Poppy Playtime ~ An Angel's Bleeding Heart

Chapter 8 : Upgrades in Production

Upon stepping out of the gondola, Gabe inspected the area before him.  All around are littered corpses of toys, strewn around bloody in pieces.  Looking around in the entire dome, while there is depictions of life wherever he went, Gabe can tell without even so much as touching it, that all the plants are just lifeless plastic.  The grass, vines, and potted plants are just as dead as the stale air around him.  And as for the trees, they were nothing more but cardboard cutouts.

The "clouds" above are but mock imitations of the one from in the outside world.  The giant misshapen masses of cotton hanging by cable wire are a stark reminder that he is still stuck underground.  The Playcare's background is a crude imitation of a sunny, bright blue sky, now nothing more but faded, peeling wallpaper.

Just by looking at it all, Gabe can only imagine just how lively this place was before Playtime.co went under.  He could practically hear the laughter of kids echoing through these withered streets.  All in all, Playcare now feels like a hollow shell of the resplendent orphanage that it once was.

No sooner as he finishes the flight of stairs the phone he kept on his side rings.  "Pssst.  It's me again, Ollie."

"Hey buddy."  Gabe replies.  "Well, I'm here in Playcare.  I've never been down here, and this place is far bigger than I thought it would be."

"Yeah, I can see you in the cameras.  Cool place, right?"

Gabe was silent for a second, pondering upon how ominous it was just from entering on his gondola ride down here.  "Not gonna lie, buddy.  But if I didn't knew that the cable car was taking me into Playcare I would have thought I was being taken into a prison."

"Yeah, you'll think from all the colorful paintings and decorations throughout the factory they would have put more thought into that part.  And the kids used to live here, but now look at."  Ollie then said.  "Anyway, see that statue in the middle of the room?"

Gabe looked and sure enough a large statue of a circular platform covered in plastic vines, and on top of it are the stone figures of the Smiling Critters, all of them standing side by side with each other holding hands.  Though there seems to be one of them missing.

"I see it.  What about it?"

"There should be some stairs under it.  There is a really cool room that powers all of Playcare!"

"So a generator room?"  He said scratching his chin intrigued.  "Ok, heading down there."

Gabe then does as he is instructed and finds his way into the statue's staircase.  Heading down, he finds himself in a rather small room, not as big as he thought a generator room would be.  In fact, while there is some components around that could be described as parts of a generator they don't look anything like the generator itself.  And given how massive Playcare is it would take literal tons of electrical power, so it has to be big.  So which means that the real generator is somewhere out of sight, and that this is just the control room on top of it.

Ollie didn't really tell him what he is to do while down here, so he simply wandered around for a moment, wondering what he should do next.  Just then he heard something that sounded like a tink.  Looking around for the source he finds a locker, opening it he finds a vent tube and hanging on the very end is a set of keys.  How helpful yet inquisitive, it must be Ollie that handed these down.  Then after taking them, the phone rings.

"Ok, so you got the keys.  Now I bet you are wondering, 'where does it go'?  Well head back out, there is a door next to the gondola that took you down."

"Alright, any sign of Catnap though?"  He said with a hint of apprehension.  He isn't too keen on meeting him if he can avoid it, and he knows Ollie can keep on the look out for him just like he did earlier.