Chapter 5: The Fallout
The day manager for Freddy Fazbear's was a woman by the name of Arianna Lewinski and ran a tight ship. Under her guidance, no one was ever late, and no one ever wanted to be early. If you arrived before Arianna, she would be more than happy to fill that extra time with extra work. With this policy, she often found herself arriving even before the morning janitors, who showed up to clean up whatever mess the animatronics left behind. So far, it had been pretty easy for them. Whatever that new night guard did to keep the place in check seemed to work, and the bleach hadn't been needed for nearly a month.
Arianna arrived at the restaurant at 6:00 am sharp, walking up to the main entrance while distractedly digging through her purse for the keys. When she looked up, she was met with the four animatronics staring back. This gave her quite a shock, before it was overtaken by professional anger. Why weren't the robots in their proper place? Arianna unlocked the door and brushed past the unmoving hulks, careful not to knock one of them over. It was difficult, since they seemed to be crowding the window, but she eventually made it through.
"Schmidt! You better have a good reason for our animatronics to be out of place!" Arianna called out. There was no response. Furrowing her brow, the manager stormed towards the security office. She found the tablet lying on the desk, off, as well as the fan and light.
The damn man ran out of power! Arianna thought angrily, before heading towards the kitchens to check on the fridges. The place looked as if a hurricane had passed through, and Arianna took it in with an increasingly angrier expression. Heads would have to roll for this. For all the china and foodstuffs to be replaced would not be cheap. Where was that damn guard? How did this happen? She would figure it out when the rest of the staff arrived.
Twenty minutes later, the cleaning crew arrived, and struggled to squeeze past the animatronics. There were five cleaners, all dressed in similar white coveralls that sported the name of the company they worked for on the back. Their old night janitor may complain about having to clean solo, but these five in particular were paid extra to ask no questions and not tell a soul what they may or may not see, as well as for speed to ensure any... "incidents" were handled before opening. Once they saw the mess in the kitchen, they sighed and grumbled, before focusing on the main task of getting the animatronics back into their proper place.
Since the machines were incredibly heavy, it took the entire crew to lift and carry them safely. They grabbed Foxy first, being mindful of his damaged frame, hook, and loose jaw, and carried back into Pirate's Cove, noting the dark stains on his suit. Another task for the ever growing list. As the cleaners carried Bonnie back into her spot on the stage, a foul odor wafted through the door leading backstage. Donning face masks, the crew members were not surprised to find a corpse lying on the floor. What did surprise them was that there were two. Quick analysis confirmed that none of the bodies was the night guard's, so where was he? For now, it didn't matter. The crew was worried that there wouldn't be enough bleach.
Mike sat on his bed in his apartment, slowly recovering from shock, the last few hours playing back over and over in his head. The vandals, the blood, the stains on Foxy, Freddy, and Chica.
I thought they stopped, I thought they figured it out, Mike thought, the image of the limp suits burned into his memory. Apparently the animatronics hadn't figured out the people they stuffed into suits were human, or worse, didn't care. And that unknown scared him. For a while, Mike considered going back that night, but the irrational fear that he would be next argued the opposite. What if the robots were simply biding their time? No, that didn't make much sense. Maybe they enjoyed it? The machines did enjoy scaring the vandals, and himself. But if they enjoyed it, why didn't they kill Mike? There were too many questions, and Mike didn't have the courage to go to the source for answers. He sat that way even as 6:00 am came and went, and after 2 more hours, his phone rang.
