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fivenightsatfreddysfanfiction · 3 months

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Find A Friend

Gregory meets Cassie... twice.

Time Set: Post-SB, pre-Ruin

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When Gregory still lived in the Pizzaplex, he figured out he could sneak himself into most kids’ birthday parties by swiping a bit of merch and putting it into a gift bag at Glamrock Gifts and mimicking the usual laments of people his age to anyone who got too curious at him. It was kind of stupid; adults expected certain noises to come from kids, he made the same noises and now he’s just relegated to another face in the crowd in those adults’ minds. All it confirmed for him was that there really was no one outside the building looking for him or asking after him.

Well, whatever. Some cheap gifts to use as cover and Gregory had access to plentiful food and games for however long the party lasted. And if there were party masks, even better; they fooled the S.T.A.F.F. facial recognition so he could ask them directly for takeaway containers to store extra food in for later. It was like shopping for supplies without the stress of having to dodge the bots in the dead of night. Wasn’t like they were programmed to sound alerts if they see any form of mask after hours… ha. Whoever thought that up was a pain in Gregory’s ass; he would have liked to be able to use a Freddy mask to fool them into thinking he was an animatronic but apparently the Pizzaplex’s network was prepared for that for the security night shifts and only allowed the weird rabbit mask the employees would wear before they disappeared.

Gregory was sure somebody tried that at some point and someone else snitched. What a pain.

Anyway, the point was that birthday parties were a great time to get food, play some games, and relax for a while. Be a normal kid and hang out with other kids, forget for a little bit that his memories were a mess and his dreams were shambles and sometimes he wasn’t sure if things he experienced were real or not. Can’t have a mental breakdown while he’s busy spending FazTokens on the birthday kid’s dime, right?

Turns out he also can’t when the birthday kid was already having a crisis of their own. Overshadowing that would be kind of rude.

The birthday kid was a girl currently sobbing her eyes out in a corner of the Glamrock Salon in Roxy Raceway. Normally Gregory didn’t have any interest in this part of the Pizzaplex but the party was being held here and it was one of the last scheduled ones before the area would be closed off for renovation. Although calling it a party was being kind, really. Despite all the party favors and goodies for the special day, there was a noticeable lack of other kids celebrating or parents being attentive or concerned with that fact. He stood there with a plate of pizza, chewing on a slice and not really enjoying the cheese and not-meat toppings. How could he, when he could hear the poor kid being miserable just around the corner?

Eventually he just set the plate down, grabbed one of the nice cloth napkins, and took a deep breath before heading over to tend to the birthday kid and introduce himself. A birthday without a single friend to celebrate with was just fucked up and Gregory wasn’t going to let that stand. Something in his soul railed against it, demanded that a lonely kid shedding so many tears needed to be soothed come hell or high water. Well, he’ll just do it so he won’t feel guilty for eating her food. He hated feeling guilty for just trying to survive.

Gregory hesitated for a bit upon turning that corner, taking in the sight of brightly colored and sparkling makeup running down the girl’s face, brilliant against her complexion and terrible in how he imagined it once looked amazing when first applied by Roxy during their hangout time. Questions on how this situation came to be flicked through his mind fast and jumbled, too fast for even words to be assembled for them. But Gregory shoved it aside and just walked up to the girl, lowering himself to one knee and holding out the napkin to her, pulling on a small smile for her sake.

“Hey,” he greeted quietly, “thought you could use something to, I dunno, blow your nose or something.” The girl sniffled, looking at him in confusion before down at the napkin. “It’s clean, promise! I got it off the nice tables.”

“Who’re you?” she asked in return, rubbing at her cheek and smearing the makeup some more.

Cover stories were the worst. Could never keep them straight in his head and couldn’t count on his memories to keep track of details anyway. “Name’s Gregory, I was just passing by and heard you, so I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he answered. Simple and honest, but still vague enough that she could fill in the blanks herself and he wouldn’t have to keep track of stuff. Best way to tell a lie was to give it the basics of a truth and let the other person think they have the full story; it was a pretty good survival trick and he was kinda proud of himself for figuring that out.

“Were you invited to my party?” the girl asked, a flicker of hope in her eyes. Gregory hesitated a moment and that was enough of an answer for her. She looked even more miserable, “Oh.” She took the napkin from him with a wispy ‘Thank you’ and dabbed at her eyes and cheeks to blot the makeup off and clean up.

He watched her from the corner of his eyes, his stomach clenching uncomfortably with his failure to cheer her up. “Hey, I don’t really get out much and I don’t really know anyone, but maybe the two of us can still make this party fun,” Gregory offered uncertainly, a crooked grin on his face. “Whaddya say, Birthday Girl? Show me around and see what trouble we can get up to?”

She laughed, a startled sound as though she hadn’t expected to find that funny, but even that was a far better reaction than more sobbing. She wiped the last of the makeup off and returned his smile with a tremulous one. “Yeah, okay. We can do something,” she said and held out a hand for him to shake, “I’m Cassie. Nice to meet you, Gregory.”

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Gregory’s first day of school had him wary of the number of kids around him at almost all times. Part of him wondered if he would lose his mind trying to keep track of them from a threat that wasn’t even in the building. Forcing himself to not count them, to not track their locations, gave him a headache and made his eyes burn. Introducing himself to his new classmates, using the cover story of having ‘just moved’ which was true enough as he and Vanessa and Freddy and Sydney ‘moved’ from living inside the Pizzaplex to living outside of it, was stressful enough without having to cope with his old habit of checking the number of kids around him to see if Mrs. Afton grabbed any of them for her Remnant experiments.

Lunchtime was the first time he could get relief, sitting outside in a shady and mostly secluded area to press the heels of his palms to his eyes and hope things calmed down enough to let him eat. His head throbbed, painful enough that he almost wanted to cry. Maybe he could get to the nurse and ask to call home. Surely Vanessa would be okay with him coming back early to rest up, right?

“Looks like you’re getting out more, huh?” a familiar voice remarked and Gregory jerked his head up in surprise. He blinked as he looked towards the source of that voice and found the birthday girl he helped out leaning against the tree he sat under. “So, ‘just moved’, huh? Got everyone fooled but I remember you spending my birthday with me at the Pizzaplex some time ago,” she said with a grin, “What’s the real story, Gregory?”

“Cassie?!” Gregory exclaimed with wide eyes. Holy crap, she went to this school too?! Why didn’t he think of that sooner, they were about the same age, right?

“He remembers my name!” Cassie declared with a laugh, raising her hands as if to cheer for the achievement before drawing closer to sit beside him, “It’s been ages and I looked for you in school after my birthday but nobody here ever heard of you before today. Where the heck were you?”

“Around,” Gregory replied evasively, swallowing hard as he tried to think of what to say to get himself out of this mess. How did he forget about her until now? The implant, did the thing connecting him to the Pizzaplex network also force him to forget Cassie existed too? Now he doesn’t even have time to pull together a new cover story!

“Yeah? But where? This is the only school for this area and you weren’t here,” she pressed and tilted her head, her pigtails bobbing with the motion, “Were you home-schooled for a while? Is that why you enrolled late here?”

Well, Vanessa had him doing workbooks at home to prepare him for the placement tests and Alex was teaching him about programming to better protect Freddy, so that sounded about right. “Kinda? Vanessa did her best but she said I needed to be social too so here I am.” That sounded good, played into the home-schooling but hinted a reason to switch to public school without making Vanessa sound bad for their situation.

“You’re not doing very good at socializing, hiding all the way over here,” Cassie pointed out, giving him a small frown, “Are you okay? You don’t look good. Thinking of calling your mom and dad to come get you?” Gregory sighed, pressing his hands to his eyes and forehead again. That did sound tempting, though a little amusing to imagine Freddy pulling up to school to take him home. Would be nice to have that, though; maybe Mr. Woods and Mr. Fitzgerald could make a casing for Freddy that could have him look like something other than an animatronic bear?

“I want to, but Vanessa’s out looking for work,” he admitted. Sydney was doing the same since he didn't want to take back his old job and Alex still worked at Circus Baby’s on the day shift so he wouldn’t be able to just run over to get him, if he even would. Gregory still was kind of iffy on Sydney and Alex sticking around but they seemed more invested in him and Vanessa now compared to when they all first met. Either way, they were all doing stuff and Freddy couldn’t leave the house, so Gregory was stuck.

“Is that your mom?” Cassie asked and he nodded. He tried calling her ‘Mom’ a few times, but it still felt awkward. He wanted it to feel normal; Gregory had stayed in the Pizzaplex to save her, had a gut feeling he wanted to get his family back but the connection seemed flimsy at best now. So calling her Vanessa again was all he could do and it seemed the most comfortable for them both. “No dad, huh? I can get it,” Cassie went on, picking at the grass, “I didn’t have a mom, just my dad. But then he disappeared so now my grandma looks after me.” She looked around at the field of kids eating lunch or hanging out. “Lotta people disappear in this town, it’s super weird. I kinda thought you were one of them since I didn’t see you after my birthday.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Like I said, I didn’t get out much,” Gregory replied with a dry laugh. His headache was waning and things felt less fuzzy now. Maybe he could just ask the nurse for something to take for the rest of the headache and he could finish the day.

“I can tell. You didn’t look too comfortable being in crowds in the hallway,” Cassie pointed out, setting her backpack down and pulling out her lunchbox. Roxy’s face smiled up at her from the lid and Gregory blinked at it in surprise. It was jarring to see Roxy as she was before that night in the Pizzaplex, glamorous and bold until he shattered her body and her self-confidence to swipe her upgraded parts for Freddy’s use.

He actually felt bad for her now. Sure in the moment of the night he was pissed off enough at the band for hunting him down that wrecking them felt deserved, but those were still Freddy’s friends and it was Afton who made them nasty and scary. If he could get their chips, maybe look into their programming and fix what Afton did, they would be their real selves again. Maybe that’ll be enough to make up for smashing them up.

“Roxy fan, huh?” he asked just for something to fill the silence as he pulled out his own lunchbox, “I’m team Freddy, just saying.” He grinned at Cassie’s giggle as the two of them got into their lunches.

“She’s my favorite. So cool and pretty and her keytar skills are amazing!” she rambled excitedly before her cheer dimmed, “It really sucks that the Pizzaplex got so wrecked by that earthquake. I know it got closed beforehand for some kind of renovation or investigation or something, but it still sucks that we can’t see the band perform anymore.”

“Maybe we’ll see them again someday?” Gregory said thoughtfully, already turning over potential ways to get into the Pizzaplex. Sydney had more access to the building when Mrs. Afton was controlling him, and Alex was really good with computers and hacking. Plus all those people that showed up at the Pizzaplex had ways of getting into the building for Circus Baby and Knife Lady. With him and Freddy and Vanessa helping with mapping out the inside, could they get into the Pizzaplex and recover the rest of the band?

“I hope so. My dad used to work there, so it’d be nice to see everything there again,” Cassie told him with a sad smile, “It felt like he was with me when I visited. Now it’s gone and it just… it really sucks.”

Gregory swallowed, his food losing flavor from that reveal. Cassie’s dad was a Pizzaplex employee? But all of them had been replaced by S.T.A.F.F. bots except for Vanessa and Sydney, and he’d been through that employee cafeteria where he picked up that company memo about a staff meeting. Did her dad end up there? Only way to know for sure would be to get into the Pizzaplex records in the servers.

“Well, forgetting all that for now,” Cassie suddenly remarked with false brightness, holding her sandwich tightly, “just wanted to welcome you to our school! It’s pretty cool, we have field trips sometimes and on Fridays we have pizza, tacos, or burgers for lunch, but we can bring our own lunches still. And the library has computers with games on them for the free period after lunch. Wanna go check it out after we eat?”

“Sure! Sounds fun,” Gregory agreed, warming up to the idea of actually being a regular kid at school. “It’s good to see you again, Cassie.” Finding her on her birthday, hanging out and playing all that time, and then making sure from the shadows that she left the Pizzaplex safely, and then feeling sad when she didn’t come back very often in ways that would let him go out to see her… it wasn’t until now that Gregory realized he had missed being able to just hang out with the first friend he ever made.

Cassie smiled back at him, bright and happy. “Always good to find a friend,” she agreed, laughing as she nudged his shoulder with her own, “Now hurry up and eat so we can get some spots on the computers!”

Maybe this public school thing wouldn’t be so bad after all.

#fnaf fanfiction #fnaf gregory #fnaf cassie #parlourverse au #fnaf au

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fivenightsatfreddysfanfiction · 4 days

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Reflections

Despite everything, it's still him....

Setting: Pre-Ruin

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Time: ??? Hurricane, Utah

When Damien entered the room, it was to see Mike Schmidt sitting quietly in his favorite armchair, his gaze on his right hand as he slowly flexed it open and closed. A faint shimmer of blue mist revealed itself briefly before fading from view again. Damien watched it fade before looking up at the old man’s expression. Impassive as ever, Mike took ‘guarded’ to an art level after a lifetime of having to defend against all sorts of monsters in the dark.

“You wanted to see me, Old Man?” Damien greeted cautiously. Everyone was still recovering from what had happened deep underground in that animatronic manufacturing facility. There was still a sense of unease about everything the group had found down there, including the two mercenaries that butted heads with Mike and Jeremy long ago. Their Remnant had been released after some deal-making with one of the spirits bound to Meera’s knife, vanishing and hopefully sent somewhere they wouldn’t cause trouble.

But Mike had stood apart from the group, staring up at the machine that had been displaying their images alongside generations of animatronics designed and built by the Aftons to hunt each of them down and collect data from them. His own photo had been up there with the original Fazband, but the display that projected Remnant sample data for a few of the others remained blank for him. Mike’s countering and evading the animatronics had been too good, honed for years and aided with 6 returning his old skills from ghost possession.

Far as Damien cared, it was best that way. If Elizabeth Afton was trying to reassemble William Afton’s soul by feeding it the Remnant of the Guards, then giving him any part of the Strength to Survive or the Warmth of Life would have been seriously bad news.

“Yeah, thinkin’ of giving this shit back,” Mike remarked, twirling his fingers so the mist would rise up again, shimmering blue against his skin. Damien furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

“Give back Six? He’s your Remnant, not mine,” he pointed out warily. “You infused that taser of yours with it, gave it your intent and will; that’s basically the closest to a copy of you as a ghost while you’re still alive as we can get.” Damien gestured at Mike’s hand. “I just borrowed him for a while when I found him, same as Seven for Jeremy. You’re meant to keep him until the end of your days.”

“The Strength to Survive..,” Mike sighed tiredly, gazing down at the blue mist winding around his fingers and wrist, “All I do is survive when I just wanna live. And this thing’ll make me just keep survivin’, huh? Cuz that’s all it knows to do, make sure I survive whatever shit gets thrown at me.” He scowled up at the television nearby, some soap opera playing that didn’t mean anything to either of them. Damien rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

“Well, that’s kinda what you’re known for, but that doesn’t really tell me why you wanna pass Six on to-,” he rambled.

“Cuz I’m old, I’m tired, and I’m done with this shit,” Mike bit out, eyes flinty behind the sheen of his glasses. “I just wanna live out my days with Doll, and I wanna rest with her when that time comes.” He lifted his hand, now fully enveloped with the blue flame of Remnant that was indicative of 6. “This? It’s gonna keep me going long after her, whether I want it or not,” he growled, “I’m no Afton; I don’t wanna end up some shell of a man trapped in a hell of my own makin’ just cuz death is comin’.”

Damien stilled, eyebrows rising as quiet realization passed over him. “Six was made from the curse inflicted on you at Freddy’s,” he breathed out in soft horror, chocolate brown eyes flickering emerald green for the briefest of moments. “Rejecting death, enduring and ensuring you survive anything, doing everything possible to keep you alive, those were your emotions back then, and Six is using all that to basically make you.. immortal? Long-lived?” He looked at his own hands. “You wanna be able to die like everyone else one day, and all the bullshittery at Freddy’s is still affecting you, keeping you bound here.”

Mike just threw him a finger-gun, mock firing a shot with a sardonic grin.

Silence stretched between them and eventually Mike sighed again, an aggravated sound as he got to his feet and winced at the popping of his knees and shoulders. He stretched to loosen up then approached the still somber man looking guilty in his doorway. “Despite all the Fazfuckery, I managed to get a good life outta this,” Mike told Damien quietly, “Lost my childhood, struggled growin’ up, but I met Doll.. I met Jeremy.. I helped set my old friends free. Got married, had a kid, walked her down the aisle to her wife; I lived a good life.” He gestured with his flame-wrapped hand idly. “And I wanna be able to rest with Doll with those memories. My part in this is done and I’m not gettin’ any younger. Dealing with Afton and his shit, ‘fraid that’s gonna be on you guys.”

Damien looked up at him finally, blinking rapidly. He sniffed, rubbing at his nose. “You, uh.. you talked to anyone else about this?” he asked, “Cuz what you’re saying, what you’re asking....”

“I’ll let ‘em know in due time,” Mike told him firmly, “My choice. You gonna take Six back or am I gonna have to attach it to something myself?”

“No, no, I’ve got it!” Damien replied quickly, eyes wide as he held out his hands cupped together, “I’ll look after him.” He frowned a bit, looking up at Mike again with green eyes as the older man watched the blue flame withdraw from his body, streams of mist pulling away and pooling into a sphere over his palm. “Thing is, you’ve been around a lot of Remnant, been cursed and uncursed and cursed again,” Damien pointed out in a low voice, “The missing kids, me, Vincent; we’ve all been through that and reincarnated. There’s a good chance it could happen to you, too, and Six will want to go back to you.”

“I don’t go anywhere without Doll now,” Mike replied flatly, “Life, death, all fuckery unless I’m there with her. Reincarnation ain’t shit; I’m not going through it.” He dropped the ball of Remnant into Damien’s hands, then shrugged as he shook off his hand of the last dregs of mist. “But if it happens, I’m gonna do my damnedest to stay outta Afton’s radar. Be pissed as fuck about it, but if I keep my head down maybe it’ll keep my Remnant from stickin’ to the world a second time. Hell if I know.”

“Got a point there. We don’t know if we can reincarnate more than once,” Damien mused aloud, allowing the grief-bound Remnant to flow into himself, a faint number ‘6’ appearing on the back of his right hand before fading from sight. “I hope you have a good rest of your life with your family, Mr. Schmidt,” he murmured with a sad smile, “And I’m sorry for getting you involved in all of this again.”

“The fuck you apologizin’ for? You were doin’ your job, I was doin’ mine, don’t say sorry for doin’ yer job!” Mike grouched and waved him off as he headed for the television to change the channel, “Lemme enjoy my retirement! Too old for this bullshit....”

Damien just smiled more warmly at the old man before leaving. The others were going to have a meeting about what to do with all the information and equipment they managed to grab from the facility. Somewhere in all that there should be some clues as to Afton’s next plan. Surely she wouldn’t have given up on trying to resurrect her daughter and William Afton, right?

Within the year, Mike and Doll got their wish and laid to rest one final time, together.

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Present Day

Damien felt his eye twitch and his hand itch as he stared down at Gregory’s newest creation in the workshop. “I’m all for creative uses of the leftovers in Jeremy’s shop but, uh,” he began and swirled a finger over the amalgamation of scrap parts while Gregory beamed up at him, “what the hell is this?”

“It’s a laser blaster arm for Freddy!” the boy declared proudly, folding his arms over his chest as Jeremy walked into the workshop with a puzzled squint, “One of my many planned upgrades for him. Pretty cool huh?”

“Have either of you seen my pen laser? Helpy got himself tangled up in some cabling and trying to pull any part of it makes him scream murder. Figured it’d be easier to just cut him out of it,” the older man said in lieu of a greeting. Damien looked up at him, then down at the ‘upgrade’ and Gregory’s attempt at looking innocent, widening his eyes and pursing his lips.

“Tools don’t count as leftover scraps,” he stated flatly, mildly amused at the facade dropping quickly into a scowl on Gregory’s face.

“I was only borrowing it for a demonstration!” Gregory quickly rebuked but disconnected the tool and set it out for Jeremy to collect.

“Ask before borrowing,” Jeremy lectured before walking off to untangle the Securi-Toy. Damien and Gregory watched him leave the shop before looking back at each other over the disarmed arm.

“So.. why, exactly, are you making a gun for Freddy?” Damien asked warily. Clearly those mercenaries were being a bad influence on him somehow. Alex harboring some strange rivalry with Jeremy over software must be rubbing off or something.

“Cuz when we break into the Pizzaplex again to get the programming chips from the other Glamrocks I want Freddy to be able to stun them for me and keep them stunned while I get the chips out,” Gregory replied in a matter-of-fact tone. Damien narrowed his eyes at the boy.

“Who said you were going back in there?” he argued, “If anything, us Guards should be the ones to go in and see what information we can find about what the Aftons are up to. Since we couldn’t confirm her death, we’ll have to assume Elizabeth is still alive and still planning to resurrect her family.” Gregory scoffed at him.

“Not in that wreckage, she ain’t,” he pointed out, folding his arms over his chest again, “You guys might have been running around in the Pizzaplex atrium and lobby, but I’m the one who set the foundation on fire and fucked up that sinkhole enough to bring the place down.”

“Bravo, you want a cookie for that?” Damien drawled, clapping his hands sarcastically before resting his hands on his hips, a concerned frown on his face. “Look, you’re a kid who went through hell once already. It’d be better if you just stayed out of this and lived a regular life. Or as regular as you can get with that family you managed to pull together....”

“No way, not until I get Freddy’s friends back and fix them!” Gregory shot back, glaring up at him, “I wrecked them and now I wanna save them.”

It was a noble idea, but also a pretty stupid one. The risks attached to trying to pull the A.I. from those animatronics were high, especially with the knowledge that Gregory was the person Elizabeth Afton had intended to use as a new body for William Afton. Putting him anywhere near the Pizzaplex could be disastrous. Damien pinched the bridge of his nose, already feeling a headache coming on.

“Have you thought about how those animatronics might react to you, with them aware that you’re the one who wrecked them?” he asked carefully. Surely he thought this through, right? Gregory’s slightly guilty expression was a bit reassuring. “That’s not something you can just take out of their memories. That’ll leave gaps in them and they won’t understand why you took them from where they’re supposed to be, from their view.”

“I could say sorry for shattering them?” Gregory replied weakly, wringing his fingers together, “And I wouldn’t take those memories! I mean, I lost so much of mine, so.. I wouldn’t wanna do that to them.”

Damien sighed in sympathy. This kid.... “Why are you so hellbent on getting those animatronics’ chips? They were built to capture kids like you and hand them over to Afton to die in her plans,” he asked genuinely. This was kind of baffling; the only other animatronic that anyone went to lengths to retrieve was Circus Baby, and that was because Meera had dedicated her life to completing her grandmother’s mission to retrieve her brother’s soul, a digitized version of it that ended up inside Circus Baby as her A.I. system. With Digital Lucian secured, she then turned her attention to taking down the other copy of him, the malevolent Master File that had vanished with Elizabeth Afton in the Pizzaplex.

Glamrock Freddy also had a spirit possessing him serving as his A.I., his sentience and ‘soul’; Michael Henry Afton, Meera’s benefactor for the pizzeria trap that was intended to destroy the collection of haunted animatronics and put an end to Emelia and William Afton’s schemes to gather Remnant for themselves.

But the rest of the Glamrock band, Chica, Roxy, and Monty, didn’t have any indications of being possessed by spirits. They were just machines, so what was the point?

“It’s not their fault,” Gregory muttered, glaring at the floor as his hands tightened into fists. “I was pissed at them for trying to get me that night, yeah. Who wouldn’t be pissed that a bunch of robotic assholes keep trying to jump ‘em till 6AM? ..But Freddy said they were originally programmed to just entertain people, do their thing like Circus Baby does, and the way they were acting wasn’t normal for them. So, it must be something Afton did to them.. like what she wanted to do to me and Vanessa.” His expression was frustrated, ruddy cheeks scrunched up as his eyes watered, and Damien felt his gut twist even as twinges of familiarity prodded at his memory.

“And if you guys made all that effort to save me, you and Freddy and Vanessa, then it’s only fair that I try my damnedest to get back into that hellsite and save Freddy’s old friends from Afton too!” Gregory declared at last, turning a fierce expression up at Damien, “To hell with keeping my head down and just living like nothing happened! I’m not gonna rest until I help bring down Afton and Fazbear Entertainment for good! So all of us can be free and not worry about kids disappearing and getting turned into Remnant A.I. or eaten up by that burnt up rabbit thing!”

Damien’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. Okay, the kid had a hell of a conviction. Maybe he actually could handle the supernatural bullshit going on with that company?

“I guess if you’re going in with all of us, it might be okay,” he finally relented cautiously, “You already proved you could survive six hours in a Fazbear pizzeria; gotta be tough to do that.” Gregory muttered something under his breath and Damien narrowed his eyes. “What was that?” he asked.

“Nothin’~!” Gregory chimed in response, beaming up at him with saccharine smiles.

For some reason, Damien could almost see a sardonic grin reflected in the boy’s expression. But then the moment passed when Gregory asked to borrow his staff for another upgrade experiment.

“No! For the last time, we’re not weaponizing Freddy Fazbear! Stop playing those old retro games; they’re giving you stupid ideas!”

#bits and pieces #fanfiction #fnaf au #parlourverse au #mike schmidt #fnaf gregory #damien woods

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fivenightsatfreddysfanfiction · 5 months

Text

Call Declined

“What the hell happened on stage?!”

Sydney’s eyebrows raised at her yell, confusion in his expression that made Vanessa groan and clap a hand over her face. Right, she’d forgotten in her frustration that Sydney tended to make himself scarce whenever the Glamrocks performed in the atrium. He wouldn’t have seen the disaster she’d witnessed when Freddy suffered a very visible and alarming system crash and wrecked the show.

So many compensation coupons were being passed out by the S.T.A.F.F. bots while the crowd dispersed and started leaving the building.

“Freddy went on the fritz for some reason and collapsed on stage about twenty minutes ago,” Vanessa began with a sigh, shaking her head at Sydney’s grimace. “Right? Monty dragged him backstage while Roxy and Chica tried to save some of the performance. Once everyone’s out of the Pizzaplex, he’ll be taken down to Parts and Service to switch him to reduced power. It’ll keep him contained in his room while diagnostics get run to figure out what happened.”

Sydney tilted his head, a squint of suspicion on his face as he glanced towards the ceiling, then back to her. “Remote?” he asked and Vanessa nodded, rubbing her forehead as she turned her attention to the screen he had been sitting at. There were still a few stragglers wandering the gift shops, but for the most part it seemed like the public was leaving and the Pizzaplex would be able to close the main entrance soon.

“Yeah, the network should be able to handle it,” she replied and pulled her manual out, flipping through the pages. “It’s weird, though. There’s nothing in here on what we should do when an animatronic breaks down like that other than the general practice of ‘make sure people are distracted’.”

“No witnesses,” Sydney murmured, his tone shaky, hands gripping his knees as he seemed to suddenly shrink in on himself. Vanessa looked at him in concern, reaching out to lay a hand on his shoulder that just made him twitch at the contact before calming.

“Look, let’s just go and make sure everyone’s out of the building so the bots can get started working on Freddy. Maybe we can still save the rest of the scheduled performances and appearances,” she told him with a wry grin, “Then we grab something to eat from the cafeteria and go to bed. We were scheduled to have the shift off since it was a performance night.” Sydney still seemed worried, his eyes scanning the screen in nervous flicks as he tracked each person walking out the main entrance. Vanessa sighed and shook her head again. “If you’re gonna be fidgety, you could always keep your hands busy by giving me another foot rub,” she suggested teasingly, laughing at the flat glare she got from him as a response. Good, that got his mind off things. “C’mon, let’s go shoo the customers out-”

She didn’t get to finish, distracted by a flicker in her vision that signaled a need to put her security mask on. From the way Sydney sat straighter in his chair, a new tension in his expression, it was clear he got the indicator too. Guess dinner was going to be postponed.

Vanessa plucked the weird bunny shaped mask from where it was hooked to her belt and held it to her face, letting the lining conform to her face and anchor itself to her skin with a bit of suction. The overlay of augmented reality built into the Pizzaplex came alight in her vision, along with the digital Helpi assistant displaying a textbox in front of her.

/Urgent orders. Missing child within boundaries of the Pizzaplex. Orders are to locate and apprehend. Further instructions upon completing this objective./

“There’s a kid still in here? This is like the twentieth kid that keeps trying to hide in here overnight, you’d think parents would get the idea to keep track of their own kids,” Vanessa complained. So another catch and call procedure; get the kid to Lost and Found, notify authorities over the phone, wash her hands of the issue and go to bed.

Should be easy enough.

“Right, fine, so we’ll be going to bed later than we expected,” she muttered, pulling off the mask and reattaching it to her belt. She looked over at her partner, brow furrowing a little as he remained masked longer than she did. “Sydney?” she called uncertainly and he finally pulled the rabbit faced mask off, dull gaze staring ahead with no sign of having heard her. Her heart sank a little. Oh. Did he anger the network again? At least this was just his usual disassociation -Why would he need to do that on a task they’ve done almost routinely?- and not the weird other kind she’d been around a couple times. Different vibe, it made her skin crawl. She reached out, cupping his cheek in her palm and gently turning his head to face her, directing him to look her in the eyes. “We’ll get this done fast, okay? No mistakes, no miscommunications,” Vanessa promised, “We get the kid, we make the report, and you come back to me. Got it?”

He didn’t respond to her, but then he never did when he was like this. She could only sigh and hope her words made it past whatever walls he’d put up as she pulled away and grabbed her flashlight. Time to find a wayward kid.

-----------------

11:40 PM

Vanessa pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers, trying to think through the slowly growing headache at everything going on. She had gotten a glimpse of the kid, a boy, that she was supposed to catch and take to a safe location but the brat had slipped into shadows behind the stage curtains and then just about vanished. She’d relayed the info to Sydney, got no response as usual, and then decided to alert the Glamrocks in hopes they could switch to security mode and coordinate with them. It worked to a point; they were looking for the kid, but they were also acting weird about it.

And then she saw Freddy missing from his room.

“You’re supposed to be on lockdown!” she griped when she spotted the tall bear animatronic in the first aid station of the utility tunnels, “Diagnostics running should have kept you offline until we figured out what caused your system crash. How’d you reboot this early?! How did you even get out of your room?!”

“I do not know how I got here!” Freddy blurted out and Vanessa glared up at him tiredly. That sounded so fake and she did not have the patience for this.

“First you ruined the show with whatever glitch happened, now you’re not even sticking to your procedure for repairs,” she scolded him, ignoring how his ears drooped and he did this little head tilt that made him look like a pathetic puppy. It wasn’t getting to her this time! “Look, there’s some kid running around backstage and we’re, like, 15 minutes to closing. Sydney’s already searching the daycare and I alerted the rest of the band to help us track the kid until the security S.T.A.F.F. bots come online,” Vanessa explained with a controlled tone to keep from losing her temper. So much stress, if she broke out with pimples after this, she was finding this twerp’s parents and demanding the good facial cleansers as compensation. “You’re too much of a liability right now and I can’t risk you damaging yourself or anything else. Management would come down on us so hard. Just go back to your room, switch to standby, and let the diagnostics finish, okay? If the system clears you later and we still haven’t found the kid, I can sign off on letting you join us in looking for him. Are we clear?”

“Crystal!” Freddy replied brightly, ears wiggling. Vanessa just stared at him, unimpressed. He was picking up jargon from the customers again. Ugh.

“Right,” she muttered and rubbed her forehead again, “Just go. And please be careful about it. Don’t hit anything on the way.” She left him be, hoping he’d follow orders, and went back up the stairs. Freddy could take the utility tunnels back to his room and if he spotted anything on the way that could be the kid, he’d alert her or Sydney about it. Would save her the hassle of finishing the search in that direction. If he tried wandering anywhere else, he’d run out of power not long after and be stuck in place until one of the S.T.A.F.F. alerted her about it. Either way, not her current problem.

Issuing directions to the Glamrocks on where to go to start their searches was a matter of switching between various frequencies on her walkie-talkie, but any time she wasn’t giving orders she kept it set to Sydney’s channel. Even if he didn’t respond it was still comforting to have that line of communication open.

Rockstar Row was clear, so she made her way out to the atrium and looked around, dreading having to search such a large and open area. It was going to be a pain to look for a single kid out here with just her, Sydney, and the three functional Glamrocks. Once midnight rolled around, the security bots would kick in and things would be easier.

She started her walk around on the floor, glancing up towards the atrium elevators just in case the kid showed up there in some attempt to get in and run somewhere else. Until midnight security protocols went live, they were still open to be used by the public so she had to be wary of them. Roxy was prowling the upper level of the atrium and Monty was making his way to the guest service kiosk to use the spotlight on top of it. Good, they were all following protocol. Everything was within the guidance of the manual.

So far, so good.

----------------

‘I shouldn’t have thought that, that was such a jinx to myself!’ Vanessa allowed herself that one mental complaint as she struggled to get control back over her limbs. It took a couple hours but she’d found that kid as he was trying to get into the elevator in the East Arcade Prize Corner and grabbed him before he could go anywhere. The frustrating bit was how he seemed to panic himself into a faint over that and she then had to carry him back to Lost and Found. The manual didn’t say anything about what to do in this kind of situation, so she was winging it and planned to make a note about it in her report. If the kid drooled on her shirt during this, she was demanding proper compensation for it.

The kid’s little Fazwatch chimed in a few times, Freddy’s voice calling his name worriedly a few times before going silent. So not only did he not go back to his room but he managed to gain enough extra charge to keep going and was in cahoots with the kid? Oh, he was so gonna get it from management for this security breach.

She plunked the kid down on a pile of Fazbear merch, shirts and plushies and the like, so he’d at least be sleeping on something comfortable while she made her calls and reports at the desk. Her fingers clicking away at the keyboard, Vanessa brought up the guest database to see where he’d be listed, get his contact info and then phone his parents. Now that she thought about it, scrolling down the list of names, it seemed odd that this Gregory kid’s parents hadn’t called the Pizzaplex first.

Did any of the other parents call first? The question flickered in her thoughts and she winced at a sudden resurgence of her headache. Shaking it off, Vanessa went back to searching for Gregory in the guest list.

He wasn’t there.

That was… weird. Vanessa ran a simple search for any match to ‘Gregory’ but a few minutes later it came back as a ‘no record’ indicator. He wasn’t in the system. So, who was he? Where’d he come from? Her dull headache seemed to insist she stop thinking about it and just focus on her work. She rubbed her forehead and sighed; maybe he just snuck in away from his parents somehow. She’d just call the police, report a lost kid, and then let them deal with calling his parents. Not her problem once the call’s made.

“Sydney, I got the kid. I’ll make the call to the authorities, so could you go figure out where Freddy is and- wait, you don’t like being around him, right?” Vanessa called over her walkie-talkie, fingers tapping on the phone nearby so she’d have it in hand. “Could you send Monty to find Freddy and get him back to his room? And then grab us some Chica Chowders for dinner on your way back? We still have some time to wind down before we have to be in our rooms. Over.”

No reply. Vanessa looked at her walkie-talkie, trying not to feel off balance. There was so much going strange tonight. Freddy crashing, kid on the loose, kid not even in system, Sydney disassociating on the job for what was a normal routine for this situation, headaches coming more often now that she was noticing things… was something going on?

She mounted the device back to her shoulder strap and went ahead with making the phone call. There was a bit of audio delay but she finally got a response. “Hey, this is Vanessa, head of security for Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex. I’ve got a lost kid on grounds by the name of Gregory. He’s not in our system so we don’t have parent contact information,” she reported after initial greetings from the police officer on the other end, “Could you send some people down to pick him up? He’ll be in the usual spot.”

“We’ll take care of everything. Thank you for your service,” the responder told her in a bright tone and then the line went dead. Vanessa pulled the phone away from her ear, staring at it curiously. Huh, that was new.

Sounds of shuffling and whispers behind her caught her attention and she spun in her chair to pin a glare on the kid that had shoved his hands behind his back quickly. “I see you’re finally awake,” she said drily, folding her arms over her chest, “Thought you were so clever dodging S.T.A.F.F., huh, Gregory?” The kid stared at her in alarm and she flashed him a smug smile. “Yeah, I know your name. You’re in big trouble, breaking in without your parents or paying for entry and sneaking around restricted areas. I’ve already called the police to come get you, so you’re gonna just stay right here until they arrive.”

“You called the cops on me?!” Gregory exclaimed in shock and offense, like she did the worst thing ever. What did he expect? He broke the rules!

“Hey, you’re the one who was wasting my time with your shenanigans,” Vanessa shot back, getting to her feet and stretching her arms, “My partner’s gonna be waiting for me with dinner and you’re gonna have to answer to the cops about being a rule-breaker. Should have thought about-”

A strange thrumming sound in the air. A new wave of pressure on her head. Gregory winced, looking around in fresh panic, but Vanessa only put her hands to her ears, trying to stave off a sudden wave of queasiness. What was happening?!

Her vision flickered. The AR overlay? How? No mask. The thrumming continued, growing steadily louder. The pressure increased and now her limbs felt numb. She couldn’t feel them, couldn’t feel her fingers, palms, toes, legs. Like her world was shrinking and she couldn’t open her mouth to scream. What was happening to her?!

There was movement nearby. The kid? She couldn’t breathe! Fear built around her as she found herself trying to move and finding nothing was budging. Like her body wasn’t listening to her.

Louder and louder, the thrumming sounded, along with a strange pitched whistling that tickled her ears and cast new visual interference before her eyes. What was doing that? How was this possible? Through the window of the Lost and Found room, Vanessa could see a strange figure dancing down the staircase towards the security door. A woman, dressed in a rabbit costume of varying shades of gray, large red eyes luminous in the flickering light. Her movement seemed almost flirtatious as she stopped at the window to wave at her and Gregory, paw-like gloves moving fluidly with the gesture.

Who was that?! What were they doing here?!

The rabbit woman opened the door -How did she get authorization to do that?!- just as Gregory rushed out of the room, the clatter of the vent covers the only indicator of how he managed it. Vanessa tried again to move, putting everything she could towards getting control of one arm. Still nothing.

“Not yet, my dear,” the rabbit woman purred through a voice distortion filter, the wide smile of her headpiece making her words all the more mocking. Her gloved hand went to Vanessa’s cheek, cradling it almost tenderly. “Just a little longer and then you can have fun with us.” Her hand then went to the walkie-talkie stuck to Vanessa’s shoulder strap, one finger delicately pressing on the call button, “He’s escaped confinement. Over.”

She let go of the button and the device crackled with an almost immediate response. “Tracking. Over.” Sydney’s voice sounded so… cold. Empty of feeling. Vanessa wanted to shiver, to scream and demand what was going on, what was happening, what had been done to her, but her body wasn’t listening.

The rabbit woman tilted her head, waved again, then skipped on out of the room via the other door to the lobby. The thrumming gradually began to fade, the pressure lessening, and Vanessa’s legs gave out under her, leaving her to collapse on the floor and remain laying there for who knew how long.

And that brought her to her current struggle and frustration and fear. Her limbs still felt distant to her but at least she was able to move them again. So strange; like moving on a delay, she would tell herself to do something and it would take a second or two for her body to follow through. Like it was still having trouble recognizing itself as being her body.

She never should have thought those cursed words.

‘Okay, I’ll just call the cops again once I can get up. They can arrest the weird rabbit lady and take the kid with them. I gotta find Sydney and snap him outta whatever this is. None of this feels right!’

Vanessa put extra effort into reaching for her chair. If she could leverage herself onto it, that put her closer to the phone. Her legs wobbled as she hoisted herself up, fingers gripping the seat for dear life. Pins and needles, it felt like when her foot fell asleep once but all over her body. At least it seemed to be wearing off and more control was being gained back. She sat down heavily, panting from the effort, and grabbed the phone from its cradle, jabbing out the numbers listed for the police. Phone to ear, she waited, but all she got was dead air. Confused, she dialed again, double checking the numbers to be sure they were put in correctly. Still nothing.

Like the call wasn’t even leaving the building.

Vanessa stared at the phone in her hand, a faint horror settling in. Were the phone lines cut? Did the rabbit woman do this? When?

What the hell was going on?

#fnaf fanfiction #fnaf au #parlourverse au #fnaf vanessa #fnaf vanny #sydney herrera #fnaf gregory #bits and pieces

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