Excerpts from a story I was going to (and someday, still might) post below:
"Chica!" Freddy bore his teeth squarely at her, hoping she'd pull those synthetic feathers out of her ears and listen, for once. "Quit referring to the spare costume as my 'birthday suit.' Nobody takes that literally."
Chica reacted as though he were ordering her to establish contact with a secure military base on the far-side of the moon. "Aww, but it's a hilarious double entendre!"
“To the demented, maybe, but you're giving children and their parents nightmares!" growled Freddy. "For the good of the common people, I have to cut you off."
He snatched the plastic cups she was speed-stacking to a pyramid out of her hands.
"Hey!"
"No more bad puns for you."
"I'd like for someone to describe what a good pun sounds like," Bonnie said snidely, as he sawed away through construction paper with a pair of meat-cutting scissors.
‘Technological gods above,' Freddy prayed, 'Won't you, please, show me a sign that I'm not the only one down here who knows how to make proper use of resources?'
A tumbleweed must have rolled by in a distinct lack of confirmation. Mangle loaded the last of the Breyer's ice cream into an orange traffic cone, offering with nonchalance the explanation that they were fresh out of waffles.
"It's cool, guys," she said, with unwarranted confidence. "I got this."
...That answered that question.
"I must be rusting!" Freddy griped, massaging his temples. His mental age was showing again. Talking to his friends made him feel like shelling out money for convertibles and bell-bottoms--anything to make dropping slang words from later generations look more inappropriate.
Mid-life crisis after a premature death? Don't mind if he did!
"Where...?" Freddy gestured to the construction cones. "How?"
"Who cares!" exclaimed Chica, plucking her ruffled feathers. "It's been a century since our junior-high graduation, Freddy. Don't ya think it's about time you turned in the Hall Monitor belt?"
Freddy's lip curled. "Since when did four years become a century?"
"Four years is a fortnight," Mangle said unhelpfully, using what Freddy liked to call, "Mangle math."
He starved off a growing migraine. "Sure, Chica. I'll take off the belt... once you lose the bib."
Chica laughed at the bear's subtle way of telling her she behaved like an infant. "Okay, wise guy," she said. Planting her dainty hands on the island counter, she leaned forward to pop Freddy's personal space bubble. "What do you suggest I tell the children when they ask me about your shiny, new coat, hmm?"
"That I haven't been meeting my daily intake of fish oil...?" Freddy hummed, fencing her away with a wooden spoon. "Try saying I turn gold when they blow out candles and make a wish, or something." He tapped his chin several times with his pretend-sword. "Do you think kids would buy that?"
The Puppet raised an eyebrow at him from the conjoining hallway, as if to ask, 'Would anyone buy that?'
Freddy forsook the spoon's return journey to its bowl of eggy, white batter, instead flinging it at the Puppet in the spirit of mischief. "Then, you three stooges come up with something better, and spare me the gut-wrenching word-play, please."
Chica twirled a stack of crystal candy-dishes precariously on the tip of her finger. "Oki-doki, Smokey!"
Freddy flinched as the ornate cookware crashed to the bottom of the kitchen sink. Oh, but of course! Freddy's wouldn't be home if something expensive weren’t falling apart by the end of the day.
A moment of silence for the departed...
"...I've been thinking what we really need around here is a nice, mosaic window," Chica clucked sheepishly.
Bonnie's whiskers twitched with amusement, and he stood up, abandoning his flurry of paper snowflakes. "I'm on it!" With habitual sleeve-rolling motions, he reached in to fetch the glass out of the sink.
Before Bonnie could send Freddy on a quest to track down the rhinestones, glitter, chrome, rainbows, Skittles, Elvis guitars, diamond tiaras, and other garish crap he would inevitably need out of the Smithsonian vault for the duration of the next two eternities, the lead singer danced his way out of the Kitchen, dropping his mic for effect.
"Thanks for inviting me, gang. It's been a blast."
"Well, tomorrow's another day!" Chica cheered after him, in an artificially sweet sing-song voice, far different from the one featured in her back-up vocals.
Freddy could only freeze, half-dead in his tracks. Had his blood still been pumping, it would have boiled. For the first time since the Crying Child had succumbed to his short-lived coma, Freddy wasn't feeling conscientious: the iconic bear was tempted to bite heads off.
No, Chica. What would really brighten up this place was a French guillotine.
Fucking ex-girlfriends. Sometimes, his suit of armor seemed more like a blessing than a curse.
"Was that necessary?" he asked her. "Did you have to go there? Don't quo..."
He trailed off, his jaw slackening as Puppet released a string of snickers for everyone's listening pleasure. What the hell? Freddy's forehead creased with concern for his wellbeing, but the only verbal response from the cheeky Pierrot came in the form of a flipped-around, wet floorboard sign.
'Annoying advice, isn't it?'
That was the message written on the inside-flap in his family's trademark-purple Sharpie... or, rather, what Freddy could decode by rotating it upside-down and reversing the spelling errors. The Puppet leaned against the makeshift eight-and-a-half-by-eleven, wearing a grin that stretched the length of his body.
...Really?
'It wasn't intended as advice!' would have been Freddy's fiery rebuttal, but he remained stoic and icy.
This was neither the time nor the place for pointing out how much he sucked at motivational speeches. It was doubly insulting, coming from a mime, and Freddy swore on a stack of Bibles (as if that would prevent perjury at this point) that the child wearing the Puppet mask suffered from Dyslexia. That made it a quadruple offense!
Never mind Chica's tongue-in-beak commentary. The Puppet was the throbbing thorn in Freddy's side. Even without cutting words or sharp edges, he had a way of lodging knives in his tender chest cavity, which had once been the dwelling-place of a human heart. ...That was the wisdom imparted to him by the fairytales of his past life, anyway.
Freddy snorted, "Creative, 'Able.' Put that kickstand back in the closet when you're done with it," he muttered. "Not that Sharpie will wash out of plastic. We are so getting sued for workman's comp., by the way."
In other words, 'Yeah, yeah! Your brother's a sociopath, and I'm his enabler! Flip to a new page of Genesis, would ya? Oh, and we are so getting sued for workman's comp., by the way.'
Uh, but conveyed with love?
Good enough. He shrugged, wishing his point good luck on its voyage.
Freddy evicted himself from the Kitchen, otherwise known as the chasm into which all common sense plunged...
Knee-jerk reaction time!
Freddy sidestepped an airborne Foxy, who had anchored his grappling hook in the wall to steer his way through a series of unwittingly sharp turns, catapulting himself into Mangle with sweeping force. The pair of foxes snowballed to the back of the oven, and a spice rack Bunny Hopped off the wall, plummeting to the ground.
Another instance of Foxy's impeccable timing, everyone!
Freddy flexed and sheathed his claws repeatedly, as if he were squeezing a rubber stress-toy, artfully shaped to resemble his murderer. "What are the chances someone else can address that?"
His inquiry was met with swift dispersion.
"You two are the reason surprise parties fail!" Freddy wailed after Bonnie and Chica, blowing smoke from his cute, rounded, teddybear ears. Zero points for intimidation factor.
A school of plastic cones emerged, swimming in ice cream, from the wreckage. Freddy threw his foot down in one's path to create a ramp, dislodging what must have been an entire container's worth of double-scoop fudge. The dessert was reduced to chocolate puddles beneath his feet, coating his nails in a sticky film of unpleasantness.
Okay, gross.
Every fiber of Freddy's being screamed, nearly splitting at both ends, begging him to come undone... but he forced himself to neatly stack the road decorations in front of the kitchen door without uttering a single word. Once he was finished warning oncoming jaywalkers to yield, he marched in the opposite direction for as many steps as the laws of metaphysics would permit--and then some.
"You have got to stop making promises to troubled children with poor prognoses, Roger," he muttered, reaching the Security Office. It took him a double-click to register the inadvertent use of his real--human--name.
Whoops.
Freddy patrolled the room with his eyes, praying for a clear coast. Fortunately, the only eavesdropper was a mounting yard of junk.
"That was way too close," he grunted at a tripod, which had long since buckled at the knees. "Damn selective memory... and what sort of warranty has to be voided for this broken equipment to be replaced?"
Someone, shoot him, or kill the buzzing static! The stockpile of broken televisions on either side of the archway had been accumulating for months, now. Was Fritz trying to build a fort?!
...Yeah, that sounded like him.
Freddy angrily pierced his claw through the tablet resting on the desk, deriving some bizarre satisfaction from seeing it crack and shatter into shards.
Considering he wanted to karate chop everything in the room, it was a moving gesture.
Honestly, this place was becoming one, big, insurmountable block of ice; dealing with the Puppet and the issues created by his brethren required titanic amounts of patience, and Freddy felt shipwrecked.
He continued his tiny temper-tantrum by yanking the antenna off a small television, snapping it like a twig. "Who said you could have reception!?" he snarled. His anger skyrocketed at the acknowledgment that he was attacking an inanimate object, so he kicked another monitor, right in its stupid face, visualizing the smug mien of Puppet's older brother... for therapeutic purposes.
Well, he connected as many dots of the picture as he could with his own memory, then threaded the remainder of the fuzzy image with needles of anger-incarnate.
God, amnesia was a bitch.
'Blame-shifting backstabber!' he hissed in his head-voice.
And, Chica? He meant that, literally.
Back when he was a human, Freddy's bond with the Puppet and his big brother had been stronger than that of either parent's. Their grandparents on each side had even affectionately referred to corporeal Freddy as "the adopted grandchild," of concurrent opinions that he was a good influence on their eldest grandson, and blissfully unaware that "middle-man" was a more suitable term. Then, thanks to the narrow, two year age-gap that separated Freddy from the older sibling, rumors had begun to circulate amongst the neighbors. Soon, everyone in The Woodlands Estates had identified him as the delinquent's "best friend."
Maybe Freddy had some bitter reservations about those titles. Maybe those reservations were bitter due to the acrid grains of truth-containing soil sprinkled at their roots. Maybe the hellish plant sprouting from those roots was now blossoming in the form of beautiful, murderous urges. Maybe "urges" was a powerful word for a fourteen year-old ghost who had been the victim of sexual assault. Or was it eighteen? Maybe aging stopped at the graveyard.
Freddy shuddered. 'Still...'
Maybe "best friends" was only the kinder of two, qualifying descriptors for his relationship with the Crying Child's brother. Maybe Freddy had a plan in the works to turn that bastard into a volcanic centerpiece to get him back for taking advantage of his unwitting, undying--now, undead--loyalty.
...Maaaybe that last statement was a lie, because Freddy had not yet become all robot. Maybe one day, he'd make the complete transformation, and his torturous feelings of remorse, anger, and betrayal would fade into traceless oblivion with the shake of an Etch A Sketch.
'Then, maybe the clouds will turn to velvet and rain smoothness with cream cheese frosting!'
Hah! Freddy laughed neurotically at his situation, pushed a swivel-seat over on its side, and sobered up so quickly from his volatile state, it was almost concerning. Even more horrifying: on some level, he still gave a damn about that quirky bastard--even though he couldn't pair a face and a name like matching socks.
Aloof, Freddy stuck a fuchsia apology on the tablet and its broken cousins, scanning the room for damage-control purposes. Then he played himself out of the office, drifting through the hallways for the better part of a Friday afternoon.
It was lonely here in the Spring, when children were off at school, but due to staggered, year-round schedules, the parlor was still open, especially to the staff at H.R., who stopped by to high-five the front door and be on their merry way.
Sigh...
Freddy blew a parachuting particle of dust away from his nose, reclining on the Show Stage.
Playing ringmaster to a zombie circus had few ups, he was discovering. Freddy was bored to the brink of despair, and socializing was a frustrating, often unsuccessful remedy. His first social life hadn't been booming, either; you know, the one back in the olden days, before karma had conquered every territory of his life.
It was awfully kind to Puppet's older brother, however. He was still roaming the streets of Houston--probably off screwing up any chances he had at a four-year degree. Would the abuse Puppet had suffered at his hands make its way onto an academic transcript? As if! His years of torment had only made the Puppet smart. Well, that, and afraid of taking elevators, but who was keeping track? As long as Puppet kept those wits about him, and the restaurant staff kept their charms about them, then Freddy could retain his sanity enough to keep the Puppet's eye-for-an-eye mentality in check.
Lives everywhere would be spared... many of them, tablets.
At least Freddy's crime was not worthy of a death row sentence. Then again, for a phantom energy, being attached to scraps of metal was a fate similar to jail. At least, he imagined so. Puppet's older brother was not around to reminisce on his many court hearings, the majority of which saw a consequence-free ending.
Without his record, he would have made an excellent tobacco sales-rep.
What kind of future had his parents envisioned for him after years of being raised without any repercussions or sacrifices? The lens through which he viewed reality was curved, and the result was mind-warping. How was he expected to take the law seriously when it was refracted through Alice in Wonderland binoculars?
The Puppet's best chances of avoiding his brother's footprints were in the hands of a foster home.
Wait a minute! Now, Freddy's moral compass was swinging in circles. Was he siding with the bastard or with his Stepford family? ...Feh. They all sucked.
The franchise-founding couple who erroneously called themselves "parents" were far too busy embarking on multiple business endeavors to pay attention to toddlers and teenagers. They practiced an uncomplicated and plastic way of addressing everything else, to include their marriage, their religious obligations, and similarly, their kids--in stark contrast to the parenting methods everyone in the family portrait believed money could buy.
Then again, "contrast" implied a comparison being drawn between two things, both of which existed on some level. Throwing trust funds, remote-control cars, puppies, bouncy houses, carnival parties, and everything short of a bee-keeping suit at a depressed child was hardly a "method" of doing anything. Arcade tokens could not be exchanged for a code of ethics, and lectures hugged at each end by verbal question marks did not qualify as discipline.
The phrase, 'Everything in moderation,' came to mind.
For the records and mixed cassette tapes, both of their kids hated puppies, because they were spawned by dogs. Their mutual hatred for large animals was the only bonding glue they had. Still, it had never occurred to the CEO or his doting wife to muzzle their unfriendly Dalmatians. Freddy could only imagine the afflictions of a Dyslexic kindergartener when the dogs were given free-roam of the house after dark, barging up to any bedroom door which lacked a securely-raised drawbridge.
How could the trophy couple be so content with their own obliviousness? Maybe they were under the impression that good upbringings just happened, organically and without explanation...?
Maybe, in that universe, clouds were made of velvet, raining smoothness and icing...?
Ch, and maybe not! Maybe they just didn't care. Maybe they were all robot.
So, Freddy was all heart, then?
'Everything in moderation, indeed.'
Freddy believed all individuals were responsible for their own actions, but they were all minors at the time--children! No matter how Freddy manipulated his position, true North only pointed in one direction: blame fell evenly on the shoulders of their caretakers... all of them. The paper trail was as well-concealed as the intent behind Phone Guy's complaints about children being handsy.
Oh, the usefulness of all that was Sydney Someone and his training-tape encyclopedia.
Really, what Freddy couldn't stand were all the odd jobs the CEO hand-picked him to do, even though he was terrible at most of them. As overseer of H.R., his sugarcoated truths sounded more like black, tarry coffee, but it seemed Freddy was one of a select few beings on any plane who found them in poor taste.
'Everything in moderation...'
It wasn't as though any of this was Phone Guy's fault, per se, but it was under his guidance that H.R.'s dedication to making excuses to the company had become unwavering. His handiwork served as a constant reminder that the Puppet and his big brother were treated like personnel files--like a cruel extension of their father's business. Freddy would observe it every time he encountered the CEO and his two boys at the local country club, where he and the Juvie-regular had first bonded over their shared resentment for khaki pants.
Dressing up third-degree burns in band-aids was a wound, all its own; yet, it was just another one of the many past-tying scars shared by the spirits that limboed here, shedding lifetimes in the name of ironic justice. It was maddeningly mundane.
Simplicity was all good and well in small doses, but... the occasional challenge never hurt.
'Everything in moderation...'
Challenges were supposed to be good. Challenges were opportunities for growth, or at least worthy of a congeniality sash and a Skiiball ticket to pass-over.
So, why did Freddy's efforts to make amends for havoc wreaked in a past life feel like a crippling stunt?
'Everything in moderation...'
How long was he supposed to have to muster up the energy to keep micromanaging Puppet's karmic mindset? Couldn't they just rent an instructional Pilates video or watch an after-school special on the appropriate responses to violence...?
And, you know, homicide?
'Everything in moderation...'
Where was the imaginary measuring cup helping Freddy titrate the mind-numbing agents that went into this supernatural E-Z Bake recipe? Chica didn't have it; that was for damn sure.
'Everything in moderation...'
Was his failure to anticipate this outcome to blame for the ethereal wear-and-tear? Had Freddy always expected fixing June to be like stitching a busted piñata back together? Could it be that he was the unmindful one? Was Freddy missing brain-parts?
That would explain his throbbing headache!
Damn it all! Loyalty was a noose, the metal canine decided, flopping back down on the Show Stage--and Freddy's particular rope lassoed him in two directions. He ceased his trail of ridiculous questions with no foreseeable end. Hello, hello, yellow brick road to nowhere!
Unless Purgatory called dibs on that humdrum and forgettable welcome-message, Freddy would be unsurprised if it wound up chiseled on the eventual headstone of the CEO's firstborn son. The main attraction would be a short and flowery epitaph that glorified his scumbag life.
If he died tomorrow...
"1967 - 1987: Cain, Jr. (A Regular Church-Goer).
Here lies the future-proprietor of Fazbear Entertainment:
Beloved son, big brother, huge role-model, and registered kidney donor."
A twisted grin corkscrewed its way onto Freddy's face. 'Hm. If he died tomorrow...'
He composed several eulogies for his former friend, none of which, did his anger any real justice. Nonetheless, it lifted his spirits, balancing his negative energy and resolving savage impulses. The funeral would be a tear-jerking occasion, all right... but until he could dance on that grave, he would have to settle for dreaming about it.
Sigh! The irritable animatronic closed his eyes, hoping to activate "sleep" mode, but moments after his dramatic collapse, the vibrations of a gum-flapping door congaed down his spine.
"Won't you at least try to take down my number?"
Freddy whined through his nasal passages, like a spoiled teenager, denied his opportunity to fall in with the wrong crowd... or in this case, into autopilot. Even private, Catholic highschools had their sinners, and Puppet's brother was living proof. "Fucking, now, what? I never catch a Goddamned break around here..."
And, no, Freddy was not repenting for that.
He purged his mind of all things dogma, as the soothing sounds of feet shuffling over confetti bombarded his eardrums. It was official: the universe had chosen today to have it out for Freddy.
Sitting up sourly, he concentrated on identifying a source of the disturbance. It was crucial he knew just who to pin to the center of the dartboard in the employee lounge.
"Jeremy, I'm talking to you! Let me give you my card!"
Freddy recognized the shrill voice as Phone Guy's home-wrecking, young secretary: a gingery brunette with thick-rimmed glasses named Jazz, or, as she had been knighted by the round table of corporate scumbags, "The hot, little number from Phoenix who does the Director’s real work." Her half-up ponytail bounced as she jaunted through the Game Area in hot pursuit of the most recent client to leave her office.
Stumbling two paces ahead of her was Jeremy, her current love-interest. Not only was shemaking incredible efforts to put his notch in her belt, but every hostess at the Houston branch had it bad for the young task force member... and Freddy only knew that because Bonnie spent too much time reading the water cooler-gossip column.
"Ah, you look nice today, and all, but... no, thanks?" came Blondie's tactful reply, the words falling out of his mouth like chewed food.
Freddy scrambled for a stapler or a stick of superglue to paste his ears to his head as the clumsy employee tripped noisily over everything barring the ceiling.
"You're a shoe-in for employee of the month, Jeremy," Freddy grunted, throwing his enormous paws over his face like a pair of shades. If this persisted, he would have to resort to pawning a hallucinogenic off Mike. The current night guard was was always experimenting with some trip-inducing drug on his shift, mistaking those star-shaped ornaments that dangled over the Show Stage for ninja weapons.
Freddy wanted a dose of the fun he was sucking down.
The sarcastic quip had fallen on deaf ears; Blondie was in search of an escape route, shielding himself from Jazz's advances by crouching behind a party table like a lion-tamer without his whip.
"Okay, then..." hesitated Jazz. "Let's compromise: can you at least give me one, good reason we can't grab a cup of coffee?"
"No."
"Why is that?"
"Because, I can't think of one?" the young, would-be ladies' man confessed with a tooth-grinding grin.
Jazz flushed her hair out from underneath the collar of her black-and-white tartan coat, locking her legs and arms with resolve. "So, it's a date?"
"Uh..." Jeremy's softly-uttered refusal was lost to Freddy.
Feh. Humans and their schoolyard dramas! Jazz was normally well-composed and engaging. What was it about Jeremy that gave her this obnoxious spark? Unless chasing dumb blonds around picnic tables was penciled into her itinerary, Freddy had to wonder about the wizardry at work, here. What spell had been cast by this mortal--who prioritized playing a Sega console over social rituals like flirting--that granted him the power to turn ordinary secretaries into romance-novel-reading maniacs?
Eh, some mysteries were best left underground--with dirt kicked casually over their remains, alongside one of Phone-Guy's infamous shrugs, just in case they ever rose from the dead. Then, he could go back to tying bricks onto bagfuls of kittens that kept floating to the top of a lake somewhere.
The two attractive coworkers moved in synchronized patterns: Jeremy matched Jazz's movements step-for-step until they resembled a pair of vultures circling a dead animal. Squawking, squawking, squawking...
Okay! One way or another, heads were about to come off--and preferably before Freddy broke out into the chorus of "Habanera."
"L-look, err... Jazz, w-was it?" Blondie bashfully toed a streamer away from his feet. "Sorry, b-but I'm really just interested in seeing your boss."
Freddy snorted. "Ain't that the truth?"
Jeremy proved that summery-green eyes could make the iciest glares. By the time he decided he was finished making glaciers, Jazz had nearly managed to close gaps. Their faces were within inches of one another, and Jeremy's was paling.
"Sorry, but Henry’s implementing policy changes over at H.R.," Jazz informed him. "What gives? If it concerns employee relations, I can file a complaint for you. I'd be the one doing most of the paperwork, anyway." Her hands found her hips. "Unless I'm your complaint..."
Sighing, Freddy rose to his feet, and whipped a page of sheet music and a pencil off a nearby music stand.
"Hey, you! Uh, Jeremy!" he rose his voice, infusing those words with a modest dose of warning tone. "Did you get in touch with Phone Guy about picking up a work pager yet?"
Jeremy looked dubiously back at him.
Freddy huffed and pretended to scribble crucial information on the first measure of a song in four-four time. "Chatty Cathy sent me a message over the internal server. You know? Something in Command Prompt lang--..."
Freddy was interrupted by the sound of gnashing teeth, as Jeremy tried to gnaw his own arm off to escape a hand-lock with Jazz.
"...Go on?" Jeremy's bangs fell in a confused slant. "Something about a note? Does he need my mailing address?"
Freddy had a fond daydream about both of the young coworkers dangling over a shark tank by a fraying rope, and his eyes shifted with annoyance. "It's just how we communicate, Jeremy. Black background, white letters..." Freddy waved his paw in windshield-wiper motions. "Sydney Surname wants to speak to you in person, seeing as Jazz is... apparently, busy."
Jazz blanched. She released Jeremy's sweaty palm back into his custody, rifling through twenty different coat pockets for the correct paging device. "Wait a second! I can--"
"Read the note, Blondie," Freddy cut her off.
Next to one of Bonnie's better stick-figure diagrams, he had written, 'You're welcome!' in grade-school cursive.
Jeremy's expression remained vacant.
"Oh, and the loiterer who owns the BMW with the custom paint-job is about to have his vehicle towed," Freddy added humorously. Towed, keyed, set on fire, driven off the pier overlooking the Gulf of Mexico... Oh, how he wished.
There was a special place in Hell reserved for him (it was probably the Pizzeria).
Jeremy looked concerned for fraction of a second, but his blank stare resumed itself. The three Fazbear Entertainment employees turned to see Puppet tapping away in staccato at Chica's old synthesizer, playing a modified version of the Jeopardy theme. Freddy had to throw his hat over his face to hide his laughter.
'Well, when in Rome, right?'
Willing himself not to double-over, Freddy signaled to the deer still in headlights to get the hell out of the street. He gave the sheet music an urgent shake and jerked his head toward the Exit sign.
Jazz smacked the batteries out of her pager and reloaded them in an effort to locate a missed tap on the shoulder. "Why don't I see this page!?" she demanded to know.
"Energizer batteries barely last six hours?" Freddy offered lamely.
"Wait a second..." Jeremy interrupted.
Their charade nearly gave way under the volume of his gasp. Ah, he had finally put the pieces of the Fisher-Price puzzle together! Up next: the wheel of animal noises.
Even Jazz seemed ready for this unconvincing game of Password to end. "What is it? Did you think of a reason you can't go out with me?"
"Yes... I mean, no!" Jeremy abused his shirt-collar. "I have to go!" he practically boasted his relief. "Didn't you hear the twenty-four-karat bear? I'm needed at H.R. headquarters!"
"Uh-huh." Jazz regarded Freddy with suspicion. "Any clue where the office is?"
"Oh, it's at the intersection of, uh..." Jeremy's pointer-finger did a side-aerial. "It's near a highway?"
"It's on the property of a sister location, actually."
"Right!" Jeremy coughed into his hand. "A sister location, like I said."
Freddy made cut-throat motions behind Jazz.
"I'd better get going!" Jeremy chucked a thumb over his shoulder. "You understand."
Jazz pursed her lips, on the verge of an eruption. "Yes, I do. Go pick up your technology."
Kay, then!" he said. "Thanks!"
"Sure." Jazz combed her fingers through her hair, giving him multiple once-overs as he threw on an inside-out turtleneck. "Give some thought to stopping at Radio Shack to pick up a GPS."
Freddy failed to stifle a girly-sounding giggle.
"'Sure?" Jeremy shrugged, lost. "See ya on Monday!"
Blondie pantomimed a sincere thank you to Freddy, flashed Jazz a less-than-sincere smile (but not without the necessary hand-gun animations) and stumbled over his untied shoelaces in a sprint.
"I'm sure it's nothing I could handle, so don't bother asking me to do it!" ranted Jazz. "I'm not headed over there, right now, or anything! Why would I be? What would I know about this company's Human Resources building? Nothing! I'm just a corporate assistant!"
Her sarcastic tirade was deflected by Jeremy's back and drowned out by the door-chimer. An unsettling stillness crept into the room, making its presence known through the steady ticking of Jazz's analog clock.
"Well, he's quite the talent, isn't he?" remarked Freddy after a handful of clicks, relieved to see her trailblazing anger ebbing away, leaving utter disgust in its wake.
Jazz shook the scrunchy out of her hair and gnawed on the handle of her glasses frame--a sure sign her fingernails were down to stubs. "I don't know, Fredbear. Do his crappy acting skills make it hard for you to sign permission slips that exempt him from coming within an inch of me?"
"Yes," Freddy answered, straightforwardly.
Well, if the cat was out of Phone Guy's bag...
Freddy had created a number of excuses for the frequently-uncomfortable Jeremy this week, but none of which were wasted. Stupid, insulting lies would not go unnoticed by Jazz's bullshit-detector. "Jeremy has to help NASA solve a calculus equation, and by the way, there's a pink elephant in the kitchen," would make anyone hearing it feel invalidated... or prompt them to issue drug screenings, which Mike Schmidt would fail.
Scratch that; Freddy could dress those statements up in laminated paper to give to Mangle as a Christmas present. "Excuse coupons," he'd call them.
The request would have been made of Jeremy to pick up a pager over the weekend, anyway. So, while the MS DOS Express was an unforgiving assailant to Jazz's personal-life, she could only gather what was left of her pride in a hell-bound hand-basket--woven from splinter-giving wicker by the CEO's firstborn son--and move on.
"You want to see if someone can lend him a pair of Velcro sneakers with that pager?" Freddy proposed. "Doesn't Phone Guy have children whose footwear might fit him?"
That could have been a joke; Freddy was leaning both ways.
"Don't ask me for stats on his daughters," Jazz said. "They're total Daddy's girls, is what I know, but otherwise, I'm not allowed to discuss his family!" she spat, yanking a Porsche key off a wall-hook. "I'm not going out of my way for Jerk-emy, either. I've been telling him to tie those damn things all morning. I was a jackass for that, too."
Freddy chose his words carefully. "You have been annoying, lately..."
Jazz's eyes narrowed into cat-like slits, and Freddy took a step back, expanding the distance between them.
Wrong words.
Few people were intimidating enough to unnerve a poltergeist with a look (assuming that was the appropriate term for a robot-ghost hybrid) but Jazz took the cake. She had whittled the art of piercing stares down to an exact science.
It was the same red-flag look his mother had issued Freddy when he was caught sneaking rum into the house with Puppet's brother... eheh.
"If that is the case," Jazz said, with menacing calm, "I'll drive him away without your help. I can handle rejection." She tapped her chin with her stylish spectacles. "I'll just have to corner him into explaining why he's resisting so strongly..."
Oh, good grief! Freddy wanted to rip it off, like a band-aid! He fought his instinct to crack the code for her, and backed down with a resigned sigh. Adult relationships were outside his realm of expertise, anyway.
'Everything in moderation, right?'
"Fair enough," Freddy conceded. "I'll pretend not to know what goes on behind your office door, so long as you keep it closed."
Jazz blinked, seeming startled by her surroundings. She must have been more absorbed in her chase than she realized. "Deal. Excuse me, please..."
The bitter brunette took her high heels and clambering Prada bags and rushed to the parking lot, leaving only her perfume as a memento of her presence.
"Oh, is it time to take Phone Guy's dry-cleaning on a field-trip already?" Freddy heckled her out of earshot.
For as much as Freddy tormented and harassed Jazz, he was quite fond of the young secretary. She was sharper than most of the boneheads who stood idly around at the card-punching station, discussing Farrah Fawcett posters. It didn't hurt that she was also very pretty...
Anyway, it wasn't Jazz's fault Phone Guy's assignments were so simple; he merely regarded her as the skirt-wearing offender keeping him enrolled in marriage-counseling sessions.
That just went to show, Phone Guy was capable of distorting truths, given enough motivation. He would be fired without all her back-and-forth running and constant faxing of legal contracts. Was she waiting for a go-ahead from the Pope to start blackmailing him, or something?
Ah, forget it.
Meddling in that rather pedestrian affair was a reminder that, despite sometimes being prickly and having second thoughts, at the end of the day, Freddy believed in doing the "right thing," and being a "good person," and all that namby-pamby, hippie bullshit.
'Everything in moderation...'
Much like Jeremy's failed attempts to turn down Phone Guy's secretary without an elaborate ruse and a frantic smoke signal, the whole process of nursing a broken spirit back to health was painful, but work had to be done, no matter how hand-wringing. The best thing to do in this instance was to avoid staging an intervention.
Was that two-cents of wisdom a worthy investment that could be counted towards repaying Freddy's debts, too?
'Everything in moderation...'
Enough with that! How could moderation be quantified?
Time was the sort of fortune-teller he'd be better off having Bonnie forge from scraps of paper. Relying on Time to answer Freddy's questions about an already-tarnished future was like entering a movie while the credits were rolling and demanding spoilers; the means were implied.
So, once the end has been reached, how can the means be rectified? Does the end not change...?'
Freddy unintentionally verbalized as much to the Puppet, meeting his painted tear-stains with sympathy in his eyes. The younger ghost only shrugged, then continued to experiment with the electronic keyboard.
There just had to be more to life than death and Pizza Parlor Purgatory.
How could Freddy lead the charge?
Well, he could cross lying around like a gaudy throw-rug off his checklist. Not only did that require a skinning from Cruella DeVil, but he wouldn't be a part of his circumstances if he didn't play a role in creating them. As a lingering soul, he too, had reconciliations to make... didn't he?
It was settled, then! Step one of the karmic rehabilitation program: resolve his personal conflicts.
"Well, how hard can that be?" A childish smile played at the corners of his lips--at the invisible ones underneath all the tamper-evident seals, nuts, and bolts. "This karma thing will take no Time at all."
Now, then... it was off to find someone who knew Freddy Fazbear better than he knew himself.
...Ohh, he was screwed.
Unseeable, blue eyes widened as he surfaced from that thought with the only person who fit his criterion: his killer.
A mental dam broke, releasing an overwhelming flood of memories, most of which were so fragmented that they were no good to Freddy... Then, there were outliers.
Anxiety gripped his heart with its sticky palms, like those of a first-time driver, molesting his steering wheel on the freeway. Just like that, Freddy was started. His common sense urged him not to proceed down such a brave and stupid path, but he felt the logic away. How unusual... and easy.
Moderation and its application to everything, again? Yeah, that.
Perhaps this memorial only marked the commencement of a wild goose chase that would land him somewhere South of Hell and West of Nowhere, but... if Hell was truly a state of mind, like he'd been taught by a priest one Sunday, then Freddy had arrived there some Time ago.
Well, he was still able to wishfully think himself Catholic, at least to the point where he could accept the existence of Hell. What more did he have to lose by taking a stroll down memory lane?
Sanity was all relative, anyway.
#2:
"That Puppet character sure knows how to roll out the welcome wagon," joked the badge-wearing blond.
Mangle's snowy-white head fell to one side in an expression best-described with a question mark. "Oh? Well, I don't much care for wagons. ...So, see ya later!"
With a flick of her bushy, pink-tipped tail, Mangle was gone.
"Impressive," Freddy deadpanned. All she needed now was a Guinness outreach program to put that record on file, somewhere under the heading "World's Quickest and Most Spontaneous Ejection from an Introduction." She had certainly bagged the title for "Strangest Excuse."
Ordinarily, there was nothing Mangle loved more than overstaying her welcome, chasing herself in dizzying circles around every party in the room until she was shooed back to the tundra formally known as Kid's Cove.
The uncharacteristically swift departure a moment ago came as no surprise to Freddy, though. The only time Mangle cartwheeled off like that without investigating her popularity first was when she sensed there was a job to be done...Viva la resistance.
Call it a hunch, but Freddy was convinced she had clipboard-radar.
He also imagined she had an array of getaway plans stashed in the vents like buried treasure maps, or one of those claws Batman used to scale skyscrapers--anything to get those power-starved clowns from management off her case, and to stop Chica from recruiting her to make trail mix. Mangle's talents were needed elsewhere. Someone had to make use of all the party games stashed in the supply closet, and for Heaven's sake, Twister couldn't play itself.
"Mangle should really see a technician about those work allergies," Freddy said to himself.
The visitor looked questioningly at Freddy, who merely threw his hands up in a shrug, dropping any responsibility for explaining that statement on the ground.
Well, it appeared he was left with the consolation prize of chaperoning the stranger again.
Weeee.
"I'll hang this up." He snorted to show profoundly more indifference to his duties than he actually felt. The paper tubed under his arm unrolled to reveal a picture of Spring Bonnie donated by an unnamed artist.
'Huh. Well, this is unusual...'
"Your half-sister made this?" Freddy wondered aloud, pausing for two beats. "I believe I've seen her pictures before."
"Yep!" said the enthusiastic rookie. "She liked to draw."
'Liked?' As in, past-tense.
Now this little Crayola project made more sense. It was a shame--or blessing in disguise--she wasn't still around to commiserate. She would have made a perfect Clyde for Bonnie...
Bah! He chucked that sentiment backwards, over his shoulder and into the past, where it belonged.
Abandoning the art show all together, Freddy moseyed back over to the only obstacle standing between himself and a free moment to collect his thoughts before the next party.
"Now, then," he began, "I take it you're not here because you heard about our new booster seats..."
To be fair, he was probably Phone Guy's age cut in half. Either Blondie, was carded for every alcohol purchase, or that pack of Pop Rocks he was eating just so happened to contain rejuvenating cream-filled sugars. It was a tough call.
"Are you here to collect camera footage?" asked Freddy.
"Ah, no," replied Blondie, eyes flickering about like a pair of green fireflies. "I'm looking for someone I met yesterday who works here. He mentioned something about a proposition?"
"What's the matter? Crime-fighting college isn't panning out for you?" Freddy snorted, amused by his own commentary. He waited for the young officer to react, curious to see if he could take a joke... but Blondie's focus had drifted off to some interesting part of oblivion.
Well, that must have been where his brain was last spotted. Great! He was a credit to his stereotype.
Groaning, Freddy chucked a Bonnie plushie at him to get his attention. "Hey! Unless you're expecting to find a trail of breadcrumbs that will lead you to the employee lounge, how about giving me a few more details, Mister We Are the Modern Task Force?"
"Huh?" The young man's eyes snapped back to Freddy as he caught the flying projectile in one hand. "Oh, sorry! Um, auburn-ish hair, pretty tall, owner of one white Porsche who maaay have paid me not to issue a speeding ticket?" he laughed sheepishly.
Freddy arched a brow. "Sounds legal."
Blondie handed the stuffed animal to the Puppet, who had ghosted in looking for wrapping paper. "Oh, wait. He also mentioned going to graduate school up North."
"That must have been Phone Guy," said Freddy, running through his mental checklist of known employees. "Well, frankly, I've no idea what his automotive preferences are, and I can't imagine him speeding"--not unless the Puppet was in the lane next door--"but he sure does love waving a certificate from Delaware around in front of his colleagues."
Doctorate, schmoctorate! Far more impressive was Phone Guy's ability to pronounce, "This call may be monitored or recorded for training or quality-assurance purposes," as one, coherent syllable. That took some serious tongue work.
Blondie scrunched up his nose. "Pardon? Well, the driver was using a car phone when I pulled him over, I s'pose. I remember his radio was tuned to some classic rock station... You know, something kids today would consider Oldies."
Freddy blinked off the irrelevancies. "So, we're looking for someone who isn't living on a prayer? That narrows it down," he sighed, rearranging Puppet's plushies with apathy. "Is there a reason my interrogation skills are better than yours? Don't expect any promotions."
If the gales of nervous giggles were any indication, he was beginning to suspect Blondie's willingness to waive Phone Guy's ticket had less to do with money than he was letting on... Nooo comment.
"Look, I only call him Phone Guy because I forget his last name, and he doesn't respond to his first name, which I want to say is Sydney. Don't quote me on that, either."
"Ah, I see."
Crime rates forbid Freddy and this airhead in an officer's uniform ever team up to design a wanted poster!
"It doesn't matter." Freddy waved a hand dismissively. "If the person you're describing is paid well enough to bribe his way out of traffic tickets, Phone Guy fits the bill."
The sound of a rim-shot ricocheted off the Show Stage.
"Chica!" Freddy barked at her through a built-in amplifier. "What have I told you about touching your drum set between performances?"
Honestly! Whose bright idea was it to give Chica drums? Freddy was beginning to miss the era of that annoying keyboard synthesizer.
Chica twirled a drum stick like a baton, looking unfazed and pretty damn pleased with herself, at that. "Eh, I believe it was not to? Sorry, but when punchlines call, I deliver."
She hit it again.
"It was barely a pun!" Freddy showed a great deal of restraint, biting his knuckles to prevent an avalanche of profanities from tumbling out of his mouth.
'Houston, you have a problem... and it's wearing a bib.'
Freddy heaved a sigh with tremendous volume and resumed his unfinished business. "Okay... Guy in Uniform. Wait here with the ensemble while I grab Guy in Porsche."
"Roger that!" With a cheery salute, the new guy found himself sitting cross-legged on the floor, as though trying to engage Freddy in a game of Duck, Duck, Goose.
Under no circumstances...
People had eyeballed spoiled milk in more approving ways than the formally-dressed mascot looked at this poor sap. "What are you doing? This is not a dojo, Goldilocks."
And if it were, Freddy would have recommended meditating in the graveyards of Auschwitz, where the spiritual energy was better.
"It's not that," laughed Blondie, as he combed his hands gingerly through a head of disheveled, strawberry-blonde hair. "There are a lot of kids here, yeah? I want to be on their level. Looking into a child's eyes as you speak is engaging. ...Hey, did you know eyes are the windows to the soul?"
Oh, God. He was one of those.
"I'm sure this is old news to you," Blondie babbled on. "Children just love you, y'know?"
"No kidding, Sherlock..." Freddy muttered, passing a humorous glance to a skeptical-looking Marionette. The lanky mime folded his arms in reply.
'Well...' Freddy's teeth sank into his tongue. I can't say a sense of humor never hurt anyone.'
That was one prank that was coming back to "Bite" everyone involved.
Pushing that fiendish, summer memory far, far away, Freddy raked his eyes over the inexperienced officer and his fixed grin, thinking they would make better representatives for Crest toothpaste than the American Constitution. Nonetheless, his tribute to India a few moments ago was a tickling gesture, and in a manner of speaking, Freddy was laughing...
Peachy. The guy who believed in eye-contact as a sport was weaseling his way into Freddy's good graces. Why was he a magnet for weirdos and flower-children?
Was there a particular reason he was drawn to this Bozo?
Nostalgia invaded his senses--all six of them. Freddy felt the dirty-blond hairs on the nape of his own, transparent neck raise to greet his metal exterior. Had he still been a three-dimensional being as opposed to a cross-dimensional one, they probably would have triggered the suit's spring-lock mechanism--or had the death-trap already been activated four summers and an autumn ago, on the day of his rebirth? Hard to say!
Freddy had no recollection of his time as a corpse, or even the exact circumstances leading up to his murder. What he had were a few keepsakes of his previous life, a handful of deductions, and a supply of random flashbacks--some pleasant, and others, barbaric.
Ew, regression. Freddy discarded his tangent, making a sour face.
"Whatever." he shrugged, walking away. "It's a free country. You can look stupid in whatever yoga pose works for you."
"Freddy, don't you need my name?"
Freddy paused and considered this for a moment. A name was another kilobyte of trivia to memorize. If he needed anything, it was luck. There was a good chance Phone Guy or Sydney Whomever would be too involved in a private moment with an audio cassette player to give a damn about anything else.
That, or whatever long, poking device he had fashioned out of office supplies to prod Springtrap's carcass today.
"I'll go with the one on your badge, Jeremy. By the way, it's been upside down since you got here."
A gasp of realization and clumsy fumbling followed that revelation. Fitzgerald... Where had Freddy heard that before? It rung bells clearly enough to chime in with the Fazbear band.
...Meh. The broad-shouldered animatronic shook off his mounting uncertainties, assuring himself he was recalling that one, famous writer he'd heard Phone Guy reference in accessory of his Ph.D. in Professing.
'So specific!’taunted his conscience. 'Didn't you just explain your aversion to using real names? Funny how you remember some novelist mentioned by Sydney Someone, don't ya think?'
Oh? Now, it was Freddy's fault he suffered from some sort of Post-Life, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? He cranked a railroad lever, sending his train of thought down another avenue. It was still Freddy's prerogative to call people by their most discerning qualities, and probably in their best interest to let him, to protect their feelings from his forgetfulness.
Jeremy Fitzgerald would be back to Blondie by the end of the day, anyhow. That was a generous estimate, too.
"That should do it," said Jeremy, ironing out his breast pocket with his hand. He cleared his throat and straightened his back. A late attempt at being professional, Freddy guessed. Now he was sure Phone Guy's guest harbored ulterior motives for being here...
Again, no comment.
"Uh, is there anything else? I have the ticket I scrapped--"
"You've been a wealth of information already, trust me," Freddy cut him off, leaving him to practice his bedside manner, or whatever he called it. "Just... stay where you are and keep your fingers crossed. And Jeremy?"
"Yeah?"
"Let's not advertise that to people."
#1:
Freddy Fazbear's Pizzería was like a triple-layer fudge cake: no matter how you sliced it, how artfully you topped it, or how much dough you threw at it, the finished product was nothing more than an aesthetically pleasing, more expensive version of the native chocolate cake. Using sweet-tasting, canned glue to stack one slab of chocolate on top of another so it resembled something else didn't change anything about the cocoa-batter-based concoction underneath. The special effects were nothing more than a sugar-coated attempt to ensure consumers never got to the bottom of what they were really eating.
If word got out about that, well, confetti cannons wouldn't be the only things going off when Freddy entered a room.
So, the titular character mused to himself, was triple-layer fudge cake really this company's main selling point, or was that just a flyer thumbtacked to the wall of the Prize Corner to help the pizzería maintain a fun and child-friendly image?
The managers probably thought it would be best.
Nevertheless, Freddy Fazbear would never jump on the triple-layered bandwagon. The original was just fine. If he had his choice, he would buy three normal-sized cakes and save a few dollars. Why garnish a perfectly good recipe in frosted rose petals and call it by some other name?
Freddy stole a sideways glance at Mangle the space-cadet, chuckling as she somersaulted from one end of Kid's Cove to the other.
'Right,' he grunted to himself, returning to his sales pitch, 'Because it's cost-effective.'
It had occurred to Freddy that Corporate was never going to give the hatchet a proper burial--the hatchet they put in the ground, revived, and called a butter-knife when they ran out of ways to cut corners.
Fucking tycoons and their chocolate Reddi-whip.
The world would be a fairer place if... well, if Foxy would quit stealing stuffed animals from the prize booth and pissing off the Puppet, for one thing... but, more importantly, if people could read advanced algorithms. Freddy would be free to voice his concerns over customer welfare in sonnets directly to the CEO's adviser. A misnomer, in Freddy's opinion.
Really, he was a power-tie wearing liaison with the emotional bandwidth of the Wal-Mart logo. And that was coming from a robot.
Well, more or less.
All essential humanity retained by the staff here at Freddy's aside, Phone Guy took 'stupefying' to heights that made him a potential target for low-flying planes. That fickle agenda of his seemed to change with the season, with duties ranging from managerial to executive to nonexistent.
Currently, his schedule was as follows:
Upon arrival: chat with the CEO, brew battery-acid coffee, and bite the top layer off a growing stack of complaints (and the plastic seal off a new bottle of aspirin...)
Next order of business: chuck tissue boxes nonchalantly at terminated employees with grievances, and craft carefully-worded memos to send to department heads.
Once out of Kleenex: post special bulletins about information contained in the memos for staff members of lesser titles.
After a brief smo--err, lunch-break: perform a mock safety-inspection, stressing over the intercom the importance of routinely checking the bulletin-board for updates on proper suit-fitting technique. (For fuck's sake, was he the only one motivated by the news? The eatery was just one golden ticket shy of receiving its first satisfactory safety rating since its revival in '83! Like... hello, hello!)
Following lunch hour: conduct interviews, meet with divorce lawyers, and, if applicable, attend a press conference to deliver a heartwarming ballad, fraught with legal off-rhymes, about Fazbear Entertainment's sincerity, emphasizing their non-involvement in scandals.
All afternoon: issue pink-slips, become tangled in a rotary phone cord, and post bulletins reminding the employees to read the bulletin-board--again.
Evening, post-completion of a Kennex Ferris wheel or something equally as retarded: record a voice mail for the night watch, merely underscoring the information discussed in the memos and bulletins... with his own added notes for good measure.
His itinerary struck Freddy as an abuse of free time.
As if that weren't more redundant than, "Singing the same, stupid songs for years," his friendly reminders were stickied on every wall of the building. His office was covered in so many fuchsia post-its now, Chica was sneaking off between band numbers to see how the new wallpaper was hanging.
Not overkill at all, Phone Guy.
Now, about resource-conservation...
Oh, like that even mattered. If the company was really preoccupied with power supply, then by now, there would be less confusion among the managers about which edition of the annual budget they were supposed to be following. By now, someone would have told Phone Guy to think twice about leaving the revisions in places where Bonnie's imagination and a pack of assorted crayons could get to them. Common sense!
These were ideas Freddy needed to have Phone Guy relay to the CEO. Unfortunately, he was always preoccupied with something stupid.
Anyway, it was a long shot. Freddy wagered that Phone Guy and the rest of the corporate sheep would be running illegal bakeries in circles around the press for years to come, as long as someone was there to fill the cracks with icing.
Oh, happy dagger (or something like that). Freddy was ready for the funny business to end now. As Chica would say, "Stick a fork in me! I'm done."
"Ye really fancy those maps, Matey." A leering pair of yellow eyes appeared over Freddy's shoulder, and his thought bubbles simmered away.
"Foxy." Freddy grunted, paying him the same amount of attention he would a passing storm-cloud.
Midnight sneak-attacks were the height of normality around these parts, and had become a permanent part of Foxy's vocabulary, to boot. The pizzería had come a short way from its police-report days, remaining incident-free in the two months since its grand-reopening. In that time, Freddy had come to expect--and, dare he say, look forward to?--these nightly ambushes from Foxy, who was often followed by a small entourage of other animatronics.
Tonight was another matter. Freddy was in a foul mood for company.
"Shouldn't you be at your cove? The next shift starts in... an hour." Sure. That sounded good.
Foxy pierced his hook through the inventory records Freddy had been analyzing and fished them out of his paws. An empty-handed Freddy groaned and forced himself to make eye-contact.
"I wasn't done with those"--he wanted to be--"and don't you have a sword to shine, or something? ...Please say no."
Freddy was all for progress and renovation, but he hoped, for the sake of children everywhere, that the character designers hadn't actually thought to supply Foxy with more props. His hook was nuisance enough for ten animatronics. He had yet to master the art of exiting stage-left without dragging Bonnie's guitar off set with him.
"Nope, 'fraid not!" Foxy stroked an imaginary beard with his paw. "Hmm. Do me eyes deceive me, Cap’n? Y’think our crew be lookin' at the dawn of a new era?"
This conversation was turning into the word search from hell. "Wait, what? Turn off that stupid pirate-speak function, and no, we're not going on lock-down or reopening again. I would have heard about it."
"'S that so?" Foxy regarded him with suspicion, ignoring Freddy's orders to change his settings.
"Aye, Matey," mocked Freddy, covering one of his eyes in the likeness of Foxy's eye-patch. "The Sea, she tells me everything."
Foxy was not amused. Yeah, mission accomplished.
Muttering something in an accent selected at random (talk about your crossed wires!) Foxy motioned to some notes Freddy had etched in the margins. "Ye wrote: 'triple-layer fudge cake: new mode.'"
Freddy's patience was wearing thin. He knotted his necktie in so many ways, Billy would have been able to pass it off as a balloon animal. "Yeah, so?"
"Aye. So, when do we dock ship and make this 'ere nook into a cake factory?"
Oh, good grief! Every crossbeam in Freddy's body suddenly felt out of whack, and he swallowed down the mounting urge to strangle his "first mate" with both hands.
"...Cap'n?"
"Listen, Foxy! I'm not your captain, those papers are not maps, we're not at sea, and that's not what I meant by 'mode.' I didn't mean it's the next phase, or the new scene! It's like..."
No, no. Logic had no power with this one, he reminded himself. Neither did serenity prayers or service part repairs, so no one could say Freddy hadn't explored other avenues.
To hell with it. Freddy was through trying to let him down easy. He pointed the twitchy animatronic in the direction of his quarters.
"You know what? Just shut up and get out. Hoist your anchor, lower your sail, shove off... Whatever you have to do. I don't care where you go, as long as it's somewhere else."
Serious, blue eyes met bewildered, yellow ones.
"Very well," came the stiff reply of a very crestfallen, very indignant Foxy. He muttered a litany of 'sailor' words, then set sail for Pirate Cove, murdering the cluster of free-floating balloons who had been undertowed in his direction. The scalawags!
...The fiercest pirate there ever was, ladies and gentleman. "Aargh!" was right. That was the sound of Freddy putting up with Foxy's antics.
Feh... Pirates!
Sure, they had a strong bond that went back a couple years, though theirs wasn't teeming with pep talks, secret handshakes, and feel-good music, like the relationship budding between Foxy and Mangle. Freddy and the others, they were nonetheless inseparable.
Unfortunately, the power of friendship didn't exempt Foxy from being dimmer than a ten-watt light bulb. Even the Phone Guy--who so often smothered the red bandit in verbal confetti that his fellow Board members now referred to him as Foxy's cheerleader--knew there were some excuses favoritism could not make.
At least, not in Freddy's own definition of intelligence. According to Mangle and Billy, Foxy was a rocket scientist.
On the bright side, there was never a dull moment at the pizzería with Foxy around, and he was... his own breed.
"Wait a second..."
Freddy's eyebrows came together, his face forming the beginnings of a frown as he emptied his top hat to find nothing in it. He tipped over the Music Box--offering a heartfelt, "my bad," to a sleeping Puppet--and scrambled the cotton-stuffed clutter on the Prize Counter. Not until he was standing on the verge of offering Foxy a proper apology did he realize someone had made off with his papers.
"...Aargh."
ProseArt
