Help Needed

Chapter Seven: Stare and Stop

Monty met him in the space before Fazer Blast. Gregory exclaimed, "That's five! So, we only need two more: the one from the maze and the dance place! Since the maze is right next to Parts and Service, that'll be the easiest to get to. So, I'm thinking we can go there first. What about you?"

Monty nodded. "Eh, yeah, that's true, Little guy. We will need to go there, eventually. May as well go now."

Gregory's eyebrows furrowed. "What's wrong?"

"There are... it's a pretty dangerous place," Monty admitted. "You jus' need to be cautious is all."

Gregory chuckled. "It's funny hearing you say 'cautious'. You normally just charge into things."

"Heh. Yeah. Yeah! C'mon! Let's do this thing!" Monty's reluctance faded and he tipped his head up and lashed his tail.

Gregory's eyes brightened and he followed Monty back to the stage lift. The lift sank beneath the atrium. Taking the first turn on the right, he found a large break in the wall leading to another light-bricked hallway with lime trimming. But as he turned a corner–

A pair of metal pincher-like hands grabbed him and whirled him around so he was face-to-face with Map Bot. It let go of the terror-frozen kid and held out a map. "Hi. Please take this map."

Gregory reluctantly took the map.

Map bot stood up straight and faced away. "Thank you. Please enjoy."

Gregory glared back at it. "Ugh! I hate that thing!" he spat.

Monty grunted, eying the bot, "You ain't the only one."

Gregory opened up the ratty, white-and-blue map as he approached another door. "Hmm... well, wasn't all useless. It's a map of the utility tunnels."

Gregory knocked his head on a partially opened garage door. He spat a word he'd learned from an oblivious teacher and held a hand to his head. Blinking the stars out of his eyes, he looked into the room presented to him. He pushed the map back into his pocket with his other hand.

Cement pillars rose out of the cement floors and touched cement walls. A few laundry baskets and a forklift occupied the room. Aside from the mechanical broken parts strewn about, they were alone in the well-lit, empty room. Well, at least none of the other animatronics were here. This would be a really bad place to meet them.

When he got to the end of the room, he found Monty lagging behind, eyes darting from shadow to shadow. Wariness crept up on Gregory and he backed up so he stood by the animatronic alligator. "What's wrong? Is there something here?"

Monty stopped. He growled low to himself, almost too low for Gregory to hear, "Stupid, you're scaring the kid." Then at a normal volume, he said, "No, it's fine, kid. Well, for right now. Here. There's probably nothin' here. In the warehouse–education maze, there are endos-in-trainin'. The others... they don't really know much about them. I don't know if they even know about them."

"Are you scared of them?" Gregory edged. He could feel Bonnie's nervousness as well.

"No! No, course not," Monty scoffed, staring ahead at their goal rather than down at Gregory. "I'm jus' bein' real with you, Little guy. They're dangerous. I ain't scared of a few endos, but I'm Monty Gator. Heh. Uh... you're still jus' a kid. No offense, o' course!"

"He's right about that; you couldn't fight off an endo on your own much less multiple. You'll need to be sneaky if they're aggressive."

Gregory frowned. "You're lying. You won't look me in the eyes."

Monty set a hand on the back of his neck. "Kid..."

"Bonnie's scared, too," Gregory offered.

"Got that right. We should just skip this place and go back to the Daycare."