Work Text:
Listen, Chica knew how it looked. Her, shoveling garbage of all kinds into her beak, kneeling in filth or rifling through trash cans to do so. It wasn’t her fault, though! And the others all knew it, no matter how much Monty and Roxy teased her about her insatiable hunger.
It wasn’t hunger at all, those jerks. It wasn’t her decision to be equipped with an internal recharge system that was meant to double as waste management. She ate the trash, something fancy happened in her stomach, and she got energy out of it and kept the pizzaplex from drowning in garbage.
The others should be thanking her, honestly. And those silly geese still had to use the recharge stations. How unlucky for them!
So maybe she did it more often than she needed to. She liked helping, is all! And the rush of new energy filling her core was very nice, so she really couldn’t be blamed for wanting to make more all the time.
Roxy had no right to be angry about her distraction anyhow. Chasing a kid around the pizzaplex was hardly fun, especially when he was so good at getting away. It was like a very unfair game of tag, and she didn’t appreciate that at all.
If Roxy was going to get mad at someone about the little intruder, it should be Freddy, who was clearly helping the boy. But Chica was no snitch, so if Roxy couldn’t figure that out for herself, then boo hoo.
So that was why she was camping out in the kitchen, whittling away at the day’s trash. She’d listened to Roxy and Monty whining about “that little brat” escaping them one too many times. They were both convinced the boy was just mocking them at this point.
Even Freddy had tried to talk them down from their escalating frustration. He didn’t usually like getting himself involved in their tantrums—better to wait them out, in Chica’s opinion—but he’d wearily given it his best shot.
Chica didn’t think he got through to them, but if they wanted to torture themselves by hunting a too-clever kid around the pizzaplex, they were welcome to.
She was so focused that she almost didn’t hear the faint rustle of cloth nearby. But she did, so she paused in her trash eating and looked up.
Every time she’d glimpsed the little troublemaker, it’d been at a distance or the angle had been all wrong. This was the first time she was facing him head-on when he caught sight of her, clearly unaware of her presence beforehand.
But instead of seeing the expected expression of smugness or challenge or something, Chica watched in bewilderment as a look of pure terror swept over his face so quickly that she worried he’d pass out. She had to resist glancing behind herself, because surely, something truly terrible must be looming over her shoulder to inspire such a reaction.
Except, she knew she was alone. She knew he was looking straight at her, not at anyone or anything else.
And Chica knew how it looked when she ate garbage, okay? But it was more icky than fear-inducing. She didn’t even have sharp teeth! So it couldn’t have been that.
It was her, plain and simple. This little boy was scared out of his mind of her.
He turned tail and ran, exactly as he had been doing all night whenever he saw any of them. Except Freddy, but she never actually saw him and Freddy in the same room together, which was kinda doubly suspicious when she thought about it.
But that wasn’t important right now. No, right now, all that mattered was the awful, sinking feeling in her circuits that piggybacked the realization that a child was deathly frightened of her. She was meant to make children happy! Make them smile and laugh! Scaring one like that was anathema to her.
Abandoning her feast, Chica hurried up to the atrium, which was where Roxy or Monty were practically guaranteed to be, unless one of the security bots summoned them. Maybe she’d even catch them both!
Because she needed to talk to them and get to the bottom of this. If they had it backwards, if the poor boy was running from them not as a taunt but out of fear…
Well. Something was very wrong if that was the case. Chica may not have been the smartest bot, but even she knew about stuff like learned responses. They had to keep an eye out for mistreatment and abuse, after all. And that… that was a learned response if she’d ever seen one.
• • •
They didn’t believe her at first. Or rather, they didn’t think she knew what she was talking about.
Resisting the urge to stomp her foot, Chica said, calmly as possible, “Fine, just see for yourself. Next time you find him, try and catch his face when he notices you. The little chickadee was scared out of his wits at the sight of me, and I wasn’t even doing anything!”
“Let’s say you’re right,” Roxy said, crossing her arms over her chest. “So what? We’re still supposed to catch the kid. What does it matter how he feels about us?”
“Duh,” Chica replied. “Because we’re beloved friends of children, Roxy! Our jobs are to make them happy! We’re friendly, and approachable, and we spend all day entertaining and being fun.”
“So it’s a blow to our ego?”
“Roxy. I know it’s hard, but ignore your ego for a second. We spend all day every day interacting with kids in a positive manner, right?”
The two of them shared a glance. Chica huffed, because they just weren’t understanding yet. But then, they hadn’t seen the look on the boy’s face.
“Right?” she repeated, and only once they both nodded did she continue, finally making her point. “So what about us could possibly be scaring him so badly? Why does he look at us and see something to fear, rather than someone to help him or make him smile?”
Monty deflated all at once, and Roxy looked away, shifting uncomfortably.
“Little guy’s had a bad experience, then,” Monty said.
“I mean it,” Chica replied. “Watch the look on his face. Then you’ll get it. ‘Bad experience’ won’t sound like enough once you do. I swear…” She rubbed her arms, remembering the moment their eyes met. “He looked like he thought I was going to kill him.”
Having set them on the right path, Chica left them to it and started to look for the one bot who could probably shed some light on the situation—Freddy himself. Because if the boy was being helped by Freddy but went pale as a ghost around the rest of them, then something else was up. And Chica intended to find out what it was!
• • •
She caught him lurking around Rockstar Row. There was no sign of the boy, but that might not have meant much.
“Freddy!” she called, hurrying over.
He paused, one foot through the door leading into an employee only area. Backtracking, he waved at her, absently patting his chest. Knowing him as well as she did, Chica could see that he was a bit tense, nearly fidgety.
“Hello, Chica,” he greeted her. “Is something wrong?”
“Yeah, there’s something I’ve gotta ask you! You know the little boy Vanessa has us looking for?”
His eyes darted to the side for a second, but he nodded without hesitation.
Suspicions raised, she tilted her head, watching him closely. “I need you to answer me honestly, okay? Have you been helping him avoid us?”
Freddy wasn’t and hadn’t ever been a good liar. He blustered for a moment, shifting his weight and refusing to look at her. His arms crossed defensively over his stomach, which wasn’t at all a normal pose for him.
“Why—why would you think that?” Freddy managed to ask, staring just a little bit to the side of her head.
“Because you’re not complaining about him getting away all the time, and because I haven’t even seen you chasing him with the rest of us, and because he’s doing a really good job at hiding and I know we’re not all this bad at hide and seek.”
He didn’t respond, which was even more telling than his deflection.
Slumping a bit, Chica skipped the accusations and cajoling and got right to her problem. “It’s just, I think he’s really actually scared of the rest of us. I saw him earlier, saw him notice me, and I don’t think I’ve seen a child that frightened in years.” She sighed. “Maybe I’m overthinking it. But I’ve just got a bad feeling, y’know? We’re supposed to notice stuff like this.”
Neither of them spoke for a minute, and just when she was about to give it up as useless, Freddy ushered her away from the door and toward his green room. “We are supposed to pay attention to reactions like that,” he agreed, all the nerves gone from his voice.
Only once they were safely ensconced inside, curtains drawn over the window, did he add, “I… had wondered whether anyone else had noticed.”
It was as good as confirmation. “I have!” she promised, sitting on the couch. “It might have taken me a little while, but he’s just so sneaky. I just… what did we do to make him so scared?” She looked up at him imploringly.
For a moment, Chica wondered if he’d deflect again rather than give away that he knew more than he should. But he seemed to come to a decision, and with a sigh, Freddy quietly said, “It is a long story, Chica. A terrible one.”
“But does he really think we’ll hurt him?”
He met her eyes, something haunted in their glow. “Yes. Because it has already happened.” Almost shamefully, he looked away. “Even I was no longer sure whether he was safe.”
“From us?” she asked, feeling very small.
Freddy nodded minutely. “It is nothing against you, Chica, you or the others. There is something terrible lurking beneath the pizzaplex. And it is full of monsters.” He took a deep breath, an unnecessary action that really spoke of how unsettled he was. “Vanessa is one of them, the monsters. It is why he—why we have been working so hard to keep him hidden.”
She gaped at him for a long few seconds. Vanessa? Vanessa wanted to hurt the little boy? She didn’t doubt her friend, they’d simply been through too much together for that, but it was so far beyond anything she had expected to hear. So great was her surprise that she barely even noticed his blatant admittance to helping the child.
But Freddy continued, “We were unsure if your programming had been tampered with, given Vanessa’s involvement. With all of you. I cannot blame him for being afraid. Both for his experiences and… Gregory’s descriptions of you all when you chase him… no, I could never blame him.”
Chica supposed she could understand that. Roxy and Monty, certainly, had the claws and fangs that would probably look very scary indeed when they were chasing a young child down. And the boy did seem small. They would all tower over him, and that spooked their guests sometimes, too.
“So it is a learned response,” she finally said.
“Yes.”
Slowly, she nodded. Eyes downcast—it really didn’t feel good to know how badly she frightened a boy who’d already been hurt—she asked, “When you see him, do you think you could tell him I’m sorry? And that I won’t chase him anymore?”
There was a moment where Freddy’s silence made her think he’d refuse. Instead, just when she looked up at him again, he said, “You may tell him yourself,” and the two panels of his stomach hatch folded outward.
Tucked inside the empty space was the boy—Gregory, she thought Freddy had said. He was small enough to not appear particularly cramped; dare she say, he actually looked quite cozy. His eyes pinned her in place—so much wariness, so much fear, so much bravery. With Freddy’s help, he easily climbed out, landing lightly on the floor.
He pressed tightly against Freddy’s leg but didn’t bolt. Progress, she decided. It was all she could ask for.
In the light of the dressing room and with no shadows to hide in, she could suddenly see his injuries. Bandaids littered his cheek and arms and legs, his wrist was wrapped in strips of gauze, and bruises peeked out from the torn collar of his dirty shirt.
“You don’t wanna hurt me?” Gregory asked boldly, almost like it was a challenge, startling her. She dragged her gaze away from the dried blood staining his clothes. He fidgeted, his fingers nudging against a FazerBlaster attached to his belt. Freddy’s hand lowered to the side of his head, a gesture of comfort and stability that somehow both surprised and didn’t surprise her at all.
Of all of them, of course it was Freddy who came to care for a child like this. Yet, the complete lack of his usual cautious hesitance when dealing with their young guests nearly threw her off. Their leader was so terribly aware of his size and strength.
“No,” she answered before her pause could stretch on too long. “Not at all, chickadee. If I had known, I never would have chased you like I did.”
Gregory shrugged with one shoulder. Distrust thrummed through him, but it ran alongside something desperate and lonely. She knew the look of a child who really, really wanted to be hugged but was too used to being turned away. This wasn’t so different. “Not your fault. Vanessa told you to catch me, right?”
“I won’t tell her anything,” Chica promised. “Or the others, if they stay all stubborn.”
That got a little smile to peek out of that deliberately neutral expression.
“What are your thoughts on the others?” Freddy asked. “We know Moondrop has been affected, though it seems to be contained to him. As was DJMM, but he has shown no interest in leaving the west arcade to catch him.”
Now that she thought about it, Moondrop had been slinking around, muttering darkly to himself. He hadn’t even stopped to chat, which was rather unusual for him. He might not have been as excitable as Sunrise, but he was still plenty friendly. She’d put it down to a bad mood at the time, not unlike Roxy’s frustrations.
“They were willing enough to listen to me when I told them about how scared you looked,” she said, nodding at Gregory. “I didn’t notice anything out of character, but I wasn’t…”
“You did not know to look for such things. That is all right, Chica,” Freddy soothed. “Simply knowing that you are safe is a very good thing.”
Gregory tugged Freddy’s fingers away from his head. “I need to go make sure it stays that way.”
Pain and worry twisted through Freddy’s expression for a moment before he kneeled down and fished a USB drive out of one of his many hidden compartments. “Be careful, superstar,” he said quietly, hugging the boy.
Producing a flashlight from one of his baggy pant pockets, Gregory nodded, sent her one last look, then scurried into the back hall of Freddy’s dressing room. Startled by his sudden departure, Chica didn’t think to say anything until he was gone and Freddy had stood back up.
“Where—is it safe for him to go out alone?” she asked, hopping to her feet.
“No,” he admitted. “But where he is going, I cannot follow him. And I am not the stealthiest.”
“I’m so confused,” Chica groaned. “Nothing about tonight makes sense.”
“And you have only been part of half of it.” Freddy smiled wanly. “There are different server hubs located around the pizzaplex. Why they did not put them all together, I cannot fathom. During our initial confrontation with Vanessa, we stole a flash drive containing a safeguard lock that, when applied, prevents our programming from being changed for forty-eight hours. Now that we know you have not been altered, Gregory can use the safeguard to ensure she is unable to tamper with your programming later.”
“Why would she even have that?”
“The lock works on the virus, unfortunately, which is why we cannot use it on the others unless we know their code has not been changed yet.”
She stared at him, stuck somewhere between shock and disbelief and awe. This sounded like something from the movies they showed during Movie Mania weekend events. They’d even had a spy-themed marathon two months ago.
Freddy sighed, nodding in agreement with whatever expression he saw on her face. “It has been a long night.”
“I’ll bet,” she said, awed and a little frightened. Having her code be messed with… she shivered. “Vanessa really… she hurt him?”
“With a knife,” he confirmed. “She has proven particularly difficult to deal with. She has a costume of some sort,” and here, he sounded uncharacteristically frustrated, “and when she wears it, I cannot see her.” Darkly, he added, perhaps without quite meaning for her to hear, “I would have dealt with her myself already if it were not for that.”
Given the way he’d acted with Gregory, Chica found herself believing it. Freddy was the last one of them to ever seem threatening, but she was suddenly aware of his sharp teeth and claws. Just because he usually chose to be gentle didn’t mean he had to be.
And with that thought in mind, Chica wondered if someone’s blood was going to be spilled tonight, fatally so. It was just a race to see who found their intended victim first.