Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Anna, I've got to do this. I need to find her."

"If you go there, you are going to die, and nothing will change." Anna glared at Luis, "even if you find her, who's even to say that she'll have control back when the mask is pulled off this time? Have you seen the disappearances in the news?"

"I have." Luis replied.

"Are you really prepared to face the fact that William turned your fiance into a serial killer?" Anna spoke again, voice shaking, still processing all of this herself.

"I am." Luis replied.

"I guess there's no stopping you then. I'll help you get this set up working." Anna sighed, pain etched into her words, "Just, promise me and everyone else here that you won't wuss out if she attacks you, and that you will fight back."

"I promise."

Chapter Text

Things hadn't been the same since Ness went missing. The last anyone had heard from her was when she took in a parcel that had been delivered to hers and Luis's door, ran up to the guest room, locked the door, and then vanished without any more of a trace than an open window. Everyone knew deep down that it wasn't really Ness who chose to take in the parcel and flee out through the window, but it was the choice of that thing that was using her body as its vessel.

Luis had immediately reported it to the police, then Anna. Everyone had been searching for her, but nobody could find her. All they knew of her was that kids were going missing at the Pizzaplex, which was so far away, yet it made so much sense for her to be there. Sylvia had reported things going missing and that usually in-use doors were going out of order left and right. It was nigh-impossible to get a search warrant for the damn pizzaplex to search for the kids, let alone search for an adult woman.

So it had to be the place.

Shit out of luck for all legitimate means of finding her, Luis had decided to go covert on this whole searching operation and he used the fact that he had an employee record at Fazbear Entertainment to instate himself as a technician there without Fazbear Entertainment's knowledge. He had faith that Anna could take care of the maintenance firm on her own, and she begrudgingly trusted Luis to not get himself killed.

He had snuck himself onto the shift roster, which was easy enough, and due to the lack of care Fazbear Entertainment showed for its staff, getting in to obtain the necessary clearance badges was equally as easy: go in with other members of staff, grab an entry pass, bug out an upgrade machine to obtain a higher clearance pass and write it off as maintenance and testing, recommend putting up a sign to warn against putting magnets on the machine as a result of the testing to make the testing appear to be more legitimate, and now he had some maintenance work with tangible results to go on his record and a dance pass, which granted him access to the west arcade.

Arcades usually need maintenance, and in the case of this place, a lot of it too. As long as he keeps notes of all the things he messes about with on the paper spreadsheet on his clipboard, nobody should have reason to question him.

Thinking about it, nobody had actually questioned him yet. Going in with a group, his (forged) ID badge being clipped directly to his belt instead of being on a lanyard, and tampering with the ticket upgrade machine. But then again, he honestly wasn't surprised. He was in the system, and technicians here did seem to work on a "wherever and whatever needs doing" basis, and many employees had to use roundabout routes, vents included, to get past security clearance doors to get to where they needed to go. One poor guard complained about having to use the vents to get to his post each day, so his actions were far from suspicious.

Getting through the crowds to the west arcade was the tough bit if anything; the animatronics were performing, so the atrium was packed, but he managed to slip along the outskirts, and a few "sorry"'s and "excuse me"'s got him up the escalators, which were thankfully out of use so just being used as stairs right now, and his manners and a bit of patience let him get to the elevator to the west arcade.

He flashed the staff bot the dance pass and it let him through. Easy. Many staff members had to use regular passes to get to their stations, so this was no different.

When up in the arcade, it was actually quite empty, aside from one or two staff bots and a handful of patrons too engaged in the arcade machines to be aware of their surroundings, so it was easy to get to the staff only area at the back.

He saw the office, but wanted to see what was around the corner first, and his curiosity followed.

He had checked the arcade machine inventory list yesterday (he hacked into it to view it, but who cares) and found 'PQ1' and 'PQ2' listed. He had heard of a game with matching initials somewhere before. A mobile game that Cass, Sylvia, Jeremy (the coder), someone else, and Ness had worked on before being contracted by Fazbear Entertainment to make a game that resulted in Jeremy losing a lot of the skin on his face, Cass losing an eye (her glass eye looks super cool though), and Ness losing herself.

Cass had finished the mobile game at some point after the development of the game they were contracted to make by Fazbear Entertainment. She said that she hid her mobile game in one of the ports of Fazbear Entertainment's game, but she didn't sound her usual self when she told him, only speaking in a melancholy voice about "fixing her mistake". Luis had always figured that she was beating herself up over Glitchtrap managing to latch onto Ness despite the game being 'de-bunnied', but he felt as if there was something more.

"Why make an arcade port of a mobile game? And why is it here?" He asked to himself, looking at the arcade machines that lined the walls, seeing if he could spot it amongst the unused machines, tucked away for maintenance.

It was a long, dank corridor, but at the end was a black arcade cabinet, unlike anything he had seen before.

It had a girl on the side, clothed in gold and holding a lantern.

Princess quest II.

It was on, so why not play it. See if it had some kind of meaning. He may call Cass about it later; after all, everything Cass has ever touched has been more than what meets the eye.

He pressed the buttons.

Nothing.

Moved the joystick.

Nothing.

Tried inserting some money.

Nothing but the money falling back out onto the floor.

It didn't want to work, but maybe there was a reason. There had to be a reason. Perhaps it was personal, and that there was something that he had to accomplish first.

Perhaps he had to find the first game.

He made a note of that and went to the security office nearby. He greeted the guard, a blonde who greeted him back by snatching the clipboard and pen out of his hands and scrawling something down on a blank sheet of paper before forcing the clipboard, pen, and a level six security pass into his hands before turning away.

The note read "goddamnit Luis. Take the pass and do what you need to do. How the hell did you get here anyway? Don't answer that, I know your means weren't legit; mine weren't either so I won't snitch. Just so you know, I've not seen her, but I know she's here and using a rabbit suit like the one you were talking about. And I saw you come from the direction of that arcade machine. If you're looking for the first one, I don't know where it is, but I know it will be in a place that customers shouldn't be. Signed, Syl."

"Thank you" Luis said as he pocketed the note in the button up pocket on his shirt.

"Nooo problem." Sylvia replied, watching the cameras for any signs of a rabbit lady and using her hat as a stress toy.

Luis left the office with far more than he had hoped; a lead and a level six pass. He figured that himself and Sylvia were there for a similar reason.

Why else would she have referred to herself as 'Sylvia', her middle and preferred name, when she was employed here under her legal first name of Vanessa.

With the knowledge that the arcade was somewhere where customers should not be - as if it were, Sylvia would have probably been able to find it by now due to her patrol routes - that narrowed down his search to the backstage of the theatre, Roxy raceway, the maintenance tunnels, backstage, and just generally the plethora of low to zero traffic staff only zones that were in the back of all the attractions.

He figured that as he was in the west wing, the next logical step would be to work in a circle, starting where he is now and rotating clockwise, so his next port of call would be the major attraction known as Fazerblast.

The crowd had since dispersed so getting to Fazerblast was easy. Getting past the bot was the tough bit. Flashing a level six security pass and saying "maintenance work, buddy," didn't make the machine budge as much as it made it beep incessantly.

"Hey!" He heard a voice yell from the side.

He thought the blew his chance until something plastic whacked him on the temple.

"Staff party entry pass. They don't tell newbies shit nowadays. No wonder everything keeps breaking." The person, who turned out to be a ride attendant for the ferris wheel, said as they idly tapped away at the controls. "And while you're up there, check the vents. Kids have reported seeing some kind of large albino raccoon? See if you can find it."

"Thank you. I'll try my best." Luis replied, not wanting to pry into how the ride attendant had obtained not just party passes, but ones that were intended to be used many times. Then again, some questions were best left unanswered.

With a smile, Luis headed into the elevator and descended (? Ascended? He didn't know, and to be frank, neither trusted the map nor wanted to know) into the main lobby of Fazerblast, where he was greeted by a rather dead inside looking member of staff, who was no older than 19, who flagged him over.

"Hey, uh, some stuff is broke and IDK what to do. I've logged like, five tickets, but nobody's come to help," The teenager said, "could you sort it?"

"Uh, sure! What's the issue?" Luis replied, hoping that he could figure out a solution to the unknown problem that the teen was having.

"Well, this cash register has broken, so we've been down a whole register. Not an issue during off hours, but during peak times, it's hell, man. We've got enough guys for each register down here, but one of us winds up getting yelled at because customer see register, customer think register work. They're being replaced by those crappy touch screen things in a few days, but I don't think I'll survive that long if this doesn't get fixed soon." The teen sounded so done with everything, and at that moment, Luis almost forgot he was talking to a teen and thought he was talking to a grizzled customer service vet. The teen sounded so deadpan and used to it that it scared him.

The fact that they looked at him with the same look a parent gives an overly optimistic child whose about to find out that life's a bitch didn't help at all.

"A broken register? I'll give it a shot." Luis said, and immediately the teen pointed to the broken register.

"Go nuts. I'm just glad there's no party today." The teen had decided to keep talking as Luis inspected the broken register, but Luis honestly didn't mind.

"Definitely," Luis replied, "makes figuring out the other things I came down here for easier."

"Like what?"

Shoot, now he had to have a legitimate reason, and he doubted that 'maintenance' would sedate the teens curiosity.

"You know that racoon that apparently lives in the vents? I'm here to check if that's real." Luis replied, knowing damn well that the racoon was likely his fiance's rabbit costume.

"Ugh, finally. I can hear that thing every evening. Someone needs to take care of it before it jumps down and bites someone." The teen replied, "I think it's got in the vent in the winner's lounge. Nobody goes up to the control room nowadays. I'll open the way once you've fixed the register."

Right, the register.

Whilst he had obtained more information than he could have ever hoped for, he needed to fix that broken cash register first.

Upon first glance, the register seemed ok, but the screen was buggy and unresponsive. He looked at the wires that connected the screen to the register, and most of the wires were burned out and split. He switched the register off, because it was going to need to be off anyway if he was going to be touching the components.

"There are a bunch of burned out wires and stuff" Luis rummaged through the tool pouch on his belt to see what components he had, pulling out two spools of wires, a red spool and a black spool, which did not match the monochromatic purple scheme of the place, and he was all too familiar with Fazbear Entertainment's form over function policies already from the shitshows they had pulled whenever they received an animatronic back from the maintenance firm, "is there a spare parts storage nearby? I've got black and red wires, but if I don't use purple, management will probably kill me."

"I gotcha." The teen said, pulling a spool of purple wire out of a box that was under the counter and handing it to Luis, "one of the other guys keeps bringing these up here in bulk cos the 'behind the scenes' of this area freaks everyone else out... Less we can go back there the better."

"Yeah. Thank you." Luis replied as he took the spool and got to work replacing the wires. It was mostly a case of tearing out the old ones and cutting the new ones to the right length. The connections to the machine were basically needles, and it was clear that you just shove the wire over the exposed needle. The burn marks made it look like someone had tried to solder the wires on last time, and Luis dreaded the think what became of that poor technician.

Not wanting to linger in such grim thoughts for too long, he turned his attention back to the cash register. The needles had pricked his fingers a handful of times as he slid the purple wiring into place, and once the safety latch that locked all the cables in was in place, he switched the register on and it sprung to life as if it wasn't full of more bugs than the insect house at a zoo five minutes ago.

"All done." Luis said as he gestured towards the now fixed cash register.

The teen looked way too happy about this as they tapped about on the register to check that it worked.

"Thank you!" They said as they reached for another set of buttons behind the desk, "I've set up the elevators to take you to the winner's lounge. Good luck on finding the raccoon!"

"Thank you too." Luis smiled back as he headed through the door and went towards the only door further into Fazerblast that didn't seem to be an exit.

Chapter Text

Some stumbling around later, he happened across the winner's lounge and stepped inside. It was kid sized, as expected, and he looked around to see where the vent was. It took him a moment to realize that the vent was on the floor. At the perfect height for someone to crawl through.

Taking a deep breath, he crouched down and inspected the vent cover. It seems to have been screwed back on in a haphazard fashion, so it didn't take much to remove the screws and move the vent cover carefully and quietly to the side. All that remained was the inky abyss of the vents; large enough for a grown adult to crawl through. Large enough for ... Her... to crawl through.

Taking a moment to breathe and purge the thought from his mind, he flicked on his utility torch and lit up the vent. He hesitated for a moment, and then remembered who he was doing this for.

With another deep breath, he crawled into the vents. They were a tight fit around his body and he could already feel the inherent claustrophobia of crawling through a vent at Fazbear's setting in, but he didn't back down. He pressed on and up, and finally found himself at the other end of the vents. Crawling out, he took a deep breath and walked to the other end of the awful excuse for a walkway and found another vent. This one with the cover already removed. Taking a deep breath, he went into this second vent and crawled through the metal tunnel. At least he hadn't seen any racoons yet.

Once at the other end, he took a deep breath, and stood up.

He was at the control room maintenance walkway.

There was a window and a security door that had been left open, and the buzzing of an arcade machine was coming from within.

Taking a deep breath, he walked up to the open door and saw what he had been dreading to see; the room had been turned into what appeared to be a small hideout, a crude makeshift bed at one end and the Princess Quest 3 cabinet at the other, and written on the walls in large purple letters was the name "Vanny".

Vanny. The familiar mix of Vanessa and Bunny. HIS Vanessa, and the rabbit man that had melded itself to her.

He snapped a few photos of the room on his phone (flash off of course) to show Sylvia what he had found the next time they crossed paths, if his heart could take bring it up, and turned his attention back to the arcade cabinet.

It appeared to be stuck in attract mode, yet not a single image was displayed. It was an eerie sight, and Luis knew that the machine would never work until he had found the other two games, so despite the urge to see if it worked, deep down he knew that he had to find the other two arcade cabinets first.

Looking back at the makeshift bed, he swore he saw something under the covers. The form of a person, and the patchwork rabbits head poking out, blending into the pillow.

This was Vanny. His Vanessa. A wave of sadness and relief hit him; she was here, right in front of him, but whilst it was her body, he knew that she would not be the one in control of her own mind. Not wanting to wake her, he snuck out of the room and went back through the vents, leaving the grates as he had found them.

His mind felt fuzzy and he felt almost disassociated from his current situation. It was as if everything had gone numb.

When he returned to the Fazerblast lobby, he told the teen that he had seen the racoon, but didn't want to get too close, as he still had half a day's work ahead of him and he doubted that the higher ups would let him go to the hospital on company time if he got scratched or bit. Despite how much it hurt to lie, it was mostly true.

The teen agreed and seemed fine with just knowing that the damn thing was real.

Still stuck in his own head, questioning why, he shakily wrote down a half-truth of what he found on his clipboard: one entry on the out of order PQ3 machine, and another regarding the confirmation of the albino raccoons existence.

He would never tell anyone that he wouldn't trust with his life that the albino raccoon was actually Vanny.

After grabbing a bottle of water to try and stave off the oncoming headache and tears, he carried onwards to the next place he wanted to check; Roxy Raceway. The place was still under construction, so lucky for him there was plenty to claim to be doing down there as the salon needed a lot of wiring to be done, and Fazbear Entertainment was far too much of a cheapskate to hire electricians, so he knew that one of the technicians would have to do it eventually.

Confident in his abilities to blend in, he ducked under the shutter and walked through the building site. He heard two construction workers by the open chain-link fence gate that lead deeper into the raceway complaining about the fact that the raceway was basically being built on a sinkhole. Luis opted to avoid that end of the raceway if possible, as there was another section of the to his right that would be less dangerous to look into.

The trek through the construction site was not half bad, a few "good afternoon"'s and "the cheapskates are having us techs do the wiring again"'s got him through way too easily. He considered that even the builders were here for their own gain as he made it to the glamrock salon. It was a small area, desert racetrack themed, and in the centre was a red building.

He entered the building and begun to look around, half surveying for what wiring needed to be done and half trying to see if he could find an arcade machine lingering about.

As his search took him to the back rooms of the salon, he saw it: Princess Quest I.

He approached the arcade machine, and it seemed to spring to life under his hands. He pressed a button, and it immediately started the game with no introduction. Just the princess - a girl with golden hair and a golden dress, holding a lantern - and a map to traverse. He didn't quite understand what the goal was, but he instinctively navigated the corridors, lighting the torches, and opening chests. He felt as if he already knew what to do, despite having never touched the game before.

He eventually happened across a puzzle where he had to light torches in numerical order according to the headstones, which were mostly broken. He could not help but think that this must have been a metaphor for something else.

Soon after, he found another chest and found that he had obtained a glowing purple key, and he quickly found his way back to the door that needed it.

He felt like the game was about to draw to its conclusion as he walked along the final corridor. It seemed to go on forever, but it eventually came to an end.

At this end, the corridor widened out, and a single unlit torch stood on the centre tile at the edge.

He activated the final torch, and a monster revealed itself: purple glowing eyes and a purple glowing mouth. Many smaller faces littered its amorphous mass, and a purple text bubble with an encoded message showed at the bottom of the screen, and the screen glitched as tentacle-like appendages begun to engulf the platform and the Princess.

And then the machine switched back to its title screen.

He felt as if he already knew that this was a metaphor for how the mind meld occurred.

Shaking, he sat down and took deep breaths. If the princess in this game was his Vanessa and the amorphous blob was William, was activating the torches a metaphor for when she had accidentally put the tapes back together? Or was it something else. Regardless, he had to save his Vanessa, his princess, and he already knew where the other two cabinets were.

But he had work to do now.

He spent the rest of the workday laying out wiring to and around the salon. At some points he saw that previous attempts at wiring this place had been made, and he wasn't sure if it was the hack job that of the previous attempts, or if it was the potential fate of the previous technicians that made his skin crawl more.

When it started getting late, he finished up a small section of wiring so that the next unlucky sod to take this task wouldn't have to redo his work, and he gave himself a moment to reflect on today's results.

He was surprised and quite proud of himself regarding what he had managed to put together, of both a solution of how to free Vanessa and a solution to the Salons wiring issues.

It was almost clock out time, so he packed his tools and went to clock out.

There, he saw Sylvia, looking exhausted.

"How was your day?" He asked, trying to he as cordial as possible.

"Shit." Sylvia bluntly replied, "If I had a penny for each kid who thought that hitting me in the leg would fix whatever problem they were having, I'd be financially stable."

"That sucks. I found some... Stuff, like the racoon in Fazerblast that everyone was complaining about, and wired up most of the salon in Roxy Raceway." He replied.

"You found a racoon?" Sylvia replied as she was clocking out.

"I'd rather talk about it outside," he said as he clocked out after.

Sylvia nodded and the two walked outside. Once at the far end of the car park, away from the minimal amount of outdoor security cameras, Luis spoke.

"Sylvia? I found her. And -"

"The racoon? Cool," Sylvia forced her hand over Luis's mouth and looked to the side. Two Fazbear Entertainment higher ups were walking past. "I'm heading to Anna's later for a coffee. You can tag along if you like."

Luis knew that was an impromptu lie, and played along. Whilst the car park was less monitored, you could never be too safe.

"I'll meet you there. Promise." Luis replied, walking to his car and getting in.

The two of them arrived at Anna's place at about the same time.

Luis knocked on the door, and Anna took a minute to answer, but when she did, she took one look at the duo at the door and ushered them inside, locking the door behind them.

"Ok, glad to see you're alive," she said as she went around closing all the windows and blinds, "but one look at your face and I already know that you've bitten off WAY more than you bargained for here."

"How can you tell?" Luis asked as he gingerly sat down at the dining table as Anna finished off closing the last few blinds.

"You psychic or something?" Sylvia asked as she also sat down.

"Nope," Anna said as she sat down with three glasses of water and passed one to Luis and a second to Sylvia, keeping one for herself, "Luis is just doing the puppy dog eyes again, and that means that something regarding Vanny happened and he feels like he's basically powerless to help. Happened when she got zapped by some static, happened the day after Vanny mode crashed their movie night. Dead giveaway. Now shoot, what happened."

Luis realised that his face was locked in a frown and that his eyes were wide. He definitely looked like an abandoned puppy.

"Uh, well, I found some arcade machines... They're the Princess Quest ones. You know, the ones that Cass, Ness, Syl, and Jeremy made?" Luis said, "those ones. I found them. They only seem to work if played in order, and I've managed to play the first one."

Luis stopped talking, as if he expected to be interrupted. The silence was unnerving, so he continued talking.

"I've found the second and third - I found the second one first, and the third one second, actually - and they didn't work when I found them, but I bet they'll work now I've played the first. And when I found the PQ3, I also found... Her..."

Shaking, Luis pulled out his phone and showed Anna and Sylvia the hideout that he found, the photos capturing the arcade cabinet, purple letters spelling out "Vanny", and the bed where Vanny slept.

"She's right there," Anna said, pointing at the lump in the bed and the rabbit costume head that may be mistaken for a pillow if you were not looking for it.

"Yeah," Luis replied, "You picked up on that quicker than I did."

"And that's the third arcade cabinet." Sylvia replied, barely glancing at the phone before making her statement, "the first game was made by Cass mostly, the second, we all had some input, I came up with the sword cos there has to be a way to fight back against that thing, right? And the third was I think just made by Cass and Ness. I can't tell you what that game will be like, but I've been told that it carries on directly from where the second one left off and is either a metaphor for saving someone from Glitchtrap or saving yourself. You can never really tell with Cass. It was the last thing they worked on before Ness started working with you two, and whilst they likely made it as a beacon of hope, I have a feeling that if that machine is played, it may be the key to freeing her."

"So, all we have to do is save the princess in the game, and she'll be saved in real life?" Luis asked. Whilst not the strangest thing, seeing as Glitchtrap had attached himself to Vanessa when she was testing a virtual reality game, it did seem pretty out there.

"Yep." Sylvia confirmed, "you've just got to save the princess."

Luis's frown cracked into a smile and tears welled up in the corners of his eyes.

"I sure hope it works."

"It better." Sylvia replied, "I didn't accept this job for the hell of it. But if we're going to free her, we can't just go in and whack out the arcade machines. We have to seem like we're working still. Doesn't help that I've got HIM breathing down my neck."

Sylvia necked her glass of water and started off into the distance.

"May I ask, who is HE." Anna asked, "the man who is breathing down your neck."

"A ... Benefactor, I should say." The words seemed to hurt as she spoke, rage welling up behind them. "He said he would get me a reference straight from the top. He doesn't know my reasons for working there, and I don't know his motives for giving me such a reference to send me straight to the top of security there, but in return, I've had to do a few... Tasks. He's always been a manipulative asshole. I bet he's behind the disappearances of my therapists too - Ness used the same ones as me back when she was doing game dev. I think she went back to try to get rid of it via therapy, so I bet that has something to do with it too. All I know is that I'm patient 71, she's 46. I can only make that guess as one of the therapists momentarily mistook me for someone else with the same legal forename and rattled off a patient number and some details before I stopped him. The Benefactor's always wanting to be in control, but I'm not the gullible child he raised anymore. I'm my mom's child before I am his. Even though I haven't seen her in... Too long..."

Sylvia's tough girl persona begun to crack as she struggled to hold back tears.

"He told me she had died. Herself. I - I thought it was my fault. But she's still alive. I - I got to see her, hug her, for the first time in years, but I rarely visit. I - I think I need to call mom."

Sylvia pulled out her phone and begun navigating to the contacts list.

"Before you get caught up in a conversation, can we ask for the name of your benefactor?" Luis asked, unsure if his question was appropriate.

Sylvia looked at Luis, and she didn't seem angry at all, much to his relief. In fact, she seemed relieved to get this off her chest. "Bill. Bill Blake. He's an investor, and Fazbear Entertainment is one of the places he's involved with the most. I know he has his own reason for getting me the reference besides me holding the fact that he lied about mom to me for about twenty years over his head. He's using me for his investors gain again. The deliveries, the fabric, the bugs."

"Fabric? Deliveries? Therapy?" Luis replied, overwhelmed and in shock, "Ness hasn't gone to a therapist since leaving her game dev contract."

The room was dead silent.

"How long has she been going to therapy for?"

"She apparently started two and a half weeks ago. The identity mishap happened about a day before you told me she had gone missing."

"I'm..... I'm so sorry. We were late telling you. She's been gone for three weeks."

Silence again.

Breaking the silence, Luis spoke again. "Where were you delivering the fabric to?"

"Fazerblast winners lounge." Sylvia replied, "I was told to make a suit and deliver it to there or the maintenance tunnels in Fazerblast, and tell nobody. I couldn't have told you back there - bugs everywhere, I'd be dead if I did."

"And the white rabbit suit is the one you made. With the fabrics you purchased back when I was working part time at Freddy's in tech support, and for some godawful reason, marketing too. Bill was manipulating you there too, when you were working with Cass and Ness on something else."

"Yes."

"That's why you barely glanced at the photo." A few things clicked for Luis. Her use of scrawling what she wanted to say on paper to talk to him instead of using words, shushing him in the far end of the car park. It made sense. "You already knew she was wearing the other suit as opposed to the one she had made herself."

"Yep." Sylvia bluntly replied, but she continued talking this time. "I know his demands are going to be more than deliveries, bugs, and needlework soon. He moved me out to Utah for craps sake, but what else is there? I delivered the suit, planted the bugs. What reason does he have to not throw me to the dogs again?"

"I think I may know what that reason is... But I'm not certain yet..." Luis replied, his voice surprisingly strained.

"Is this a 'I know but don't want to accept it' or a 'just don't know'." Sylvia asked as her phone rang out its dialing tune.

"I know but don't want to accept it."

Chapter Text

The drive back was arduous, but by the morning, they were back in the Freddy's parking lot. With all their cards spread across the table, they had to plan their next move carefully. They had to work silently too; recoding bugs were everywhere.

It's all or nothing now.

Luis and Sylvia entered the building together and headed to the west arcade. That meant Sylvia could cover for any passes and security checks that Luis may have needed otherwise, as they seemed to have ramped up security quite a bit today. Something about a kid going missing.

The duo both had the same guess as to what happened.

Sylvia took up her post at the west arcade security desk, and told Luis in a far too conspicuous voice to see if he could repair any of the machines in the back so that if one out front broke, a replacement could be immediately wheeled out. In an equally conspicuous voice, Luis agreed and made quite the show of fixing up one of the arcade machines before slipping deeper and deeper into the corridor of discarded games, heading to Princess Quest II that was sitting at the back.

It was almost as if it had been waiting for him.

The machine functioned as you would expect an arcade machine to do, and when Luis pressed the buttons, the game started as abruptly as before, yet this time, he was given the smallest amount of exposition in the form of what seemed to be a red bishop who simply gave the princess something that the game called the sword of light.

Who was this bishop supposed to represent? He'd have to ask Sylvia later. Or Ness, after he saves her.

He started off by going west, and after clearing out the room of enemies and finding a chest with an extra heart, he figured that this was a room that was probably going to be a late game thing rather than a now thing, so he went back to the main room and went to the other accessible room. Whilst his main strategy was to attack everything that could damage him, he felt as if it was all too natural. Hell, even when he got to the shadow clone puzzles, he aced it, seemingly knowing what formation the lanterns should take.

Soon, he found himself at the ending. The bishop was there again, in what looked like a bedroom, telling the princess to rest. On the other side of the room from the entrance, however, there was a door. Out of instinct, he approached it and pressed the button, and all that happened was the princess swung her sword.

He did it again.

And again.

He didn't know why, he just kept holding to walk into the door, and mashing the attack button.

Until the princess clipped into a small room. It looked like a security office.

Luis knew this was the ending, and after a few moments that felt like years, the machine returned to the start screen.

He had done it.

He ran back to the security office and told Sylvia "repairs to cabinet 46 - 2 are complete."

Sylvia knew what he meant.

"Great, but we have bigger issues. There's a massive staff layoff happening regarding the night staff, and I'm the only one not getting the sack." Sylvia's voice shook, "I've got to hide. It's not my fault. It's not my fault."

She continued mumbling those words, "it's not my fault," over and over.

Luis quickly checked his work email inbox, and low and behold, an email sent to everyone, yet addressed to the night security team. To sum it up, it basically said everyone on the night security team was getting reduced hours. Nothing about Sylvia, until he looked over her shoulder. An email, directly to the night staff only, listing the names of everyone whose hours were being reduced to zero. There was no "Vanessa Sylvia Blake" on that list.

"Shit -" Luis mumbled to himself as he put two and two together. This was as bad as he thought it would be. Fazbear Entertainment wanted Sylvia to be the only night guard. And for what? That, he figured he already knew.

"I've got to hide." Sylvia mumbled to herself, "I don't think I can show my face."

"I'll help." Luis replied, "I think you should hide in the showers. If you keep the curtains closed and water on, nobody should bother you."

"But my uniform will get wet." Sylvia replied, "then everyone will know I just hid."

"Not if you put the shower hose directly into the drain." Luis replied, quite confident in his solution.

"Then there'll be no noise, dumbass." Sylvia chuckled a bit, "I'll just point it at the wall and stand on the other side. That'll work better."

Luis nodded, and for once, Sylvia wore her cap. She undid her low ponytail, and forced her hair into a high ponytail, and then closed the back of the cap around her hair.

"It's not much, but it should be enough for me to slip by without anyone instantly recognising me." She said as they walked out of the staff only zone and into the west arcade.

The place was packed with people, and the only human guard on duty was freaking out in a corner, so getting to the atrium was simply an issue of slipping through the crowd of dancers and gamers.

Surprisingly, the elevator was empty when they called, so they had the ride down to breathe and prepare for how they were going to route to the locker room.

"I think I know a route." Sylvia mumbled, sounding less like the brash lady he knew and more like a scared girl.

"Point it out," Luis said, pulling up a camera map. It showed a map of the atrium, and the camera it currently had selected showed the two of them in the elevator. The image was as clear as the Fazbear security cameras could get, and Luis breathed a slight sigh of relief before quickly swapping to the atrium camera.

Ness traced a line along the map showing the quickest route from the west arcade to the door on the ground floor below them.

"That's the shortest way, but there are people here, here, and here. They might recognise me, but we've got to minimise the time we spend in the open." Sylvia said, pointing at spots on the map that were likely where her colleagues were posted.

"Right," Luis said as the elevator doors opened, "Let's do this."

The duo walked through the top floor of the atrium, only looking dead ahead. Whilst a sense of creeping dread threatened to overtake Sylvia, she managed to keep her focus as they proceeded across the top floor to the nearest stairs; basically dead ahead.

As they passed the first of Sylvia's colleagues, she tensed up a bit, and the old man in the same uniform as Sylvia turned to talk to them.

"Why, you look pale. Is everything ok?" The old man asked. He was a kind soul, and they were both banking on the man not having the minimal computer literacy to have managed to check his emails yet. But then again, the old man was day staff, so he was likely unaffected.

"I just feel a bit ill. That's all." Sylvia replied. It was mostly true.

"Well, why don't you go and get some fresh air when your break starts." The old man smiled back.

"Yeah, I will." Sylvia replied with a nod.

After a quick goodbye, the duo carried on and dashed down the escalators, and then immediately dashed down the other set. The guard at the elevators to the atrium didn't get the chance to even see them.

Now on the ground floor, the door to the kitchen, loading docks, and staff area wasn't too far away, but the last of Sylvia's colleagues that were on the route to this door was standing right in front of it.

"Hey Sill! What's with the hat?" He asked.

It was one of Sylvia's friends.

Sylvia was a bit shocked to answer. Of all people, of all stations, HE had to be at this one.

"You doing ok? You look pale. I heard about the layoffs. Kinda sucks that they're letting so many people go, especially seeing as you just got transferred to that shift, but hey! At least you won't have to work at this dump anymore."

"No, that's the thing." Whilst she was terrified, she couldn't keep a friend in the dark. Not like this. After all, he was just day staff. He wouldn't be mad at her, right? "I'll be the ONLY one on the night staff."

After a slight silence, the friend replied.

"Yikes, that sucks balls. I couldn't imagine being stuck here all night, let alone on my own."

At least he was sympathetic. Hell, everyone had been sympathetic so far. Perhaps it was only the night staff who would know, so perhaps there was nothing to worry about.

As they proceeded closer and closer to the locker room, they passed the cafeteria.

It sounded like a riot was happening in there.

The doors flung open to accommodate a table that barely brushed past their noses before it crashed into the wall and fell to the floor.

It took a moment to process, but the realisation that someone had torn a table from its fittings in the ground and had thrown it at full force out the door soon kicked in, and the duo ran at max speed towards the locker room. Once there, Ness ran to an open shower cubicle and hid inside as she said she would.

Luis hoped that a shield of common decency would protect her from being found.

This is where they had agreed to part ways until the commotion died down.

Whilst it was a dangerous situation, Luis had to know what was going on in the cafeteria exactly. That way he'd know what everyone else thought of this situation. But it couldn't be very good, given that a table had already been tossed. With a deep breath, Luis slipped into the cafeteria and saw that the place was so trashed that looked like it had been abandoned for years and was looking more broken by the minute. Chairs were knocked over and being tossed through the air, ceiling tiles had been pushed out or shattered and were littering the floor, tables had been pulled up and tossed about, and a staffbot had even been dismembered.

"What's going on?" Luis asked, his voice shaking as he hoped that nobody would throw a chair or table at him.

"Showing this hellhole what's what, dumbass. They just layed off basically the whole night crew, and they expect us to sit down and take it?" A rather angry staff member who was wearing a gas mask to cover their face replied before looking Luis up and down, "you're a technician, right? Why don't ya go pull out some wires?"

"I ... don't fancy touching any wires when at any moment I could have a chair in the back of my head."

He was about to say that he was looking for his fiancé, but he felt as if it wasn't safe to mention that to this person right now. After all, getting impaled by a chair was something he wanted to avoid anyway, making his statement true.

"Suit yourself." The staff member said as they tossed a chair into the ceiling.

As Luis walked around trying to eavesdrop on what everyone was yelling, he was approached by a staffbot who seemed to be trying to catch glimpses of everyone's faces. A fruitless task, seeing as most if not everyone except him was wearing some kind of mask.

Luis quickly plunged a screwdriver into its eyes and removed some of its circuits. Hopefully it didn't have time to tell anyone that he was there.

As he left the room, the only words he had picked up on regarding Sylvia were "poor girl. Are they trying to kill her?" In regards to her being the only remaining person on the night shift.

As he returned to the locker room to see if Sylvia was ok, he considered telling her what he heard, but decided against it. Pity can be as bad as hatred for her - she's a 'brush it off and move on' kind of person - so telling her would make it worse.

He didn't need to go any further than the locker room to find Sylvia, though.

She was drenched, sitting on the bench, hair down, and wrapped in a towel, yet she was still in her uniform.

"What happened?" Luis asked as he sat down about half a metre away. There was no point in asking if she was alright; the answer was going to be no anyway.

"Nothing. I decided to give myself a cold shower. You know, try and clean all this away." She looked distant as she spoke, "but I overheard some people talking. They pity the fool forced to stay the night."

"You're not a fool. We both came to work here for a reason, and we're so close to achieving that goal."

"And then what. Father isn't going to let me leave. Hell, he may even force me to take up her mantle." Sylvia begun to shake, "and besides, I was the second. Cass and I may have compartmentalised that thing whilst we thought of a solution to get rid of him, but clearly, even after she removed him from the game, he had already found someone to take over."

Her father, Bill Blake, her benefactor and manipulator, was forcing her to stay. That he knew. But what he didn't know was that after Jeremy, it was Sylvia who was possessed next. Luis didn't know that until now.

"So Cass was the third." Luis replied. It was all he could reply with.

"And Ness was the fourth. Jeremy sacrificed his face, Cass her eye. And what did I give? What did I give to be free? All I did was force him back and we split him up and forced him into Cass's tapes." Sylvia was practically yelling, but Luis knew her anger was aimed at herself and this place. "If I gave nothing, did it even leave?"

"It left you alright." Another voice spoke from behind them before walking into view. It was a man with short dirty blonde hair, a sweatband on his wrist, and the upper half of his face covered by a visor. Once he was in view of Luis and Sylvia, they recognised him immediately as Jeremy, the beta tester. He then continued talking. "Does it matter that you didn't have to give something? You forced him out."

Sylvia stayed quiet.

"Where's the tough girl I met in coding class?" He asked.

Sylvia stayed quiet for a moment before replying. Her voice sounded more worried than anything else. "Why are you here."

"Well, I heard you yelling from ... A while away."

"No, why are you here at all."

"I needed the cash."

Sylvia glared at Jeremy, and he shrugged.

"I'd tell the truth, but I can't in here."

Sylvia nodded. It seems that Jeremy already knew about the bugs.

Without words, everyone seemed to be on the same page. Sylvia dried her hair and put it back into her usual low ponytail, but it was less dry and more just not as wet as it was before.

Everyone stood for a while as if they were about to leave.

Then Sylvia spoke, heading for her locker.

"I'll stay here. I think I'll freeze if I go out there, and I can't exactly return to my post if I'm drenched, can I?" She opened her locker and was looking for her second uniform. "I'll catch up with you after I change though."

"Alright," Luis replied, "I'll see if arcade cabinet 46-3 is working."

"I'll help you dry off." Jeremy said, "I've got a hair dryer in my locker that you can use, and someone's got to pass you things and take things so you don't wind up changing into an equally wet uniform."

Sylvia looked a bit dumbfounded, and then realized she was only a bit less soggy than she was when she stepped out of the shower. "Right."

With a nod, Sylvia passed her second uniform and towel to Jeremy, who had gotten his hair dryer out of his own locker.

"I'll send a message to your tablet once I'm done here." Sylvia said as she gave Luis a nod before he left.

Nodding in reply, Luis said "counting on it," before leaving the locker room to head to Fazerblast.

Chapter Text

As Luis stepped out into the atrium, something felt wrong. It was too empty, and it wasn't even late. It was two PM for crying out loud.

Perhaps it was because of the riot.

With a sigh, he walked further into the atrium before he was stopped by a man with a clipboard.

"You were the guy wiring the salon yesterday, right?" The man said.

Luis's mind was racing and he was worried as to what was going to happen to him.

Did he do a bad job? Did he break something? Did they want him dead?

"The guys want you to finish the wiring. You did a good job apparently." The man with the clipboard seemed to just be taking the construction teams word for it as there was no emotion in his voice.

Luis breathed a sigh of relief, but also realised that the rest of his shift would be spent doing electrical work.

"We've got a real team of electricians on the main raceway, but we need the salon sorting out stat." The man continued.

"I'll do it." Luis replied, trying to not sound like he just had the life scared out of him.

"Good," the man in the suit replied, "get there ASAP."

Luis watched as the man walked away, and he knew that he was now stuck with a task that he had to complete, as despite being an illegitimate employee, he was still an employee and technician. Besides, he didn't want to think about what might happen if he didn't do as he was told.

Once in the construction site that was the raceway, he navigated the plywood and steel tunnels and came to the chain-link gate intersection again. Today, he heard some electricians talking about brownouts in the raceway. Luis chalked it down to shoddy or incomplete wiring; he wouldn't be surprised if a main cable was just shoved into the ground haemorrhaging power because someone thought that was what grounding a cable meant at this point.

As he made the turns and slight backtrack to the salon (at this point, he had just given up on leaning the layout of this place), he wondered why massive segments of the Pizzaplex was still under construction. Had the raceway always been the raceway, or was something here before it had to be removed, rebranded, or covered up entirely. Thoughts of what could have been here before filled his mind as he ducked under the shutter as it opened.

He greeted the construction crew as he went to the salon to pick up wiring this place where he left off.

In terms of wiring, everything had been left where he had put it. On the other hand, the construction crew had moved everything about, making it a pain to get to the walls. The staff bots circling the area didn't help.

As he attempted to run a cable to the cash register for the fourth time, Luis exclaimed "Can someone tell these things to move? I can't run wires with these things driving over them."

A meek "sorry" rang out as the salon doors burst open and a petite woman who looks exactly like what you'd expect a petite staffbot operator to look like; large glasses, white clothes, and her belt full of various remotes.

"These things keep forgetting that it's daytime. I should have fetched them earlier, but the mapbots decided that the patpats all needed a map each, so, there went my morning." She said as she grabbed one of the staffbots and dragged it to the other with an awful sound of the side of the wheels dragging on the ground. Once she got to the second staff bot, she also grabbed that one in much the same way, "I thought that they fixed it in a patch, but this 'eternal night' bug seems to just affect these two."

"Thanks!" Luis replied, "And the patpats? They're the wet floor signs, right?"

"Yep? Cute, right?" The woman replied as she touched a few buttons on her remotes, seemingly causing the staffbots to shut down.

"Yeah. This place may be full of horrors, but they sure know how to design something so cute you'll almost forget that first bit." Luis replied. The wet floor sign bots, known to some at patpats, were probably the only thing about this place that didn't make him want to get as far away from this place as he could.

"I mean, this place wouldn't have been open five minutes if it wasn't for those cuties. These brats, however," she let go of the staff bots and they stood there, deactivated, as she readjusted their wheels so she could drag them both without breaking them, "creep me the hell out sometimes. Talk about uncanny valley. Well, it was nice talking to you! See ya!"

And with that, the woman left, staffbots in tow.

As Luis ran the cables to the desk with the cash register, he wondered to himself about the staffbots. They unnerved him, and clearly the woman who was in charge of managing at least some of them seemed to think the same way. Even during the day, there were a lot of them about, doing janitorial work, some were cooking food, and the majority were doing security rounds. Whilst during the day, many sat inactive in back rooms, the fact that the place was almost entirely ran by staffbots scared him. Especially when knowing what was in this building. Was this Fazbear Entertainment's way of just cutting down on staff, or was there some other reason for reducing the size of the night team to the same guards per shift as it was in the 80's.

Luis didn't give it a second thought, as he knew the answer was 'yes'. He even felt as if the answer to why they would reduce the night staff on such short notice was at his fingertips too, but it was barely out of reach.

The answer would come to him soon.

As he finished wiring up the central area of the salon, he noticed that the reel of cable that he was using had run low. There was still quite a bit to do, and he wasn't about to be stingy about wiring. He was going to complete this job in the safest way possible using as much cable as he needed, weather Fazbear Entertainment liked it or not.

He walked outside and asked the construction workers if there was any spare reels of cable about.

"No, sorry. But we overheard the electrician's talking about having to go to that theatre in the daycare to get any cable around here."

It was something at least. Even if it did mean walking all the way across the building.

He thanked the construction workers and headed off to the theatre.

The walk took longer than expected. Mostly due to customers jamming the walkways and the lifts having queues longer than some of the food shops.

Being crammed in a lift with ten other people was not a nice experience at all, and he just wished that there was better access in the maintenance tunnels, but sods law, cyclone gates blocked the way.

By the time he actually made it to the daycare, he felt exhausted. He just wanted to grab the cables and go.

He trekked across the upper level of the daycare, being careful as to not bump into any children, or worse, their parents. A kid running at mach fuck into his leg and then using him as a springboard to run off in another direction was one thing, and he could tolerate that, but even brushing shoulders with a parent? He didn't feel like getting screamed at. Not today, or ever for that matter.

Without incident other than the fact that his legs were definitely bruised now from the number of kids who decided that his legs were a perfectly good springboard, he made it to the theatre. There was a bit of a queue at the ticket desk staffed by one human and one staffbot, and in an ironic twist, the human was actually outperforming the staffbot. Luis held up his security clearance badge as he walked around the back of the queue, then into the back behind the counter, and then behind that too where a second human member of staff was taking a short break.

"Hi, uh, you know where the cables are?" Luis asked.

"Sheesh, man, you almost gave me a heart attack. Yeah, uh, at the end of the corridor, there's a door. It's, like, super weird. Good luck getting the cables, man. You'll need this maybe" The man replied, tossing Luis a Fazbear branded camera that seemed to be Polaroid based, which he barely caught.

Luis could only pray that this person he was talking to was sober.

"Thank you," Luis replied as he backed away and out into the tiny entrance area to the theatre. He looked down to the end of the corridor, and saw a poster.

"That can't be right," he told himself as he approached it, wondering what on earth this all was? Do the daycare folk play pranks on technicians and electricians, or was that man for real.

When he got closer, he noticed that the eyes on the poster had started glowing as he approached, and he didn't think much of it; it could easily be one of those holographic things. That was until one side of the poster and its floor length frame creaked open.

"A hidden door? Really?"

Luis said to himself as he walked inside. The door seemed to close behind him.

"And I didn't even need to take a photo." He thought as he walked through the rather grotty corridor and to another, thankfully normal, door. Opening this door reveled what seemed to act as a backstage for the soft play area of the daycare, but what piqued his interest more was the small tunnel that led to another room. Something in there seemed to beckon him.

Taking a deep breath, he crawled through and round a small room with an arcade machine in one corner.

"Balloon world, hu?" He told himself as he recalled reading another technician's report on how it glitched and then had vanished, "let's see why they moved you."

It seemed to be working, so, he pressed to play.

The rules seemed simple enough, and it seemed to be a high score game. It reminded him of another old game, but then again, many of the games here were rebrands of the most generic form of other popular arcade games.

After managing to carry his first run to quite a high score, he noticed something; what seemed to be glowing purple rot covered a single tile of a tree, so despite it costing him a balloon, he went into the tree and collided with the glitch.

The screen changed, and the gameplay changed too, as he now found himself following the line rather than avoiding obstacles.

He didn't know how he adapted to it so quickly, but he did.

Soon, the glitching got worse, to the point where the screen froze, and all he could see was a glitched sun, similar to the sun form of the daycare attendant that he had only seen so far on posters and as a statue.

He felt slightly scared, and felt as if the arcade machine had acknowledged him somehow.

He thanked the arcade machine on instinct before crawling out of the small den, grabbing a reel of wires, and booking it back to the salon.

When he got back, one of the construction workers commented, "that didn't take long".

Luis was surprised, given that he had spent some time playing an arcade machine, but he replied with, "The door to that weird back area that seems to connect to the castle up in the wall of the soft play just opened for me."

The guys seemed to know the area, but were more confused about something other than his weird wording of where he went.

"That door doesn't open usually. If we want to get anything from there, it's usually a case of having to take photos of a bunch of cutouts. It's bullshit, and no wonder everyone just steals the spare cable reels from the other storage rooms. Get rollicked for it, but, it's easier."

"I didn't have to do any of that. When I approached the door, the eyes on the poster just lit up." Luis replied, a little spooked.

"Well," a construction worker replied, "you didn't hear this from me, but, I think that door can tell people apart. I went down there once, had to go through the whole photo ordeal, and got through, but the door wouldn't let my mate through unless I held it open. I think it sensed something about you that made it decide that you were allowed in."

At this point, Luis was visibly shaking, and expected someone to say that the whole door and camera thing was all some hazing ritual that he managed to avoid, but no such words came.

"Whatever you came to this building for, it probably knows. Not the people, but the concrete itself," that same construction worker replied, "but be careful. It may not let you in next time."

Luis nodded and went back to wiring. The shaking had mostly worn off, and he could already feel the bruises forming in his legs, but he pressed on. He had to get this done tonight to give himself more time to find her.

Losing himself in his thoughts, Luis tried to figure out what all of this meant. He was trying to find Ness. Was the building trying to help him free her, or was it going to betray him after it had gained his trust.

A spark snapped him back into the real world as he remembered what he was doing; wiring up a beauty salon, in the middle of a construction site, in the middle of a restaurant that never switched off the mains.

With a huff, he walked out the back of the restaurant and unplugged a large cable which connected the internal building to the Rest of this place.

"You done trying to kill me?" He mumbled as he walked back into the salon to continue his work.

Despite this being his first building wiring job, he felt as if he had done a good job so far. It helped that the diagrams for this place were all just left out in the open for him to snap a photo of for quick reference, and that it was kind of obvious as to where the wires should go. It was less like actually wiring a place up and more like playing a messed up version of a cereal box maze.

As he laid the last wires down, he breathed a sigh of relief, and as the final one was put in its place, he stood back and looked around. It wasn't the best wiring job in the world, but it was a damn sight better than what was here when he first took up this task, and it was a damn sight cleaner than everything else in this damn establishment.

Triumphant, he walked out the back and plugged the larger cable back in, and the salon's lights sprung to life. The lights all seemed even, nothing seems to have shorted, and the light switches worked too. He checked the back room, and the Princess Quest arcade machine was unaffected by the salon's now powered state; it was just as he had left it.

Feeling quite proud of himself, he made all the notes he needed to make on his clipboard, and then got out his tablet. There was a few messages from Sylvia. The one he was counting on, then some rather worried sounding messages. Luis quickly replied, apologising and stating that he had gotten caught up with wiring the salon again. Sylvia replied instantly that it was fine; she was just worried that he'd gotten himself killed.

"Not yet." Luis wrote in reply, "Heading to Fazerblast now."

He hoped that Sylvia, Jeremy, Vanessa, and Anna would forgive him for how stupid he was about to be.

With a deep breath, he grabbed the half empty cable reel and carried it with him; he had to look busy. Then, he said his goodbyes to the construction workers; pleasantries are always vital. Finally, he walked to Fazerblast at a pace that was quicker than walking, but slower than running. This speed walking mixed with maintaining good posture managed to get him through the crowds and to Fazerblast, where he greeted the on duty staff for both the ride and around the area before he stepped into the elevator and headed to the main Fazerblast area.

Luis remained silent. He didn't know if he'd get another chance today to see if he could access Princess Quest III, but he had to try. He had to try and save his princess.

Chapter Text

Luis stepped out of the elevator into the Fazerblast lobby and waved at the teen on the cash register, who he recognised from the other day. It seemed that the register he fixed was still working just fine.

The place was just as purple as he remembered, and the uniformity of the doors confused him momentarily before he noted the door with an exit only sign. That would be his way in.

Walking with a sense of purpose, a reel of cable, and a high level security pass seemed to be enough to get the door to open for him, and for that, he was thankful. He mumbled a 'thank you' to the door as he stepped through, remembering what the construction worker said about the building being alive. It seemed crazy, but who was he to risk slighting the monolithic complex.

With a deep breath, he walked through the somewhat hexagonal tunnel that somehow qualified as a walkway - that people were supposed to go through frequently, no less - and found himself at the door to the winners lounge. Nobody was there, so he stepped inside and crouched by the vent. Whilst a claustrophobic space, he had to do this. For Ness.

The crawl through the vents was just as bad as last time, but at least the metal's surface was poor quality enough for him to not slip. He couldn't imagine lugging a heavy box through these vents, let alone making this crawl in a fursuit. The walkway that was probably not supposed to be a walkway have him time to breathe, and then it was back to the vents. This one was no better, but at least he was used to the closed space now, so found it just a little less painstaking to get through.

Once out the vent, he heard noises and looked down through the grate metal of the maintenance catwalk, and he noticed many people, most of whom were children, playing Fazerblast. He checked his watch and figured that this was the last game of the night, and if to prove him correct, the tannoy switched on and the artificial voice of the announcer signalled the end of the match and instructed all participants to leave, and that due to it being late, the winners lounge would close in five minutes, so that the winning team should collect their prize and leave.

He opted to stay low and hug the wall as he snuck across the maintenance catwalk, lest everyone report him as yet another racoon.

At the door, he stood up, and slipped into the control room.

His blood froze cold as he saw who was awake.

Vanny was stood at the control panel, and turned her head to look at him, and waved.

In a move that felt like a good idea at the time, he waved back with a nervous smile.

"Hi..."

In return, Vanny gave a slight giggle and skipped closer to him. It was almost surreal.

He felt butterflies in his stomach, but it wasn't the good kind. He knew that whilst Ness was in that fursuit, she was definitely not the one in control.

As she leaned in close, she placed one hand near her mouth in a shushing motion, and Luis noticed a glimmer from her other hand.

She was holding a knife.

Vanny moved her hand from the lips of her mask and went to caress Luis's face, and Luis felt that if he stayed putt, the red eyes of the rabbit costume may be the last thing he ever sees.

Almost throwing himself into the wall, Luis leaped backwards and realised that it was just in time too, as the knife barely grazed his shirt. As Vanny recovered her balance from the missed thrust of her knife, Luis made a break for it, dashing across the maintenance catwalks, Vanny in hot pursuit.

As he reached the small gate at the top of the stairs that would likely only stop a child, he jumped.

Not over the gate, but over the balustrade and he let himself fall into the Fazerblast arena; going down the stairs and through the behind-the-scenes of this attraction would take him to the same place anyway.

The landing hurt like hell, but he kept running as he looked up and saw Vanny confidently make the same jump and stick the landing far better than he did - Glitchtrap's work, no doubt.

As he reached the exit and ducked through the door as it was opening, he felt dizzy. Despite everything beginning to spin, he kept running, and kept running, barely paying attention to his surroundings anymore, focusing only on putting one leg in front of the other.

He opened his eyes, and found himself in the security hall of monty golf. He felt as though if he stopped running that he wouldn't be able to move, so he ran the rest of the way to the office before collapsing to the ground.

The camera monitors showed no signs of Vanny, so he was safe for now.

Taking a moment to catch his breath, he checked the time.

12:01

The shutters would definitely be closed by now, so he was stuck here until they opened at six AM.

"Damnit..." He mumbled to himself as he leaned back against a crate. He felt his heart pounding in his chest and his lungs ached, his legs felt like jelly and his head was spinning.

A disembodied voice coming from the crate behind him didn't help at all.

"Hey, dude, you alive there?" The voice said.

Luis groaned as he mumbled "great, now I'm hearing things."

"No, no, you're not hearing things. I'm right here, in this crate!" The disembodied voice said in reply, "You seem to be a bit stressed. What's up?"

With a sigh, Luis replied.

"Well, my fiancé... She got possessed by... William. He kept on hurting her, and he's trapped her in her own head and taken over her body..." Luis knew he was probably going to cry, but he kept talking anyway, "He's been using her as a vessel to kill people, and ... She almost killed me."

"That's rough buddy. If it makes you feel any better, there's a kid in the building."

"How would that make me feel any better!"

"Well, my parts may have been taken, but they can't take my connection to the cameras. I can see her in the east arcade, but some lady in a rabbit costume is trying to kill her. Hurry."

Luis stayed quiet for a moment, and wanted to ask so many questions, but only one came out.

"Who are you."

"I'm Bonnie. Or at least what's left of me," the voice replied in a confident tone, "now hurry!"

"Right." Luis replied as he clambered to his feet.

There was a child locked in this building, and even if he couldn't save Ness, he could at least try and save this child.

His legs hurt, but they didn't seem broken at least. His lungs hurt, but he could still breathe. His heart was running at a million miles an hour, but he'd rather that than have it be stopped.

As he stumbled down the hall, he felt himself steady up. It didn't matter if this was the adrenaline or if he was getting better, but it didn't matter to him. He was going to get to the east arcade.

He was not going to let William force Ness to take another life.

Chapter Text

Luis ran as fast as his legs would carry him. He ignored the staffbots in his path and ducked around Monty. Weather this animatronic was aggressive or not, he didn't know, nor did he have time to find out.

As he entered the lift, he wondered why he didn't remember stopping for the lifts, and he wondered if he ran to Monty Golf via any conventional passages at all. As the doors opened, he realised that he didn't have time to think, and he had to run.

He dashed out of Monty Golf and fled up the escalators, gunning it to the top floor. His legs ached, but he had to get to the east arcade.

As he reached the shutters, he realised they were closed. In an act of desperation, he checked his map.

He noticed that the east arcade was connected to El Chips, and ran to that shutter. As he got close, the shutters opened, but only by a metre. He skidded underneath the shutter and then continued to run. He didn't know how he managed to pull that off, but as he ducked under the other two shutters, he was just glad that he didn't fall on his ass.

As he entered the arcade, he could see the issue immediately.

A young girl was running around, trying to hide behind arcade machines, only for Vanny to find her and slash at her with her knife. The girl was barely able to dodge the hit and then half crawled half ran to hide behind another arcade machine. As Luis ran further into the room, he saw something else; Roxanne was also searching for the girl, and Luis figured that Vanny was using Roxanne to cheat, as the wolf always seemed to be looking in the girl's direction, albeit with a worried expression.

Luis didn't know if Roxanne was friendly, but when Vanny attacked Roxanne and seemed to do something that caused the kid to scream "NO! Leave Roxie alone!", Luis figured that Roxanne WAS friendly, but wouldn't be friendly for much longer.

As Roxanne deactivated, Luis noticed that Vannys head turned to face him.

"Hello Luis," Vanny said, her voice a distorted all-too-sickly sweet form of Ness's voice, "Fancy seeing you again!"

Luis didn't even know Vanny could speak, and hearing Ness's voice, albeit distorted and far too sweet and cooing, coming from behind the mask sent a shiver down his spine.

"Stop using her voice, and let her speak for herself." Luis yelled.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Luis noticed that the girl has used this minor distraction in order to try and sneak away again.

"So you don't believe that this is me?" Vanny spoke again, the voice sicky sweet and distorted.

As Luis was about to open his mouth in reply, Vanny spoke again.

"Smart boy. After all, you'd be dead already if you thought that she even had a chance of taking back control."

The word hurt to hear, but it was true. If he hadn't have jumped away from Vanny's embrace back in Fazerblast, he'd be bleeding out in the control room right now. The only reason why the words hurt was because they only acted as confirmation that Ness basically had no control over her own body anymore; she was in there, but there was nothing she could do anymore to save herself.

"I know, but I know that she can be saved." Luis said, his head spinning. Something about the suit Vanny was wearing. He couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"You're too hopeful." Vanny chuckled as she put a hand to the ear of her suit. "You hear that?"

"SOMEBODY HELP ME!"

It was the girl.

Roxanne had managed to grab the girl, and try as she might, she couldn't struggle free from the robots grip. However, the robot showed no interest in killing the girl, only in bringing her to Vanny.

Luis knew that words were meaningless now, so he dashed towards the animatronic and got between the kid and Vanny. He pushed his hands underneath the robot's hands and pulled the child away from the animatronic's grasp as a searing pain ripped through his shoulder. He knew Vanny was close, so as he fled from Roxanne, he kept the girl close to his chest. That way, the kid couldn't be grabbed out of nowhere.

Luis kept running, and he looked behind him, seeing Vanny skipping closer.

"You run, I'll fend her off, ok?" Luis said as he placed the child down and urged her to flee.

"Uh huh." The kid nodded, and ran, only to go back to hiding behind arcade machines. Luis hoped that the gap she had squeezed into was too small for Roxanne to grab her again.

"Are you really willing to die for that kid?" Vanny asked as she skipped up to Luis.

"You're going to kill me anyway, so I may as well try." Luis hissed back. Like hell was he going to let this monster who had hijacked Ness's body use her voice to coax him into giving up. "I'll save this kid, then I'll go back to Fazerblast, play that last arcade machine, and save Ness."

"That's sweet, but you won't last long enough."

Vannys words did not match her actions as Vanny seemed to stumble backwards, as if someone was crudely controlling a robot. As Vanny grabbed a knife and dropped it on the floor, she said "what the hell is this woman doing?"

Finally, she kicked the knife toward Luis.

Vanny huffed, the sweet mascot persona already broken. "I guess she wants you to have a fair fight."

Shaking, Luis examined the knife before putting on his wiring gloves and picking it up. If Ness wanted to give him a chance, he'd take it, for her sake.

"Ready?" Luis said, trying to keep his cool as he felt his own blood dripping down his back.

"I was waiting for you." Vanny said, the voice returning to the sickly sweet mascot voice as she rushed at Luis with her knife.

Metal crashed on metal as Luis used his knife to block the blow. He wanted to go on the offensive, but hurting Vanny would mean hurting Ness, and who knew how much Glitchtrap had already hurt her. For all Luis knew, his princess could be at death's door; he didn't want to push her through it.

As he blocked another oncoming swing of Vanny's knife with his own, he delivered a swift kick to her ribs, causing her to stumble back momentarily before regaining her balance. Luis knew it was never going to be that easy, so he replied to Vanny's next knife swing with a swing of his own that snagged on the fabric of her fursuit. He watched as Vanny went to stab the air where his leg would have been if he kicked, and when her arm was down, he sidestepped behind her and elbowed her in the back. Vanny stumbled forward, and was about to fall, but she grabbed Luis's arm and pulled him down with her.

Luis didn't know what the floor was made of, but landing on it hurt. He tried to scramble to his feet, but Vanny grabbed his hair and pulled him back, placing her knife at his chest.

"You've always been the bleeding heart type. Now, let's see how much it bleeds."

Luis grabbed Vanny's wrists and pushed the knife away as much as he could. He didn't know how long he would be able to keep this up for before he either lost his grip or bled out through his back

As his grip failed, he had a strange, dark thought. One he did not want to have.

What if he let Vanny stab him.

He gave it a second thought. If he could force the knife somewhere not fatal, the shock could let Ness take back control, if only for a second. Then, he'd be able to use that opening to escape her grasp and get back to his feet.

Now, Luis was no doctor, but he knew that there were some places where a person could be stabbed and survive. Hoping that what he knew was accurate, he pushed the knife down and to the side.

"FUCK! That hurts..." Luis yelled as pain flared out from the stab wound. His vision became blurred, and his ears rung, but he felt Vanny's grip falter as a muffled shriek rung out from under the mask; a shriek that Luis recognised from that time when a spider dropped down onto Ness's hand that one time when they went out to a café.

It was a shriek of fear.

Luis used this momentary lapse in Vanny's control to pull himself away and get up.

As he pivoted around to face Vanny, he saw that she had also managed to get back up, and she had the knife that she had passed him, leaving Luis armed with only the knife that was in his gut. He knew that he had to keep the knife in so that he wouldn't bleed out. Even though he had a belt full of tools, he was completely unarmed. He wasn't willing to risk hurting her with a screwdriver or wrench.

He'd have to dodge and retaliate when Vanny's theatrics pulled her off balance from now on.

Vanny didn't wait for Luis to be ready this time and immediately slashed at him, aiming for the throat. Luis ducked the swing, and jumped back to dodge the back swing, the knife barely grazing his neck as he did.

Metal flashed again and Luis dove to the side. Pain flared up in his arm as he realised that he had dove the wrong way, but he used this as an opportunity to counter. With his other arm, he punched Vanny just below the neck. As she recoiled, Luis jumped back, and waited for Vanny's next move.

A jab was dodged by leaping backwards, then a second jab was dodged by strafing to the side.

A slash was dudcked under, and Luis attempted to kick Vanny's legs out from under her.

She jumped over the kick, but Luis rolled out of the way and got back to his feet before Vanny did anything else.

Her next attack was another slash which he dove away from, managing to evade the knife again as the slash turned into a stab.

Despite the tears in his clothes and his own blood spilled in pools across the floor, he felt that he was getting the hang of it, but he knew that he wasn't going to be able to dodge forever. He was already getting dizzy from the blood loss, yet Vanny always seemed to be at peak performance.

His next dodge was interrupted by tile as he found himself backed up against the bathroom wall.

Vanny was in front of him.

Tile walls were behind him.

There was no way out.

He felt a child grab onto his leg. Luis figured that the girl ran here when nobody was looking. It just sucked that Vanny had backed him into a corner in her hiding spot. But maybe that was Vanny's intention.

As Vanny closed the distance between them, Luis reached out and grabbed the rabbit head by the ears, and pulled.

Vanny froze as the suits head was removed, and her weapon fell to the ground as Luis saw the face under the mask.

Ness, his princess, was battered and bruised, her lip was split and many small scratches littered her face, some old some new. Her hair had been crudely bleached blonde and was tied back in her usual ponytail, but that did nothing to cover the dark brown roots.

Her knees buckled, as if to collapse, and as she fell, Luis caught her.

"It's going to be alr-"

Luis words were cut off as a hand - Vanny's paw - grabbed the knife and pulled it out.

The mask was off. Why was his princess still Vanny?

As he felt her lips on his cheek, he anticipated that a knife through his heart would follow, but instead, there was nothing. As he opened his eyes, through his blurred vision he saw Vanny retreat; bloodstained knives in one paw, mask in the other. Her movements were staggered, similar to someone walking on an injured leg.

His heart beating in his eardrums and a constant ringing prevented him from hearing what was said, but he saw Roxanne enter the bathroom, and she did not seem to be herself.

Roxanne readied herself to pounce, her eyes full of an animalistic hunger for blood.

Luis planted himself in front of the girl. After all he's done to protect her, he was not about to let her die now. After all, as he was bleeding out from four wounds with an ever growing pool of blood underneath him, he figured that he'd use what time he had left to buy the girl some time to run. Perhaps, if the kid survived, his princess would forgive him.

Luis closed his eyes and braced for impact, but none came. Instead, he heard the click of a camera and opened his eyes to a blinding light.

Then he heard a yell.

"Come on! Run!"

It was the voice of a young man. He had only heard this voice in passing, so whilst on an instinctual level, he knew who this mysterious camera wielding saviour was, he could not for the life of him put a name or a face to the identity.

He looked around to try and locate the source of this voice, and all he saw was Roxie twitching in place as if she had been electrocuted. Luis assumed that the bright flash did this to her.

"Follow the torchlight!" it was the same voice, and Luis noticed the beam of a torch pointing into the bathrooms. Whoever was holding the torch was likely waiting for him to follow it.

Luis took a step forward, but the kid hung back, clinging to his leg, shaking.

He tried to keep his voice calm despite the blood dripping out of his abdomen and mouth, his smile the only thing between himself and giving up.

"Come on, Let's get somewhere safe."

He extended a blood-stained hand to the girl, and she took it, her own hand already covered in blood.

The two then snuck out of the bathroom, and looked for where the torchlight went next.

The beam of light bobbed across the room, as the young man holding the torch dashed across the other side of the room. Luis followed behind, keeping to a walking pace so that the girl could follow.

He noticed that many staffbots had been pushed to the wall by the wet floor sign bots, but he made sure to steer well clear of the few that remained, as despite being a technician, he did not trust that they wouldn't sell him out to the animatronic whom he had just been saved from.

Manoeuvring around the staffbots was nerve wrecking as he felt his head spin and herd sirens that weren't really there. It was quite easy to catch onto the movement patterns off the staffbots, but slipping past at a walking pace with a child in tow was still terrifying. Each time he passed behind one, he found himself asking what would happen if it turned around then and there.

As they got closer to the door, a staffbot managed to escape it's yellow and black captors and tried to return to its post, heading straight towards him.

In a second wind of adrenaline, he picked up the girl and staggered to the side to dodge the staffbot's torchlight before he followed the dancing light of the torch into the staff only area.

As he entered the security office and set the child down on the chair, he noticed the shoulder length red hair of the mysterious camera wielding saviour and recognised him as the son of one of the owners of a small robotics company whom his own company works with from time to time.

"Name's Julian. Yours?" The redhead said as he crouched down to see eye to eye with the girl.

Julian already knew who Luis was, so there was no need for any other introductions.

"I'm Rachel" the girl said as she hugged a Roxanne plushie that was stained with her own blood.

"Hi Rachel, well, I'm going to use the stuff in this box," Julian pointed at a first aid kit that he had took off the wall and was holding in his hands, "and it'll make you and Luis over there hurt less. Ok?"

Rachel nodded and Julian nodded back in response.

"I've got to patch him up first, as he's losing a lot of blood. If I don't, he might fall asleep and not wake up." Julian said as he knelt at Luis's side and begun to tend to the stab wound that was in Luis's gut. He worked with the speed and precision of a forest ranger; a skill taught to him by his dad, no doubt.

Julian's hands were bloody as he pulled away from the freshly patched up wound and turned to examine the other wounds that Luis had.

As he was patching up the slash wounds in Luis's shoulders, Rachel spoke.

"You could have just said that he might die."

Julian looked up from patching up Luis's wounds, and tilted his head. He didn't speak, as he was using his mouth as a third hand to hold some bandages in place.

"Sorry. My parents always tell me not to sugar coat things." Rachel sunk back into the office chair and continued to watch the impromptu surgery.

It was a bloody process, but within minutes, blood soaked bandages and bloodied slashes in his jacket were all that remained visible of the wounds that Luis had received.

Julian stood up and brushed himself off, which seemed to be more of a force of habit than a utility, as his jeans had become covered in blood and his hands were no cleaner than before.

"I'd recommend not moving much." Julian said as he saw Luis trying to stand out of the corner of his eye.

"Now, where are you hurt?"

Rachel shuffled around a bit before removing her jacket. The sleeves were tattered and quite an accurate reflection of her arms underneath. Julian could also see that she had blood on her face, and that her lower legs were covered in scrapes and heavy bruising.

As she was wearing shorts, the wounds would be easy to treat.

"Ok Rachel, you're going to have to promise me to not scream. We don't know how well Roxie can hear, or if Vanny is nearby." Julian said as he pulled some antiseptics and bandages out of the first aid kit. "Antiseptics tend to sting, and with the amount of wounds you have, it's probably going to sting a lot, but we can't risk your wounds getting infected."

Rachel nodded and presented her left arm, and Julian got to work cleaning and bandaging the wounds. Rachel buried her face in her plush Roxie, and when Julian told her that he had finished with that arm, it was clear that she had been crying.

"One down, umm... A few to go. Do you think you'll be ok?" Julian asked, and Luis saw the redhead's face was more serious than he'd ever seen it before.

Rachel nodded and stuck out her more injured leg next. There was heavy bruising on the side, and Julian seemed rather concerned.

As Julian was busy with the rinse and repeat process of patching up Rachel's injuries, footsteps that sounded like work boots on whatever the hell this floor was could be heard running for the door.

Luis checked the cameras, and gestured to Julian that the door should stay open.

Julian nodded and got back to work as a petite woman with white clothes, large glasses, and a belt full of remotes dove into the security office.

"I've blocked the entrances and exits. We just need to worry about Roxanne, but I think I've got her tricked into chasing around the wet floor bots."

She seemed out of breath as she sat on the floor and grabbed one of the remotes off her belt. As she shoved her head as close to the remote as it could get, it was clear that she was controlling what was on the other end.

"Great work, Patty. We've just got to hold out until six. If Vanny gets past, I'm sure the two of us can take her."

Patty nodded, but seemed more focused on what she was doing.

"Where were you guys earlier?" Luis asked, wondering if they could have come to his aid any sooner.

"Atrium." Julian replied, "making my way to the arcade. Running loops around Freddy."

"Fighting for my life against staff bots in the prize counter." Patty replied.

Luis nodded and figured that they couldn't have gotten to the east arcade sooner, even if they wanted too.

"Did you know there was a meeting at 11:30? Everyone was supposed to be there, but I guess it's for the best you weren't, as that turned into another riot." Patty said, switching out which remote she was using, "But I guess that's what happens when you try and have a meeting in the same room everyone trashed just a few hours before."

Julian didn't look away from Rachel's wounds as he replied to Patty. "Bet they were banking on it too. Basically all of us got locked in. I'd say they're trying to kill us, but they're doing a shit job. There aren't enough of those big bots to terrorise us all."

"The staff bots tried to kill me!" Patty sounded like she would have yelled that if it wasn't for the fact that they were trying to stay quiet.

"Never mind, I retract my statement, they could absolutely kill us all."

"So, what's the plan?" Luis chimed in.

"Well, seeing as I can't control the staffbots, we'll have to get around them if we need to leave here." Patty replied, now sketching something in a notebook. A map, perhaps?

"Or we could attack them first?" Luis replied, recalling how he'd already stabbed one staffbot during the riots.

"Are you kidding? That's more work for me!" Patty replied, holding up her sketch which was totally a map, "I've noted down all their patrol routes, and have calculated the safest way around. I can use the patpats to make it even safer."

"You've got to actually survive first." Julian replied as he finished bandaging up Rachel, "then you can complain about work."

Patty grumbled for a bit before agreeing with Julian. Survival was more important than what tomorrow's workload may be. Hell, after tonight, live or die, Fazbear Entertainment is probably going to get rid of as much of the human staff as they legally can, and the riot is the perfect reason to sack that many people at once.

"So, the plan?" Rachel asked, "Why can't we just stay here?"

Silence cloaked the office.

Why couldn't they just stay here? They had security doors, they had cameras, and they had a swarm of wet floor sign bots to barricade the regular doors. What was stopping them from camping out here all night?

Luis checked his tablet, and saw that Sylvia had sent him another message about half an hour ago, and it read.

'Daycare blackout. Sorry about the silence. Been busy. Attendant is perma moon. He hasn't left yet, but I think he's gotten the picture that he can't get through me, and he's been mumbling nonstop about one of us hiding a kid, so I think that at the next hour, he may try and leave the daycare for once this night. If it comes for you, just beat him off with a broom. It worked for me.'

Luis checked the time.

2:58 AM.

"The daycare attendant is loose." Luis said as he sent off a message to Sylvia to say that the kid was in the east arcade before he begun flicking through the cameras.

Rachel also begun flicking through cameras on her Roxanne themed fazwatch - how she had access to them, he did not pry - and it looked like she had found something, as she froze up before mumbling "he's here."

Chapter Text

Everyone had their eyes on the doors as shadows circled outside the office.

The three adults stood around the chair: if that robot wanted the kid, it'd have to get through them first.

As a red glow brushed past the office door, a creepy voice echoed from the halls. "Naughty girl, it's past your bedtime."

Yeah, now Luis knew why the maintenance logs on the daycare contained so many customer complaints of the daycare attendant traumatising the kids. Hell, he probably wouldn't be able to sleep with the lights off after this.

As Luis checked his tablet again, he noticed the red glowing eyes of the attendant, lingering in place instead of circling around, and that they were looking into the office. He looked up, and there was nothing there, but when he looked to Patty's side, he noticed the animatronic hopping between one foot and the other, in an intense stare down against her.

Bells jingled as the daycare attendant leaped at Patty, and in retaliation, she yelled a war cry as she unsheathed a remote and brought it down upon the daycare attendant's head.

Patty yelled profanities between breaths as she beat the daycare attendant down with nothing but a remote. Even though the attendant's retaliation attacks seemed to hurt, it's rounded fingers were only good for bruising and perhaps choking someone, but Patty didn't give it the chance as she continued to whale on it with a remote, which was now fractured and about to shatter.

Luis noted the hour chime over, and as it did, the attendant switched from trying to attack to trying to flee.

Luis and Julian prepared to attack as Party backed off, and much to the relief of everyone in the office, the daycare attendant retreated out into the halls and through the vents.

"Ok, so now what?" Julian seemed unsure of where to go from here. He didn't know if they should hunker down and deal with that every hour as well as run the risk of Roxanne finding them, or if they should pull out of the office and stay on the move.

For a lone child, the answer may well be to move, especially if a human such as Vanny was hunting them, but for a team of adults protecting a child, the answer was less clean cut.

Patty sunk to the ground, clearly in need of a break, bruises from the daycare attendant's attacks already having formed on her skin.

"Guess we'll be here a few more minutes. I know we can handle another minute, but can the patpats hold out against Roxanne until six?" Luis asked as he also sunk to the ground, the pain in his gut a reminder that he should try and stay still.

"Probably, but we'll definitely need to move eventually. Especially if the animatronics find out that the kid's here." Patty said as she checked her other remotes.

Luis nodded, and he he decided that there was something that he wanted to get off his chest. Even if he was a bit dizzy from the blood loss, he had to get it out, no matter how it wound up sounding.

"I've been finding arcades around here, and I think I can use them to save the princess. I don't know if I need to find anything else, but I'm getting worried. I swear I've done everything right so far, but I just need to make it to the third arcade to be safe."

Patty and Rachel looked equally gone out, but Julian looked as if he was calculating something.

"Oh, your trying to save Ness, but don't know if what you've done so far will be a success."

Luis nodded and checked through the maintenance logs that he had managed to obtain about the other arcades.

"I've found one, and I was able to glitch it. But, I don't know if what I did was helpful, a hindrance, or just means nothing..."

"Right," Julian replied, "which one did you find?"

"Balloon world." Luis replied as he scanned maintenance log' after maintenance log on his tablet.

"I see," Julian replied, "I guess you've read up about the two other glitching arcades. I've personally found that the mini-golf arcade machine in Monty Golf has a fair share of weird purple fractures in it. I guess those are the glitches, and all you need to do is interact with it, right?"

"Those are the rifts, yes..." Luis replied. "Did you manage to glitch it?"

Patty and Rachel had lost track of what Luis and Julian were on about, but the two boys seemed to understand what eachother were saying and figured that Luis was using 'rift' and 'glitch' interchangeably.

"Nah, sorry. Couldn't get the ball into the glitch." Julian shrugged as he tried to figure out how on earth anyone is supposed to be able to glitch that one, "but I've seen the one in the bakery. Couldn't get close though; the guys there didn't want anyone running around back there, so I was shit outta luck."

"Do you know what the game is like? Where would the rift be?" Luis asked as he scoured maintenance logs to try and figure out exactly what needed to be done, "and are we sure we need to glitch the arcades to save the princess? How do we know that we aren't sealing her further? I don't know!"

Luis begun to shake, and he seemed to be slipping into delirium. Perhaps it was the blood loss, or perhaps it was the Pizzaplex which was driving him to insanity.

As Luis curled up, hands over his head, head buried in his knees, he begun to mumble distressed words in panicked tones.

Rachel scooted back in her chair and tried to hide behind her plush toy.

"What's wrong?" Julian asked the girl, "Did you see something on the cameras?"

Rachel shook her head and pointed at Luis.

"The rabbit lady attacked Luis, like she attacked Roxie. Is he going to attack us now too?"

The room went silent for a moment.

"No," Julian replied, "he's clean."

"Clean?" Rachel replied, rightfully confused.

"Ah, let's just say I have this 'ability' and it let's me see things like that, and I can see that nothing has leeched onto him."

"So you're, like, a ghost seer?" Rachel replied, eyes wide.

'At least she got the point.' Julian thought to himself before replying "Yes, I'm a ghost seer! That's exactly right. Now, excuse me one moment. I'll see if I can figure out what the rabbit lady did to Roxie for you."

Julian picked up Luis's technician tablet and flicking through a few things, "ah, and that's why Roxie is now hostile. I'll bring that up when he's less delirious."

"What is it?" Rachel said, now rather wide eyed and full of hope.

"Well, I've found that I can trace a few things using this tablet. With this maintenance tracker that I've found on it, I can see what modes the animatronics are in. It says here that Roxie was in safe mode at 12, and a note? Shut down during photo op. Hmm, and now, it's logging her regular night mode. That must be it; this virus that's been ravaging the systems for the past week, it has been effecting the animatronics night modes to make them hostile! I had my suspicions that this had been going on for quite some time, and I guess I'm right."

Julian's reply was confident, as if he had experience in this paranormal field before, and it appeared that a simple computer virus was a welcome suprise.

"So that's what that virus is doing. Probably why some of the staffbots have been stuck in night mode too."

Patty seemed to know what Julian was on about.

Luis just nodded. Despite having only worked at the Pizzaplex for a few days, he was more than in the know. He even knew who put it onto the system, and exactly what it did. After all, his and Anna's maintenance firm was hijacked as a testing ground for it.

"Now things are making sense. Too bad we're a little too late." Julian said as he scrolled the rest of the maintenance logs.

"What do you mean? Are you really saying that we can't do anything?" Patty's face sunk into a fearful scowl.

"Not exactly." Luis words came out as dry rasps between heavy breaths, "We can't stop it. It's already taken over the system. But. We can fight against the monsters."

Julian gave a solemn nod, "exactly. What's done is done, but we can make sure that nobody else gets hurt."

"But YOU'RE hurt!" Rachel cried out, noticing that both Julian and Patty had small injures that they had neglected to tend to. Julian's shirt was torn slightly and his neck was bruised with a hand print, whilst Patty's Jacket looked like it had been ravaged by moths and her face had grazes up the side, "You're all hurt!"

Julian sighed. It was not a sweet sigh, or a melancholy one. It was an exhausted one. The exhausted sigh of someone who has looked death in the eyes and refused it's hand.

"I meant die. We can make sure nobody else dies. If us adults fight, we can take hits that you kids can't, and we can survive them. My dad did this back in the 80's and 90's, now it's my turn. But this time, I don't think that any amount of blood will sedate those beasts."

"Your dad worked at Freddy's?" Rachel asked, and she didn't seem to be done with the questions. Julian expected her next question to be a normal one of 'where' or 'what was his favourite animatronic', but the words that fell out of her mouth instead were, "does he have red hair like you, and does he wear a scarf? My grandpa works here and sometimes talks to a red haired man with a red scarf. They keep talking about a 'role' they both had."

"Your grandpa was a phone guy!?" Julian seemed to be in pure shock, his eyes wide and his moth agape; he knew that there were many locations, hell, he was in Hurricane right now - the site of the original Fredbear's - whilst his dad had worked at the Freddy's back in Chicago. But meeting the grandchild of someone who shared his father's role, at this place, at this time under these circumstances? He shook himself off and tried to formulate a less shocked reply.

"Uh, yeah, that's my dad. Scar on one side of his neck. He's a journalist." Julian replied, shaking a bit.

"Yeah." Rachel nodded, seeming more melancholy than usual, "my grandpa almost died back in 93. He always tells the story to me on Halloween."

Julian nodded and stayed silent for some time before replying, "My dad told me about it all as soon as he figured that I was mentally ready to handle the explanation as to why my grandpa is dead but present as a ghost bear and why I'm blind in one eye."

"Why are you blind in one eye?" Rachel asked, the scars on Julian's face piquing her curiosity.

Julian pointed to the trio of scratches over one of his eyes.

"I was attacked by an animatronic fox - a funtime mangle. It was sent to kill my dad, but clearly it's facial recognition was far from perfect, as it attacked me. My mum saved me and drove the robot out with her axe, but not before the fox had slashed my eye. ... I was four."

The two were silent for a moment before Julian smiled, "I mean, when your dad spent a good portion of his life being tortured by a bunch of dead kids who wanted to make him their 'voice' - You don't want to know what that entailed - well... I guess he just figured that seeing as Fazbear's is still trying to kill him to this day, that I should be properly informed. Just in case anything happened and I needed to carry on where he left off."

"Did they think that he killed them? The robots that attacked grandpa thought he was the guy that killed them." Rachel replied, clutching her toy as if a bad memory was about to boil to the surface.

"No. They knew he was innocent." Julian replied, wondering if that made ot better or worse. "They just saw him as a posessed person who they could use to do their dirty work during the day."

A raspy breath broke into the conversation.

"Princess. That's what the monster is doing to my princess."

Luis stood up and staggered towards the door.

"Please, take care of the kid. There's something that I need to do."

Julian sighed, "Just don't die. Ok?" As he patted Luis on the shoulder and passed him back his maintenance tablet.

But before Luis could leave, Patty chimed in, "Before you run off and let yourself get killed, I'll open a path. But once you get to the atrium, you're on your own. There's too much space and not enough of the wet floor sign bots to make a path out there."

Luis nodded, and Rachel was the last to speak. "Thank you for saving me from the rabbit lady."

Luis turned around and smiled in reply.

"Thank you three... I mean it."

Chapter Text

Luis left the safety of the security office and walked out into the East arcade once more. He saw staffbots being pushed into corners by the little wet floor sign bots, and Luis smiled and waved whenever one of the small yellow bots looked his way. After all, there was no harm in thanking Patty for her assistance again.

Following the path that patty had made for him, he ventured further into the arcade, keeping an eye out for any staffbots that may have wandered into his path, as well as Roxanne.

He heard the tell-tale heavy footsteps of an animatronic, but was unsure as to where it was coming from, so he crouched and snuck behind a line of arcade machines. As he used the arcades as cover, the footsteps drew closer, and he saw the animatronic wolf stalking through the arcade.

Her claws grabbed onto the arcade machine next to the one that he was hiding behind, and pulled it away.

"I can hear you."

The angry voice of the wolf made his skin crawl, and he held his breath as the only thing between him and the wolf was a thirty degree turn of her head.

He was too scared to move. To scared to risk moving. He had stopped moving, stopped breathing, and the only thing signaling that he was alive was the rapid beating of his heard and the blinking of his eyelids.

It felt like hours before the wolf pulled its head back and grabbed another arcade machine. The one he was hiding behind.

He used the little time she spent pulling the machine forwards to crawl away, putting a few more arcade machines between them.

This time, as Roxanne poked her head behind the machine, she looked directly his way. A pair of golden eyes stared into his, and it was clear that she had saw him, and had full intent to kill him.

Luis sprung to his feet and made a run for it, vaulting over boxes and other stuff that probably shouldn't be vaulted over before skidding under the barely opening shutter of the arcade.

He heard the robots feet slam against the tile as she chased him down. Even after he was out of line of sight, she heard her yell "You can't outrun me!" As the shutters opened to let the wolf pass.

As he skidded under the shutter that took him out into the atrium, he took a turn towards mazersize, slashed a vital wire of the security bot that was in his way, and hid behind a pile of soft play items.

The heavy footsteps of Roxanne could be heard as the shutter creeped up to accommodate her, but as she stepped out into the atrium, she turned the other way and roamed deeper into the megaplex.

Luis breathed a sigh of relief as he saw that the wolf had lost sight of him and was now stalking once again, trying to locate a target.

He would have to get past her, but he figured that he'd have a better chance in the open, as even though barriers were few and far between, with all the temporary barriers shoved to the sides, he could still vault the ones that were permanent fixtures, as well as vault over tables and such.

He used the map on his maintenance tablet to see where he was and plan a route to Fazerblast; he had to go back to the last arcade and save the princess.

His fingers traced many paths along the digital map until they decided on one path.

He nodded in agreement to himself as he stood up and checked the path ahead. Aside from a few staff bots, the path was generally clear, but he knew that Roxanne was wandering somewhere around the atrium. The whereabouts of the other animatronics were unknown. Likely terrorising another small group of staff. He could only hope his colleagues were safe.

With a deep breath, Luis begun to walk across the top level of the atrium towards the nearest escalators. He kept one eye on the path, and one on the cameras on his tablet; being able to walk and check cameras would be his saving grace.

He noticed Roxanne on the far end of the second floor.

'How the hell did she get there so quick?' he thought to himself before noting a staffbot walking towards him.

He staggered out the way of the staffbot before steadying himself. His head felt fuzzy, but he had to fight through it. The escalators weren't too far away anyway; he could make it.

As his hands connected with the railings, he felt as if the rubber was too warm. He wanted to believe that someone had been here recently. He didn't want to consider that he was getting colder.

Luis felt that the escalators were safe. He crouched in the landing between the first and second set of escalators as he considered his next move; would he sneak around the first floor then head down, or would he go all the way down and brave the open terrain of the ground floor.

The escalators down to the ground floor were nearby, so it would be easier to go down a floor, but then again, the ground floor was rather open. Then again, this entire place was rather open and lacking in hiding spots that would be able to conceal a fully grown man. He'd have to brave not getting spotted in the open either way, and as Fazerblast was on the ground floor, it would be quicker.

With another deep breath, he pulled himself to his feet and descended the other escalator to the first floor. There were two sets of escalators, each about the same distance from where he was now.

It was just a matter of getting past the staffbot who's route lead it by the exit of the escalator that he was standing on.

He had already decided what the best path forward was.

As the staffbot turned its back to him, he limped, heading towards the escalator to his right. One that would land him near the shutters around Monty Golf and Rockstar Row. The minimal staffbots on route proved easy to evade, yet he kept a screwdriver in his hand as a weapon, just in case.

Shadows danced in the corners of his eyes and the lights danced behind him. He was surprised that nothing had spotted him yet as he grabbed onto the handrails of the escalator, shaking, and finally feeling the cold chill.

His legs shook as he carefully descended the escalator, and as he reached the bottom, he felt the world spin as a searing pain formed in his head, dull yet constant and amplified by his weakness and fear.

Looking across what resembled a dining area, Luis saw the beams of light from the torches of the staffbots. He watched them as they moved, and he felt that even though he couldn't recite the patrol routes of the staffbots off by heart, he felt as if he had learned them, and that he'd just have to trust his instincts.

He felt the ground shake behind him, and he figured that it was about time he moved.

The first step made his ears ring; it was as if he was walking towards the source of the dull pain in his head. But he pressed forward. As he reached where the staffbots paroled, he didn't wait. Instead, he carried on and trusted his instincts on making swift turns and as he limped onward, he felt the staffbots swoop behind, the light of their torches barely missing him as he slipped by unnoticed.

As he got closer and closer to his goal, his vision begun to blur red as the pain in his head got worse. It felt almost surreal, yet fitting; moving towards the source of his pain.

As the final few staffbots passed him by and he reached the shutters to Fazerblast, the pain in his head felt so overwhelming that he considered collapsing where he stood.

He felt dizzy and light in the head, as as he ducked down to dive under the shutter as it was opening, he fell to the ground completely. Whilst he was able to crawl under the shutter, he couldn't get back up.

Whilst the only staffbot in the small area near the Fazerblast entrance and ferris wheel was the one at the elevator who only cared for party passes, he still felt unsafe. It was as if the source of his splitting headache was nearby.

Everything felt too heavy; try as he might to move, he couldn't get up.

He was barely able to register the sound of the shutters opening, but he did hear it. He braced for the heavy footsteps of an animatronic and braced for pain, but instead he heard what sounded like the dull sound of fabric against the floor as a familiar fabric hand brushed against his cheek.

"I know what you're doing. See you soon."

A familiar, chilling voice echoed out; a distorted mimicry of his princess.

Luis expected to die, yet there was no steel blade and no paw around his throat.

In his flickering vision, he simply saw the woman in the rabbit costume walk into the elevator and wave as the door closed.

Moments later, the pain in Luis's head was gone, and he could stand again. He still felt as if he needed to throw up, but at least most of the pain had subsided.

He stared at the elevator and took a deep breath. If he wanted to free his princess, he'd likely have to face that pain again. If she was the source of the pain, he wondered why he didn't feel that headache the first time they had faced off against one another; he wondered what was so different about this time? Was this some kind of defence mechanism for when she was moving about, or was her game of 'hide and seek' an exception.

He showed the party pass to the staffbot and it let him past, and as he stepped into the elevator, he took another deep breath. She was going to be there, and he doubted she'd spare him a third time.

As he walked through the familiar entrance room, he sidestepped the staffbots and headed through the corridors that lead to the arena. They felt longer than he remembered, and the flickering strobe lights didn't help the pain that returned, biting at the back of his head like a caged rat.

He bypassed the staffbot giving the safety talk, and as he stepped foot into the Fazerblast arena, he spotted where he needed to go.

There were many staff only alcoves for storing props, storing replacements panels, and taking off the record breaks, but he wasn't looking for an alcove; he was looking for the maintenance tunnels.

The door was locked, but he had a key. At least something in this awful place had a manual lock alternative.

Rather deteriorated looking staffbots patrolled maintenance tunnel, and he quickly put two and two together as to why nobody likes coming here; the creepy smiles painted onto the staffbots made them appear almost demonic, and Luis wouldn't be surprised if those machines had the capacity to tear someone to shreds. He did not want them to spot him.

Luis limped through the maintenance tunnel as he evaded these disturbing staffbots, ducking into small offshoots to let the beasts pass.

Once he got to the other end and to the stairs, he knew that this was the point of no return. He gripped the handrail, and it felt cold.

The cold hurt, but it was nice to have something to keep him grounded.

Despite the pain in his torso and the dull headache, he limped up the stairs.

As he dragged himself up, he felt as if something was creeping up behind him. The pain in his head begin gnawing at him again as he dragged himself up the winding stairs, and the moment he reached the top, he ran. He ran using energy that he didn't have, his feet pounding on the metal of the catwalk as he ran to the open door of the control room.

Once he reached the arcade machine, his legs gave way as he collapsed at the foot of the Princess Quest III arcade machine.

He pulled himself up and pressed the buttons to start the game, just as he did for the other two, but it wouldn't respond.

Luis collapsed once more before the arcade machine and begun to wail.

"I did it! I did what you wanted! I beat parts 1 and 2. Why won't you turn on? What else is there? Tell me!"

He begged the machine, praying for a response, but there was none. The machine stood silent, as it had always done.

"Please, tell me."

His vision was blurred by tears, and the noises behind him didn't matter any more.

He let the exhaustion overwhelm him.

He let the pain subdue him.

He let the muffled footsteps on the maintenance catwalk lul him to sleep.

Chapter Text

Luis opened his eyes and looked up, and he saw Ness, his princess, as she was before William Afton tore her away from him. Her hair chestnut brown, untouched by bleach, her rainbow streak shining. Oh how he missed her so much.

Luis knew that he had to be dreaming. But perhaps there was solace to be found in this dream, so he let himself stay asleep.

She was cradling him in his arms in a bridal carry as she spoke to him. He couldn't make out the words, but that didn't matter to him anymore. If fate was going to play such a cruel joke on him, he figured that he should at least allow his mind to grant him some respite.

As he tried to stay in this dream, he felt as if he was not stationary. The cold chill he felt was almost real. His vision was fading again, but he didn't want to let the dream go, but he could feel himself slipping again.

As his vision faded a second time, he heard a voice. It was her voice. Her real voice. He couldn't make out all of it, but he knew that what he could remember would be important.

"It's like a conspiracy"

Those words. Luis's mind was too clouded to fathom their meaning, yet he knew that he should cling to these words and never let them go. Even if they meant nothing in the end, it meant everything to him.

As his vision faded to black once more, he lamented that this may be the final time that he'd hear the genuine voice of his princess.

The world stayed black for a while, and as he felt himself return to his senses, the world stayed black a while longer.

And it stayed black.

He couldn't see.

He turned his head, but there was nothing. He tried to get up, but he found that he was wedged into a small space. To one side was a wall, likely concrete or cinder block. To the other side was a flat metal surface, like the side of an arcade machine. He tried to move again, but he found that his arms had been tied behind his back, and he now felt the source of his blindness: a strip of fabric that had been tied around his face.

His heart dropped and he begun to hyperventilate. He was scared, cold, but the worst part was that he didn't feel as if he was even alone; he felt that there was a malicious being watching him that had been waiting for him to wake up.

Luis wished that he had never woken up at all.

He felt hands near his head and tensed up. He didn't want to die this way. Fortunately, the hands seemed to have other ideas, and instead of grabbing his head as he expected, they grabbed the fabric that had been tied around his eyes.

In a moment, the blindfold was ripped off, and Luis could see again.

The walls were grey and covered in drawings, to his right was the Balloon World arcade machine, the floor was a mess, soft play items tossed about like an attempt at furniture. The ceilings were low, and the room was cramped, but it was cold.

He knew that whoever took him here had to take him through the tube in the wall of the backroom of the daycare that constituted as the door to this room, and he could feel the bruises already. But why would someone go to the effort of tying him up and keeping him back here.

His answer was crouched in front of him.

A businessman in a shirt, waistcoat, and red tie. He looked incredibly old, yet in his hand, he held a gun, the silver of the barrel reflecting a glimmer in what little light was in this room.

This was one of Fazbear Entertainment's executives. "Exec's" as everyone called them, but right now, the man in the suit seemed less like a business executive and more like an executioner.

"I know that you playing those arcades was more than you slacking off or playtesting." The executive glared at Luis, the man clearly knowing far more than he let on, "Now explain: why have you been hunting down and playing those specific arcades. Speak."

"I- I was just playtesting the ones that had reports of being buggy so that I could fix them! I swear!" Luis pleaded his case between heavy breaths. What he said was true, but just not the whole story.

"If you were just playtesting, as you claim, then why do you keep sneaking onto the Fazerblast maintenance catwalks." The executive replied, raising the gun slightly, seemingly confident that he had caught Luis out. "Speak. What business do you have up there, Arcade Technician?"

Luis wouldn't be caught out that easy.

"I've been reading the maintenance logs for each arcade, and have read that a few arcades have been stashed away in areas outside of where they should usually be. I've been trying to get them all, this one next to me included, back into working order." Luis was shaking as he spoke and he felt tears run down his face. "I'm just doing my job."

This executive knew way more than he was letting on, and Luis was just waiting for the man to lay his hand bare. There was no reason for even Fazbear Entertainment to tie up a technician in a back room like this just for doing work that's a bit outside what he should be doing; the executive clearly knew Luis's motives already, and was proven correct.

"But why those arcades? There are plenty of arcades in the maintenance corridor in the west arcade for you to fix. Why these?"

The executive was looking at his gun, as if he was considered shooting him already. Luis tried to think of what to say, but his mind was a blur.

"Now speak." The executive demanded, and Luis knew he had to say something.

"Because there's only one of each of them." Luis replied, his mind struggling to continue his response and his mouth refused to let any more words out.

The executive shook his head. "I appreciate the half truths, but not only do I know who you are, but your maintenance tablet has been kind enough to give me a sneak peak into your little conspiracy to throw a spanner into the founder's plans."

The executive pulled out Luis's maintenance tablet, and on the screen was a maintenance note. Luis recognised the words as his own: the very words he cried as he collapsed at the foot of the princess quest III arcade machine. His tablet must have picked them up and thought them a maintenance note, titled under the heading of 'Red Flag'.

The executive lifted and looked at his gun before side-eyeing Luis.

"Do you understand the significance of those arcades and their glitches?" The executive sneered as he pointed at the Balloon World arcade machine. "Or are you just pretending. You may as well come clean. It'll be one less weight on your conscience when you die today."

Luis's tears turned into a full on sob. Even though tears wouldn't save him, there was nothing left. And all he managed to reply with was a single heavy nod accompanied by a mumble of "I know."

"Do you?" The executive glared, turning his gun to Luis.

"Please don't shoot! I'll never tell anyone about those arcades." Luis let all the words fall out. There was nothing else except their purpose, which he would take to his grave if it meant that someone else could save her. "I'm sorry. Please don't shoot."

"This wouldn't be the first time someone's given me that story. You're not the first to try and free her. What do you think happened to the last technician who tried to find out this little secret?"

Luis stayed silent. The arcades were documented in the records as having an unknown date of arrival to this place with only a few notes a peice. Luis had been the first to write about Princess Quest, but far from the first to notice the golf arcade and the bakery arcade. It felt almost as if whoever was documenting the arcades never finished noting down their findings.

The executive shook his head. "Whilst I'd love to remove the arcade machines from the equation, I'm afraid that that would go against the founders instruction. So you must be removed instead. Just like that technician before you."

"Don't please!" Luis begged, "I can help hide them. I'll do anything, just please don't shoot!"

His plea fell on deaf ears as the executive aimed his gun at Luis's head.

There was nothing else he could have done.

"Move!"

Luis recognised the aggressive growl as being that of a friend as a blonde blur grappled and begun to restrain the executive, but as the man's hand was pushed downwards, a sharp bang echoed in the small room, and a searing agony ripped through Luis's shoulder.

Black spots threatened to engulf his vision and a high pitched ring lingered in his ears, yet underneath the ringing, he heard the cracking of bone, and between the voids that threatened to consume his vision, he saw the blonde - and a second blonde - pin the executive to the ground.

As the darkness overwhelmed the last of his sight, he saw a pair of green eyes move towards him, as a pair of red eyes hung back. He swore that the green eyed blonde was trying to say something, but he couldn't hear as the rest of his vision faded, taking his consciousness with it.

As Luis opened his eyes, this time he was met with blinding light. He thought he was dead, but everything hurt too much for him to be dead, and as his eyes adjusted, he found himself lying on the floor of the entrance to the Pizzaplex.

"Finally, you're awake." A voice said, "Can you hear me?"

Luis tried to reply and roll over to see who this voice belonged to, but his reply came out as a strained groan and he could barely move.

"Easy now, easy now." The owner of the unidentified voice helped Luis sit up, and he now saw this this voice was Julian's, "Sylvia and V- .. this other blonde lady carried you here. It's almost six, so we figured that we should gather everyone in order to get everyone out as soon as possible."

Luis gathered that this other blonde was Ness. He didn't know and didn't want to know how or why.

Looking around he saw many faces, many people he recognised, and many that he didn't. Luis had a gut feeling that everyone was accounted for and alive. Even the restrained man in the business suit whose arm was bent in many incorrect ways was alive.

Yet as he was looking around, the room went dark.

"DAYCARE ATTENDANT!" A stranger yelled.

The clatter of metal on floors, walls, and ceilings sent a chill down Luis's spine as he looked around to try and see it.

Julian jumped to his feet and grabbed a broom, yelling "ON IT!" In reply.

The redhead shot off and ran towards the source of the noise, and yelling could be heard. A whisper of worry echoed through the lobby.

After a few minutes, Julian returned, a little worse for wear but otherwise ok. As he sat next to Luis, he seemed to wave a few people over.

"If you're wondering what happened to us, well, "Julian replied, gesturing to Patty and Rachel, "We went on the move and barricaded ourselves in lost and found for the last two hours. But as we were moving around this place, a weird noise seemed to follow. We checked the cameras, and found that the source was a lady who seemed to be carrying an adult human. She headed to the daycare though, and Sylvia insisted on following it alone. It's a good thing she followed too."

Luis knew that the distortion came from Vanny, but that raised even more questions. What was Vanny was doing to cause the distortion, and why would she take him to the daycare, of all places?

Luis's thinking was cut short by him remembering that he was about to get shot by an executive - no, he was shot. The pain flared up in his shoulder and he shrieked in agony as he begged an unseen man to not shoot.

Julian had already took the liberty of patching up the gunshot wound as Luis was sleeping, using the summer he spent at a bear reserve as his excuse for his proficiency with first aid - he did not want to mention who his dad is and what he had taught him in such a crowded space, especially when in earshot of the man who had shot Luis - so he knew that Luis would survive his injuries, but the thrashing about was something he was not prepared for or knew how to handle.

As Luis writhed around screaming, Julian scooped him up in order to stop him from hurting himself on the floor, saying "it's going to be ok. He's been apprehended, you're going to be alright.

The entire lobby stared at the apprehended business man, and you could hear the gears turning and clicking into place. Various mumblings echoed in the lobby "what did he see" and "why bother shooting him". Luis's screaming dwindled into its own mumble, but Julian didn't let go.

He looked around, hoping that there was someone who could handle this situation better than him, and fortunately, Sylvia and a gardener were decending the stairs, and old man in a guard uniform between them. Behind them was a small troupe of miscellaneous staff, including a ticket clerk, a younger guard, and a chef. They all seemed to be injured, but the old man was worse off by far.

As the crowd on the stairs merged with the croud on the lower lobby, the younger guard got straight to patching up the old man's wounds, whilst Sylvia and the gardener rushed over to Luis and Julian.

"Is everything ok? I heard yelling."

"Luis started screaming and clutching his shoulder. I already patched up the wound, but he's freaking out and I don't know how to help him." Julian replied, looking between Luis and Sylvia as he spoke.

"Well, you did a great job." Sylvia said as she gestured for Julian to pass Luis to her, "I'll sort out the rest, you go help patch people up."

Julian nodded and obliged, getting to work on patching up a nearby injured guard who wore a gas mask around their neck, which seemed to be about as worse for wear as it's wearer.

"Anyway, Sil, what have you been doing tonight?" Julian asked as he treated a gash in the gas mask guard's head.

"Been helping the guys who have been locked behind. I've got global cameras, so I've been giving everyone the heads up, and they've been reporting back to me with any casualties. A lot of people were injured, but by some freakish miracle, nobody is dead. Then again, a massive group had managed to bunker down in the kitchen area by unscrewing the doors to the cafeteria and using them to barricade chica in a broom closet with a massive pile of pizza based trash to keep her busy. Between checking up on everyone virtually, I was physically in the daycare with the guys you saw me bring down a bit ago."

Julian nodded, and Sylvia continued to speak.

"A blackout in the daycare meant the moon side of the attendant was out all night. As he's the biggest threat despite having no "weapons", and the old man's granddaughter had been locked behind, it was best to beat the daycare attendant back before it could get anywhere."

"And your cuts?" Julian asked, pointing to the lacerations in Sylvia's shirt and skin, "the daycare attendant doesn't have claws."

"The staffbots were going haywire. They thought that everyone except me were intruders. Then again, with the mass layoff, they've probably already taken the liberty of removing most of the staff from the database." Sylvia huffed as she checked her wounds, not having had the time before now to tend to them, "when they saw anyone, they'd call one of the other animatronics. I've had to fend off Monty a handful of times, but he never seemed interested in me, only the people I was protecting. Like,"

"Grandpa!"

After finally turning around to take a look at the old man, Rachel set of running for exactly six steps and sat down next to him. She seemed to understand that he was injured and being patched up, so she couldn't hug him right now. It was pretty clear that this was Rachel's grandpa. Her excited rambling of tonight's events and pointing at Julian and Luis, to which in response Rachel's grandpa smiled, was a sure sign that she was glad, despite the trauma.

As Julian finished bandaging the head of the gas mask guard, he turned to Sylvia and asked "who the hell's that guy anyway?" As he pointed to the restrained executive.

"Hell if I know." Sylvia replied, trying to pin an identity to the executive, "it's not Bill, that's for sure. They've got no reason to risk him falling out of the picture, so I guess they just selected one of their disposable execs."

"He reminds me of this old dude my dad used to work for." Julian said, "silver hair, red eyes. But, this guy's too young to be him. Like, I don't see any fossilisation yet."

As Julian begun patching up the wounds of a cleaner whose broom was in splinters, Rachel's grandpa spoke up.

"You dad and I have talked quite a bit about our old jobs at this franchise. Do you think that the restrained man over there may be his former boss's son?"

"Daniel D.'s son, hu?" Julian pondered, "maybe. This place does have a weird obsession with family lineages, so giving the son of an exec the position that he's got is pretty probable. And given how much of a shitshow C location was, I wouldn't put it past whoever's running this place to task that guy with killing snoopers."

Rachel's grandpa nodded, but as he was about to speak, a shout echoed from the floor.

"What did you just say about my father?!"

Rachel's grandpa and Julian turned to look at the restrained executive who looked practically red in the face.

"Eh?" With a tilt of his head, Julian smirked, "what about it?"

"You..." The executive sunk back, realising that he was talking to one of the banes of his father's existence. It seems that he realised that it was better to stay quiet.

Julian simply gave a little giggle in reply before replying to Rachel's grandpa. "Well that's one thing solved. What do you think happened to his father in the end. He was arrested, but I don't really know what happened after that. Probably why the kids so salty."

"Probably," Rachel's grandpa replied, "and, did you and your dad figure out what happened to the others?"

"Well, you already know about the cafe owner and the singer, and what happened to the first. But we've found out a bit." Julian looked like he was deep in thought, but he genuinely had just forgotten the information. He had it written down at home, but that was at home and he was not there right now, "But I think it'd be better if he told you himself."

"Noted."

As Julian finished patching up the cleaner, the creaking of metal set everyone on edge, frantically looking around for any threats.

Then everyone turned to the shutters.

They were opening.

Chapter Text

The automatic opening system clicked into gear and the shutters rose up. Sylvia could see shadows on the other side and she feared that they all hadn't made it out of the woods quite yet.

She gave Julian a practiced signal before approaching the doors, where she took a deep breath before stepping outside.

Red white and blue lights blared accompanied by another blue light. There were many cars in the car park, and several angry old men, yet none of them were armed. A look to her left showed a paramedic waiting to head inside, accompanied by someone who looked to be a private clinic doctor, and to her right was a man she recognised, and near the cluster of police cars from where he had arrived was a blonde officer guarding a cardboard box with the crude marker pen labeling of 'dumb bitch exec weapons go here'.

The woods were a bit less perilous as she thought.

Sylvia gave a second hand signal to Julian before speaking to the brunet on her right. She felt her voice shake as she spoke, but she didn't mind anymore. The danger out here had been managed already.

"Give us a hand could you. We've got a lot of injured folk we need to get out to safety."

The brunette - whose name had slipped her mind - nodded and rushed in to help, and Sylvia forced herself to re-enter the Pizzaplex. As the head of security - no, now the only member of the security staff - she had to keep helping her now former colleagues, because it wasn't over until everyone was home safe.

Those who were able to walk were able to get to the car park themselves. Sylvia, Julian, the gardener, and the brunette helped out anyone whose injuries were too severe to walk on their own.

Once everyone had entered the car park, Sylvia finally let herself sit down.

The brunet then approached her.

"Are you ok?" He asked, his eyes full of worry.

Sylvia breathed a heavy reply "'m fine."

"You don't look it. Do you remember your name?"

"Sylvia."

"Do you remember my name."

Sylvia stayed quiet. She didn't want to admit that she had totally blanked, even though she used to work part time with him - where. She couldn't process anything that had happened before tonight, it was all a blur that had been pushed back in favour of survival.

The brunet placed a hand on the back of her neck, and then showed her the blood on his fingertips.

"My name's Mike. You must have took quite the hit to the head back there at some point. You're lucky your still conscious."

"I'll be fine. It - it's all coming back now." Sylvia wasn't exactly lying. The sit-down, despite being brief, had been enough for her mind to clear enough for everything to click back into place, but she wasn't about to admit that she was in any way not fine. "I remember now. Mr head cop of the paranormal department on the other side of the country. My brain just blanked a bit, that's all."

"If you say so, but you'll still be getting that seen to, today rather than later." Mike replied, "and if you feel dizzy, please don't keep it to yourself."

Sylvia nodded and gave a thumbs up before Mike rushed off to help someone else.

Julian then sat down next to Sylvia.

"I wasn't the only one who called for police and an ambulance back there," the redhead said smugly, "by the time I had called, they'd received a call from over half the people locked behind at this place. With the shutters closed, they couldn't do anything in the way of getting in, but I think them just being here and already knowing about what happened to Luis was enough to make the execs back down, at least a little bit."

He stuck out his tounge as he gestured towards the box that was guarded by a few police officers.

Sylvia nodded. Her initial hunch had been correct. Then she looked around.

Where was Luis?

She scrambled to her feet and saw a man hovering over Luis. The man was in a suit and holding a clipboard, and Sylvia recognised the bastard.

"Get the fuck away from my brother in law you asshole!" She yelled as she planted herself between Bill Blake and Luis.

"That's no way to talk to your father, young lady."

Sylvia simply gritted her teeth in response, but as Bill begun to speak, Sylvia growled, "I'm not moving. Anything you've got to say to Luis, just say it as if I'm not here. He's already been shot by one of your buddies, so you're on thin fucking ice."

"I see..." Bill glared back. Sylvia knew that Bill was the one who orchestrated this, and he couldn't sack her with the rest of the security staff because she was needed still for something greater. It was both a blessing and a curse.

There was a silence in the air, and Bill craned his neck to look at Luis.

"Luis. It has come to our attention that you have been exposed to sensitive materials during your shift."

Luis had been mumbling, and suddenly, it was coherent.

"They are working together. The arcades. They are hiding something. The glitches. Glitch them at the same time... Then the Princess will recognise me. She's testing me. I am not yet worthy. The others are protecting it. Let me stay! I am so close! Just one more night, please! I can save the Princess!"

Luis sat shaking on the tarmac, terrified, just as he was in the back room, mumbling and begging.

Sylvia saw a flash of rage in her father's eyes. He knew exactly what Luis was talking about.

"You're insane!" Bill yelled, "what the hell is all this about a princess? You're insane and your employment is terminated."

"He's not insane!" Sylvia yelled, "we both know what he's talking about. Just because he's lost a lot of blood and can't speak coherently doesn't mean he's nuts! It means he needs medical attention!"

"He's insane and needs to be sent to an asylum!"

"No, the lady is right. He needs to go to a NORMAL hospital and receive proper medical attention." The private clinic doctor had walked up to the trio and spoke her peice.

As Bill opened his mouth to speak, the doctor spoke up again. "I am a medical professional. I know more than you about both his injuries, and this perceived insanity. He has suffered immense amounts of blood loss. He is not going to appear sane when like this, and it's a miracle that he's even conscious."

The clinic doctor then picked up Luis and turned to Sylvia. "I'll make sure he gets proper medical attention. I know you have something else to deal with."

Sylvia gave her a blank stare before the light clicked on in her head.

"Oh! Right. That guy." She said before breaking into a sprint and re-entering the Pizzaplex.

The exec was still as she left him, contorted on the ground. Nobody had deemed him important enough to be moved.

With a huff, Sylvia grabbed the exec and dragged him out of the Pizzaplex, and when she was outside, she dragged him to Mike to turn him in.

Mike looked a little bit bewildered and asked her "Wait, is this the guy who shot Luis?"

"Yeah. I found him in a back room in the daycare theatre."

"A back room? How did you find him in time?

Sylvia didn't want to reveal everything when her dad was in earshot, so she simply said "I was following a friend, and she lead me straight to him." Which whilst not a lie, wasn't the whole truth either; a bitter in-between.

"Alright." Mike replied as he took the exec of her hands, "Just, don't get yourself shot too."

Sylvia nodded before sitting back down with Julian.

"Rachel's grandpa has already been taken to the hospital alongside Luis." Julian smiled, "Everyone who was uninjured is heading home as soon as the police get a statement about what happened tonight. The chief over here has a deep rooted hatred for Fazbear Entertainment, so it's totally going to be for making Fazbear Entertainment pay up severance and medical bills to all of the guys that've just been fired or layed off, and the local paranormal department's going to have a field day too. Just sucks that this probably won't be enough to shut this shitshow down. Nothing short of the building being destroyed'll do that."

Sylvia nodded, feeling the exhaustion set in as her heart settled down to a healthy speed. She didn't even have time to process how fast it had been beating until now, and she was shaking way more than she'd ever want to admit. She then looked around and saw Mike talking to a brown haired man in a brown jacket - who she assumed to be the head of the paranormal department over here. Whilst he could help with her half sisters situation, she needed someone else, someone who could help her with the 'benefactor' situation she was in, and she scanned the crowd for Chief Burke.

She was going to need to talk to him and his dad if she was going to survive whatever her father had planned for her.

Chapter Text

The hospital was cold and sterile, but waking up in a hospital bed was probably one of the better things that had happened to Luis within the past twenty four hours.

He recalled that he had almost died to Vanny once in Fazerblast, once in the east arcade, was almost killed by Roxy, passed out in Fazerblast, and was shot in the shoulder by an exec.

An eventful night.

He tried pushed himself into sitting position, but his shoulder felt like it was about to tear open, so he flopped back down and kept on staring at the ceiling. It was a very bland ceiling, so he attempted to sit up again, this time putting his weight through the arm with the shoulder that had not had a bullet in it.

Once he had sat himself up, he looked down at himself and saw that his torso was covered in bandages. If it wasn't for the distinctive texture of the bandage wrap, it could have been mistaken for a tight fitting t-shirt. He didn't really want to think about what scars would be under there when the bandages were removed.

"Guess I've already been patched up then, hu."

"You were the first to get seen to, silly!"

Luis did NOT expect a response.

He looked around the hospital ward and saw that the other beds were populated with people who he recognised as staff of the megaplex. It didn't seem the hospital had specified anything for the ward other than "Fazbear related injures", as Patty was sitting and reading in the hospital bed one over from his, and Rachel's grandpa was across from him. On the bed next to the grandpa's bed sat Rachel, who was colouring away in a colouring book. It was definitely her who had just spoken, and she continued to speak.

"The doctors said that gun wounds are dangerous and they can make you bleed out faster than most claw wounds. But if a claw hits an art-er-ee it'll be the other way around. Or was that a vay-ee-n. They also said that guns can kill instantly sometimes. Then they told me that kids probably shouldn't be interested in knowing this stuff."

"Well you sound like you've bent the ears off the doctors here." Luis replied with a smile, "how's your grandpa doing?"

"Grandpa's doing great! They put his leg bone back together, and closed the wounds that he had in his sides. He should be home next week!" She sounded incredibly happy for a child that had almost died and was currently also covered in bandages, which were mostly covered by her jacket and dress, but it was obvious that the bandages went all the way up the arm.

"That's great to hear!" Luis replied. At least something was going well.

As Luis tried to think of how to continue the conversation, a nurse walked in and said "is Mr Cabrera awake?"

"Yep! I'm here."

"You have a visitor." The nurse said before stepping to the side, "we just wanted to make sure you were already awake. Should we just send in other guests?"

"No problem, and yeah." Luis felt a little awkward, but then again, he'd never been a patient before, only a visitor, so this was all new to him.

As the nurse walked away, a purple haired woman walked into the room at an alarming speed.

"You idiot! You almost died."

Anna was a mix of concerned and a little angry. Luis figured that she felt a little responsible for this, seeing as she had helped him set up his 'employee transfer'.

"But I didn't. And I managed to save a kid whilst I was there, so that's got to count for something."

"Her? The one right there?" She pointed at Rachel, who gave a confident nod, "then who the hell reported her missing?"

"Shh!" Rachel seemed to whisper, but it was more of a stage whisper than anything. "Keep it down. We can't let Fazbear Entertainment know I'm alive. The police decided to report me as missing so they can gauge Fazbear Entertainment's reaction. The other missing kids were reported as missing by the parents, not to Fazbear Entertainment, so Fazbear Entertainment should not know the real number, so if they try and correct the information, then that tells us more about them!"

Luis figured that if the police were going to report a kid who was not missing as missing for the sake of finding the others, that it made sense that they'd let the kid know everything that she wanted to know.

Anna turned to Luis to make her reply. "But there's a lot of people who know she's not missing, AND a whole bunch of execs saw the kid being put into ambulance. She's in the bed there for crying out loud. Do you even know what's going on here?"

"The fake missing plan or the grand scheme." Luis questioned back, "Because no, and kinda. I passed out after I got carried into an ambulance."

Rachel laughed a little bit, likely finding the situation to be the funniest thing she'd seen all day.

Luis didn't mind, and Anna didn't seem to mind either.

"Well, they said that 9 is getting reported. If they correct to 8, we know they have either a way of tracking guests in or out - unlikely, as that can be fudged - or they're facilitating and responsible for the murders. Do you two understand what that means, because I don't think I get it."

Rachel laughed a bit again, likely at how funny some of the words sounded, like fudged, and facilitating.

Luis nodded, and so did Anna, "yeah. I actually understand what the plan with reporting you as missing is now. Hopefully that'll tell us a lot about what's going on."

"So could you two tell me what it means?" Rachel then asked, eyes wide with the wonder of knowledge.

"Well, you know the kids that have been going missing?" Anna held her breath as she waited for a response.

"Yeah. Some of them went to my school." Rachel's smile faded to a slight frown. Given the disappearances were within the past month, the wound was still fresh.

"The police are trying to use you to find out what happened to them. They suspect the megaplex, and seeing how they'd react to you being classed as 'missing, last saw at the Pizzaplex' could tell them a lot about if and how they link to the other missing kids." Anna finally breathed, but it wasn't easy. A kid had been through hell and back, and she only hoped that the kid's parents, or grandpa, had let her become familiar with the concept of death before today.

"So, you're saying that what happened to them may have been like what happened to me if Luis didn't save me." Rachel replied, holding a red crayon. The colouring book page she was on had been bathed in red crayon, and only red crayon, with no regard for outlines.

Luis and Anna nodded. It was a hard thing to tell a child, but it was worse to hide it.

A silence filled the room until footsteps echoed in the hallway and Sylvia stepped into the ward.

Her face was stuck in a frown and she stood hunched over, she didn't look her usual self at all. But then again, she had also been through hell, almost constantly fighting the daycare attendant, and clearly some other robots too. Whilst she had been patched up, she looked rather worse for wear still.

"Sorry, am I interrupting something?"

"I think we just finished talking about what we were talking about, so no." Anna replied, looking between Luis and Rachel.

Rachel nodded, agreeing with Anna. If the crumpled paper on her hospital bed was anything to go by, it seemed that she'd rather not dwell on what could have been happened if she was left alone.

"You're not interrupting anything." Luis added. He figured that Sylvia wasn't here to just say hello, especially given what happened at the megaplex.

With a deep breath, Sylvia sat down in one of the chairs by Luis's hospital bed.

"Are you ok with learning something about Ness and her mental state."

Sylvia voice sounded hoarse, and her eyes seemed faintly bloodshot.

A knot formed in Luis's stomach. He didn't know what to expect and was terrified of what Sylvia may have learned. But he had to know.

"Go ahead."

"Well," Sylvia looked around tapping her foot. She was shaking slightly and couldn't seem to maintain eye contact with Luis, "when she was carrying you to the daycare, I followed her. You probably already know that. But you don't know how she was acting. She was in control, but not necessarily right in the head. I got in contact with the only living therapist she had seen, and I told her about the Vanny situation, and that I needed to know what patient 46 was like in order to prevent more deaths and disappearances. She seemed to understand, but the fact that she was taking the brainworm to therapy was news to her, and she gave me a run-down of her mannerisms. It boils down to her being very childlike, and she's concerned that 46 has brain damage. Due to this, she treated the patient the same way she was taught to treat children because it'd be easier to get through to her that way. The brain scans that I managed to get my hands on are also pretty concerning too, but at least it's confirmation that she is posessed."

Sylvia took a deep breath before continuing talking. "She displayed those brain-damage adjacent childlike mannerisms when she was walking to the theatre, and when I saved you from the exec. It seems she's like that whenever she's in control. She always acts that way now. It's as if parts of her brain are locked off, as if her being in control is just inverting a cage. She's past the point where she can just suppress him. Someone has to remove him from her to save her now."

Sylvia seemed as if she was about to burst into tears, and Luis simply nodded. If Ness was really the one in control when Vanny spared him as he lay collapsed at the area near the entrance of Fazerblast, then her mannerisms lined up pretty well. And as for the other moments where there was a lapse in Glitchtrap's control, her actions - even pulling the knife out - made sense too, given that all she could do was work off instincts and split second choices.

"I see now." Luis held his hands over where he had been stabbed by Vanny, "but... I failed. I missed something, and I think I know what it is. I - AAAAH"

An ear splitting scream pierced the air as a pain shot through Luis's shoulder as he tried to reach towards the dresser, where he assumed his tablet may be.

"I'm fine," he interjected before anyone could respond to his scream, "I just need to not move. That's all. I - I know I knew what I needed to do, but I didn't know it at the time. It is possible to save her, I just know, but I can't exactly do anything when I'm like this..."

Sylvia shuffled again before she spoke.

"I'll look into what you said back in your exit interview. I'll see if I can do anything to free her."

Chapter Text

The Fazerblast control room had a light on, despite automation having put it out of use. A pair of shadows argued in the window: a woman, bleached hair and scratched face, even more scratches joining them, and she was yelling at her captor: a human sized cloth rabbit with yellow fur and a purple waistcoat.

"So, do you have it? Nessie?" The rabbit grinned.

Ness grimaced in response; she had told him many times that only her friends could call her Nessie, but the monster never listened. She rummaged around in her pockets and procurerd a vial containing a strange liquid that sparkled like liquid mercury and had the colours of a rainbow.

She handed the vial over to the rabbit.

"I got it as promised." Her voice was strained, as if she were about to cry, "Some remnant in exchange for letting him live."

"Good." The rabbit replied as he took the vial and examined it, holding the contents up to the light. He seemed satisfied. "I knew you would have destroyed it if I'd have made you kill him."

"You were going to make one of your business buddies shoot him!" Ness cried and looked as if she were about to lash out, yet she was unable to move. She considered herself lucky to have enough control to even be able to formulate proper sentences right now, but then again, if the monster demanded a conversation, it was clearly willing to only give her enough of herself back to have a conversation and nothing more. "You're lucky Sylvia followed me to that back room."

"Did I order that?" The fabric of the suit morphed into a smug grin, "I don't remember directly ordering his death."

"It doesn't matter!" Ness yelled, wanting to hit the oversized plush toy in the head, but she couldn't move. It was as if she was frozen in place, and she didn't expect that to change any time soon, "Now tell me, what did he forget? I know what this stuff is and what happens if extracted from a live host. You can't hide it from me..."

"What you told him as you picked him up and took him to that room. That whole half hour is in that vial." Glitchtrap held up the vial and angled it towards the light, "from when he passed out on the catwalk, to when you took the sample. No more, no less. I hope you took that time you had after you took the sample as your chance to say goodbye, because I won't let you pull that again. Next time, I won't let my control slip."

Ness nodded. She was lucky that the shock she had experienced back in the east arcade was enough to give her back at least some modicum of control, even if it was temporary.

She knew she'd likely never be able to gain back control like that again, and the thought scared her. If this is what it took to force his control to slip for only a few hours, she already knew that she'd never be able to free herself.

She watched as the Glitchtrap suit deflated and dissolved into a purple mist.

She knew that at some point, within the next hour, he'd reassume control, but for now, she had a moment alone.

Her legs gave out from underneath her and she begun to wail.

In an attempt to comfort herself, she reached into her shirt and located the necklace she wore and followed the thin chain down between her fingers until she reached the object attached to the chain, which was nestled safely between her breasts. She breathed a sigh of relief: her locket was still there.

She pulled out the locket and opened the clasp before gently opening the locket. A small photograph of herself and Luis was inside; the photograph that was took the day they got engaged.

For the first time in what felt like forever, she smiled. Even if it was just a photograph, seeing Luis's smile made her smile; it reminded her that she was once normal, that her memories before the Pizzaplex were real, that she had something to live for if she ever was able to escape this hell.

As tears streamed down her face, she pulled the locket close to herself. It was the closest thing to a hug that she could get, but it would have to do for now.

As she tucked her locket away again, scared of what may happen if the monster knew that she had one last artifact of her life before this nightmare, she pulled her knees to her chest and tried to sleep. Maybe she'd dream of what life was like before.

She didn't want to be used to hurt people. She just wanted to go home.