They're Just Children (FNAF: SB X Little Nightmares)

165

She wouldn't let it get away, she wouldn't let this monster wriggle out of her grasp again, she wouldn't- 

Mono grabbed her sleeve and pushed the Tangle down the hall, it slithered around the corner and vanished down the halls. 

'Its not worth our time, we're here for Freddy.' Mono pointed to the shudder door to the greenrooms. 

Six hissed under her breath but relented. The shudder doors creaked and groaned, refusing to move but eventually lifted as Six and Mono shoved it open with their knife and Helpi wrench before Bailey wedged the metal rod underneath it. She turned to them with a grin. 

"Into the Garbage Shute, flyboy!" Bailey called. 

The comment felt like whiplash, they forgot to snarl about keeping down. What the hell? 

"...But it's a door?" Mono muttered. 

"Well, yeah but it's a... ya know, Star Wars? A New Hope- Just get in." Bailey waved her hand around and suddenly deadpanned, patting Mono's back into Rockstar Row. 

There was scattered glass all across the floor, the lines of displays full of old animatronic parts and recovered props were carelessly tossed to the floor or missing entirely. The curtains were all drawn shut in the Glamrocks' glass walls and Monty's was still covered frame-to-frame in caution and out of service tape, only now there were streaks of slime trailed over them that Six quickly consumed just by walking nearby. She and Mono didn't need to slow and read any of the signs, they knew where they were going and uncaringly dragged Bailey with them, the teen not knowing what else to do or where to go. The door to his room was all that was left. What are we supposed to say? Should we say anything? 

Mono acted first, somewhat recklessly but she wouldn't be the one to judge, he forced open the door with a wave of his hand. 

---

The empty head's dark, soulless eyes stared blankly back at her, only with a pair of tiny, burning, shaking red dots filling the void. Vanessa wasn't sure where it came from or why the Rabbit insisted on plucking it off of the Blob twice, it made her shiver for sure but she still couldn't figure out what it was supposed to do. Other than a prop or paperweight, it appeared useless. Did it do something special? Was it important? She knew it was valuable just by virtue of being an extremely old part of an expensive machine, of which only two were ever made. As far as she knew, the Hare hadn't made any attempt to sell it. Even if it did, there was obviously something deeply wrong with it, more than the corrupted Glamrocks, though not as obviously dangerous. Although, it was pristine aside from the black tears, nobody would believe it was genuinely over 60 years old by now. Maybe selling it just wasn't an option? But then again, why go through so much trouble and risk so much to take it from a monster so big and fluid it spilled out of the Lobby and flowed through the stores and Greenrooms? And what user was knowing she was missing something when she didn't have the slightest clue how to figure it out? 

With any luck, Sunrise would at least get her note after he get repaired, maybe they could put something together when he was back online. 

In the meantime, though, the bundle of pixels had ditched her in the Atrium, right in the tunnel behind El Chip's. Why do we even have this hall? Just expand the restaurant and make it a door. The shudder clattered open, not that it did much good. It was already lights-out for the entire mall but some of the clearance bots were starting to wander around again. Clearly she'd missed a security warning, because those things should've finished folding up in the maintenance tunnels before all the doors locked. One of them probably got stuck behind a wall or some decor; more than a few missing drone warnings had been raised in her time here and most were purely because of one stupid bot repeatedly running into wall, pole, fountain, statue, or other display. Their repeating voices made her grit her teeth every time they announced a warning and often got in her way when she was doing her rounds. And the missing animatronic/property alarm would just keep getting raised whenever she turned it of until she found the cheap pile of plastic and awful wiring constantly running into something. If the damn things could stop talking for more than a few minutes, she might be able to just listen for whatever one got stuck or glitched. BUT NOOOOOOOO, quieter pirate custodians could 'fall short in regards to the customer experience' as if the board cares about the 'experience' unless it drives profits, most people won't even see those things just let me give them a mute button. Her own gripes with her human and artificial coworkers aside, she didn't know if the Rabbit would be coming back for her. Fortunately, it didn't seem to be mobilizing at all; she wasn't sure where Monty went but it looked like the other Glamrocks were sticking to their Greenrooms as usual, not hunting; nobody was inside this time. Unfortunately, that didn't mean nothing was amiss tonight. She could barely hear a distant ding and caught the light of an elevator out of the corner of her eye. Two tall shadows clunkily stepped inside, both taller and stockier than the clearing drones. They were mostly obscured by the complete darkness but the elevator's flickering interior lights cast a small glow on their scratched plastic casings, one was light blue with a pair of antennae on its head and holding something bright red, the other yellow with a bit of pink around the waist.