Chapter 30.
When it all Met the Furnace.
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"Go outside and play!"
-Every Old Playstation 2 videogame at the ending of credits.
She had only been gone two or three days, a handful of time, compared to those less fortunate, of being deceased, or shut down- By the end of a maze-like mystery that, only recently, had been ended.
In only ten or eleven days, give or take, Phillip had become embroiled in something, an occult undertone that had plagued humanity for longer than any of the current members involved in its existence, could say or prove.
Freddy and his minions, living, techno-organic monsters that fed off of the pain and terror they caused unsuspecting prey, had been ended, killed, by not the unspoken number of brave souls that had stood up to them, or by the two 'Defunct' members of their kind, but by some smelly kid looking for a part-time job.
The irony that undid the bear and his cronies, was something of a storybook perfection, a laughable hoax that no mastermind demon lord would EVER be befallen for in any of the Dungeons and Dragons books that Phillip read.
Yet, to take into account just HOW Freddy was defeated, you would need to perceive the engagement, no matter how weak the blunt presentation was- In a serious inspection of the elements.
Think of it this way, if you took a Medieval fortress, a castle, complete with peasants and farmers, knights, the rabble of common infantrymen, archers, groundskeepers, a handful of nobles, government servants, and headed it all with a King, what would he be afraid of?
-Here's the situation, the King was unjust in his rule, farmers were stricken with poverty, and the common man was poor, diseased, and uneducated, while those close to the King and his family were rick, intelligent, and received the best food and medical care in the kingdom.
Now, an army from the rival kingdom has amassed outside that castle, and all this time, the King has defeated every other army his men have come across, he has held against innumerable sieges of the SAME castle he lives in, and he has stamped out all resistance from the rebellious, starving people.
What would the King find more a threat?
The unarmed peasants and lepers pleading angrily for help at the foot of his great palace?
Or the mob of armed, trained swordsmen showing up by the thousands with archer and catapult support?
Obviously, the latter seemed a tad more fearsome.
But just like Freddy, the King did not see the whole picture, and became confident in his God-like might over people less powerful than he.
Because when the castle finally fell, and the noble family was exterminated, and the surrounding lands were annexed, the King himself did not die by spear, or arrow, or sword, or a shot from a catapult or trebuchet.
No, the King was killed by the angry farmers who poisoned the mixture used to create his wine he sipped every afternoon.
Thus, with the King and his tactical brilliance dead, his lords, and his armies, may have been trained and elite in their class, but without the head, the snake's body became disoriented and was thrown into a spasm of disarray.
THAT, was the real reason for the victory.
Not the massed arms, or the massed soldiers surrounding those siege engines.
ANGRY FARMERS.
-Pitchforks raised by the common man, not giant deathrays of neighboring nations, or missile barrages from rival armies, or massive cannon columns from the enemy country, but internal strife, and the day when your average person says-
ENOUGH, is ENOUGH.
Truly, not enough villains feared this risk.
Phillip was one of the few people to tell you, they should, based off experience.
Though as of the last few cycles of time, that poetic sense of justice was not resonating with Phillip Linn.
In fact, only one element of his adventure was resonating with him.
BESIDES, his repairing of Mangle.
"Hand me that ratchet,"
"-But, Philly, me no have batch-kits!"
"NO-! Not-! Ugh, just... You see the shiny claw-thing right there?"
"OOooooOOooo... Me think it look tasty!"
"DON'T YOU DARE. Hand it over, please."
"-Okey-dokey, Emperor Philly-kins."
Phillip snatched up the ratchet and began to crank closed several of the bolts and washer-pairs that linked the metal understructure of Foxy's wrist.
Really, Phillip had repeated the same pattern of repair he had on her the first time, with the addition of her second attachment he had found, and sealing the nasty wounds on her gut and chest.
The last fight had broken some sorts of internal systems, and one thing Phillip had found, was that, in similarity to how her organic mesh repaired when the copper-supports were re-linked, Foxy's body could repair itself if the mesh properly SEALED it.
For the last night, Phillip had gone without rest, tying off copper-tears, and waiting for the mesh and fur to regenerate over the course of a few hours for each fix. He tightened the hinge-like structures that were wedged between the joints of her limbs, sealed more mesh covering them, he faltered at the covering medical tape on her torso, avoided it, and worked on her abdomen.
Briefly, he had taken a break, wiping his forehead with a rag, and tossing his shirt away in the corner of the garage by the door into his home, where Mangle had promptly slipped it over her ears, and was wearing it like a hood.
"What are you doing THAT for?" He asked tiredly with a grin.
"Me a hoodlum, Philly!" Mangle cheered, flicking her ears under the shirt and hopping excitedly on the floor next to the driver-side left wheel of the car.
"HA! Aha!-Woo! W-Where'd you hear THAT? Yo, t-that's funny!"
"Me dunno. Think it sound funny!"
"Well, it IS funny, but just because you have a shirt on your head, doesn't mean the word... 'HOODLUM'."
"OooOoo! Like when womenz say no, womenz mean yes?!"
When Mangle asked that, Phillip's smile was shot off his face, and he scratched the back of his neck with a sudden urge to end his break, and resume fixing Foxy.
"-Uhm. Yeah. Very similar saying..."
"Or when first hear where babiez come from!"
"You don't know the answer to that one do you?"
"Or when-!" She stopped, blinked her one good eye, and cocked her head to the left a little under Phillip's shirt. "-Me not know answer to babiez, Philly."
"Maybe when you're older. Pfft."
"TELL ME ABOUT THE BIRDZ AND THE BEEZ, PHILLY-KIIIINNNSSS!"
"Oh my God! NO! I like my sanity, thank you!"
"But WHHHHHyyyyyyyyYYYYYYyyyyy...?"
"-B-Because- I-It's nasty to talk about!"
"Me think boogers nasty to talk about."
"Good, than think of babies like boogers..."
"But babiez small and soft and loud! And cuddly!"
"Pfft. Like you?"
"..."
"What? I hit a nerve?"
"YOU GENIOUS PHILLY!"
"Not really- MMF!"
Again, just like when she had first been reactivated, Mangle obscured his head with another wad of flailing pipes, leaping up, and leaving his shirt to flutter down to the floor without a user.
"CUDDLEZ!"
"GET OFF ME, YOU WIERDO! C'MON!"
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It had actually been more difficult than he had originally thought it would be.
Once or twice now, maybe a few more times, he wasn't keeping track, Foxy had jolted in her state of disrepair, like someone would after receiving the smallest zap from shock therapy in medical history. With a hollow clank of metals she'd jerk upwards, and then go still again.
The first time it happened, Phillip had finished sealing off a gash on her belly, and he'd even been daring, reaching inside the wound itself, and managed to knit back together a deeper section of copper bases for some other organic mesh internal structuring.
The extra effort obviously did something, because when he sealed the gash after said work, the animatronic experienced aforementioned jolt.
CLACK
-Came from the crates she was atop, and Phillip screeched loud enough for Mangle to fall out of the top shelf on the nearest shelving unit she had been napping atop.
"WHAAA!" The flailing mess of metal ended her brief tumble onto the side of Phillip's car, making yet another dent on the hood with a hollow THUMM, before rolling off onto the floor.
Phillip didn't even notice the continued destruction of his once prized automobile, he was too busy hurrying back over to his makeshift operating table-(Since he'd leapt a foot away from it from startled fright)- And giving the fox's arm a good shake.
It was her right arm, the one he had fixed with the new paw, and he thought that might get a better chance of reaction from her.
However, Foxy was still dark and stone cold, Phil found himself growing grim just looking at her.
"Fox'? Come on, Foxy," He tried. "Anything? Anything at all?"
"Foooxxxxxyyyyyyy!" Mangle popped up from her splay on the floor, and clambered atop his car's roof excitedly.
Turning over his shoulder, Phillip grimaced at the undoing of his feeble attempts to make his beaten-up car look presentable, looked back at Foxy, and sighed with a slumping of his shoulders.
What the heck else could he do to wake her up?
He woke Mangle up, so why was Foxy proving more and more challenging?
He thought the reflexes, the jolts she made, had been a sign of progress in his effort to repair her. As of now though, Phillip wasn't sure if any results had been feasible. Had he fixed ANYTHING?
"What the shit..." The cursed, turning away to glare at Mangle in thought.
As he stared he picked the stubble on his chin with his curling left fingers, and the whackjob fiddled with two of her pipes with an unreadable expression.
Obviously, Mangle had been overjoyed to be returned to the land of the living, but now without Foxy, she still felt happy that Phillip was here- Yet Foxy had been a mentor of sorts throughout the years, her OTHER 'Bestest' friend.
Now that same mentor, the only other being she'd been able to talk too beside Phil, was not waking up.
"M-Maybe Foxy broken bad, Philly...?"
"N-No, I'll get her up. I'll do it."
"But we try for hours."
"I know, I'll-WE'LL, figure it out..."
"Me trust you, Philly-kins."
"Thank you, weirdy," He snickered in his palm. "-I just don't know what else could be broken..."
Traveling back to the dormant animatronic, Philip pointed at her body, her arms, her head.
"-I-I mean... We've sealed all the tears in the mesh, I fixed whatever internal damage was exposed, the rest should be regenerating, and I patched her arms and legs up! So, what the hell? Where's Foxy?"
"Me have itchies!" Mangle whined. "-Philly-kins! Can you scratch back?"
The vulpine twisted her rib section around and angled over her pipes with an anxious nod of her chin.
"-Where'd that come from?" Phillip quizzed, stepping over to the side of his car. "Don't tell me you caught fleas..."
"Me have no peas, Philly-kins! Me like teas!"
"Oh yes... I KNOW that one..."
Idly, he reached up and dragged his fingers in the rear groove of her only section of animatronic torso left, and Mangle immediately draped her tongue out.
Shaking his head at her usual antics, Phil kept thinking over and over again at how he would get Foxy up, when, whilst he humored Mangle's awkward irritation for a metal body, he concentrated on the several linked sections of rounded steel, that made her spinal section.
Over the last week, Phil had never paid attention to the details on Mangle's body, or the bush of pipes that swung around it all the time like a bad smell. But seeing the small spinal construct, and how it was missing all the links from half her ribs-down, he was alerted to a new idea.
What if... THAT, was what was broken on Foxy?
"Her back..." He mumbled, rubbing his fingers into the side of the metal, wire-wrapped vertebrae to emit a relieved chatter from Mangle, she listed to the left, and he angled his head to view her back more. "-Her back... T-That must be it. That's it! Mangle! You're brilliant!"
"-No, me have itchiez!"
"No-!-I mean, y-yes, you do, b-but this is what-! THIS, the spine, that's what must be broken! I can't think of anything else!"
Phillip hurried back to the crates with which Foxy still lay atop, and the Mangle grumbled at his stoppage of 'Itch-relief'.
"Help me turn her over! Hurry!"
"Me think tea fix problem!"
"Yeah, well I think you should hurry the frag up! C'mon! Under her arms!"
Mangle clambered over the floor, and snagged her pipes underneath Foxy's left flank, while Phillip took hold of her right, and they both slowly turned the animatronic face-down on the crates.
Phillip took caution to reach up and angle her face to the side, as not to leave it plastered into the plastic.
"Okay, here we go-Why the heck didn't I think of this?!" He jabbed a finger at a large gash in her center-back, as if Mangle would somehow understand. "See that! Mangle, hand me the flashlight."
"What's a hash-sight, Philly?"
"Ugh, t-the, what'd you call it? The 'Beam of Doomz'- That thing!"
"Oh! Beam of Doomz, why not say so, Philly?"
"Just... Please give it too me."
"Okey-dokey!"
Mangle's extra pipes flicked by the worktable a few feet away, and came back with a small, black-colored, portable flashlight, which Phillip took from two feet clasping it between their toes, flicked on the light, and shoved the beam of illumination at the gash on Foxy's back.
Inside, he could see the reflective sheen of the wire-wrapped vertebrae lining all the way up the rear of her body, just like a human's.
At the center of the gash, it was clearly evident that two of the bulges were disconnected, and a thin trail of copper wires bridged the separation between them raggedly.
He'd have to be careful with this.
If he tugged something, or broke something, he could actually make the damage worse.
"I guess I really am a- 'Doctor' Phil..." Phillip laughed.
"Surgery time!" Mangle cheered, coming back with a device that made Phillip nearly soil himself.
Mangle held the buzzsaw he kept in the back storage unit, and, thankfully, had done so when the thing was unplugged.
"N-No! NO NO! Gimme that!"
Phillip reached up and snatched the flailing piece of equipment from two of her tentacles, held it by his hip, and frowned at her.
The animatronic smiled innocently down on the floor.
"Leave the-SURGERY, to me, please."
"Okey-dokey!"
"Just hand me things I ask for."
"Mmkay!"
"Can you do that? And NOTHING else?"
"Me keep concentration in head like steel cap!"
"-TRAP. The expression's TRAP, weirdy."
"Me have no sap, Philly, me can check tree though!"
"Nevermind."
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The last time Foxy was happy, was a very very VERY, LONG time ago.
As a matter of fact, Foxy didn't recall it.
Because she really didn't recall anything BEFORE the other animatronics.
She didn't know if there was any real life before them. She didn't know what they were before their current incarnation. She didn't know is she even existed before them.
Her memory, she felt, had been purposefully skewed on the subject to prevent her from doing something, or believing something rather. What that something was, though, she again did not recall, or know.
Like reiterated in the fashion of a broken record, there might not have ever BEEN a something.
Maybe that something was her, herself.
Maybe it was Mangle... That'd be a horrible laugh.
Maybe it was Phillip.
-And that Phillip boy-oh-boy...
That last time she'd been happy? The one she didn't recall?
-The only happiness she could recall was over the last week. And that was because of Phillip, some stupid little human, who waltzed in on a colossal power-broker between good and evil, and thought he could make minimum wage of it.
Some stupid little human, that had been the first too talk to her on a personal level, moreso than Matt or Jensk could have ever hoped too of. Some stupid little human, that had been the first to make her laugh.
All of these really wonderful things, from a hairless ape.
He didn't even have any resemblance to her, he was a different species, pink, fleshy, weak, he had a wad of fur on the top of his head and nowhere else-(That she knew of)- He wasn't super strong, he was bright, he wasn't athletic, or fast, or agile, and he had no real FIGHT capabilities on him, the one thing that had judged who dominated who in her life.
Thus, instead of repelling her, Foxy was swoon by the peaceful, happy lifestyle he seemed to live compared to her.
She had envisioned so many things in her life, and the crazy part was, her life had been utter shit before she came into contact with the guard for hire.
All of the things she had dreamt up in her little Cove, now, a pile of ashes like the rest of the accursed building, all of the ones that had to do with a significant other, had BLOOMED off of Phillip, she saw pleasantries not possible without him, in her life.
So, Foxy was undeniably attracted to him.
Nearly at first sight. And it had been a whole week, and now, she was effectively smitten with him.
But she was also effectively dead.
So, you know, being smitten with some dude and then DYING on him, not only blew-chunks for the girl in question, but the dude himself probably was not prancing through the tulips either.
In the darkness that she found after she had been shut down, Foxy felt horrible, she felt robbed of the same happiness she had never gotten more than a week to experience, and she felt cheated. She felt enraged.
But that rage gave way to grief and mourning, than depression.
So she sat in the void, silently.
Waiting for nothing.
She couldn't really think, or feel, see or smell or taste or HEAR. She was just there, for ages it appeared, she was just THERE.
When, out of the blue-Or rather out of the BLACK, came a wonderful sensation.
And then another wonderful sensation.
And another.
And ANOTHER.
Her physical form came to her, and it grew alive with light, senses, refreshed vigor.
Foxy started to reactivate.
"-You hear that?"
"Me still here, Philly."
"No! Not that kind of-! Ugh, did you hear that gasping sound? The breath?"
"...Me has indigestion."
"N-No it's-! Wait, oh my... Oh my God, do you REALLY?"
"Me smell worse than skunkies on pot bummer day!"
"HOT SUMMER DAY! GOOD LORD! YOU STINK THE JOINT OUT AND CAN'T EVEN GET THE PHRASE RIGHT! AGH!"
"Philly-kins sound like octopus guy from spongy cartoon!"
"-HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW ABOUT THAT?!"
"Me watch T.V!"
"Can you BLAME me for sounding like Squidward?! I can't breathe!"
"Oopseez."
CLUNK
"I swear on my HOOK, you corroded-garden-hose! I'll PLUG that dispulsion system if you don't control it!"
Phillip froze in the back of the garage, hands still clenched over his nose, when he heard her voice again.
Mangle was stopped mid-clamber over Phil's car back to the floor.
Both eyes spun to the crates, and the being on top of them.
Like nothing even happened, their eyes met the same sight they'd been graced with for a full week, and in the case of Mangle, for far longer.
Foxy snarled at the two of them, sitting upright on the crates' tops, reached up for her eye-patch, remembered she'd still taken it off, blinked, and jabbed her hook at Mangle.
"What is it with you, you rabid-licorice-stick?!"
Foxy gawked, and looked at her wrist, and where her hook was SUPPOSED to be...
"W-WHERE THE SHIT'S MY HOOK?!"
"FOXXXXXYYYYYYYY!"
"WHO SWITCHED MY ARMS OR SOMETHING-OOF!"
CLUNK
Foxy vanished in a flurry of white as Mangle plastered her onto the top of the crates again with a wrapping of all her pipes.
The animatronic lay there in a stupor as her friend squeezed her tightly, and burned holes in the ceiling of the garage. Foxy opened her mouth to speak, shut it, and slowly brought the one arm, her right arm, out of Mangle's coils to view it.
She held it aloft, and turned the wrist and paw to and fro, flexing the fingers just as easily, though a bit more stiffly, as she would her paw, her ORIGINAL paw.
She was speechless, and she struggled to edge vision over the wad of metal on her body to view the same stupid little human she had been thinking about in the void.
Phillip slowly walked up to the crates, before her draped legs over their sides, and smiled at her in amazement.
Foxy blinked.
"-This... Is real, isn't it?"
"A-As real as it'll get, Fox'," Phil stuttered. "H-How do you feel? I... I fixed you! I got ya' back! Are you... Okay?"
Foxy stared at him silently, feeling Mangle uncoil herself, and sit on her belly in a collected bunch, her head cocking to the side to frown at her.
"Foooxxxyyyy...?" She muttered, giving the vulpine a shake with some coils still wrapped around her. "-Don't remember me and Philly-kins?"
"O-Of course she remembers us! Why-Why would you think THAT?" Phillip snapped. "C'mon, Fox'... It's us! We won! We stopped the bear..."
"The... Bear...?"
"Yeah! You know? The Demonic-Douchebag? The Build-A-Bear Reject? Killer Care-Bear? Yes?"
"Phillip...?"
"-Y-Yes I'M, Phillip, remember? I... Foxy, you remember all this, right? You're... You're okay? Right?"
"...Okay...?"
"Y-Yeah... I..."
He stepped back at the same time Mangle uncoiled herself fully, and the two gawked at the confused animatronic still lay atop the crates, her eyes wide, brows furrowed.
Mangle looked distraught, and Phillip looked defeated.
He'd brought her back, but... He didn't want to bring her back like THIS.
Amnesia? Short-term? Had Foxy been like... Dazed?
How did he fix THIS?
"...Okay... Huh..." Foxy trailed with a tiny murr.
"I guess... Y-You're NOT okay then... God-" Phillip swung around with a frustrated pump of his fist. "-DAMN IT!"
"P-Philly-kins... We fix her!"
"HOW? Huh? I just- I just brought her back and she remembers NOTHING!"
"B-But, she still Foxy!"
"I-I know... But... I..."
Foxy interrupted them with a small grin, reaching up to clench Mangle with both of her paws, she slowly lifted the panicking whackjob off of her, and set her down on the crate next to her as she sat up.
Mangle looked like she was about to go into hysterics, and Phillip was starting to become upset.
"Well I... DO, remember something," Foxy stood to her full height, took a step, wobbly-like, forwards, and supported herself by reaching out, and cupping the human's shoulders. "-Something important, I think."
"...What's that, huh?" Phillip mumbled.
"I remembered that I wanted too kiss you harder than I ever had, if I got out of that fight alive."
"...Yeah well... I guess that's all water under-the bridge now-WAIT, whatdidyoujustsay?!"
"Cough up the payment, human." She grinned.
"Y-You're... So you-?"
"I'm WAITING, Philly-kins."
"HA! Oh! You are funny!"
"I had to put on SOME kind of act-MM!"
Foxy wasn't the one shoving Phil's head forwards this time, and Mangle was already hopping up and down in excitement once the worst had been warded off as a fake.
So there, in the garage, was where Phillip, for the first time, forced the vulpine against the door to his house, and smothered her with the most drawn out oral-connection she had experienced with him, and she muffled out laughs the whole time between her flexing jaws.
Despite the heated mess, Mangle still managed to preoccupy herself with the 'Beam of Doomz' and made hand/foot puppets with her pipes as she coned the light on the side of Phil's car.
And from Phillip's point of view, whilst Mangle was distracted, he disconnected from Foxy, keeping his arms curled around her furred waist, he couldn't stop smiling, beaming at her with shining eyes, and this wasn't too say Foxy wasn't reciprocating.
The animatronic had the expression of sheer joy on her features, she flexed her paws on his back and shoulders, nudging forwards until they were connected via forehead.
The week, they all supposed, hadn't ended so badly after all.
"I'm so ecstatic right now," Phillip said. "-I really REALLY am, Fox'."
"Phillip, I don't care if it's been a week," Foxy stated. "-I'm staying with you..."
"I'd hope so," Phillip chuckled. "I wanna take this like a REAL relationship, Fox'. I'm gonna talk to you, I'm gonna tell you things, and listen to you, and I'm going to understand you one-hundred percent."
"-And hug me and kiss me and name me George?"
"Maybe not the last part, eh?"
"Phillip, I'm in love with you," Foxy sighed. "-I'm in LOVE with you."
"I am going to make you a queen, you know that?"
"Screw difference in species..."
"You can say that again."
In fact, it was the best fragging week of their lives.
It all started with a part-time job offer, an opportunity to be a boring guard who was under threat from a bunch of things that were not supposed to be alive.
It all started so simply, and then it devolved, and EVOLVED, into a battle of justice and chaos.
While two heroes had been lost in the final push to end the evil, three more had emerged, and they weren't exactly going down against any obstacles that might present themselves in the far future.
It all started without a care for the future, and now, there was a LOT of caring, because this future looked bright.
Really bright.
And it was unrestrained, no longer limited to the forced ceramic view of a handful of Camera Angles.
Funny how that all worked out, huh?
-0-0-0-0-0-
FIN
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EPILOGUE
In the blackness of the late night, behind the thin, translucent screen of a wire mesh fencing, there was a great clank of hollow metal, crumbling of plaster, and snapping of wood.
From the pile of scorched remnants, a horrible gasp of dusty, unused lungs plagued the atmosphere, and something jerked, rubber walloped, a black piece of ragged debris was flung out of the mound of rubble, stone and plastic fell away in a miniature avalanche.
With a final burst of masonry dust, a hunched shape slowly sat up from within the piles of rubbish, cricked a head that, from the shadows, looked longer than natural.
There was a voice, laced with the grind of stones being dragged along each others' sides, and tinged with a kiss of ragged static.
"-Agh, so THIS, is what I get for a bit of a leave... Eh?"
Long, ape-like limbs made from multiple wraps of wire entangled over welded metal pistons and machinery, uncurled from the thing's sides, and stretched into the air as the creature sighed from the moved joints.
"That's the spot... Alright then, upsy-daisy!" Two legs in similar construction to the arms, unfurled from its waist line in the mound of burnt remains, reaching forwards to dig three toe-like suction cup protrusions into the ground.
They pulled the creature two steps forwards, and another set of these legs dragged out from where the monster had been partially buried, forming a quad set that transported it stiffly over the multiple bevels in the piles of scrap.
"For shame that this haven's a burnt skidd-mark... 'Stupid son of a bitch couldn't keep his head on against a plebian! Ha!"
Shaking its welded, bulky body like a dog, the monster loosed off a cloud of soot, sending chunks of plaster and wood in all directions, like a small hail storm.
"What's this?" It muttered, reaching the gate to the mesh fence, and taking the pad-lock in its left claw, with three fingers made from bolted plates of steel. "-Friggin' humans..."
CLK
It squeezed its fist over the lock, crushed it like a wad of tin-foil, and let the crumbled, ringing remains skitter away on the dark pavement at its feet.
"I LOVE the fresh night smell of pine-trees! MMMHmmm!"
It pushed its palms into the gate, and they squeaked ajar, knocking over a sign reading 'AWAITING DOZER' that had been stood up on a small metal stand before the entry. The creature stepped out into the vacant parking lot, and yawned its long, reptilian, mechanical head.
"Almost wish I had eyes... EYES, eyes... Not this stupid echo-locat-HEY! Whadda-we have here then..."
Reaching down, it picked up a little top hat, colored black, and licked by a small glance of fire damage.
The monster sighed, expelling another puff of dust from its unused internals.
"Agh, for the luvva-Pete! Boy's really dead ain't he? FINE! Fine..." It uncurled its fingers, and let the little top hat flutter back down onto the pavement. "-The job's vacant then..."
With its multiple rows of metal, daggered teeth, the long, eyeless head of the being bowed lower in humor.
"I'll do it myself."