Wasted Repair - Chapter 6
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You yank on Chica’s leg as hard as you can, trying to drag her across the floor and only succeeding in moving her a few inches. Even when you throw your whole weight into it, your progress is pinfully slow. It takes you actual hours to get back to the lobby. When you finally make it, you shove Chica’s body near the wall, propping her up next to the broken cardboard cutout of her and Roxy, then sit next to her. Your arms and legs feel like spaghetti, and you’d definitely strained your back pulling the heavy animatronic along the halls.
“Ugh, I really hope this doesn’t become a pattern,” you sigh, resting your head on your hand as you check her over. There’s significant damage to her face and arm, but the movement difficulties could just be chalked up to a combination of low power and garbage in places it shouldn’t be. The attempted aggression was also a problem. If you started fixing her body and she could move as fast as Sun did, that would be a problem. You’d need to take a look at her code and see what was up.
But you don’t want her sitting there stinking up the entrance while you wait for info on how to do that. You don’t have cleaning products, but you could at least try to clear out the garbage and food scraps.
“Friend! You came back!?” Sun bounds up to where you’re sitting, leaping between his color-coded objects with the grace of a ballerina. He stops a few feet away from you. “Why are you here?”
“There isn’t another way out of the Pizzaplex,” you press yourself against the wall. He was too close. “Besides, with the building collapsed, management said this was the place to take recovered animatronics.”
“They shouldn’t have sent anyone.” If he could frown, he probably would be right now, but his face remains stuck in a wide grin. “It’s dangerous.”
“Yeah, I know that,” you motion at the bandage on your temple. Sun stiffens, but you continue speaking, jabbing your thumb to point at Chica’s body. “This one over here was the same way as you were yesterday, just a lot slower. And also apparently with a worse battery.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“What is this, another interview?” you laugh. “I took the job ‘cause I need the money. Simple as that. Now, down to business. Can’t be caught slacking on my second day, now.”
You look at Chica, taking a moment to steel yourself against what you’re about to do. With a grimace, you plunge your hand into the cracked-open side of her torso, closing your fingers around something warm and slimy. You pull it out, fighting the urge to throw up as you drop it onto the floor. It lands with a wet slap against the tiles. You think it might have been alive at one point, but you can’t be sure.
Sun gives you a disapproving hum.
“Okay,” you say, reaching your hand back in to fish out a small, dripping trash bag. “My turn to ask a question.”
“Your turn?” he asks.
“Yeah! You asked me a question, now I get to ask you a question.” You grin mischievously. Surely, Fazbear programmed their animatronics to engage in play with the children. Hopefully you could trigger that same response and get some answers.
“...Okay,” Sun sits across from you, legs crossed and arms propped up on his knees. Oh! You hadn’t expected that to work so effectively. What should your first question be? You had so many!
“Why does your personality switch depending on the light level?” you decide to ask first, still fishing for trash inside of Chica’s chest. “Is it a separate AI or just you with different behaviors?”
“That’s two questions, friend.”
“Oh, fine. Just answer the first one, then!” you huff, debating chucking your handful of sludge at his face.
“It was meant to be for when the daycare children had naptime.” Sun rubs his wrist, playing with the edge of the red ribbon tied there. “I was in charge of playtime, and Moon put the kids to sleep.”
“That thing put children to sleep!?” you ask. There’s no way those kids didn’t have horrible nightmares. Heck, you’d had nightmares about it last night when you got home.
“Uhp bup bup,” Sun wags his finger at you. “My turn.”
“Ugh, fine,” you roll your eyes.
“Why won’t you leave?”
“Like I said, I need the money,” you shrug as you shove your hand down Chica’s mouth hole, pulling out some yellowish slime that clings to her, leaving a long string of… cheese? Maybe? Between her mouth and your hand. “This place was hiring.”
“Surely there are other establishments who could use your… skills,” he says, watching as you pull more garbage out of Chica’s throat.
“Hey! Don’t get sarcastic on me!” you glare at him. “I got lots of skills! Just because Fazbear didn’t hire me for them doesn’t mean I don’t have ‘em!”
“Of course,” Sun responds in a customer service voice, grin seeming impossibly wider and more strained. “Like, perhaps, hacking into the staff records to put yourself in them?”
“I didn’t–” you snap your mouth closed, thinking. “Okay, so I did hack into them, but I do work here! It was just to get that freaky moon you to stop trying to kill me!”
Sun is silent.
“My turn for a question,” you point an accusatory finger at him, hand dripping with garbage juice. “You asked two, so now you gotta answer my second question: are you the same AI following different directives or two separate processes?”
“Curious one, aren’t you? Let’s see…” he taps his chin thoughtfully. “Two.”
“Wait, then how do you know about the database?” you ask. “Moon was the one in control then. Can you both access the same memory files? Or are you always active, just unable to pilot? Or–”
“You are asking a lot of questions out of turn, friend!” Sun tuts. It sounds like he’s scolding a child. You stick your tongue out at him.
“...Fine,” you roll your eyes. “You take your turn asking a question or whatever, then answer mine!”
“Hmmm,” he spins his head 360 degrees. “How about we play a different game? This one is called ‘clean up’. I play it with the kids before they go home for the day!”
“I mean, what do you think I’m doing now?” you motion at Chica. Despite the pile of garbage you’d pulled out of her, she looked just as disgusting as when you’d begun.
Sun flexes his fingers, curling them slowly before letting them fall slack. You continue peeling gunk off of Chica, dropping it into the slowly-growing pile near her feet.
“I mean, if you want to play ‘clean up’, you could fix what you did to the room,” you gesture in the general direction of the entrance. The grid of organized plushes, pop cans, and junk was definitely going to get in the way eventually. “I don’t know what possessed you to color-code all the junk lying around the lobby, but I kind of can’t walk to the doors without knocking something over.”
Sun looks between you and the door.
“You can just make a walkway for now, if it's too much to pick up?” you suggest. “I’d just shove it against the wall or something.”
“Of course you would,” he says, looking back down at the dripping mass of garbage you had left on the floor. You flick a piece of green pepperoni off your hand, adding it to the pile. “You make messes.”
“This whole place is a mess,” you shout, gesturing wildly at the room.
Sun just smiles at you.
“You know what, fine,” you sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose with the hand that hadn’t just been elbow deep in Chica’s trash-packed torso. You stand up quickly and snatch a flashlight off the ground from where it had been organized, clicking it on before marching into the dark giftshop. Sun stands, tilting his head to watch you leave.
It doesn’t take long to find what you were looking for. Stood in the corner was a giant metal basket, likely meant to hold stuffed animals within view of children, who could then nag at their parents to buy them a toy of their favorite character. You grab it with one hand, dragging it behind you as you walk back towards the entrance.
You shove it in front of Sun without comment before going back in for the second basket you knew was on the next floor, yanking it onto its side and rolling it down the stairs before depositing it next to the first.
“There,” you say, sitting back down next to Chica. “You can organize the junk into the baskets. Go ham.”
Sun stares at you for a moment before wordlessly picking up a nearby Monty plush and dropping it into one of the baskets. You decide to leave him to it, focusing again on Chica’s sorry state. You grab at the web of cheese strung across her chest, pulling it off with a wet squelch. Attached to the strings is an assortment of moldy cupcakes, bits of popcorn, chip dust, and empty candy wrappers. A few cockroaches skitter out of her.
You keep working at the wet gobs of food.
Eventually, thankfully, your shift nears its end and there's not much more to peel off. She could use a wash, but there’s not rotting food wedged into every crevasse of her body.
You wipe your hands off on your pants, momentarily mourning the loss of your jeans. (You would never get the stains out. Maybe burning them was a better idea than trying to toss them in the wash.)
When you turn to look at the doors, you can see a thin walkway Sun has made through his grid. He seems to still be trying to color-code the items, but as long as you can get to the door, you don’t really mind. You find your backpack sorted into the ‘black’ section of the array and pick it up, checking to make sure everything was still inside before slinging it over your shoulder and tiredly walking towards the exit.
You turn to lock the door, only to catch a glimpse of Sun as he works. He looks more relaxed than yesterday or even this morning, but he’s still broken beyond belief. You can’t imagine spending months trapped in this run-down building, body slowly deteriorating, split personality or no. And the fact that Sun apparently knew things that happened when he was Moon…
“Hey, Sun?” you call out, and he pauses his clean-up, turning to look at you with that same vacant smile.
“Can you pass on a message to that Moon you?” you tap the side of your head, trying not to feel weird about what you’re asking. Surely, if Sun knew about the database, Moon would know what you said somehow. “That I’m sorry for the light thing? I broke my promise yesterday, and I try to not do that.”
Sun’s head twitches to the side, rays flexing and shoulders drawing up. It only lasts a moment, but the glitch is concerning to say the least.
“...Keep the lights on,” he finally says, turning back to his organizing.
You watch him for a moment before locking the door and heading home for the night.
Taglist: @cassjoyse
