Chapter Text
Saturday at 7am
A short scare occurred with the escaped animatronic bear, Freddy, powering down. The 11-year-old orphan boy in a blue striped collar shirt and light brown shorts with short but unkept brunette hair, Gregory, quickly jumpstarted the bear’s battery through use of the stolen van's engine and jumper cables.
They then continue their getaway drive from the Pizzaplex where the young boy's worst night imaginable occurred the evening prior. The underage driver has no idea where to go other than away from that deathtrap knowing his mechanized ursa passenger has no concept of the outside world they now found themselves in.
The van made it off Fazbear Entertainment property without further incident and merged onto the nearby freeway. It was still relatively dark outside, despite being early morning, which proved to be a blessing in the underage driver’s mind. The road was rather desolate other than one or two semitrucks propped too high above the van for their drivers to notice how short the van’s was. Freddy had relaxed some and released his hold on the passenger handlebar and instead focuses on what’s ahead while still hoping a safety incident doesn’t occur.
“So, what now?” Gregory abruptly asks his robot bear guardian.
“I thought we would see your parents first,” Freddy replied, “I would like to meet them.”
The boy went silent. He realized they never got the chance to talk about his personal life while trying to survive the night inside the Pizzaplex.
“Is something the matter, Gregory?”
“I... don’t have any parents... or a home... I’m a homeless orphan”
Freddy sadly responded, “I see... I am sorry if I brought up something I shouldn’t have...”
“It’s fine, Freddy”
“I know little about the world beyond the Pizzaplex, and now that we’ve left it... all sense of direction is lost on me” the bear said defeatedly.
Gregory tries to perk the duo up, “Well the first thing we gotta do is find out how to keep you powered up. The van’s engine battery helped, but I don’t think it’s going to last forever.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” Freddy concurred, “But I wouldn’t know where to start. The charging stations’ designs and functionalities are so intricate and complex that I fear it would be difficult for us to replicate. Only an experienced Fazbear Entertainment maintenance engineer would know how to build one”
“Well I am not driving back there,” the boy retorted in a huff, “besides, I overheard that security guard lady threatening to have you scrapped for helping me”
“I know...” Freddy conceded.
The two sat quietly for a moment. Gregory, while eyeing the road as best he can, tries to think about what other options they had. Obviously, the boy can’t build one himself as his only engineering experience was part-replacement with an automated computer assistant guiding him after a series of “accidents” with the other, more hostile, animatronics. In frustration, he thought about how the heck that place got by not fixing anything during the night shift with only a single security guard working those hours? He then recalled one of the many notes he found while running around that place mentioning Fazbear Entertainment implementing their S.T.A.F.F. bots that subsequently fired and replaced the other nightshift staff. An idea struck.
“Hey, Freddy,” the boy turns to the bear, “When the S.T.A.F.F. bots came in and they let go of the rest of the human nightshift workers... were any of them an experienced engineer working on you guys?”
The robot bear looks upwards in a pondering position, “Why yes, there was a full maintenance staff working in Parts and Services at the time. There were our mechanics and engineers who worked repairs, functionality, and power control and our computer operators and coders who oversaw the animatronic AI and system protocols”
“Did any of them hold a grudge during the lay off?”
“Now that you mention it, the former Parts and Services nightshift engineering supervisor, Carl Ramirez, did cause an... incident”
Gregory raised an eyebrow, “Incident?”
Freddy turns to the boy, “I recall the dayshift security crew hauling him off the premises as he shouted something along the lines of... ‘I gave this bleeping bleephole of a company ten years of my bleeping bleeping life and this is the thanks you pencil pushing bleep-wads give me? You can all kiss my bleeping bleeping bleeping cider bleeping bleeping bleep.’ I, of course, censored some words to fit more appropriately to your age group, Gregory. We kept his facial recognition profile in our system so we can report to security should he ever step foot in their facilities again. It was a shame. I did miss how lively the night shifts were prior to the S.T.A.F.F. bots.”
Gregory bit his lip in frustration. He doesn’t trust adults. At least not human ones. Not even before his experience with Officer Vanessa and Vanny in the Pizzaplex. His fellow homeless people paid him no attention unless they wanted something for themselves. There were also angry storeowners chasing him with a weapon when he desperately ran off with one of their breads or other necessities and those were the ones that only wanted to beat him. There were kidnapers, pedophiles, human traffickers, and organ harvesters, and a local gang whom he had a run-in with months ago too. Even the regular joes who walk by would hardly give him the time of day even if he laid dying at their doorsteps. Otherwise, it was always him alone until he met Freddy and Freddy was all he wanted in his life. But to keep his bear guardian alive, this Carl guy may be their only hope especially given that he would have the fewest objections to helping a kid hide Fazbear Entertainment’s stolen property.
Gregory turns back to the bear, “Do you think this Carl Ramirez person may know a thing about getting you a new charging station?”
Freddy mulled, “Hmm... it does sound like a good lead.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
Freddy closes his eyes to search his internal memory databanks. “Ah yes! I remember he mentioned he commuted from some town called Santa Clara. Perhaps we should look there.”
“I don’t really know what that place is...” Gregory groaned until he remembered one time he scavenged for food in an abandoned car a week ago, “Freddy, check the glove compartment over there!”
Freddy complies and finds a statewide roadmap, unfolding it. The animatronic, not knowing about maps beyond the Pizzaplex’s own, is not much help in deciphering, but Gregory was able to find it in the corner of his eye.
“Alright!” the boy exclaims, “If we are on this highway here, it should be just a thirty-minute drive!”
“That’s great, Superstar!” Freddy praises but relents, “although I may need another jump start on the way...”
Gregory diverts his focus back to being on the road. He takes a short glance through the rear-view mirror as the city he spent his young life on the streets in gets further and further away.
If I never have to step foot there again it will be too soon.
Minutes pass and the boy is worrying a little less about the future for the time being and starts thinking about the past. What they escaped from. And what remains unresolved in the deathtrap known as Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex. Gregory takes a short glance at his animatronic guardian who was admiring the sky and nearby woods.
“Freddy?” Gregory asked quietly.
“What is it, Superstar?” Freddy smiles back.
“Are you mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad you?”
The boy turns back towards the road, “Not even a week ago, you were entertaining kids with your bandmates. Everyone cheering to see you perform on stage. Presenting a birthday cake to make some lucky child their best day ever. And now you’re grimy, wearing the others’ parts, and on the run from the very place you called home... because of me...” Gregory sadly slumped back before readjusting to stay eye level to the road.
Freddy looked out the passenger side window for a moment before turning back, “Of course not, Gregory. While I admit, I will miss my friends and performing in front of children, but you helped me remember what was below the Pizzaplex. That monster we saw that controlled me and the others. Too many awful memories...”
Gregory thought back to the withered yellow rabbit with what looked like a slimy skeleton within it. Everything happened so quickly back then that he never had the time to process that horror. “What exactly was that thing, Freddy?”
“I don’t know, Gregory... but every circuit inside me spun at his sight, telling me this thing should not exist. No place for children should have something like that in it...”
The boy remembered it tried to take control of Freddy. The other animatronics that were chasing him last night were also called after him in that underground pizzeria below the Pizzaplex. He then recalled looking back while the two escaped from the hidden location as it begun to cave in and collapse under rubble. There was a blobby mass of robot wires and endoskeletons that grabbed the malformed rabbit man and pulled him through the ceiling’s crevice and into the abyss.
Freddy continues, “I wish things had been different. I wished we could’ve helped Chica, Roxanne, and Monty from that madness. Fazbear management had to be aware of that underground pizzeria while constructing the pizzaplex... they had to have known...” Freddy’s eyes glowed with certainty, “I realized while down there that I cannot be a part of such a thing that allowed and covered up so many tragedies.”
That reminded Gregory of something. They could’ve escaped the Pizzaplex sooner and not encountered the monster below it. But they did stay there longer specifically to uncover Fazbear Entertainment’s dirty little secrets. They wanted to stop the disappearances. While defeating the monster in the yellow rabbit animatronic suit was definitely the right thing to do... something still didn’t feel like the resolution the boy wanted.
After almost twenty minutes of driving, Gregory sees a sign up ahead giving directions to a nearby rest stop and tells the bear, “We can stop there and give you another jump”
The van turns off the freeway and drives a ways to an open rest stop. Fortunately, it looks completely empty. Gregory parks, steps out of the driver’s seat, and looks around. He signals the stolen animatronic bear to come out and the boy lifts open the van’s hood. Wasting no time, Gregory hooks the jumper cables to Freddy’s robot ears and the van’s battery. A quick bolt of energy surged into Freddy and he was back to full charge or at least full charge while still stuck on reduced power due to his prior performance malfunction the day before. Freddy noticed Gregory seemed distracted during the end of makeshift operation but quickly went back into the van before someone could drive by. The boy quietly put down the hood and entered the driver’s seat facing down. He stood still for a moment before resting his head on the steering wheel.
“Gregory... is everything alri...” a concerned Freddy tries to ask before realizing tears were falling from his eleven-year-old companion’s eyes.
“Freddy?” the boy tries to hide his sobbing, “Did we really make a difference back there?”
“What do you mean Gregory? Of course we did. We stopped that yellow rabbit monster” the bear tries to assure.
“We stayed longer back in there... to stop the disappearances... but it still doesn’t feel right. That underground area may have caved in and collapsed, but the Pizzaplex itself is still there! Fazbear management is still there! What if the rabbit lady, Vanny, is still there too? We may have survived, but what if everything else in there just moves on to a new victim?!”
Gregory breaks down in more tears while still pressing against the steering wheel. He never considered himself as a paragon of virtue. He sometimes had to lie, to cheat, to steal, but it was all just so he could survive to the next day. But he experienced horrors both in the Pizzaplex that no other kid should ever experience.
“What if I had the chance to do more and I missed it? We could’ve burned that whole place down, but we didn’t! No one may ever have the chance that we did. And now even more children may disappear because of me!”
The bear didn’t know what to say at first as the boy continued to sob, “We didn’t have the time to do anything else other than slip out before the dayshift crew could catch us”
Freddy never saw Gregory cry before. Even when his own life was in peril by his hacked friends, the boy always kept a brave face and never broke down around the bear. But it’s not Gregory’s life on the line this time. It was his empathy towards other children. Freddy unbuckled his seatbelt and reached over to pull Gregory into a soft hug.
“Gregory,” Freddy comforts, “You are not being fair to yourself. You’ve done far more than anyone could ever expect from someone your age could do. I do not know what the monster below the Pizzaplex was and what relation it had with Vanny, but we caused enough damage to ensure her and all of Fazbear Entertainment has at least a significant of setback which will take a long time to recover from. I wish we could prevent all the tragedies, but we all have our limitations and can only do what we can”
The boy sniffles and wipes away his tears as the bear releases their embrace, “Thanks Freddy... I...”
Gregory is interrupted by an abrupt rumbling in his stomach. He gave a nervous chuckle thinking about after all he had been through, he forgot about the very reason he snuck into the Pizzaplex in the first place. Running for your life for hours can make you forget how little you’ve eaten.
“Hmm... Gregory, check the back of the van. They sometimes have snacks loaded in these”
The boy complies and crawls over the front seat to rummage into what this van has.
“Jackpot!” the boy exclaims as he pulls out a full box of Freddy Fudgebars and cans of Fizzy Faz. While the warm soda was of no interest, the desperately hungry orphan quickly chowed down on the chocolate.
“Well, I’m glad we solved that problem” Freddy says with a smile, “Though hopefully it’ll sate you until we can find something a bit healthier.”
“Yeah, a burger would be nice. Maybe once... FREDDY GET DOWN!” The boy shouts while he pushes the bear to duck as a nearby pickup truck pulls in and parks only a few spaces away from their van.
A heavyset bearded man steps out of his truck and lights a cigarette. Gregory ducks himself to avoid drawing the stranger’s attention. After a minute or two of puffing, the man drops and smushes the cigarette butt remains and heads towards the restroom building. The man stops midway to take a glance at a nearby van with a side label that s ays ‘Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex’ on it. Gregory sees this and panics. He jumps up, starts the van, and tries to quickly pull away back to the freeway. The bearded man just watches, scratches the back of his head and wonders why that driver looked so short before shrugging it off and continuing to the restroom.
“Gregory, you don’t need to panic. That man did not look like a Fazbear Entertainment employee,” Freddy advised.
“I can’t take that risk. I don’t trust adults...” the boy retorts before begrudgingly admitting, “at least not any more than we have to...”
The rest of the ride was uneventful as the van drove by a sign sayi ng ‘Welcome to Santa Clara.’ Gregory looked down the hillside of the road they were on to see an overlook of the small town the y finally made it to. The orphan never lived outside the harsh streets of the big city and was worried about adapting on top of existing worries such as keeping a stolen robot bear hidden and charged.
He turned to look at Freddy and the bear responded with an assuring smile.
The boy tells himself:
We’ll find a way to make this work . The worst is behind us.
7:45am
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A/N: Hope you all enjoyed this chapter and please leave comments. I haven’t written a fanfiction for many years so I hope my structure was bearable. I understand that it was said that FNAF 6 took place in Hurricane, UT so I picked a random town nearby. I don’t know jack about Utah’s geography so it won’t be put in much detail beyond the Pizzaplex existing in “the big city” while the current events with Gregory and Freddy take place in a small nearby town and mostly leave it at that.