Chapter Text
Lucia spent an annoyingly long amount of time shaking around the employee’s only vending machine to retrieve the second apple juice bottle she paid for. Eventually it fell to the bottom of the chute and she grabbed it in a hurry, limping back over to the two kids who sat in spinning office chairs Lucia had pulled away from their respective computer-clad seats. She handed each kid a bottle which was lamely rewarded by mumbled incoherent thanks and the quick and almost ravenous opening of the lids as they began to chug. Lucia cocked an eyebrow. “Glad to see you’re enjoying yourselves.” She limped back to the vending machine and got herself some water.
Another round of disgruntled shaking and annoyed huffs and Lucia has a water in her hand, opened in seconds as she took a giant gulp. She took a moment to breathe as she shakily put the lid back on and wandered towards the two kids fanning at themselves across the room. She quickly and unceremoniously slumped into a desk chair and wheeled over in front of the two kids, her weak foot burning as she dragged it across the floor. She made a conscious effort to ignore it. “So, you two have been the talk of the town all day so far. What’s the deal?”
Greg perked up. Before he could think of anything, Cassie’s mouth began running. “Listen, we’re sorry, I know we were running around but we didn’t hurt anyone or break anything and we tried to— we tried—“
“Stop,” Lucia interjected bluntly, putting a hand up and cutting Cassie off. “It’s nice that you’re sorry, and I know you didn’t break anything.” Greg blinked at Lucia slowly. “But you two can’t be running around such a huge place without supervision. Where are your parents?”
Cassie looked down at her feet silently. Greg’s eyes twinkled as he took a momentary glance in her direction. He slowly— almost mechanically— jutted out his lip and folded his hands like he was about to beg. “Both of our parents dropped us off here so they could go to work. You can’t blame us for that, can you? We just got left here!”
Lucia gave an uninterested deadpan stare. “Right.”
Greg flexed his hands uncomfortably. “What? It’s the truth.”
Lucia wordlessly crossed her arms as she looked between him and Cassie, who was silently sipping on more of her juice. Greg bit on his lip nervously. “You don’t believe me?”
Cassie set down her juice on the counter behind her. “He’s telling the truth. I don’t really… have the option to go home. For right now.” Lucia loosened the grip on her water bottle in confusion. “He just dumped you two here?”
Cassie looked over to Greg silently, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead as she furrowed her brows. Lucia looked between them silently as she tried to decipher just what the hell was going on between them. They were having an entire conversation without saying a single word, and the way Cassie was visibly uncomfortable while Greg sat rigid in his seat at the mention of the girl’s dad made Lucia feel like she was silently being told something concerning about the circumstance these two kids were put in. “… He said he would come back later, though.”
Lucia gave a sad smile. “Sure, but that’s the problem. You need an adult with you right now.”
Greg kept flexing his hands uncomfortably as he tried to take a swig of his juice. The bottle gently crumpled underneath his grasp with every movement, turning Lucia’s attention to him for a moment. She tried to keep her attention on the girl next to him, but her peripherals kept focusing back on Greg as he put the bottle back in his lap, looking blankly at the cap while slowly putting it back on. Throughout the short time she’s spent with him, Lucia felt like something was very clearly wrong with him. It seemed like he regularly forgot how to do certain things or how to act a certain way— he was always off looking somewhere else and moving like the weight of the world was on his back. Was he tired? Maybe he was just stunted in some way socially? Lucia blinked harshly and moved her gaze back to Cassie.
The young girl’s face was practically covered in sweat. She had made the mistake of wearing a brightly patterned sweater that she at some point must have taken off and tied to her waist while she was running around the Pizzaplex. Her hair was in a high ponytail and tied tightly with a matching bright scrunchie that was only able to hold so many of the flyaway hairs that now stuck to her forehead. She wore knee length shorts, but the bottom halves of her legs were bundled in striped leg warmers that swallowed up her tennis shoes. A well thought-out outfit, very clearly picked not with the intention of doing laps around the building like she has today. Lucia glanced back over at Greg, who was just as (if not somehow even more) disheveled as Cassie. His blue polo was crumpled and halfway tucked out of his khaki shorts and his very overtly baggy oversized socks lumped at his ankles. His hair stuck in multiple different directions and sat slicked against his sweat-covered neck. Lucia closed her eyes and groaned quietly as she felt an overwhelming wave of annoyance build in her skull. Sure, she did the dirty work her entire team couldn’t manage to do, but now she had to carry out the consequences to these kids herself. Her next move was going to eat at her, wasn’t it?
“Alright, I have to call you two in.”
The two kids snapped their heads up at Lucia in a panic as they immediately realized what she meant. “What? Why? We’re complying! We’re listening! We didn’t even break anything! Nothing even happened!” Gregory immediately began spewing, jumping to the edge of his seat. “Nothing happened!”
“Yeah, sure, but the rest of my team has to know that the people they’ve been chasing all day have been caught,” Lucia retorted. She tapped a fingernail against the cap of her water bottle as she tried to muster a steady voice. “Plus, lost kids get put in the Lost and Found. It’s just protocol. I can’t keep you here.”
Cassie giggled. “Lost kids get put in the Lost and Foooouund… we’re gonna get thrown together with all the lost shoes and socks!” Despite her good humor, she seemed to be the only one of the two kids who found the idea funny. Cassie’s smile fell as she looked over to her friend, who was having the complete opposite reaction to the new (but not entirely unexpected) information. Greg’s eyes were blown wide and he grit his teeth while staring blankly at Lucia’s face. It’s as if he couldn’t process what he was being told. Or maybe he processed it well enough, but he was scared? “You can’t take me there.”
Lucia glowered at him. “I absolutely can.” She knew when she was being challenged, and she also knew when she would come out on top. She slowly grabbed her walkie from her belt and pressed the button to call in her current situation, and Greg took that as his opening. He grabbed Cassie by the wrist mid gulp from her apple juice and bolted around Lucia. She immediately fumbled and struggled to find a decent grip on her walkie before it landed in her lap, fizzling as the voice on the other end made futile attempts to reach back out to her. Knowing she wouldn’t make it to the kids on foot, Lucia quickly slammed her foot to the tile floor and began pushing herself backwards in her swivel chair towards the opening back into the Prize Counter. She slid slightly as she stopped in front of the doorway, staring down at the two kids who stopped in front of her. Huffing, she picked her walkie back up and continued talking into it. “Yeah— sorry— they tried running for it. Can anyone hurry up here?! I’m not even on my feet right now.”
Cassie frowned deeply as she turned to look at Greg with big beady eyes. He looked back at her with a sharp gaze that cut her silent pleading in half immediately. Lucia’s walkie fizzled as a response cut through the mind-numbing tension that filled the small office space. “What? You really can’t run after them? We’re sending someone, just stay in your designated—“
All of the day’s frustrations came to a head in that moment. A giant, red hot angry head. Lucia threw her walkie at the wall with a loud frustrated yell. Greg flinched back hard and darted another way in the rounded out office, eyeing the walls and looking for another door. A sweltering flame pounded at Lucia’s temples and told her to get up now. She bit her lip so hard it bled against her tongue as she stood up and walked back to the desk where she had left her cane and used it (albeit very poorly) to propel her to run after the two kids that had handed her their trust just minutes ago. Lucia knew she was never good with kids; she was never good with any of the peers in her life either. But she knew that she had something particularly special with these two that no other security guard had been able to achieve that day, and she completely blew it by simply doing her job. But it’s what she had to do, wasn’t it? Why did Greg have to be so difficult about following protocol? What was he doing?
The two kids ran through another opening, Greg grazing the security gate that had been opened to allow guests to go by. The hit didn’t slow him, and it sure didn’t stop the probable scrape he now had somewhere on his body considering the blood he left behind on the edge of one of the metal clasps. Lucia held back a strained groan as she continued to follow, nearly tripping over herself as she darted around unused tables and chairs that lined the poorly lit walls. The wooden floor scuffed beneath her boots as she yelped after she rammed into a table, holding herself steady before she could hit the ground face first.
Greg and Cassie made it to a doorway that led back into the Prize Counter. Lucia cursed under her breath as she mustered everything in her lungs to let out a quick “Don’t move!” that the two didn’t listen to anyway. They crossed the threshold into the neon colored room and made a line for the front shutter doors that had still worked properly.
The small handful of Prize Counter attendees scrambled to move out of Lucia’s way as she stumbled fiercely towards the doors. No one wanted to be involved in whatever wild goose chase she had been so sure she would have snuffed out if she hadn’t been so forceful. But it’s what she had to do. This place had rules, and she followed them. There was nothing more to it. She didn’t need to go above and beyond for anyone or anything; she probably would’ve barely scraped by if she had given any more of her limited energy. But she had gone above and beyond for Cassie and Greg, hadn’t she? She brought them stupidly overpriced vending machine drinks with her own lunch money. She had them sit down in an employee’s only office space in the expensive spinning chairs that she found impractical and useless. She listened to them ramble about how they had got here and offered as much sympathy as she could muster in her annoyed state. This was her most exhilarating shift in months. Maybe even the most exhilarating experience she’s had at any job ever. Even with her bloody lip and burning leg and sweat stained everything it didn’t matter. Lucia unconsciously gritted her teeth. It almost reminded her of—
The main Prize Counter shutter doors opened, and Lucia was greeted with hundreds of pounds of hulking neon plastic and metal staring directly into her soul.
Glamrock Freddy and Roxanne Wolf, both stock still and silent, stood directly in front of Lucia’s way. Cassie and Greg cowered behind their legs as they both gave a betrayed glare at Lucia’s now pale face. She couldn’t look at the kids she was supposed to be chasing after anymore— Lucia was dead set on getting her nerves ready to run.
Roxy and Freddy’s eyes were plastic. All animatronic eyes were the same thing with different paint jobs at the end of the day. But their eyes, up so close and focused so linearly on Lucia, seemed glossed over and predatory. A ring of glowing orange peeked out from their pupil and slowly filled the rest of their irises with the same rusty color. The glow was so violent it overtook their sclera and tinted it slightly, almost like molten lava filling the inside like a ticking bomb. They were charging up for something. And all it could remind Lucia of was the screams. The exact same horrifying glowing molten lava-bright eyes that chased her and looked her dead in the eyes as it ripped at her scalp and dug into her leg. If you don’t run, they’ll kill you. You will die.
It will kill you too.
Lucia stumbled and fell backwards. Her trembling form stared at Freddy and Roxy pleadingly, even though she’s sure they probably couldn’t read her face no matter how desperate. Part of her wished so badly that they could. She reached for her cane and held it close to her chest, trying to quick-math any possible way in her mind that she could use to hit the two robots with it and make it actually do something. As she slowly inched back, her eyes fell onto Greg and Cassie, only staring with watery eyes as the two animatronics still stood unmoving. While Cassie was trying not to bawl, Greg just stared and Lucia blankly. His eyes were swimming and cascading between his regular amber-brown and a concerningly bright shade of purple that she’s begun to fear isn’t coming from any of the light sources in the mall. In a flash Greg was smiling, big and wobbly and horrifying. It sent a real shiver through Lucia’s body as he dashed away, dragging Cassie behind him with little to no give. She just went with him. Lucia felt her chest ache.