Never the Same

Chapter 4: Deeper and Darker

Michael had been walking, and had passed what looked like several office doors, all locked. He finally passed one door that seemed a bit different from the others, this one being a bright shade of purple, a pretty weird color especially compared to the rest of the building he's seen. He tried to open this door and as soon as he reached for the doorknob, the door swung inward and he lost his balance, falling into a pile of papers scattered all over the floor. He got up and checked the wall for a light switch, surprising himself he found it in no time at all. With the room all bright and lit up now, along with a familiar buzz of the fluorescent light above, Michael began to look through the desk and the papers on the ground, expecting to find another clue or letter his father left, but instead finding records of some place called "Circus Baby's Pizza World", along with some what seemed to be concept art of some characters, he found one that caught his eye, it was for "Baby", now he figured out why the place was named as such. While looking over the design he noticed some things about her that threw him a bit off, she reminded him a lot of his sister, not that he remembers much about her, but from all the pictures his dad had he can form a perfect image of her face in his mind, and there's no doubt about it that his father used her as a sort of reference. Another character he found "Ballora", seemed to be designed after his mother, he even made her out to look like a ballerina, his dad has always told him how much his mother loved ballet when she was younger. He also found reference sheets of two characters, "Funtime Foxy" and "Funtime Freddy", he had never heard of a "Foxy" anywhere, but he assumed that the Freddy one was based on Fredbear.

After searching through the drawers and shelves, Michael found nothing important, however he did find a flashlight that surprisingly still works. He grabbed those reference sheets, folded them and put them in his pocket, "Sorry dad hope you don't mind, but I think Henry might wanna see these," he said to himself while walking out of the room. After leaving the room Michael returned to his straight-forward path of the hallway, making sure to check every door on the side to see if they were unlocked, unfortunately the only ones that were had nothing inside of them other than dust and a few papers here and there. "What were all these rooms built for? It's like an office building down here, why would dad need all these random rooms?", He asked himself after finding another empty room. It didn't really make any sense to Michael, and he's sure Henry and Charlie thought the same, why would his father need all this space down here unless he was planning something big, and if so when did he even have the time to build it all, it takes a normal building possibly months to be built and those are seemingly about four times smaller than this place, it just seems impossible, unless he began this before they even opened up that Fredbear's place on the surface. Thinking about didn't seem like it would clear anything up, so Michael pushed that aside and focused on the task ahead.

***

"Come on Charlie, we can't stay here all night, we don't know what other things are hiding here." Henry said to a stubborn Charlie who refused to get up from sitting against the door. "No like I already said, I'm not leaving this spot until Michael comes back through it, and unless you can find another way to reach him and get him out of there then I will not leave this place." Charlie said adamantly, still with a tinge of sadness in her voice.

Henry got up from crouching, "Well, I'm going to look around the rest of this room. If you need anything just holler for me," he said while facing away not wanting to see the pain in his daughter's eyes. Henry walked along the walls of the place and finally made it to the lone metal door with a small window, on the other side of the huge atrium-esque area. He jiggled the knob and tried to open it, and as he expected it was locked. He decided to knock, "Anyone home?" He said jokingly to himself.

He turned away and began to walk back to Charlie as he heard a creak, he turned back around fast and saw nothing, so he assumed it must've been him moving on the floor and thought nothing more of it. He began to take a step forward and heard a loud screech, he quickly looked behind him and the door that was locked just a moment ago was ajar, just open enough for someone to go in, or come out. This put Henry on edge, as he stared at the door and began to back away.