Chapter Text
Dear Pezzy,
You have been nominated by a former Playtime Co. Factory coworker to assist in recent independently-managed Extraction Missions. It is understood that you have experienced both the orphanage and the workplace perspectives at the Factory, and we believe your knowledge is invaluable in our cause to finally bring peace to the building.
Attached to this letter is a file, and in there you will find a plethora of reasons as to why this effort was initiated. If you agree to partake, please refer to the first page’s contacts to receive more information.
We hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely,
Poppy’s Angels
What the fuck?
Yes, he read the file. Yes, he vomited more than once. How could any normal person not? The absolute goddamn torture these kids went through would make the most innocent person want to murder someone, even if that someone’s 10-years dead, according to what’s explained as the Hour of Joy.
It was deserved, honestly, even if he can hold some sympathy for workers near the surface level of the Factory, oblivious to the atrocities going on under their feet. That could’ve been him, he realized quickly, and he wouldn’t wish that terror upon anyone, especially those poor kids.
Pezzy never really spent time thinking about his history with Playtime Co. and Playcare, especially 15 years after he left it behind. He had entered the orphanage already on the older side, ‘graduating’ and being given a choice: Keep working at Playtime, or leave for greener pastures. He chose to keep working, and lived to tell the tale.
Now, he could only think of how those “greener pastures” would’ve probably been found inside fabrics and toy parts, if he didn’t choose to be a worker. The orphanage made a grand deal of helping him find a nearby apartment to make the commute easier, then left him to meld with other coworkers like all was normal. He was never allowed to return to Playcare, only able to see the kids when they rarely came up for tours. His higher-ups told him again and again that working at Playcare was a luxury he wasn’t qualified for.
God, one wrong move and he would’ve been one on the lengthy Confirmed Dead list, toy or not.
Accepting the assignment was the easy part, after reading that file. Actually going to the Factory again, though? Alone? It was like stepping into an eerily silent house of horrors, only the horrors were nowhere to be seen. As it turned out, the Angels’ Extraction Missions are unsurprisingly very unpopular and secretive, leaving there to be only one-person teams entering to sweep different areas.
Those one-person teams have supposedly cleared out the main floor down to Playcare, leaving his section to start at the Prison. Thankfully, they didn’t leave him completely helpless, training him on online calls through distorted voices: disguises for protection, they said, in case a leak got out and their lives were jeopardized. Now, though, he knew all the fun ways to not die with a grabpack.
Oh, this won't be traumatic at all.
All Pezzy wanted to do was help. The main goal wasn’t even to find people alive down here, but to make notes on a digital iPad map if he came across a dead toy or human body. Apparently “bringing peace” to this place wasn’t about calming down a revolution as he expected, but collecting and giving the dead a proper burial. It seemed like, to him, he was stepping into an old battleground of a war nobody won. Not the scientists, not the poor kids, not even the giant monster that the wall art panickedly worried about, the name Prototype being at the top of the list of Confirmed Dead.
“How many…oh shit,” Pezzy muttered to himself, staring out at what’s labeled The Graveyard, according to the burner phone’s map. His words sounded loud to him, echoing around the hazmat suit helmet that muffled his voice. He felt like even if he was screaming right now, nobody would hear him—not that there’s anyone left here to hear him. Stomach flipping for the umpteenth time, Pezzy moved on quickly from the Graveyard, noting it as, essentially, a place for someone stronger to count the dead.
No wonder they need more people, even if there were others ahead of him Pezzy’s sure they needed months to get over the trauma of simply walking through these halls, let alone when they were actually occupied. About a month ago, Pezzy remembered getting a DM from an old friend who eventually jumped career ships with him:
~~~
DIRECT MESSAGES
Rich (in vit… | 10:58 AM
I have to go back. Cover for me, please, but don’t come looking if I stop responding.
~~~
He hasn’t heard from him since, but looked for his name on the Confirmed Dead List first. It wasn’t there, so now he’s tense with anticipation that he may find his body down here. Rationalizing that closure’s better than being ghosted hasn’t helped him up to this point, and certainly doesn't when he’s face-to-face with skeletons upon skeletons.
Though, when stooping down to inspect a name badge to label one of those very skeletons, something clattered. He nearly jumped out of his skin, pun unintended. It sounded metal and heavy, a quiet hissing sound that he thought to be the rusted air ducts no longer present in the background.
Part of his training was to leave no rooms untouched, so, while shoving his curiosity aside, he quickly ducked into some bare (and pretty randomly placed) interrogation rooms. He had seen dozens around, likely to ensure they could all be used at one time with managing so many toy-kids. This area seemed to be more industrial, though, so it seemed quite random. Pezzy had noted a huge Mining Pit that he passed through, covered in blood and weird clumps of something frozen stuck to the ground.
The room had a thin but lengthy table with uncomfortable chairs on opposite long sides, the stereotypical picture of an interrogation room minus the ripped Mommy Long Legs poster clinging to its last life on the wall. Oh yeah, and there’s a skeleton in the corner that he mindlessly made note of. His desensitization should really be studied at this point, it was starting to get concerning how fast he’s getting used to blood and bones.
What he did rush to inspect with far more focus than the corpse, was a file beside it. The Angels always insisted on grabbing any materials left behind by the researchers, no matter how seemingly insignificant. This one seemed far from it just from its weight and size. He hit the theoretical, Extraction-team jackpot.
Flipping it open, any interest he may have had vanished, because he knew the name listed in the title.
~~~
Doey the Doughman Handling 101
~~~
He knew it not only because of the incredibly popular play-doh ripoff toy, but because Doey was listed near the top of the Confirmed Dead List. He— both the toy and kid he was—had died. And this is a file with instructions teaching how to “handle” him, like an animal or a “Subject 1322” and not a kid. No, kids. Three of them in one body, one mind. Apparently, the three liked to transform the 900 POUNDS of dough into different forms, causing kids to call them different names when they played with them.
1322a was called Droid due to his habit of mimicking the toys around him with his dough, directly nicknamed that when he turned into a giant imitation of a Boogie Bot in front of a kid playing with one of those same toys. He was the youngest of the three, life miraculously preserved after he fell into an activated vat of Doey dough when he first visited the factory with his parents. The researchers didn't know details about him like they did with the orphans, so in a panic they added two more kids to the experiment to try and stabilize it—1322b for his intelligence and 1322c for his leadership and sociability. Droid was rarely allowed to surface by the other two, the file noted, the innocence usually only showing when playing and feeling safe, which was a feat to witness in and of itself. Researchers theorized that he’s represented by the green hand crawling up his right side, fidgeting and waving when happy but not surfaced to display it.
1322b was called Puffer due to, obviously, turning the dough into pufferfish when surfaced, sometimes a singular one, sometimes multiple, and sometimes a normal Doughman form with spikes. He’s critical, hyper-vigilant, and easily angered, if anger wasn’t already the reason for his emergence. Researchers noted that the orphan appeared to have no awareness of the other children in his head, referring to them as strictly “gentle voices.” Other researchers theorized that he’s represented by the bottom dark blue hand, the hand often shifting to close into a fist moments before he takes over.
Finally, 1322c was called Grizzy due to bear features sprouting when surfaced, usually remaining bipedal (with stray unspecified exceptions) and sticking with a short snout and ears. He was the eldest of the three and seen as the leader and face of Doey, the main stabilizing force behind the toy’s creation. Researchers noted both his awareness of the other children in his head and his intuitive skill in calming them down, as well as theorized correctly that the orange hand along his left side represented him, often seen shifting when appearing to soothe the one currently surfaced.
The file never referred to Doey by either of those three names, only referring to him as “the subject” or “the toy” or “it.” Pezzy’s eyes narrowed in disgust briefly skimmed over the punishments when the toy would refuse to remain in Doey’s signature form, spotting instructions to “Ensure Ms. Gracie’s availability for a session when in use of the Mold to further encourage positive connotations associated with it.” The second it started describing an incident in horrific detail, the file was dropped like a stone in his grabpack compartment, his eyes glaring pointlessly at the ripped Mommy Long Legs poster. What was the point anyway? The kids died, there’s no point in imagining their mental and physical hell when, hopefully, the three poor souls had moved on to actual greener pastures with all the others. Half of Pezzy wanted to rip this file to shreds then burn the place to the ground, Angels be damned.
The neighboring rooms were a bust, empty except for dust and cobwebs and faint blood splatters without any sign of a corpse nearby. Pezzy kept walking, leaning to peer into the room right as he glanced down to check the map and…
~~~
{x} Doey the Doughman
~~~
This…This was where Doey died? To a hydraulic press after, he could only assume, full canisters of freezing agents froze him into place. He looked mangled, a mess of collapsed limbs and torso with freeze-dried dark blue spikes littering the ground, long-since snapped off by either the cold or the press. Pezzy wasted no time in firing his grabpack hands at the crusher’s handle, slowly lifting it with a creaking groan. It was too easy to move with the grabpack, and too stiff to have been mechanically activated as usual. What kind of cruelty would have compelled a worker to do this to these poor kids? Stepping back with a scoff, he lifted his map to add a personal note next to the death marker. If Doey was to be buried, he deserved to have a pufferfish plush, teddy bear, and not-alive Boogie Bot with him.
He was about to walk out when his light shined oddly on something. A fallen canister, made of metal and on its side on the ground. Call it curiosity or stupidity—the random thought even seemed insane even to himself—he still wanted to test it. He’s in a room with a corpse, and he couldn’t help but think this canister would make the noise he heard.
Hesitantly, he picked it up with his red grabpack hand, and dropped it. It hit the ground with a bang, the noise reverberating painfully through his eardrums, and Pezzy had withdrawn at least three large steps before it dawned on him.
That was the noise he heard. That’s why the hissing stopped. It was coming from this room. Right here.
Who would've knocked it down? There's nobody left in this stupid factory. It's a ghost town, has been one, for hours.
No toys, no people, just skeletons and a bunch of dead toys.
His eyes turned back to Doey. Dead toys. His brain screamed at him to run.
But he’s dead—
A sob ripped out of the corpse, and Pezzy’s blood turned to ice.