Chapter 1: Prologue
Chapter Text
Chapter 1 - Prologue
The lab was dark and quiet; the entire room was a mess with several papers and clutter scattered around it and items were left out and unorganized. The clock on the wall read the time was around 11.25pm.
The only source of light in the room was a single light that dangled over a small table in the corner of the room, overlooking a small table.
By the table was a man dressed in a lab coat, the man had a tired look in his eyes and was hunched over on a small chair.
The man’s attention was currently focused on a weird assortment of items that were placed across the table in front of him, a small container, and within it was a rat that laid motionless, the words ‘Experiment 814’ were written on the container.
The rat was submerged in a weird red gelatine with a set of wires attached to it, which led to a small button that the man currently had one of his hand hovering over and his other hand grasping a pencil pressed against a small sheet of paper.
“Alright, test one.” The man said to himself as he rubbed his head, a look of anticipation across his face.
The man proceeded to press the button with caused the small rat to twitch as a small electric shock was applied to it.
The man waited for a second to observe any results.
1 second passes.
2 seconds’ passes.
3 seconds’ passes.
The rat still appeared motionless.
“Damnit, applying second electric shock.” The man replied with a bit of frustration in his voice, as he started to take write down something on the sheet next to him.
The man then pressed the button again; a second electric shock was delivered to the dead rodent.
1 second passes.
2 seconds’ passes.
3 seconds’ passes.
Still nothing, the rat remained motionless.
The man scribbled down some more notes and then slammed his hand onto the desk, before wiping his head and standing up from his chair as began to stroll around the room.
“What am I doing wrong?” The man asked to no one while looking up to the ceiling “I know I’m close, just what am I doing wrong?” As the man gazed down to the floor, exhaustion began to creep into the man’s voice.
“I think you just need to look into different source, Mr Ludwig.”
The man nearly jumped up as he heard the new voice, he immediately turned around.
He was shocked to find that he was on longer alone in this secret lab as another person had somehow made their way inside. The man was properly dressed in a black tailored suit with a weird necklace hanging around him. The necklace was a circular shape with an interesting and complex pattern on the inside.
The mans was obscured by the shadows of the dark room, meaning this face was unable to be seen fully, but he could make out what appeared to be his piercing eyes that were staring right at him.
‘How was this man able to get into my lab, I didn’t even hear him come in.’
He tried to get some answers.
“Who are you and what are you doing down here? You nearly gave me a heart attack.” The tiredness in the man’s voice now gone and replaced with slight anger and shock.
The man stood still before giving a small chuckle “Oh, I’m so sorry Mr Elliot Ludwig, I did knock on the door, but you mustn’t have heard me, it’s just I’ve heard so much about you and I wanted to come down and see you as soon as I could.” He said as he began to fidget and rub his arms.
Elliot didn’t see anything wrong with the person in front of him, just after such a long day with no success he wasn’t in the right state of mind to have a nice conversation currently.
“Well, my inventions quire famous and I’m assuming you must be one of the new employees working here. I’m afraid you’re in a restricted area and its very late. I don’t know how you got done here but is it alright if we have a talk tomorrow, I’ve had a long day.” Elliot Ludwig said as he tried to motion the man to the door.
The man stood up a little straighter, “Oh, right Mr Ludwig, please forgive my intrusion, but I’m not talking about your toys. I’m referring to your research into the poppy flower. But I do find your toys very neat too.” The man said quickly to reassure Elliot.
Elliot’s eyes widened, as he slowly tried to obscure the view of his latest experiment from the man’s view “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
‘How does he know about that? That information is classified.’ Elliot thought in a panic.
“Oh, Mr Elliot there’s no need to lie to me, I know all about you research into the flower, I’ve been looking into you for a while a-and I wish to provide you with my assistance.”
Elliot didn’t know what to make of this situation, this strange person has just shown up in his lab and seems to have knowledge of what he’s researching. Anyone learning about what he was doing could cause great harm to both him and his company. So, he had to be carful about what he would say next.
“Who are you? What do you mean you’ll provide me assistance?"
The man dressed in black took a stroll around the lab, taking in every detail with great fascination and curiosity “Well, what I want is the same thing you want, I’ve also taken great strives to study the poppy flower and its special properties. Its association with life and death is not a new discover, but I think you’ve come closer than most reaching a breakthrough.”
‘For a Human it’s even more impressive.’ The guy thought briefly.
“You seem to already know a lot about it, so why exactly would we need each other for?” Elliot questioned the man.
The man stopped his stroll once again, turning back around to face Elliot. He seemed to try and say something, but then turned back around, once again fidgeting his arm.
“W-well, while I have taken good liberties, the people around me don’t see it that way. Much like you I’ve had to perform in secret and that’s only gotten me so far. I’ve reached a wall, a dead-end on my quest”. The man said in a dramatic fashion.
“So, I thought I could reach out to the one person that could help me, so we can help each other. I want us to pool our knowledge, research and resources together so that we both can achieve our goal.” The man had spread his arms out and then held both his arms together to emphasise the point.
Elliot looked over the man once again. It didn’t seem that he was lying but he still seemed sceptical about the man’s true intentions, he'd dealt with a few shady people in his years running the company.
“While that does sounds like a good idea, but I don’t know anything about you right now. How would we even be able to help each other out like you said?”
“Well, that’s simple Mr Ludwig, I have certain knowledge and resources I think could help you in your endeavour and you have the skills and talent that could help me. By combining both we might just be able to achieve something greater than what we could individually.”
Elliot was a bit confused at the question “What exact resources are you implying I need?”
The man responded by reaching his hand behind his back, before pulling out something almost out of the thin air, it appeared to be some kind of book. The thick book was black in colour; the cover contains an image that appeared to match the same as the on the man’s necklace painted in a gold colour. “Something from beyond this world.” the man said, as he began to wave the book around.
‘Oh, no.’ Elliot Ludwig thought to himself, as he took a good look at the book clutched in the man’s hands.
Doing research into the poppy follower had taken years, while he’d only really invested into it over the last few, he’d had a pasting interest in it before then.
While doing this research he’d gone through many different books that even had a small mention of the flower. This ranged from history, war and even mythology books.
One thing that popped out a lot though was the mention of black magic, stories that involved demons and angels. Demons that would come to make people deals when at their most desperate.
While he didn’t believe the stories at first, the more he investigated the more he started to realise something, if the poppy flower and its properties were truly real, that would mean that all myths talked about could also be real.
He now had a better understanding of what the man in front of him was showing him or even could be himself.
Whatever face Elliot pulled, appeared to give a clear indication to the man in front of him about what he was thinking. As his smile seemed to change into a more reassuring face. “Ok, I know you might understand what I want, but would you at least hear my out before you make your choice?”
‘Did I even have a choice?’ Elliot thought to himself.
“Look like I said, we both want the same thing, we both want to make a better world where people can be happier.” The man said as he began to walk around the room “You are a very capable man with a noble heart that wants to help out others in need.”
Elliot’s eyes followed the man as he moved around the lab, before he stopped at one of the many tables, he picked up a piece of paper laying on it. The man turned it around, revealing it to be a children’s drawing. A drawing was that of several toys that Elliot had created at playtime co, the words ‘We love you Ellot Lodvig’ crudely written on the top in crayon.
“You keep these drawings in here, because you use them for encouragement as you work. Every area you frequent in the factory has at least a few drawings that the children created for you.” The man then motioned his hand around the room. “Most people in the factory look up to you and all are inspired by your creations. I know your colleague’s upstairs were starting to get worried about you, they all look up to you.”
Elliot took notice as the man began to look down to the ground as he continued his speech “And you don’t do it through fear or even power, the people around you just see you as someone that wants to do the right thing.” The man said before looking back up at Elliot.
“You even went out of you way to build an area for orphancies to be taken care of. I’ve seen the children at the Playcare you’ve built; all those children look up to you. You’ve even had the children help you with making some of your toys.”
The Man proceed to pull another piece of paper from behind his back, this one showing an image of several small animals with massive smiles on their face all while standing on top of a logo containing the words ‘Smiling critters’.
“The children were even your inspiration to create these toys, you based them off the children in the Playcare, everything you’ve done was for a simple reason, you wanted people to smile.”
As the man continued to speak, he seemed to get more exited and enthralled with what he was talking about.
“You create things for the sole purpose of making people happy, this...” The man reaches his hand over to the experiment. “This is no different, you want to help benefit people.”
The man then walks up close to Elliot and put his hand on his shoulder “I can provide you with everything you need so WE, can achieve that goal, a world where even you daughter can be happy again.”
The man moved back and placed his hand out for a handshake.
Elliot knew that this decision could be bad, he knew what could happen if he chose to work with him, but at the same point, the man was right. If this person could really help him achieve his goal then it would be all worth it, if they wanted the same outcome would it not be a beneficial thing to work together?
“I’ll agree but I don’t know your name.”
“Oh, just call me Janus.”
Elliot Ludwig looked up at the man before reaching his own hand out to shake. Little did he know what would this one gesture would mean down the line for both him and the very company he’d ran.
*****************
The day in hell was the same as any other, the sky radiated the same red glow that illuminated the entirety of the pride ring.
The ring of pride was home to many different sinners and denizens of hell, that were currently going about their day.
On the outskirts of the ring was Imp City, a large area that was (as the name implies) largely populated by Imps, one of the lowest in hells society.
The place was mainly comprised of large red and grey buildings, that were almost mostly run down. The streets were littered with junk, and fights broke out frequently.
There weren’t many reasons for anyone to want to willingly come to a place like this, but one person currently had one.
The large figured stumped his way through the streets with rundown and dilapidated buildings on either side. Many different residents of the city, who were going about their usually routine seemed to stop upon noticing the individual. Some seemed to stop and stare, while much more were taking a step back and gave him a wide berth. One very scared individual even decided that jumping into an open sewer grate was a good course of action.
Whether the person was even taking notice to any of the passing glances was uncertain, but he didn’t seem to care and he continued to walk through the city.
His walk came to a stop as he looked up at a particular building, one of the very many large buildings that seemed to make up the bulk of Imp cities locations. This building however seemed to have 2 very large, pointed horns poking out the side of the building, giving it the appearance of Imp horns.
The person looks down at a piece of paper he seemed to be holding, the paper was a very crudely drawn promotion flyer.
Wunt, somewun dead?
Cum on down two I.M.P.
Under the flyer it seemed to give a list of directions and even included a small picture of the building in question. The man even brought up the flyer to judge if it was the same. While the art itself looked like it was drawn by a child, he could still see that it seemed to match.
‘Ok, this is the place.’
Notes:
Hope people enjoyed this first chapter.
I'm not sure long it'll be before I get another out.
This first chapter is mainly just the set up.
I plan to add more characters tags as the chapters go on.
Sorry if that's not what I'm suppose to do. I'm new to how the character tags are meant to be added.
Any comments and feedback or welcome.
Thank you, have a nice day.
Chapter 2: A Mysterious Job Offer
Summary:
An average day at I.M.P is interrupted by the arrival of a new client.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 2 - A Mysterious Job Offer
It was a very slow day at the I.M.P Office, Moxxie was currently sitting down at the companies front desk. His head was down, looking over the business’s budget. He was also currently watching out for any potential customers that could walk in the front door.
The office was surprisingly quiet, outside of the occasion argument happening in the neighbouring buildings or even the street below. It was a nice change of pace.
This was because currently he was the only one of his team at the office.
Loona was taken a day off for being a ‘very hard worker’ as Blitz had put it (Much to Moxxie’s annoyance)
Blitz and Stolas meanwhile had gone out to do a bit of shopping.
Due to this Moxxie was left as the one in charge of everything until Blitz got back, this meant he had to answer any calls that came through as well as managing any clients, on top of any other responsibilities he would normally be doing.
Most of the time Moxxie didn’t mind the peace and quiet, he enjoyed in on a normal day, where he could just sit down and do his obligations without interruption.
That would be if it wasn’t for a certain something that had happened, or rather a certain someone, someone that would change both his and his wife, Millie’s lives forever.
Moxxie looked over the desk, to a photo frame that was on the counter next to the papers. In the frame was a photo of him and his wife both holding hands, while his wife was holding a small image in the photo.
It was an ultrasound of a baby, their unborn baby to be more precise.
His wife Millie was on maternity leave and was currently visiting her parents in the ring of wrath. She had been gone how for a couple of weeks.
When Millie had first announced the news of her pregnancy, Moxxie went through a lot of emotions simultaneously, shock, happiness and worry were some of the more prominent ones.
Before he promptly fainted.
It was big news; they were going to become parents; he was going to become a dad and that news had Moxxie scared.
He’d been in a ton of dangerous situations, from a murderous family of cannibals, angels, assassins and he even had to stand in court in front of the seven deadly sins (or rather six of them). Yet none that made him feel more scared them the news of the baby.
So many new variables he had to be considered moving forward.
The biggest worry for Moxxie however, was if he was even going to be a good father.
It was no secret to the people in the company, that his own experience with his parents were not great ones to say the least.
His father was a nasty individual, an abusive mob boss, with a habit of taking his victims as trophies, and his mother had walked out on them when he was very young. It had Moxxie doubting if he would even be good with kids.
‘What if I screw up?’
‘What if the kid doesn’t love me?’
‘What if don’t turn out to be a good dad?’
These thoughts were all Moxxie could thing about while sitting down at the desk, he couldn’t think straight without his thoughts going back towards the baby. The only thing he could do now was try and distract himself as much as possible with his work.
He had already gone over all the companies weapon supplies, and he had made a list of their entire ammo stock and even was able to reorganise all the weapons in alphabetical order.
He had cleaned over all the surfaces around the office and the meeting room so that place looked presentable. He even refilled the water in the company's cooler, anything he could think of so that the negative thoughts wouldn’t come up, and he was running out of things he could do in the office.
There was nothing left for Moxxie to do except take another look at the budget that he’d already gone over, but it didn’t hurt to go over it again.
Most days, when it was slow he’d be able to at least excuses himself (With Blitz’s permission) and go for a little walk or even go out for a bit of food at the local café (or what passes for one in hell).
But, since he was the only employee currently present, it meant he couldn’t leave. What if client came in the short time he was gone?
‘Might as well go over these again, can’t trust Blitz to do this himself. How does one man spent so much of our needed budget on children’s toys?’ Moxxie rubbed his head, trying to make sense of his dumb boss’s compulsive habit.
“Excuse me sir, is this I.M.P?” a new voice said.
The new unexpected voice in the room, caused Moxxie (Who was already on edge) to jump from his seat and fall on to the floor, the papers he once had been looking over in front of him were now flung across the office and were slowly descending to the ground.
As the Imp picked himself off the ground he looked around to see that papers were now scattered around, but his attention was now drawn to the new arrival at the office.
He looked up only to be met with a very large individual.
It appeared to Moxxie that he was so focused on the papers in front of him, he had he failed to notice that a person had not only entered the office but had made their way over to the front desk without him noticing.
The person in question was almost completely covered in what appeared to be yellow fur, with extremely broad shoulders and upper body and 2 pairs of arms, a small pair that dangled from the chest area of the creature’s massive torso. Just above was the creature’s circular head, which had a big pair of eyes and a massive grin with sharp teeth.
Another pair of arms came out of the side of the creature and almost reached all the way down to the floor. The hands on either arm where differently colours, the right being red and the left one being blue. This person’s entire body was all being held up by what appeared to be a set of very thin and lanky legs.
This was all before Moxxie even mentioned how big the creature even was, as it appeared to be around 16” tall, to even fit into his office he was currently couching and leaning over him, how Moxxie didn’t notice this thing was astounding, he cursed his tunnel vision at that moment.
Moxxie could only assume that this was a sinner, but he’d never seen one that looked like this before.
Once the imp had gotten over his initial shock at noticing someone inside the office, he quickly readjusted himself and picked himself of the ground, after remembering this was most likely a customer.
“Oh, my apologies, yes this is I.M.P how can I help you?” Moxxie said in as much a professional tone as he could muster while picking up the some of the papers across the room.
“I need your services to help with killing someone.” The sinner replied.
‘Of course that’s why he’s here, that was a stupid question, Moxxie.’ Moxxie thought to himself.
Once Moxxie was able to finish picking up all the paper, he placed them all on the desk, before addressing the new client directly.
“Sorry for my tardiness sir, would you like to step into the office over here so we can discuss this further in a more private location?” The Imp said while motioning his hands to Blitz’s office behind him. The sinner nodded his head, as he followed Moxxie.
Unfortunately, Moxxie had not been allowed to touch anything in Blitz’s office while he was gone or even enter, unless to talk to a client. This also meant Moxxie was not allowed to clean inside the room.
As Moxxie walked into the Office, he was made aware of how tardy his Boss was. Around the room were several horse toys, on the floor, desk and even on the filling cabinets.
‘Ugh, why does Blitz have to make this difficult, it’s a curse that we haven’t had more incidents.’ Moxxie thought as he tried to keep his composure.
The state of the office thankfully, didn’t seem to bother the client, who had followed him inside. The creature’s big size also didn’t seem to effect or bother him as he made his way through the office while slightly crouched and sat down in one of the client chairs, across from him Moxxie began to sit down in Blitz’s chair, before staring the discussion.
Moxxie straightened up his uniform and cleared his throat before continuing. “Ok, so as you know our company’s speciality in the killing of people on earth, so who do you want killed?” Moxxie said with confidence.
Moxxie waited for the creature’s response, the sinner’s face didn’t seem to express any kind of emotion, it just seemed to have a permanently grin etched on to it. It was kind of creepy (though Moxxie would never say that out loud).
The creature reached one of his large arms to behind his back and rubbed it, before replying in a sort of bashful voice. “Well, there’s a bit of a problem… I don’t know who?”
Moxxie paused for a second “Wait, what do you mean you don’t know who?”
“I don’t know who I want to kill.” The sinner reaffirmed his answer.
Moxxie took a second to understand what the man was trying to say. “Excuse me sir, I don't understand, what do you mean you don't know who? Could you by chance provide more information about the reason Mr….” Moxxie stopped upon realising that he never actually got the client’s name.
“P, Mr P.” The sinner replied.
It was a weird thing with a lot of sinners, while they had excellent memories of everything that went on in their lives before death, the one thing that some seemed to have trouble with was recalling their own name. This led to a lot of sinners adopting new names once they entered the afterlife. It was theorised to be to be because the higher ups at heaven felt they didn’t deserve to keep their old name and so it was a way to punish them, but that was pure speculation.
But that wasn’t what Moxxie was focusing on right now, he needed to understand what the client even wanted killed.
“Well Mr P could you please explain why you want someone killed and who you want, could you by chance provide some more details?”
The sinner seemed to understand, as he started his story.
“Oh ok, so around 10 years ago, I used to work for this big toy company named ‘Playtime Co’. It was a big factory, famous for creating some the biggest toy brands several years ago.”
Another thing a lot of sinners liked to do, that Moxxie had noticed was that they loved to go on monologues about their past and who had wronged them. Blitz had concluded that you should just let them go through with their whole speech. No reason to try and upset and potentially lose a customer, money was important for the business after all.
Moxxie continued listening to the Sinner’s story.
“I didn’t hold a big spot in the company, but one day I had to take some time off, I don’t even remember what for. But the very next day I find out the entire company had been shut down and all the employees had apparently disappeared.”
‘Ok, that’s definitely weird.’ Moxxie thought to himself, while it wasn’t his business to get invested in the stories of clients, he was able to pick up on shady business practices when he heard them. His own father had been involved in many similar activities while he lived under the man’s roof.
Moxxie brushed off the thoughts of his father as the sinner continued his story.
“So, several years go by, I had almost completely forgotten about my time at the place. This changed however once I received a weird package in the mail, it contained an old VHS tape for a commercial for the factory and a letter that said that the employees didn’t disappear all those years ago. So, I was curious and decided to return to the factory and see if I could at least get to the bottom of who sent the letter.”
“Then what happened next?” Moxxie asked with a bit more intrigue than before.
“Oh, I actually don’t remember much after that.”
“That’s it, what do you mean?” Moxxie said really confused.
“Well, I don’t remember the rest clearly, everything else is kind of a blur for me. All I can remember was that I went looking around the abandoned factory for little while and then suddenly everything just going black, next thing I know, I’ve wake up down here.”
“So, you don’t know who or what killed you?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”
“And you want the person responsible for it to be killed?”
“Yeah” The sinner replied nodding.
Moxxie now understood the story a bit more, but determining who exactly killed him could prove to be a bit of a problem. I.M.P
wasn’t exactly made for investigation work.
Moxxie flinched upon remembering the last time he had to do something like that at the camp, it was what he considered to be one of his worst moments. But he also was aware that he couldn’t really miss an opportunity to get a potential new client.
‘I’ll have to discuss the actual way we want to proceed with this, once Blitz returns.’
But until any of that something else needed to be taken care of.
“Well, Mr P you will have to wait until my boss gets back before we can finalise this job, we don’t usually do investigations missions, but we might be able to handle your problem.”
The sinners face didn’t change at all while hearing about the news, in fact Moxxie can’t recall his expression changing at all during their entire conversation. It was like his face was stuck in that one position.
Moxxie waited with bated breath to what the response from the sinner would be.
“Alright” The sinner said, much to the relieve of Moxxie. “I can wait if you want, but just know I’m willing to pay a lot to get the job done…” The sinner gave a quick pause before continuing. “You… do accept earth money down here right or maybe even items?”
“Yes, we can accept human currency down here.” Moxxie said.
Luckily due to their access to the mortal realm, I.M.P were able to use both hell and earth currency, it opened a way for sinners to pay that didn’t really have anything yet.
Which was convenient for the company because a lot of sinners wanted revenge the second they entered hell.
“Everything that I own from earth is yours, I lived by myself and assuming no one has come looking for me, which I doubt, my house should still be full. I have no use for any of it and no family to take it, so it’ll all be yours.”
Sinners were also willing to give anything to get revenge. But Moxxie wasn’t complaining.
“Ok, that sound reasonable, how do you want us to confirm that the target is dead, usually our clients want us to bring a memento from them as prove, but in this case, we might not be able to do that. But we also could provide you with a photo of them once the job is done as substantial evidence.”
“Yeah, a photo will do, I want to get a good look at the son of a bitch who murdered me.” The sinner’s said as his words slowly became laced with venom. Moxxie however was used to this type of reaction and was nonchalant about it.
‘Ok, that’s taken care off, just a few more things.’
There was still the problem of the target’s identity, Moxxie knew he would need to get a bit more information out of the sinner to help with the job.
Before doing so Moxxie opened Blitz’s desk, looking for something as he rummages around in his boss’s assortment of items he kept inside.
After moving around the many weird pieces of junk his boss kept in his desk draw, including a few more horse figures, several condoms (hopefully not used) and even a picture of his boss naked in the shower (he’ll get back to that later) he was able to find a small note pad and pink pen with a unicorn ornament at the end.
“Mr P while I do appreciate you cooperation so far, is it alright if I ask you some further questions that could help me with the mission.”
The sinner merely nodded.
“From what you’ve told me you were most likely killed from behind, did you by chance get any kind of glimpse of the person that might have done it?” Moxxie said as he opened the notepad to a page and prepared to write down what he needed.
“Nope, I’m sorry I really don’t remember anything, the last thing I can kind of remember is this weird room I was in and some bright lights.”
“Do you have any details on what the room looked like?” Moxxie said as he writes down some small notes on the paper.
The sinner brought one of his large arms up to his face as he tried to remember anything.
“I think there were these big machines with eyes on them.”
Moxxie stopped writing and looked at the client with a look of confusion, “Eyes on machines?” he said, trying to sound professional.
“I think it was designed that way to look child friendly, I mean it was a factory for children’s toys” The sinner replied while struggling.
Deciding to move on, Moxxie quickly scribbled something down and began asking more questions.
“Well, can I ask you who sent the letter, that might help us?”
“There was no address on it when I got it, not sure who sent the package.”
‘Well, that doesn’t help.’ Moxxie though, another answer not providing adequate information but still determined he continued.
“If you don’t mind me asking, where is the letter right now?”
“If it hasn’t been moved it should still be in my car, and that should still be by the factories entrance.”
“What type of car was it and were there any other cars around when you did this.”
“My car is a For Mustang, its black and No, there weren’t any other cars around when I was there, just mine.”
‘Hmph’ Moxxie thought that this was a little odd, the imp had originally thought that someone had just set him up to be killed. But if that was the case wouldn’t there be another vehicle at the scene, of the culprit?
None of this was sitting right in Moxxie’s head. But he at least had some form of place he could start looking.
“Is there anything else you can tell me about the package you received; you mentioned a VHS tape.” The imp questioned once again.
“Yeah, it was a commercial for a toy called Poppy playt-” Mr P stopped mid-sentence as he suddenly remembered something “Oh that’s right, the letter also mentioned something about finding the flower.”
“The Flower?” Moxxie questioned, ignoring how silly it sounded.
“Yes, the letter I got talked about the staff that had vanished 10 years ago, that they were still there and they said I should find the flower.”
Before Moxxie could try and infer what the yellow sinner was saying, Mr P seemed to glance around the room. His eyes stopped suddenly as he spotted one object on top of one of the many overfilled cabinets: a small box of crayons.
Immediately after, the sinner’s red hand seemed to shoot off from its wrist and latched onto the small colouring box, Moxxie was able to make out what he could only describe as a weird fleshy robe coming out of the sinner’s wrist and was attached to the hand.
At the same time the sinners blue arm did the same thing, only it grabbed onto a discarded piece of paper on the ground, at a quick glance the paper seemed to have a piece of Blitz’s ‘artwork’ scribbled on it.
Moxxie then witness, as the weird fleshy robe seemed to retract back into both the sinner’s wrist which also retracted both of his arms, bringing both the held items with them.
Mr P then placed the paper down on the desk and began to draw using the newly acquired items.
While Moxxie would question what he was doing, currently he was still trying to process the absolute absurdity of what the sinner had just done.
While working at the company, he had witnessed a large range of different sinner, but he’d never seen one that had retractable arms.
Hell was a weird and bizarre place.
His daze was interrupted once he heard the sinner slam down the piece of paper onto the desk in front of him.
Once Moxxie was able to get a good look, he saw that the picture Mr P had drawn was that of a flower with 4 large almost heart-shaped red petals with a black centre.
Mr P then began to point using one of his large retractable hands at the picture.
“The bottom of the letter said, ‘look for the flower’ and had a picture just like this.” he said while tapping the picture continuously.
Moxxie didn’t know what to make of all this information, none of it really helped identify who the target was, the story just made no sense to him. Why would someone from this guy’s old workplace just happen to post a cryptic message to him around 10 years after the fact for no reason?
But Moxxie took a breath and decided to still go along with it. ‘How does Blitz put up with these kinds of people all the time.’ he thought to himself.
The only solution would be to check around the area he mentioned and see if he could find any more information.
Unfortunately, the crystal they use to access the human was currently in the hands of his boss Blitz, who wasn’t currently here, so any further investigation at the actual location would have to wait until he arrived.
Moxxie turned his attention away from the clients drawing and back at the yellow sinner.
“Well, thank you for your time, Mr P, the information you've provided will helps us out, like I said we will look around the area and try to find your killer, you won’t have to pay until the job is done of course.” Moxxie said to assure the customer.
“We will, however, need to know the exact location of where the factory is and we will also require that you leave a contact number for us, or if you don’t have that you could always come back tomorrow around the same time.”
The sinner quickly took back the paper he had given Moxxie and scribbled out his contact on it before giving it back.
“That should be alright, thank you for your time, Mr IMP, just call me when you’re done.” The sinner said as he brought up one of his massive hands over the desk in an attempt at a handshake.
Moxxie relented for just a second before accepting the man’s hand, not wanting to be rude. The hand was surprising gentle, giving the imp’s track record with getting hurt he was expecting something more painful.
After which Mr P made his way out of the company’s compartment and disappeared out of sight.
Once out Moxxie did a small fist pump in the air with a giddy look on his face ‘Good job Moxxie you got a job.’ Moxxie said proud that he had accomplished his job correctly.
Notes:
Hope you enjoyed the first chapter.
Chapter 3: Preparation
Summary:
Moxxie prepares for the job, as his boss comes back from his outing.
Notes:
Hey, the next two chapters were suppose to be one big one.
But I felt like it was too long and so I've broken them both up.
Hope you enjoy.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 3 – Preparation
Target: Unknown
Location: Playtime co factory
Description: Client was unable to describe target.
Info: Client was given strange VHS and told to meet up at old workplace, Killed from behind by unknown target.
Moxxie gave the document one last look over, before placing it back on the desk, all he had to do was wait for blitz to return. He’d just cleaned up the budget documents he had accidently dropped on the floor earlier and was currently on the computer searching up any sources of info he could on the playtime co factory.
It was a good thing that the mortal realm’s internet was also accessible from hell. Thank Lucifer that Blitz paid for the special ‘Vox Living world package’. Its much better for investigation work then the pony show about friendship that his boss originally bought it for.
Moxxie didn’t have any other things he could do around the office and since the job couldn’t get done until Blitz got back with the crystal, this meant that the sharpshooter could wait take his time to research what he could and plan for the job.
So far Moxxie had been doing just that for the past few hours, not that he was complaining about it.
Honestly, he wished he could do investigation work more often. Moxxie never really got an opportunity to do so, he was even able to prepare a selection of weapons he thought would be ideal for the mission.
Usually when they got a mission Blitz would immediately open a portal and push them through, no plan, no research and it would usually end with the job getting done, but with a lot of unnecessary carnage.
Didn’t even matter what Moxxie was doing at the current time either, Blitz would sometimes just pick him up and lob him through the portal. Moxxie still remembers the time Blitz thought it would be funny to open the portal right under his feet. Thankfully he stopped doing that after the first time.
Although after the last time he'd done investigation work, he now knew not to get too carried away with it and focus on the mission.
Moxxie had been able to go through the history of the company, and it was interesting to say the least.
It was founded in 1930 by a man named Elliot Ludwig and the company had been very successful when it was around.
The man from what Moxxie could find was considered a hard worker who saw everyone in the factory as his family, the man strived to make sure that every child could smile. It was the very reason that he created play co in the first place.
It said that he devoted every waking moment of his life to bring joy to children, it was honestly very inspiring.
He even felt a bit bad once he started to read further into the info about his life that was available.
The man was so devoted to his work that it ended with his own wife divorcing him, due to his work ethic going above his marriage. The man had even lost his daughter.
‘The man had lost so much, yet he continued to bring joy to everyone around him, he didn’t care about himself but other around him’ Moxxie thought, feeling a bit sad for the man.
Moxxie looked through more of the articles, until he seemed go across one that stood out to him.
- Body found on Elliot Ludwig Estate -
Moxxie had to stop for a second to reread what the article said, he really hoped it was a joke.
With a little bit of hesitation opened the link and started going through the article.
“On the morning at 9:45AM, local authorities report that the body of a young boy was found on the estate of the late Elliot Ludwig, an esteemed toy maker and originator of the Playtime Company, the identity of the boy was never confirmed.
Reports say that the child’s body was located upstairs in the man’s bedroom inside a large duffle bag, it detailing that boys remain were disturbed, with organs and even bones from their skeletal structure missing from there body.
“Dear, Satan” Moxxie said aloud to himself almost horrified, he had to take a few moments to really grasp the words he had just read. He was thankful that he hadn’t taken a sip of his coffee that was next to him, otherwise he would have to explain to blitz why both the floor, and the computer were soaked and ruined.
Its moments like this where Moxxie was reminded that every human could look nice on the surface, but underneath it all they could have the most nasty, vile and putrid souls imaginable.
What made it worse in Moxxie’s case was that person could still be around in the pride ring somewhere, assuming he wasn't a victim of the yearly extermination.
Moxxie may have been trained to kill through his whole life, he may even assassinate for a living. But there were lines he wouldn’t cross and jobs he would never like to take.
He had his morals.
Really needing a palate cleanser after reading something so vile, he decided to investigate other topics involving the company.
And after doing a bit of digging, he was able to confirm that yes, what the client had said was true. All the staff had just disappeared one day.
The report went over how on the 8th of August 1995, suddenly all the staff seemed to just up and vanish from playtime co.
Except for one person.
A man by the name of Leith Pierre, the new head of the company. It seemed after Elliot Ludwig had passed away, Leith went from the head of innovation, to become the successor to the company.
Now of course it raised eyebrows to Moxxie that the only person to come out of this ‘Incident', was the current person in charge.
This lead Moxxie trying to do research on Leith Pierre. However, while Elliot Ludwig was a very public figure who always seemed to be in the mood for talking, Leith was a very different kind of person, as there was next to know information about him available, Before, during or even after his time at playtime co.
The only thing he did know was that Leith was investigated after the incident and it he was cleared of any wrongdoing.
Anyone (or at least any sensible person) would point to him as the most likely culprit, but Moxxie wasn't sure.
‘This doesn’t make any sense, don’t you need employees to make profit. If so, why would the one in charge make such a convoluted incident?’
From Moxxie could tell the company never seemed (or what was reported) to suffer any financial problems, so money might not have been a reason.
It did raise a very big question to Moxxie though.
‘What did happen to the staff?’
‘How was it not a bigger story?’
Humans seemed to just want to move on from some tragedies, it seemed.
This lead Moxxie to checking through playtime co’s back catalogue of things they were involved in. while it wouldn’t help with the job currently, it would help distract him (Also he was curious).
This brought him to the list of the many toys and products the company had made over its 65-year run. Moxxie spent a little while going through the different products the company had produced.
A weird doll with red hair, a blue thing called ‘Huggy Wuggy’, a group of collectable animals and even a creature made of doe, just to name a few of the things they made. It was fascinating how vast and varied all their products were. I guess they had to be to stay in business.
But, while Moxxie looked through all the toys, only one thing seemed to come to his mind.
‘I don’t get the appeal.’ His face was blank as he tried to make sense of any of the toys.
Not that Moxxie hated the toys he was looking at, it was just he didn’t get them. He didn’t have any toys growing up.
His father didn’t allow him to have any toys whilst he was a child, his mother had bought him a few. Which were found and probably burned by his father right in front of him.
“I’m raising a MAN, not some DAMN baby, so NO BABY TOYS.” He heard his father’s voice say as he remembers another one of his ‘Lovely’ childhood memories.
He still remembers when he told his co-workers and wife that detail about his life, which he didn’t think was that big of a deal.
The only reason they even got on the topic was because they were discussion what kind of toys they would get for Millie and his baby.
Which lead into a discussion on what kinds of toys everyone had growing up.
However, once the conversation drifted to him, and he stated he didn’t have any toys. It seemed to spark everyone in the office, (Even Loona) to look at him in weird ways, it seemed like they pitied him.
Moxxie just didn’t get what the fuss was about, maybe because he didn’t have any that he didn’t get the appeal. But he really didn’t see any problem with it, unlike his co-workers, who seemed to think he was missing out.
When your being raised in a mob family, your priorities seem to go in a very different direction. His dad had never gotten him any toy growing up and had gone out of his way to make sure he didn’t get any.
He gave another look at the clock on the offices wall.
3.15 pm
His boss (and his boyfriend) had been gone for an almost the whole day at this point. ‘Where is he? He isn’t usually gone this long when doing something.’
Moxxie’s answer was given shortly after, as the silence was broken up by the sound of the front door to the office being slammed open.
Moxxie jumped for the second time that day and looked up towards the door. In the doors entrance was I.M.P’s lovely boss Blitz, as he strolled his way into the office with a few bags in each hand, carrying that confident smile on his face. Shortly followed right after by his Boyfriend Stolas, the former Goetia prince, who was also carrying several bags in each hand, their little outing appearing to be completed.
“Hey, Mox, sorry we’re late, ran into a bunch of assholes at the clothing shop and had to teach them a lesson, got a bit heated and we had to run once the police were called over.’ Blitz said.
‘Well, that at least explains his absence’ Moxxie thought.
He never understood how someone could always get themselves into so much trouble and yet always find a way out of it. His Boss had some insane luck, which he couldn’t explain.
Blitz had since made his way over placing his bags on the counter before making his way over to Moxxie. “So, how’s the day been going, we got anything?” He said as he placed his hands front desk were Moxxie currently sat.
Moxxie sat up in the presence of his boss. “Actually Blitz, we just had a client come in a little while ago.”
“Alright Mox, look at you putting on the big boy pants, can you hand me the client’s sheet, I take it you’ve already made one.” Blitz said while gesturing his hand to be given the file.
Moxxie happy handed over the sheet, that was still on the desk. “Well, Blitz I did what you asked, but I figured I should talk to yo-
Moxxie couldn’t finish his sentence before the sheet was snatched out of his hands by the boss of I.M.P.
As Blitz took a quick look over the file, his smile dropping slightly into confusion upon seeing the client’s sheet, before looking at his employee. “Moxxie what the fuck is this? There's hardly any information, I told you to only accept clients that can provide every detail.” Blitz said with slight annoyance and confusion.
Moxxie was quick to defend his actions while keeping his cool “While that is true Blitz, you also said to always take jobs for sinners that were willing to provide everything they had. I figured I’d wait for you to come back to see if it was doable.”
Blitz was quick to change his tone. “Oh, we got a freshly dead sinner with a massive hate boner, my absolute favourite kind of customer.” Blitz said as the smile returned to his face. “Ok never mind then, good shit Moxxie.” Blitz said as he began to flip through the client’s sheet.
Moxxie sighed, he was nervous for a second thinking he had upset Blitz again. “So, do you want us to do, Blitz? They left a number so if you want to ca-”
“Well no time to waste, I want you to go up and kill the target” Blitz said interrupting Moxxie, as the place the sheet back on the table.
“One amazing benefit we’ve been provided for this kill by the looks of it is that the client isn’t aware of who did it, so we can just kill any old asshole and call it a day.”
Moxxie didn’t look pleased with that answer. “But Blitz, with all due respect I still think we should try and kill the actual target, so I propose that we could go and so a bit of investigation on the fac-”
Moxxie seems to stop talking as he just realised something his boss had said. “Wait, I’m sorry Blitz but I must have misheard you, it seemed like you were implying I was going up there by myself.”
Moxxie looked at Blitz’s hoping to get an answer, but he noticed that Blitz had slowly started to form a bigger smirk across his face, and Moxxie knew when Blitz ever pulled that face it meant something bad was coming.
‘Oh, no’ Moxxie thought.
“Yes Mox, you heard me right, while I would like to just do it my way I know you’d throw a hissy fit if this wasn’t handled correctly and I’m kind of tapped out after going shopping.”
“But are you really sure?” Moxxie seemed to get a bit nervous and rubbed the back of his head. “It’s just last time I was tasked with leading an investigation mission It didn’t go so well.”
“Aargh” Blitz threw his hands up into the air before looking back at his employee “Moxxie there you go again, overthinking things and doubting yourself.” Blitz moved over and placed both his hands the imp’s shoulders “You made a mistake, you know you’ve made a mistake and we both know if anyone in this company is capable of learning from their mistakes and improving, it’s you.” Blitz said with a smile on his face.
“You really mean that?” Moxxie said with a glitter in his eye.
“Of course, I think this will be a good test to see how you do while running solo.”
“Wait, will I get the crystal? Moxxie said questioning if his boss.
“Oh, no no no nope” Blitz said placing his hand over the crystal that was on his glove. “I trust you with the mission for now, let’s not get carried away.”
Moxxie thought about reminding him of mission in Antarctica but chose to not change the subject.
“So, how it this mission going to work then?” Moxxie as asked his boss.
Blitz reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone “Simple, you’re going to go into the factory, do you little ‘investigation’ as you put it, find the asshole and kill them.” Blitz using his fingers to form a gun to pretending to shoot.
“Then once that’s done, you’re going to use you phone and sent me the picture of the dead target, then I use the crystal to bring you back. You get the target, we get the money, everyone wins.”
Moxxie nodded before making his way over to the storage room to get some weapons he had already prepared for the job, before he could though he was stopped by Blitz.
“Oh, before you go digging around for a few weapons, I don’t think you’ll be needing many for this mission, I think you should just take a pistol.” Blitz said to Moxxie.
“Blitz, don’t you think I should at least have more than one weapon for this mission?”
Blitz looked at Moxxie with a look of reassurance, a face he’d rarely seen on his boss’s face “Moxxie, you have to understand, you tend to overthink things, so I think you should try to only bring a single gun on this mission, that way you won’t spend a while fussing.”
Moxxie didn’t like the answer, but he also trusted Blitz enough to know figured he was right about this. “Fine, if you say so.” Moxxie said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his trusty pistol.
The gun was a custom M1911 pistol with a red and black colour scheme. He’d just completed an inspection of the weapon early, so he was aware that it was in good condition (like all the weapons he uses), but Moxxie still wanted to give it another quick look over before leaving.
It never hurts to double check.
He’d used this pistol a lot and was aware of its workings, inside and out. The weapons currently had a full magazine inside with 7 rounds.
While Moxxie was checking over his weapon, Blitz had begun to raise his hand, the crystal on his gloving orange colour before a portal began to martialize in the middle of the office.
Blitz went and placed his hand on Moxxie’s shoulder “Ok, Moxxie remember don’t overthink it, also feel free to take your time, I know that didn’t work well last time but I know you won’t disappoint me.” Blitz said as a final act of reassurance to his faithful employee.
Blitz gave his employee one last smirk “And beside it’s a toy factory, so this might be a good time to break your toy virginity.”
Moxxie looked back and Blitz with a look of ambivalent, “While I do appreciate the encouragement, I wish you didn’t have to word it like that.”
Moxxie then turned towards the portal.
‘It’s just an old factory; how bad could it be?’ Moxxie thought as he entered through the portal, and it closed behind him.
Notes:
Hope you liked this chapter.
I don't know if I write Blitz a bit OOC.
I just needed to find a way to make sure Moxxie no go into the Factory with a arsenal of weapons.
Chapter 4: Conversations
Summary:
Blitz and Stolas get into a quick conversation.
Meanwhile Moxxie starts to make his way towards the factory, before making a quick detour.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 4 - Conversations
Stolas sat idlily by as he watched both Blitz and Moxxie have their conversation and as the small imp entered the portal. He’d watched the whole exchange between the two imps from the side of the room. Once the the portal had closed behind Moxxie, he decided to make his way over to Blitz. As Blitz turned around he was quick to notice that there was a small knowing smile on owl's face as he approached. Blitz looked at Stolas with a confused look. “What? What’s with that face?” Blitz questioned his owl boyfriend.
“You really do trust him don’t you blitz, otherwise why would you let him go by himself, I think it’s kind of sweet.”
Blitz rolled his eyes in a weak attempt to play of his emotions. “Well duh of course I do Stolas, I trust him an awful lot. I think he’s capable." Blitz continued to speak as the brought his hand up to his head. "The problem is since he found out he was going to become a dad he’s become more distracted, and now he's even started doubting himself. So, I figured, as his boss, that he needed a little confidence.”
Stolas eyes lit up as he began to realise what Blitz was doing. “Is that why you had him work here by himself and also why you had us take out time during the day?” Stolas questioned Blitz.
Stolas was kinder curious why Blitz had left the little one by himself all day in the building, he got even more confused once he had them both just go around the city just doing random stuff, that his Blitzy wouldn't normally want to do.
Blitz nodded his head “Like I said, I truly do think he’s very capable, he just got a lot of issues up here he had to deal with up here." Blitz said as he pointed his two fingers to his head, "luckily one of his best qualities is that he always gets back up, learns from his mistakes and tires again.”
Stolas’ smile grew a bit bigger “You really do love him, don’t you?” Stolas said softly.
Stolas while growing up had been taught to always keep his eye out for danger, this included always making sure to read the body language of other people around him.
So, while the former Goetia hadn’t worked for IMP very long, he was quick to pick up on a load of little quirks that each of the members displayed. One thing he noticed quite a bit was that Blitz always seemed to check over on Moxxie, when he seemed down and Moxxie did the same thing.
It was honestly quite sweet.
He never told either of them this, granted, while spoil a good moment.
Blitz was quick to defend himself as he throw his hands up and began to walk around the office space. “Yes platonically, he’s one of the only people that’s stuck by me through a lot of my bad moments, I mean I’ve been an ASS to him a lot over the years.” Blitz head looked down at the floor guiltily.
“I tried being hard on him to try and teach him how much I care. I now only realise how much that didn’t help, If anything he has the opposite effect on him.” Blitz raises his head again to look at Stolas, the owl was able to make out the guilt in the Imp's eyes. “Moxxie’s father was a truly awful person to him growing up, I generally think up until he met me his life was only miserable. Even now, his dad is still having a influence on how he thinks, and now with the baby on the way Moxxie is more on edge than ever.”
Stolas listened to Blitz with intent, it was becoming more clear to him why he always made sure to look out for Moxxie.
Stolas nodded his in understanding, while doing so he began to slowly walk over the window, before peering out and glimpsing at all the different imps going about their lives below. The old Stolas would of looked out and not seen much of anything, but being with Blitz and the others had made him have a new understanding for them, these people went through the same problems as him. “I can understand why that would be a problem. When my little Octavia was born, I worried every day that something bad was going to happen or I was doing something wrong.” Stolas said, reminiscing on old memories.
Blitz spoke up “Even though I didn’t raise Loona from a baby I always tried to make her feel loved and tried to help her along, even when she was horrible to me and others.”
Stolas leans down so that he’s face to face with Blitz “Which is why we both can help Moxxie and Mille, when they need it.”
Blitz enthusiasm came out once again “Hell, yeah we can.”
Both of them had a small chuckle to themselves, sometimes it was just nice to have these moments.
But while the moment was nice, it did also have pull up some bad memories about his own family, his face slowly formed into a frown as a consequence. “I also know what it’s like to have a bad father, my dad didn’t even have time for me, or any of my siblings.” The owl said to Blitz “I don’t think he cares for any of us, he didn’t even come to my trial.”
Blitz looked at Stolas with a look of understanding and his face morphed into a sad one, he still remembers the day he first met Stolas and bared witness to the Owl's father's attitude when he slapped the young prince for bowing to him. “Yeah, I know a thing about bad fathers” Blitz remembering their very first encounter (or second technically).
Stolas looked around “That’s not even the worst thing he’s done to one of my siblings.”
Blitz seemed a bit intrigued by the sentence “Why, what was the worst you crummy dad did?” Blitz said unsure if he was going to regret the answer.
Stolas looked sad “He killed one of us, for falling out of line.”
As he turned back to Blitz, the imp was able to see the hurt in his eyes. “Oh, oh shit, I wasn’t expecting that answer and I thought my dad was bad.”
Stolas face immediately shifted from one of sadness into a sterner look soon as the words had left Blitz mouth. He crotched down to be on Blitz level and grabbed his hand before bringing him closer to him. “Don’t undermine what you, Moxxie or anyone else went through, what you went through is just as bad.” Stolas said.
Blitz nodded as he looked at Stolas, he forgot while the owl could be seen as very sweet and nice, he was still a former Goetia, that title bares weight and responsibility, no doubt he had to deal with some bad people.
Blitz let out a small sigh “None of our dad’s really cared, did they?” he said sorrowfully.
Stolas could only give a sad node in response. “Never forget I also saw what your father was like, and from what I saw he wasn’t a good person either, my father also never cared for any of us, all he cares about is getting in the good graces of everyone above him, we were all just a means to an end.” Stolas replies sadly, his face looking down to the ground.
“I can’t say I’m any better. Even if I didn't mean to, I still neglected my own daughter and her feelings. Now she won’t even speak to me or have anything to do with me. But unlike my own father I’m going to try and make it better.” Stolas said as he clutched his into a fist.
Blitz seeing this, decides to brighten the mood, “Ok, that enough trauma dumping for a while.” Blitz says as a smile returns to his face.
Stolas look at Blitz confused for a few seconds, he had no idea how he was able to bounce back from bad experiences.
“Hey, you know while I was in that store, I was able to pick up some more of that special coffee you like.” Blitz said to Stolas grinning.
Stolas looked at Blitz as he face contorted into grim expression upon remembering the taste, “I didn’t say I liked it, I said it was the best they had.”
“Yeah, well welcome to the life of an Imp, everything can suck, and you make do with what you get, none of that rich shit here.” Blitz said trying to lighten the mood.
The way Blitz had said it made Stolas lose his serious face as it slowly formed into a smirk before he started laughing.
“Hahaha ok, I guess your right, can you give me two sugars?”
All the people across the building would hear as they pasted the I.M.P office would be the sound of two men laughing there assess off.
----------------------------------------------------
In the matter of a second, the hot and choking air of hell was suddenly replaced with the much more calm and pleasant air of the living world as Moxxie stepped through the portal and began to look around, as the portal shut behind him.
After making sense of his surroundings. The first thing that caught his eye was the massive factory Infront of him.
The factory was made up of several smaller buildings ranging in shape and size with several chimneys on top of it.
The two things that stuck out the most to Moxxie was just the sheer size of the place, while he had seen pictures of the place will doing research, he couldn’t get the real scale of how big it was until he was the front of it. The other thing that stood was the variety of colours that made up the building’s appearance. The whole thing almost gave off this weird whimsical vibe. Growing up in the Greed ring for most of his life, Moxxie was very familiar with these types of buildings, heck they were the most common building in Greed.
The only difference being that the ones back in Greed were always extremely nasty that spewed out toxic fumes into the open sky, clouding the entire ring’s skies in a nasty black smog. The colours used were also very drab and miserable.
This factory gave of almost the complete opposite vibe, the warm colours and hues applied gave it a nice feeling. The difference was night and day.
‘Ok, that’s enough admiring the building Moxxie, you have a job to do’ Moxxie reminded himself as he slowly made his way down the road to the factories entrance.
Approaching the huge factory, the first thing he was able to notice was the massive archway loaming over the front entrance. Right behind he could see a massive open area, that was assumed to be the companies carpark. Making his way under the arch he began his slow track across the open area, the road was cracked and damaged, the walls around the place had vines and tress growing across them and the entire carpark itself was empty. No doubt when the factory was still running, the place would have been filled with vehicles, but no it was just a reminder that the place was shut down.
It honestly felt a bit weird, going through area now it made Moxxie feel on edge, the lack of any kind of sound wasn’t helping.
That was until reached the end of the carpark, where he noticed a single vehicle that was parked at the very entrance.
It was a black mustang. Moxxie immediately went over to it upon realising that it mostly likely was his clients.
‘Ok, I guess the investigation starts now’ Moxxie thought as he tried to open the car’s door.
Griping the driver side door, he pulled up the handle to try and gain entre, to no avail, it was locked.
'Should of asked the guy where he kept his keys.' Moxxie thought reminding himself to mentioned that question in any future investigations.
It was most likely that the keys would be on the clients body somewhere in the factory, luckily growing up the mafia Moxxie had to perform several shady dealings and practices. One of the lesser skills in the imps repertoire that he acquired from it, was that he knew was carjacking, so opening the car door itself was no big deal. While a little rusty at the job, he was eventually able to open the lock.
Upon forcing the car door open, he started to climb into the front seat. He began to scan around the vehicle hoping to find the package that Mr P told him about. His search didn’t need to last long as low and behold on the passenger side seat was a package.
Moxxie reached over the seat and picked up the package, the brown envelope didn't have any address or even any words on it at all. The only real clue on its content was the 'Playtime Co' brand logo on the front of it. He began to tilt on its side to empty its contents. Two items fell out on to the seat in front of Moxxie's hooves, a letter and an old yellow VHS tape.
Moxxie firstly picked up the tape to inspect it, the front of the tape reading ‘Vintage Poppy Commercial’ on the front of it.
The other thing was a note, the same note that supposedly lead the sinner to this place (and his death), so Moxxie picked it up an began to read it.
EVERYONE THINKS THE STAFF DISSAPEARED 10 YEARS AGO
WER'E STILL HERE.
FIND THE FLOWER
With a picture of the same flower that the sinner had drawn laying at the bottom of the letter.
‘Hmph, I guess this proofs that what Mr P said was true, but the big question is who sent him here and for what purpose?' Moxxie said as he brought his hand up to his chin, as he began to ponder.
The other thing Moxxie was quick to pick up on was the fact that letter in fact had a few spelling mistakes on it, not only was the disappear spelt incorrectly but apostrophe was in the wrong place in the we're.
“Still better then Blitz’s handwriting though” Moxxie said getting a chuckle out of himself.
The ‘wer’e’ in the letter implies this was written by an old employee of the factory, but the poor grammar used made Moxxie call into question that detail.
‘I’m starting to think that this was prank or something more sinister, they lured him here to kill him or somethi-’
Moxxie’s thoughts were quickly interrupted by the sound of a buzzing noise.
Moxxie quickly jumped, nearing hitting the car's roof as he also lost his grip on the letter as it fell out of his hand and onto the floor of the car. Moxxie quickly scanned the environment to find the source of the noise, reaching into his jacket pocket reading to pull out his weapon. Before realising that it was coming from his jacket pocket or more specifically, his phone.
Moxxie gave a sigh of relief relisting that he had over reacted over nothing 'I've got to keep my cool, did Blitz want to talk to me already?' Moxxie thought before taking his hand off his gun and reaching into the adjacent pocket which contained his phone before pulling out the still vibrating device.
He took a second to read the ID, before all the shock in his body was replaced with surprise.
‘Loving wife (With baby)’ was displayed with a picture of his wife Millie behind it.
Moxxie’s eyes lit up upon reading the phone. ‘Oh, crumbs that right she said she’d call around this time, I completely forgot’ Moxxie then quickly fumbled with the buttons before finally answered the phone as he sat up right on the car’s seat.
‘Hey Moxxie, how's ya doing?” The voice on the phone said, Moxxie began to relax upon hearing the voice of his lovely wife on the other end of phone, it was a much-needed relief hearing her soothing voice.
“U-um yeah, I’m doing alright just about to start a mission, but how are you two doing?” Moxxie said as he started to relax a bit more.
“'Giggle', we’re both doing fine Moxxie, I just got through helping the family make dinner, Ma kept insisting that I sit down and just relax.” The deathly voice of his wife said through the phone.
Upon hearing that news Moxxie's eyes began to grow with concern, he new his wife didn't enjoy being pregnant, or rather she hated that she might have been seen as a liability.
“For once I think I agree with you mother on something, I hope you’re not putting too much strain on yourself, not that I don’t think your capable.” Moxxie said as he tried to correct himself, he knew this situation was delicate.
“Oh, don’t worry Hun, I know my limits” she said in a reassuring voice. “I really do wish you decided to come down with me through.”
Moxxie felt a bit guilty once her heard her say that. “Yeah, I know I should have but we still need to think about money and besides I don’t think your parents would have liked me being there.” He said as he began to remember how they handled the news about the baby.
“Oh, Mox.” Millie said in a slightly sad tone before brightening back up, “Trust me, once the baby arrives, they’ll both be congratulating you for making a beautiful baby." Millie said. "Also that reminds me, both my ma and pa are going to give us my old ‘hand-me-down’ baby clothes that me and my siblings used to wear so we won’t have to worry about buying baby clothes.”
Moxxie couldn’t help but smile, his wife always found a way to reassure him whenever he felt down. How he was ever able to meet someone like her was a curse for him.
“That’s great news Millie, also I was thinking that when you get back, we can go and look for a cot for the baby.”
“OOOHHH” Millie said across the phone with enthusiasm, “That’s a great idea Mox” Millie said causing Moxxie to smile more.
“I’m also thinking that maybe we could get some different decorations for the room, I’m thinking you pick out half and I pick out half, we can both pick out different decorations for the baby.” Moxxie said as kept thinking about how the child’s room would look.
“Oh, I love that idea Mox, we might not even have to actually buy the cot, my family built all of ours from scratch, so we might be able to build our own.”
Moxxie didn’t know what to think of that idea, but it could help him with bonding with the In-laws, and it seemed like something he could get behind. “You know what, I do like that idea, we might have to make a trip back up there, just you and me, and the baby of course.”
“I’m glad you like the idea Moxxie, Sorry this was only quick hun, but I’m gonna to have to go now, I’ll see you again next week.” His wife said.
“Wait, Millie before you go.” Moxxie said attempting to stop here from hanging up.
“Yeah, what is it?” Millie asked confused
Moxxie hesitated for a second, he wanted to say this to her before, but he didn’t have the courage too, but the talk with Blitz from earlier and Millie here, it gave him the confidence to say it.
Moxxie took in a huge bit of breath before finally speaking his peace.
“Just know that I’ll respect you decision about what you want to do once the baby does arrive. I’m more then willing to stay home and take care of it, while you go and work at IMP, don’t let anyone tell you what YOU want to do.” Moxxie said with confidence in his voice.
Yeah it had been a few rough months for the couple, when the baby was first announced Moxxie and Millie had a very long talk about there next steps, It was a tough talk to get through, but it needed to be said, whether they were even ready for a baby or not.
Millie seemed to be having doubts about herself and if she would even be able to carry on her job if she had the baby. So Moxxie constantly reassured her that if she didn’t want to have a baby, he would follow her decision.
While a long discussion, they did come to the decision that they did want the baby. The other big question was what Millie would do once the baby was born. Being pregnant meant that she had to take time off doing the thing that she loved most. She loved it more than anyone else at the company. But would she even want to come back to the company once it was born? It worried her if she would still be able to go back after 9 months of inactivity. It became evident that she was having doubts about her usefulness after a while, but Moxxie and the other were quick to reassure her that she was not a burden or useless. The other question would be who would take care of the baby? If they were both had to go on missions, someone would need to take care of the baby. Moxxie had given it some thought but hadn't really spoken up about it yet, he had come to the decision that if they weren’t other options he would quit his job and take care of the baby, so she could continue her favourite job. He could always get a job in a different field he liked. He also knew that Blitz wasn't going to like the decision that he was making, but it wasn’t his to make.
He heard her voice starting to starter a bit before you answered.
"Sometimes I wonder how I even got someone as lovely as Yo-yo-yo-yo-yo-yo-“
Moxxie pulled back the phone for a second, for some reason the phone appeared to be glitching out and his wife's voice was just on repeat, this had never happened before.
“Um, Millie can you hear me you appear to be glitching on my end of the phone.”
The repeated glitching lasted for a few more second before it appeared to go back to normal.
“ Yo-yo-yo, Hey Mox, can you hear me now?” his Wife said, her voice returning to normal.
“Yeah, I can now, I don’t what happened there.” Moxxie was just as confused as her.
They’ve never had any issues like that before; whether it was across different rings or even across the mortal realm and hell, the connection would always stay good. Maybe it was because it was a combination of both at the moment, either that or he had he should get his phone checked once he gets back home.
“Well, like I said, I’m really glad to have a husband like you.”
“And I’m glad to have a lovely wife like you.”
“Well, I got to go, happy killing Moxxie and say hi to everyone else for me.” Millie said whilst she gave a kiss to the phone.
“I will once I’m done, I love you both.” Moxxie said as he also kissed the phone.
With that the phone call ended, as Moxxie placed the phone back into his pocket with a new fuelled determination to get the job done.
He firstly picked the letter off the ground and put both it and the VHS tape into his seemingly infinite jacket pocket. Before opening the car's door and marching towards the front door of the factory.
He now had a new reason to complete the job, he wasn’t doing this job for himself, he was doing it for the two most precious things currently in his life.
His Wife and Baby
He opened the doors to the Playtime Co building,
'Time to find my target.'
Notes:
Well, only after 4 chapters and around 10,000 words we're finally gotten inside of the bloody factory.
I'm sorry about Millie, I don't know if I did a good job writing her.
I also wasn't sure if I should've added the Blitz and Stolas part at the end of the last chapter or the beginning of this one.
I also didn't expect these chapters to get made so fast.
Thank you for watching.
Have a good day.
Chapter 5: Entering the Playtime Co. Factory
Chapter Text
Chapter 5 - Entering The Playtime Co. factory
The silence of the playtime factory was broken as the front door was opened and Moxxie began to enter inside.
Once inside, he began to scan around the contents of the first room. It didn’t seem that different from any other factory entrance. A typical visitors’ reception desk laid out in front of Imp, with two doors right behind it that lead further into the factory and another couple of doors placed on the left and right sides of the room.
The first thing that stood out however, was a drawing of a creature on the wall right behind the reception desk, with a speech bubble saying ‘Welcome’. Moxxie was able to identify the creature as ‘Huggy Wuggy’ one of the very many toys that had been produced by the Company during its active time.
The floor itself was decorated with white square tiles with an occasional, blue, red and yellow tile that brightening up the dull décor.
The entire room seemed to showed its age, as all the colours and decorations on the walls and floor were muted and the art on the wall was faded and the room also appeared to be littered with random stuff such as boxes and other clutter.
But Moxxie kind of did expect the factory to look like this, this place has been abandoned for 10 years after all. However, what he didn’t expect was the place to be so bright, as the lights for the room appeared to be on, bringing a bit of life into the room.
‘Why the heck is the power still on?” Moxxie thought to himself.
Moxxie not deterred by the weird questions he currently had, slowly made his way up to the reception desk, with his pistol gripped tightly in has hands and a determined look in his eyes as he made sure to continuously scan the area for any signs of movement, he knew someone was in the building somewhere, so he had to be as cautious as possible and keep an ear out.
Making his way closer to the desk, his attention was drawn to a green VHS tape on the front counter with dust covering, it making it difficult to read. Picking up the tape and giving the tape a quick blow revealed the words ‘Leith Pierre Closing’ written on the front of it.
‘Leith Pierre, isn’t that the old head of the company?’ Moxxie thought as began to glance around the rest of the room.
He was quick to notice that a conveniently placed green VHS player was just off to the right side of the room, with a tv attached to the wall right above it, which seemed to matched the same colour as the tape. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where the tape was meant to go.
‘Why is there just a video tape lying here though?’ Moxxie thought while looking it over.
Could this potentially be some sort of trap, after all who would leave a tape lying on the counter like this? especially after so long.
Moxxie was also aware that if he played the tape inside the building, the noise produced could attract anyone hiding nearby, and that could pose a serious problem.
Then again that could also be beneficial as it could lure out his potential target, and there was also an off chance that the tape could provide some much-needed information on the company.
Moxxie’s placed his hand under his chin as he contemplated what the better outcome could be for this situation. In the end Moxxie’s curiosity won out on this cautiousness, maybe he was hanging out with Blitz too much.
Walking over he placed the green tape into the VHS player, to be careful Moxxie made sure to back up just enough so he could watch the tape but also keep an eye out for any potential assailants.
A second later the tv screen transition from it’s a black display to any image that was mostly made up of static. Moxxie focused his eyes on the screen, he could just about see what appeared to be an image of an arm of some sort among the tv static.
‘The tape is old and presumably been just lying on the counter for ages, so the possibility that it didn’t work isn’t farfetched.’ Moxxie thought as he was about to move on. That was until he heard audio began to play.
"Hi, my name is Leith Pierre and I'm the head of innovation here at the Playtime Co. Toy Factory.” The voice on the tv said.
‘Must be an old introduction video for people visiting.’ Moxxie assumed now paying attention to the tape’s audio, while his eyes would occasionally dart around the room.
“If you're seeing this, then you're trespassing. Yeah, we play this little tape on loop whenever we close the factory for the day. So, trespasser, just to make you aware. While we pride ourselves primarily on our high-quality toys and excellent childcare, we also pride ourselves on our security.”
‘Or maybe not.’ Moxxie thought, as he continued to listen to the tape.
“For example, this facility is full of hidden motion triggers which, once set off, will turn on the factory's emergency alarms and directly contact the authorities! And that's one of the more tame aspects of our security system. No spoilers...”
“So, you've got my warning. It's not too late to turn around. I just hope you're certain whatever you're doing is worth it."
After that the screen went dark again, indicating its end. Moxxie made his way out over to the VCR, with a confused look on his face.
‘That’s a weird way to give a warning, why would a toy factory even need so much security, is the toy industry really that cutthroat?’
Moxxie was also sceptical about the security mentioned in the tape, why would you outright say you had hidden sensors and security? Unless you were trying to bluff and there actually wasn’t any.
Just from the way he heard Leith Pierre speaking, he kind of got the feeling he was a bit arrogant, so him bragging about it couldn’t be too far off.
Also, even if they did have security of that calibre, there was a strong possibility that that it would’ve most likely been inoperative after 10 years. Considering his client had already gone through the factory and the authorises appeared to have not shown up was further proof of that.
But he still was a bit curious what he could have meant by it being the ‘Tame’ method, what could the more serious method be, assuming Leith wasn’t lying.
‘I should be careful while exploring.’ Moxxie said as he prepares to go deeper into the facility. ‘I can’t assume anything, the last time I did I almost got my team in serious trouble.’ Moxxie thinking back to a certain Murderous family.
Moxxie's 'tour' of the factory continued, as he first checked the two side rooms next to the entrance. Both appeared to not have much in them, the room on the right was a small gift shop with nothing but empty boxes and the left room seemed to be a small security room with nothing inside.
Finding nothing of value in either of the side rooms, Moxxie began to follow the corridor past the reception desk. Following the path through a colourful archway and a small corridor he found himself in a big circular room, with a set of windows making a skylight, letting in the soon to be setting sun.
The walls were all decorated with an assortment of cut-outs of the companies’ mascots.
The room seemed to act as some kind of hub from what Moxxie could tell, as around the room were several doors with Plagues above them assumably saying where each one lead.
The words theatre, testing, innovation, cafeteria and power were all written on the plagues above the doors.
He could also see two other pathways that didn’t seem to contain a plague of any description and archways that lead to different areas.
The centre of the room had a raised circular platform with a few oversized blocks on top of it. An information board was also placed just in front of the platform, with several toy boxes that appeared to contain Huggy Wuggy toys littered about.
Looking just above the platform, the Imp saw a Playtime co sign, with several stage lights around it that beamed down onto the platform itself.
Moxxie gave the room a quick scan and found that almost all the doors appeared to be locked. The only way he could seem to take forward was one of the two doors with no plague above it.
Moxxie decided to go up to the platform and do a quick inspection.
The description seemed to just give a brief history of the Huggy Wuggy toy and how it helped make the company as big as it was today. Moxxie was also only now able to notice that the blocks placed out on the platform all had letters on them that spelled out Huggy when lined up in front of the description, which he thought was sort of fun and clever.
The history of the Huggy toy and the playtime company wasn’t anything Moxxie hadn’t already found out while doing investigative work.
It really only seemed fitting they would have something like this dedicated to the toy in the front entrance.
Picking up one of the boxes Moxxie was only now able to get a clear look at the Huggy Wuggy toys. The toy in question was covered in blue fur except for their hands and feet that were instead a yellow colour.
Its body was also slender and very lanky, with disproportionately long arms and legs with a weird triangular shaped head that contained two large eyes and a big, oversized smile.
The only piece of clothing that toy seemed to have on him was a thin bowtie around its neck, which Moxxie could help but think looked quite nice.
The rest of the thing though, Moxxie couldn’t help but be a little creeped out by it. It was just something about the dead eyes and the smile that just rubbed the imp the wrong way.
“I don’t get it, why would people be interested in a toy like this, what’s the appeal?”. Moxxie said to himself. 'Maybe I'm just too old to enjoy them now'.
The other thing that Moxxie was quick to notice and make him feel off, was the fact that all the lights appeared to just be shining down on a big empty space on the platform.
In the centre of the platform was a slightly small circle that was raised lightly more, the problem was there was nothing on it. It felt like something was missing for the area.
The lights were clearly supposed to shine down on something and yet there nothing in the spot.
‘Was something supposed to be here?’
That wasn’t really an important question now, the real big question was were was his client’s body?
Moxxie had enough of the room and with only one door he could take forward that was available to him know he decided to follow it.
Making his way through the archway lead down another hallway, the pathway was comprised of several more archways with a sign reading ‘MAKE-A-FRIEND’ placed above one. The hallway also displayed posters of the mascots, giving out motivation advice.
‘At the very least there’s only one way that P could have also gone down, so tracking him might not be a hard as I thought.’ Moxxie thought as he carried on along his path, through a corridor, down a maintenance hall and then through a big metal door until he seemed to find himself in a storage area of some description.
Multiple boxes were scattered around the room alongside multiple racks of shelves. Toy parts were also strewn about the room, across both the shelves and the floor. A conveyor belt system also was set up on the right side of the room.
‘This definitely wasn’t the scenic route’
Moxxie made his way through the room as he began to check around as he noticed that several of the toys were dismantled and thrown around the room haphazardly.
‘There has to be away out of this room somewhere’ Moxxie thought as he continued to scan around, P would have to have come through here assuming the imp hadn’t missed a door somewhere, which he doubted as he was very thorough.
He couldn’t seem to find another open door in the room anywhere, before he noticed that the conveyer belt door were the toys and other items go was open and appeared to lead through a vent.
Moxxie was a bit sceptical about going on to the conveyor belt. ‘Its highly unlikely he could choose to go in through the vent system, but a quick check wouldn’t hurt.’
Moxxie put his weapon back into his jacket pocket, before he began gripping on to the ledge of the conveyer belt and hoisted himself up to get on top and followed it along into the vent systems open hatch. Moxxie was quick to noticed that the convey belt took a sharp turn at a 45-degree angle, once inside the vent.
Not wanting to fall, he edged his way forward slowly to try and get a better look at what was down the other end of the conveyer belt.
However, as he edged his way forward, he failed to notice a small sensor across the side of the conveyor. As once his hooves moved across it, it triggered the conveyer belt to start moving, in a second Moxxie found himself being almost pushed over the edge.
“Oh, Crumbs!” was all Moxxie could say before he began to tumble his way down the vent. The Imp landed face first on the Convery belt as he felt himself the belt began to move him.
As he got up, he looked around the small vent as flashing red lights blared in his face and his ears. As the alarms went off, side compartments on the walls of the vent opened dropping toy parts on to the conveyer, and Moxxie’s face.
“OW” Moxxie said as the hard bits of plastic began to assault his noggin.
A few second later he’d reached the end of his journey as the vent opened into a new area as he began to slide out the vent and into an open tube filled with toy parts inside.
Immediately the Imp attempted to pull himself out, in fear of potentially more toys parts falling on top of him and hurting him. He made his way over to the edge of the tube, he tried to reach out but accidentally found himself falling out and a few feet straight onto the ground below.
*Thud* as Moxxie’s face hit the concrete. 'That didn't hurt much, but still.'
Moxxie took a second to pick himself up and readjust to his new environment and contemplate why he always found himself getting caught in these types of situations, at least no one was around to see it this time.
He began to turn back around to see that the vent he had exited from was in fact one of three similar vents that was feeding the toy parts into big tube-like devices. The one he had been put in fortunately was broken so he was easily able to climb out.
The tubes all seemed to have hatches on their front and levers were placed on the side of the devices. The hatch leading onto a conveyer belt that run alongside the tubes, that assumably would take the toy parts out.
Moxxie followed the conveyer belt as it appeared to lead through a series of three machines, with the conveyer belt next leading to another closed door that would take it to another area, once going through the machinery.
Looking above the machine, there were letters which spelt out ‘MAKE A FRIEND’. As well as a series of catwalks running just above the machines.
In the centre of the room appeared to be another description displayed, along with what appeared to be a button on some weird looking podium right next to it with the words ‘MAKE A FRIEND’ written on it.
He also noticed that all three of the big machines were decorated to look like faces with…googly eyes.
‘Wait, machines with googly eyes? Isn’t that what P said he last saw?’ That meant he must be close to where he got attacked.
Checking around the room some more, he saw the exit door in front of the machines. Deciding to try and leave the room he went up to try and find a way out. Whilst walking over he saw a message was on the door saying, ‘Nobody leaves without a toy!’, Moxxie was also quick to notice some kind of scanning device placed next to the door, indicated that it might be used to open the door.
Moxxie gave an annoyed sigh as he rolled his eyes, well guess he had no choice. There didn’t appear to be another way in or out of the room.
The universe it seemed, wanted him to have a toy and so he would have to get one if he wished to proceed. He turned back around and made his way over to the ‘Make-A-Friend’ machine.
Going back over to the description by the machine and he looked over at the button displayed right next to it. He raised his hand and raised over the button for a few seconds.
‘So, what do I just press this? I really hope people didn’t have to pay for these when they visited, that’s the kind of shit Lord Mammon would pull off.’
Moxxie hesitated for another second before pressing the button, the imp then watched as the three big tubes dispensed the colourless toy parts onto the conveyor belt, which took them into the machines.
He first watched as the colourless toy parts were then coloured as they entered the first machine, then began to get assembled as they entered through the second, the assembled toy then exited out of the third machine and the belt stopped moving.
Moxxie couldn’t lie he thought the whole process was fun to watch, he could see why the place was enjoyed by tons of people, as he began to walk over to his newly created toy.
On closer inspection of the toy, it looked like a cat, but it had features and a colour scheme that made it resemble more a bee then a feline. It was coloured yellow with several black stripes across its legs, body and tail, it also a set of antennas along with cat ears on the top of its head and small insect like wings on its back.
‘Why does this remind me of Beelzebub?’ Moxxie though, hoping he hadn’t accidently offended the Queen Bee.
Moxxie however couldn’t deny the appeal that the toy had. It looked cute and unlike the other toys he’d found, this one didn’t look that creepy and it was in pristine condition (Due to being brand new). He honestly felt it was at least worth keeping.
‘Well, it does say I can’t leave without getting a toy, maybe Millie will want it, or we can keep it for the baby later.’ Moxxie said has he began to pick up the fructiferous feline.
“Meow, meow, meow, meow, buzz!” Played from the toy as he began to pick it up, toy’s voice echoing around the room.
He made his way over to the door and placed the toy on the scanner next to it, a few bright lights began envelope the toy and a small monitor above the door, showed an image of the ‘BeeCat’ toy. A few seconds later the door began to slowly raise up. Moxxie took the toy off the scanner and put into his jacket, ‘I’ll find somewhere to put you when I get hom-.’
Moxxie’s thoughts were immediately interrupted upon witnessing the sight that greeted him on the other side of the door, his eyes growing wide as he quickly reached back into his jacket pocket and fumbled to pull out his weapon, before aiming it ahead.
On the other side of the door was another hallway like the others he had already been through, only the first section of the hallway was illuminated while the rest of the hall was swallowed up by utter blackness, that made the way forward hard to navigate.
But just in sight before the darkness was an horrific sight.
Blood, bones and guts were everywhere, with a few toys parts and mechanical parts thrown about the hallway, the walls were painted crimson.
Moxxie couldn’t even tell what he was looking at. He expected a dead body sure but not… this.
He’d been on a lot of different missions, with a lot more different types of circumstances, and some job… got messy. But he’d never seen anything this brutal before.
There was no way he would even be able to identify the body. There was practically nothing left.
As Moxxie began to take in more of the massacre in front of him, he was able to identify something just out of sight in the shadows.
It was the sound of crunching and grinding, the crunching of bones and to be more specific.
Someone or something was eating the body.
Was it even a person? Moxxie had never considered that the target could potentially have been an animal of some kind. Maybe a stray creature had taken up home inside the abandoned factory.
He couldn’t make out anything while it was concealed in the darkness.
This fact only fuelled the fear that was slowly building in the imp’s mind
as he began to visualise what the creature would even look like as his s head to fill in the blanks.
‘It tore apart this person, what could it be, it must have sharp claws and teeth, heaven knows what else its capable of.’
All these thoughts were starting to influence Moxxie, his arms began to slightly shake as he held his weapon, a few drops of sweat poured down his face and his breathing started to become more rapid and shallow, he could even begin to hear his heart in his ear.
He began to take slow and calculated steps backwards to provide more distance between himself and the creature, his pistol never lowering and never taking his eyes off the darkness, too afraid to even blink.
The only two noises that Moxxie could hear was the sound of entity chomping away at its meal and his own heartbeat. He started taken more steps before his fear began to increase once he realised something else.
The chewing noises had stopped.
Moxxie breathing began to become more rapid and his heartbeat became louder. His heart felt like a jackhammer, like it was going to burst out of his chest at any moment.
The utter silence in the dark hallway was then replaced by the sounds of growling noises that became increasingly louder.
He had been spotted.
Moxxie tried his hardest to keep his cool, he was a trained assassin, he’d dealt with worse. He knew that whatever was hiding could reveal itself any second and once it did Moxxie had to take the shot.
He steadied his breathing, making sure his hands were firm on the gun’s grip, his finger on the tigger ready to fire with the hammer pulled back.
As he took one last small step back, no sooner had Moxxie move, something fast had darted out of the dark hallway and directly at the Imp.
*Bang*
Without missing a beat, Moxxie fired his weapon and immediately jumped to the side to avoid whatever was charging at him. Moxxie could feel the air whoosh passed as the thing just brushed past him.
The thing appeared to stumble past Moxxie further into the make-a-friend room.
Turning around quickly Moxxie raised his weapon preparing to aim at the target.
But once he turned around Moxxie, could only look confused.
Now hunched over in the middle of the make-a-friend room was a big blue creature which Moxxie instantly recognised, he’d only seen it like five Minutes prior in the main area.
Huggy…. Wuggy?
Only this one was much bigger, it appeared to stand at around 17 to 18 feet by Moxxie’s rough estimate, making its lanky form all the creepier.
As it began to turn back around to face him, he saw the sweet innocent smile that was adorned on all the others of its kind was gone and was open, revealing several rows of very sharp jagged teeth, with bits of meat stuck inside of it and hanging out. The front of its blue body was also stained and covered red from the blood of it's victim.
Moxxie didn’t even know what to say about what he was looking at. You could've given hundreds of guesses for what the target could have looked like, but he never would have expected this.
On another quick inspection of the thing the sharpshooter was also able to notice a small bit of blood leaking from a small hole around the left shoulder of the creature.
His bullet had met its mark. Though it didn’t seem to have any effect on him, as it was still standing.
Both just seemed to look at each other for a few seconds, before the Huggy Wuggy let out an animal scream.
Moxxie’s questions would have to wait for now. The investigation was now over, and the assassin job had begun.
Chapter Text
Chapter 6 - A Tight Squeeze
No sooner had Moxxie readied himself, Huggy Wuggy had began to charge at him, his right arm raised as it attempts to hurt the imp.
*BANG*
Moxxie without missing a beat, fire his second round from his gun and immediately jumped to the opposite side of Huggy’s raise arm to dodge the attack.
The bullet met its mark, hitting Huggy in the chest area as he stumbled past Moxxie once again.
The way Huggy was moving around was making it a little harder to get a direct hit on him, but at least the bullets were still landing.
As the imp begins to steady himself, he twists his body around to fire another shot at Huggy. However, upon turning around Moxxie's eyes began to widened as he found that Huggy had already recovered from the shot to the chest and begun to charge at him again and was only a foot away from Moxxie, with his arm raised once again.
Moxxie had very little time to think about what to do, dodging this time might not be effective, but he couldn't thin of anything else as Huggy took another swipe at the imp. Moxxie with no time to think of a new plan, once again tried to avoid in a similar fashion as the first.
Only this time while Moxxie was able to avoid the attack, he felt his arm was suddenly empty and he could hear the distinct sound of metal object hitting the floor. Moxxie looked towards his hand a found that it his gun was not missing.
While Huggy hadn’t been able to swipe at Moxxie directly, his swipe had been successful in knocking the gun right out the imp’s hand, as it got nicked by the swipe.
Moxxie quickly turned his head, only to see his favourite weapon sliding across the factory floor and into the middle of the room.
In a panic Moxxie attempted to run over and retrieve it, but this idea was short lived as Huggy Wuggy had moved in the way, getting right between him and his weapon, blocking any chance of retrieving it at this point.
Looking up he was able to get a better view at his opponent. The first thing he was able to notice was the two new bullet wounds he was now sporting, in the torso and shoulder. However, despite the gunshot wounds and blood leaking from them, indicating a good hit, Huggy didn't think so, as he showed no signs of pain and it also appeared that he had not slowed down either.
This wasn’t good.
Without a weapon this would prove to be a problem, guns were Moxxie's specialty, without them he couldn’t work at peak performance. Not that he hadn’t lost or even dropped a few guns before while on a job, but that was why he always made sure to carry at least a few spare weapons.
While had started to take combat training with both his wife Millie and co-worker Loona, he doubted it would prove to be efficient against at target that so easily was shrugging off injuries like this.
Huggy Wuggy once again went for anther attack and without a means to fight back properly, all Moxxie could do now was dodge. As Huggy came in for another swipe, the Imp attempted to avoid again.
*Swish*
However, this time Moxxie proved to be slower, as he peered down at himself only to see a slash across his trousers’ leg, exposing his red skin underneath. While the attack didn’t appear to have draw blood or hit flesh, any closer and it might have been serious.
“Oh, this is my favourite outfit” Moxxie said slightly annoyed and concerned.
‘This is bad, a bit closer and he would have got me.’ Moxxie thought as he started to panic. His calm demeaner had started to vanish along with his weapon and the creature was getting closer to hurting him with each attack and all the Imp could do was dodge now, he needed to think of a new plan and quick.
As Moxxie tried to think of a plan, Huggy had took another swipe at him.
*Swish*
“Arrgh” Moxxie groaned in slight pain as he looked to find a small cut on his jacket’s shoulder.
Moxxie turned to look at Huggy once more, as he did his gaze turned to right behind where Huggy was standing and he could see his weapon laying just a few feet away right behind him, Huggy hand moved back around to where his Gun was and was once again blocking his path once again.
In that instant, Moxxie had an idea, but it was risky and in any other situation he wouldn’t even dream about doing it.
Huggy Wuggy stepped towards the imp once again, his figure towering over the imp as he approached. Only this time Moxxie didn’t try to move, he just stood still as the blue toy got closer. Once Moxxie was in arms reach, Huggy raised both its arms up, ready to attack his prey once again.
Only at that very moment Moxxie put his plan into action and dived forwards with his arms stretched out in front of him and using his small size, he was able to jump right between Huggy’s legs and began to scurry across the floor to reach his weapon. He knew he had to be quick; the creature would be on him in about a second.
He saw his gun just a few steps away as he scrambled across the factories floor, reaching out his hand as he tried to grasp his weapon. But just as he reached it, he felt a sharp tug on his tail and his forward momentum grind to a halt as he fell straight forward and he smacked his head on the floor with a small thud.
He felt his body being dragged across the floor for a brief moment before he found himself being hoisted up by his tail, now face to face with Huggy Wuggy as he dangled by his tail like some cheap piñata.
He could hear the growls coming from the creature and feel the creature’s hot breath on his face. Moxxie watch as Huggy began to slowly open his mouth wider revealing several more rows of sharp teeth, the foul smell of flesh also hit Moxxie's nose as Huggy Wuggy pulled him closer into towards his mouth, preparing to make him his next meal.
The creature however couldn’t fulfil this task, as he soon heard the click of a gun and found himself face to face with a pistol aimed directly as his face. Luckily it seemed that Moxxie was just able to pick up his gun before Huggy had successfully grabbed him.
*BANG*
The gunshot echoed around the room followed by the unholy screams of the blue mascot as a massive splatter of blood, exploded from the creature.
While Moxxie was unable to line up the shot perfectly due to being both upsides down and dangling, he was still able to land a shot into the creatures left eye.
Moxxie’s victory was short lived as soon the creature in a fit of pain and rage, began to fling the imp around violently by the tail before throwing him. The imp flew for a few seconds before he slammed against the one of the factories walls, all the air leaving his lungs, as he also began to feel a sharp pain his back as he peeled off the wall and fell to the ground, his pistol dropping beside him.
‘Oh right, in the diaphragm’ Moxxie thought in pain as he braced both his hands against the floor and attempted to pick himself up, while gasping for air, that had HURT.
Luckily it wouldn’t be the first time he’d been thrown into a wall, the only difference being this creature also wasn’t calling him ‘Fatty’.
He slowly looked up through the pain and looked at Huggy Wuggy, who was currently screaming in pain and clutching the eye he had shot, he also noticed blood had began to seep down from under the hands creatures hands as he grasped its face.
If the creature wasn’t angry at him before, it was going to be now.
He knew in a few second Huggy would once again attempt to attack him and while winded and hurt, he would be in trouble. He needed a few more seconds to recover before he could properly fight back.
Looking around for something that could assist him, he was able to notice a flashing light just to the right of him. The flashing light was located above the now open vent that the toys from the machine were supposed to go through.
It appeared to be big enough for him to get into to and it looked like Huggy wouldn’t. At the very least it could provide him with a few seconds.
Not wasting anymore time, he was able to push himself up, grabbing his gun and made his way over as quickly as he could while recovering from the blow to the back.
Every step felt like a struggle as heaved his way over to his safe space, he was too sacred to look back as he knew Huggy could no doubt be right behind him. His fear was confirmed once he started to hear Huggy Wuggy’s growls and they were a lot angrier sounding now.
With one last burst of energy, he jumped into the open vent and turned around with his gun aiming, ready to fight back. Only for the doors to immediately close from behind him. Leaving Moxxie alone in an almost pitch-black vent.
Moxxie reached into his jacket and pulled out his phone to use its light. As the phone illuminated the darkness, he noticed that it wasn’t any different from the last vent shaft he was in.
Slowly Moxxie’s deep breaths returned to normal and he started to traverse the vents to find a way out. Now that he finally had a moment to reflect on his situation, he started to have questions.
‘What the heck did I just fight?’ Moxxie thought to himself, the answer appeared to change rapidly in the Imps head as the encounter went on.
When he first saw the carnage that the thing was responsible for, he suspected it to be an animal of some kind and not a human.
This answer was quickly proved wrong when he was able to see the thing for himself and he then suspected it was some kind of old robot used by the company. It wouldn’t have been the first time he had dealt with a robot on the job, thinking back to ‘Loo Loo Land’.
But that couldn’t have been the answer either, as it was shown that the thing had bled once shot, although it did show no immediate reaction to the bullets.
So, the only conclusion Moxxie could come to was that the target in question was just some guy in an old mascot costume (Lucky him), most likely some random homeless person or someone with a mental problem that had taken refuge inside the factory and was also potentially on drugs of some description. That would explain both the lack of a reaction to the bullets and unstable reactions the creature appeared to be displaying.
If so, then this would change how Moxxie would have to approach the target.
The most important rule he’d learnt while being an assassin is always making sure to kill the target quickly and efficiently. Otherwise, you risk the change of the target getting away or even blowing your cover and alerting other people to your presence.
This meant making sure to hit a target in its vital areas and while that was easy normally, when inside a mascot costume it presented a unique challenge of being unable to locate the vital points, effectively.
Granted you could still make a rough estimate, but it did still pose a small problem.
The other issue was the possibility of the target either being ‘not of sound mind’ or using human narcotics.
Another important rule when doing an assassin job is being able to predict what the target is going to do next so that you can prepare. While the target is unstable it becomes more harder to accurately predict what they would do next, leading to a higher chance of the getting hurt.
The use of certain drugs also meant that the target might be unable to feel pain properly, or just mitigate it, something Moxxie had noticed was true about his current target. This could turn a simple job into a much harder one as the target posed a bigger problem and wouldn’t go down as easily.
Moxxie still remembers one such mission where I.M.P had to kill the leader of a drug cartel, only for him to fall into a pile of his own drugs and go on a rampage. The guy kept refusing to die and it almost felt like he wouldn’t (At least until Blitz used that rocket launcher).
While these things, individually wouldn’t normally pose a problem, they both had the effect of costing both time and ammunition when on a mission, and currently Moxxie only had 4 bullets remaining, with not back up or additional weapons to rely on.
So, if he wanted to kill this thing, he needed to be extremely careful. A single wrong move could prove to be fatal for him in this case.
Moxxie began to walk further down the vent shaft, his phone illuminating the path forward, as his hooves clunked on the metal floor, the vent system seemed to branch out into different paths as Moxxie made his way further through.
‘Well at least this conveyer belt isn’t moving’ Moxxie said trying to look on the bright side of this situation.
As he moved through the vents a bit further, he was soon able to hear something ahead. It was the sound of the metal walls rattling and clanking, he didn’t take long to figure out what was doing it as he soon noticed his tall, blue and creepy target manoeuvring down the vent shaft in front of him. Its figure crouched down so he could fit inside.
‘Oh, crap it’s in the vents now, at least it saved me the trouble of looking for him’ Moxxie thought as he raised his gun again to hit the target dead on. ‘Now all I have to do is sho-.’ Moxxie paused as he realised an important detail he nearly overlooked.
‘Shit, I can’t shoot in the ventilation system.’
Shooting a gun in this enclosed metal space would cause the gunshot to echo of the walls and potentially damage his ears, even leading to permanent loss of hearing. A bullet being fired also had a high chance of ricocheting off the vent’s walls and hitting him instead.
The only solution would be finding a way out of the vents first, so he put his gun back into his jacket pocket and began to run down another vent path, away from Huggy.
The vent twisted and turned as Moxxie tried to Navigate his way through the place properly. Every wall looked the same, with multiple paths to choose from and the occasional flashing red light adding to the tension of the chase.
All the imp could hear was the sounds of Huggy also making his way through the vents as it relentlessly pursed its prey, the sound of clanking and banging metal in his ears as he tried to find a way out.
The only silver lining to this whole ordeal was the fact that due to Huggy’s immense size, it made it difficult for them to properly fit into the vent and so they had to hunch down and pull himself along using his arms, which greatly effected his speed. A problem that the imp didn’t suffer from.
‘I guess being little proved to be a viable component in this mission.’ Moxxie thought trying to keep a cool head while being hunted down by the creature behind him.
His chase lasted for a bit longer as Moxxie desperately tried to find anyway he could to get out, he didn’t want to use the gun, but at this point he was contemplating if it would come down to that being the only option.
This all changed once one of the maintenance doors decided that Moxxie was having too much of a good time and decided to close right in front of him, leaving Moxxie at a dead end.
Moxxie turned back around, as he began to hear Huggy getting closer. Shortly after he was able to see the creatures face appear from out of the shadows and was making his way towards the Imp, its one good eye almost seemed to pierce into his soul as he made his way towards his trapped target.
Moxxie didn’t want to do it, but it looks like he had no choice as he reached into his jacket for his gun. The options right now were between a potential bullet wound and ear damage verses guaranteed death.
But just before he could fire his gun, the door next to him opened once again.
‘Must think I’m a toy or something’ Moxxie thought, stashing his gun back into his pocket and diving into the now open door as he began to run as fast as he could through the open shaft, with Huggy Wuggy still in close pursuit.
As he ran further down the path he looked ahead and noticed that the conveyor belt took an incline upwards, which would make it more difficult to move up.
“Oh, COME ON!” Moxxie shouted as he began to approach the incline and began to scale the ascend. As he began scale the conveyer belt he started to slow down due to the added effort needed and he began to feel tired.
This tiredness was short lived as he turned around and saw Huggy Wuggy was getting closer. In that very moment Moxxie doubled his efforts, his legs going into overdrive as he began to go as fast as possible up the vent, he clenched his teeth and shut his eyes as he went faster, his legs were aching and begging him to stop, but he couldn’t stop.
‘G-got to keep going until I reach the to-.’ Moxxie’s thoughts were cut short as due to his eyes being closed, he was unable to notice that he had not only reached the top of the vent, but he also didn’t notice that it took a noise drive straight down.
Moxxie had no time to prepare as he once again found himself falling down a ventilation shaft.
*Crash*
*Clank*
*Ding*
Moxxie’s body was thrown and tossed around as began to fall through the ventilation system, only coming to an end once he found himself flying through the ventilation exit.
Once he exited his body rolled a bit further before crashing into a broken part of the conveyer which halted all his momentum.
His head was spinning, but he still wasn’t out of danger and needed to be ready. Once he able to stand up and adjust himself, he was able to get a clearer view of the new location he was in.
It was a massive room suspended above a dark abyss, with no bottom in sight. The only footholds were a few metal catwalks that ran through the room and some conveyer belts with metal railings to prevent things from falling. Multiple pipes and wires that also ran through the room.
The conveyor belt Moxxie was on, met its end here. It seemed like part of the belt had been destroyed and prevented Moxxie moving anywhere further.
The catwalks stretching across the room were also too far for Moxxie to reach.
So, he was trapped.
The only other area even near him was the conveyer belt running just above the one he was on, that for some reason had a massive box on it.
Moxxie didn’t think about it as his attention when back to the vent door he had just came out of, he knew that Huggy Wuggy would most likely burst through it to continue its pursed of him any second now.
Now free of the vents and no having to worry about damaging his hearing or himself, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his trusty pistol and aimed at the vent door in front of him.
Judging by the speed Huggy could move, Moxxie estimated it would take at least 2...no 1 and a half seconds for the creature to close the gap and reach him.
When he fought him in the other room, he at least had the option to dodge out of the way. On the positive side Huggy also wouldn’t be able to avoid either. This meant it would come down to how good of a shot Moxxie was.
‘I’ve only got 4 bullets left’ Moxxie thought, as he tried to calculate the best possible use for each bullet.
The few seconds he spent observing the vent, felt like ages as he prepared for the inevitable. Sweat began to pour down his face as he took one last deep intake of breath and aimed his weapon firmly at the door. His teeth clenched and his eyes focused intently at the door.
He was ready.
Not a second later, the vent door in front of him was blasted off as the blue creature charged at him full speed attempting to close the gap.
*BANG*
*BANG*
While the creature was fast, Moxxie’s trigger finger was faster as he shot two bullets directly at the creature landing another shot in the torso and one in its leg, its speed making it hard to accurately hit the target.
Moxxie watched as the creature appears to stumble from both the gunshots, as it started to lose its footing and begin to tumble and roll towards the imp.
Moxxie didn’t know what to do as Huggy continued to roll towards him, he couldn’t get a clear shot on its head, with it currently position and he didn’t have much time to react as they slammed right into each other, breaking through the end part of the conveyor and sending them both flying.
Both Moxxie and Huggy began to fall through the air. Moxxie immediately slammed onto the metal catwalk right below him and almost bouncing of it into the abyss, fortunately the imp was quickly able to wrap his tail around the railings to prevent the fall.
Huggy had not suffered much better, as due to his momentum, he had travelled a little further then Moxxie and had landed on a row pipes that ran through the room, directly across from the metal walkway Moxxie was on.
This left a gap separating the two from each other across the bottomless abyss.
Moxxie tried to pull himself back up but due to injuries he had accrues in the fight so far and a bit of fatigue was having a bit of trouble. As he looked up, he was also quick to notice that he had dropped his gun on impact with the metal floor and it was currently on the catwalk right above him.
Quickly looking to his side, he noticed that Huggy was also trying to pull himself up on the pipes
Moxxie knew he had to reach his gun quickly before Huggy got a chance to attack again. Using the last of his strength he pulled himself up using his tail and was able to get himself back onto the catwalk.
He turned quickly and noticed Huggy was slowly making his way across the pipes towards him as the blue monster tried to maintain his balance on the way over. He knew Huggy would attempt to jump over the gap to get him once again and he had to stop it.
Moxxie had to do it now, as jumped and slide across the catwalk and picked up his gun before rolling over onto his back with his gun draw and turned around pointing in the direction of Huggy.
At the same time Huggy had reached the end of the pipes and jumped over to reach the catwalk where Moxxie currently was.
Everything seemed to go in slow motion for Moxxie as Huggy leaped through the air. But Moxxie didn't seem worried anymore, in fact a small smirk began to appear on Moxxie’s face.
‘You may be tough to shot while on the ground because you can move around, but while in the air you can’t change your momentum or direction.’ Moxxie thought as he lined up his shot and pulled the trigger.
*BANG*
With the 6th bullet shot from his pistol, Moxxie was finally able to land a clean hit right in between Huggies eyes. The creature went motionless as its body slammed right into the railing, a huge splash of its blood painting the catwalk in the process. It then proceeded to almost peel of the side of the walkway and fall as it hit multiple pipes on the way down before disappearing into the darkness below.
Moxxie arms fell beside him as he took a few deep breaths while laying on the sidewalk, it was over.
He was tired, but it was over.
A small smile appeared on the Imps face.
‘Ok, the target has been dealt with’ Moxxie reached into his pocket to pull out his phone ‘All I got to do is take a picture…. of the target…. that just fell…. into the bottomless pit… …shit.’
His smile quickly leaving his face upon the realisation.
Notes:
Ok, one more chapter and we'll be out of Poppy's first chapter and the story will start to drift away from the actually game more.
I'm aware that the story currently might be too similar to the actual poppy game, but it'll start to change, its just the first chapter of the game is so short that there wasn't any room to do anything different.
Hope you've enjoyed the story so far.
Have a good day.
Chapter 7: Case closed (& then opened)
Summary:
As Moxxie closes one case, he then finds himself opening another.
Only this one is a lot more harder to close.
Meanwhile the imps actions seem to have attracted the attention of a particular individual.
Notes:
We're finally getting out of the first part of poppy playtime with this chapter.
Also I've got a piece of cover art on the first chapter, special thanks to silverdo_ve over on Instagram for doing the artwork.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 7 – Case closed (& then opened)
“Moxxie, you’re an idiot” the imp said to himself, he'd been saying it to himself for what felt like the past 10 minutes, still laying down on the catwalk as he looked towards the ceiling above, currently contemplating his choices.
He was so close to getting the job done right, everything had gone swimmingly and he'd been able to successfully complete his first solo mission. However, at the last minute something had to happened to ruin the imps good time, the target had fallen into a bottomless pit and now he found himself unable to get a photo of his target, meaning…no proof for the kill.
This meant no way to proof that the target had been successfully killed and that meant no pay out for the job at hand.
‘A massive reward as well for doing the mission, just…. gone’ Moxxie thought sadly.
All his enthusiasm for doing the job had immediately been squashed by the revelation, all the joy gone and deflated like a punctured tire.
He finally decided to picked himself up off the ground so he could sit upright on the metal grate, his face filled with disappointment and frustration. All directed at himself.
As he looked around, he caught notice of the blood stains on the catwalk, the last remnants of his kill, not enough to proof to confirm and just a reminder of how much he had failed his task.
‘Blitz is going to hate you for this you know?’ Moxxie thought to himself angrily, ‘Loona is going to laugh, Stolas will be annoyed, and Millie will be-’
“NO” Moxxie shouted to himself as he tried to clear his head of the negative thoughts. “No Moxxie, Millie won’t do anything, and Blitz will understand, he said so himself, it was an honest mistake.” Moxxie said trying to reassure himself.
He remembered what Blitz had said to him before he went off on the mission, how he trusted him and how they all make mistakes.
He picked himself up off the ground and began to put his gun back into his jacket pocket, before reaching back into his other pocket to retrieve his phone, hoping to call Blitz and find at least some way to remedy this situation.
“Just give Blitz a call and see if we can fix this, we could always jus-.” Moxxie’s eyes lit up in horror as searched through his pockets but couldn’t feel his phone in his pocket.
His breathing became sharp again as he frantically rummaged through all his pockets in hopes; he’d just misplaced his phone in the wrong one. But while searching through all of them he was still unable to find it, which caused Moxxie to begin to panic.
“W-Where could it be? I had it a second ago while I was in…” Moxxie words started to trail off as he began to look up from the metal walkway, all the way up to the area he had previously entered from at the top of the room.
“…the vent” Moxxie said as he started to have the realisation.
Moxxie now only realises that he never got the chance to put his phone away when he was being chased through the ventilation system. He last remembered having it, just before he started to fall through the vents and got thrown into the room.
In his frantic avoidance of Huggy he must have dropped it and didn’t even realise due to the circumstances he was in. That meant it must still be up in the vent system. Moxxie began to search around the room, a desperate attempt to find anything that help him reach back up to the ventilation above.
But as his eyes scanned around the room, they stopped upon noticing a small object on the catwalk further away from him, right near where the imp had previously landed. A small rectangular object, with the words ‘I Don’t cry, I sing’ displayed on the back with a design that looked like a dressing room, displayed around the words.
It was his phone.
Moxxie brought his hand up and wiped the sweat of his face as he breathed a sigh of relief. Looks like his phone has slide down with him and against all odds had just landed on the catwalk with him. Moxxie didn’t really want to think about the odds that it just happened to fall down here and not into the abyss along with his dead mark.
Moxxie strolled his way over to pick up his Hell phone.
“Oh, that was close, for a second I thought I lost my Phon-.” Moxxie’s relief was once again cut short upon picking up his hell phone.
While there wasn’t any visual damage on the back of the phone, upon picking it up and turning it around he noticed that the screen had several cracks in it. Which Moxxie could only assume had happened as it smacked into the vent’s walls on the way down.
Moxxie was also quick to remember he had felt himself landing on something when he fell on the metal grate, which he didn’t pay much mind to at the time.
Moxxie pressed his thumb down on the screen to turn the phone on.
Nothing happened.
Moxxie almost felt his heart atop.
“No, no, no.” Moxxie repeatedly said in an almost whispering voice as his eyes began to franticly look over the phone and continued to press down on the screen, in vain hope that it would magically turn back on.
But it didn’t turn on, not even a single sound was produced from the device, as he kept looking over trying to see if there was any indication that it could still function.
He stopped pressing the button and just stood still in stunned silence, His pupils shrunk down while his hand dropped down to his side with his phone still firmly within it. As he came to a horrible realisation.
His phone was broken.
Meaning he couldn’t call Blitz.
So…. he couldn’t get back home.
He was trapped.
“Fuck……. FUCK!” Moxxie said now all his misery and sadness now replaced with boiling anger, his pupils returning to normal before shifting from black to red as he began to look around the area, he needed to find something, anything to release his anger into.
The only thing near him was the metal railing, which Moxxie immediately slammed his leg into it.
*CRASH*
The metal railing bended and almost tour off from the rest of the walkway by the shear amount of force that the wrathful Imp had inflicted upon it.
Having released a lot of the built-up tension Moxxie was able to calm down, or at the very least subside it. The red in his pupils shifted back to their normal black as he began to stroll back and forth on the walkway while both his hands grasped his head, with a look of panic and distress on his face. His situation now going from a relatively small size cockup to a full blow disaster in a matter of seconds.
Moxxie just couldn’t believe how quick the entire mission had gone wrong, and now on top of everything else that happened. he was now stranded AND needed a new phone; he almost felt like crying.
Moxxie rubbed to top of his head and took deep breaths and tried to remain calm as possible. He knew this was a problem, but he needed to stay calm, he couldn’t afford to have a panic attack here, with no one around to help him it could spell more trouble.
He knew Blitz would try to reach out to him at some point to check on him, but the only problem was when that was, it might take a while. He had told Moxxie to take his time on this job.
Even if Blitz did call him to try and check-up, there was no guarantee that he would show up. In their line of work there were times when their phones had to be put on silence when doing serious missions, something that happened on multiple occasions, so the idea of Moxxie not answering a call wouldn’t be something that Blitz would find odd.
This meant he could be in the human world for a week by himself, which posed a few problems for the imp.
At the current moment, the first thing the imp could focus on was making his way out of the factory.
Slowly he made his way across the catwalk, the only sound accompanying him being the clanking of his hooves on the metal walkway as it echoed through the room.
Also with the adrenaline starting to subside, he also was starting to feel the pain from fighting Huggy was beginning to set in, and the rail kicking.
The imp began to look around the area ahead, he still had no idea what the room was even for, tones of catwalks, a dark empty abyss below, the giant flower……. wait what?
Looking further ahead, passed the maze of wires, pipes and catwalks, Moxxie was able to notice a massive painting of a red flower on the wall on the other side of the huge room. The flower was made up of 4 red petals with black centre, which appeared to be painted right over a door.
Moxxie honestly didn’t know what to make of it. It stood out among everything else in the room.
‘Why is there a flower painted on the wall, and why does it look so…. familiar?’ Moxxie thoughts were then drawn to something in his pocket as he began to go through the items that he had inside before he pulled out the note he found in the client’s car outside.
He began to unfold it, and sure enough he brought the paper up to match it with the flower he saw ahead. Sure enough they were the same flower.
‘Wait, so is this where P was supposed to go?’ Moxxie thought as he tried to make sense of what was even going on.
While investigating the area, he almost completely forgot about the note and didn’t think it held any real meaning. But now as he stared at what was in front of him it started to raise a lot of questions.
Like whom even sent the letter? It was a question that Moxxie had when he first asked the client.
Was the guy in the Huggy costume the one who sent the letter?
If that was the case, then that could mean the room ahead is where he might have lived or worked, there was no way of knowing for sure unless he checked and at this point, he not reason not to, the room ahead was the only area he could access.
Making his way across the catwalks a bit quicker, he was able to get a better look at the poppy painting as he got closer. But he now noticed that it wasn’t the only ‘Decoration’ present, as several words were also painted across the poppy such as ‘Go Back’, ‘Turn Around’ and ‘Danger’ in red, yellow and blue paint, along with several arrows of the same three colours pointing away from the door to emphasize the point.
But that wasn’t the only thing that caught his attention, just before the door were several toys strung up by rope dangling on either side of the catwalk leading up to the door, including a small green robot, a few red dinosaur toys and even a few of the bee toy he made, all with varying degrees of damage. It was like some weird messed up art piece.
‘Ok, someone doesn’t want me going in there’ Moxxie thought to himself a little creeped out by the weird display in front of him.
But Moxxie didn’t have any other options now, no other paths he could go down and so against all the warnings laid out in front of him, he strived forward to the door.
Slowly he made his way up to the ‘poppy’ door and with no way as actually reaching the handle normally, he decided to use his long tail to reach out and wrap around the handle before pulling the door open. fortunately, the door was unlocked as he began to slowly open it as he braced himself for what could be on the other side.
Moxxie looked inside the room, and he just seemed… perplexed?
On the other side was a small hallway that only contained a single staircase that descended downwards. But what caught his attention was the fact that on other side of the door old lights and wallpaper?
‘Ok, I wasn’t expecting this.’ Moxxie exclaimed and confused at the entire scene in front of him, as he made his way forward and continued to observe the weird scenery. Slowly he started to descend the staircase, he was also quick to noticed that the stairs were made of wood in complete contrast to the rest of the factory. It honestly was weirding out Moxxie the more he tried to make sense of it.
As he got to the bottom of the staircase, he looked ahead and found that it led down a much longer hallway with the same lights and wallpaper plastered on the walls.
‘What is this doing in a factory?’ Moxxie thought, another question added on to his growing list of questions, as he continued to stroll down the corridor, glancing from side to side and taking in the weird scenery.
It was very creepy to him, not being helped by the dim lights, that just barley illuminating the path ahead as he made his way further down the confusing hallway, a soft melody also started to come into earshot as Moxxie traversed further, which wasn't helping the imp's options of the place.
Moxxie didn’t even know how to describe what he was feeling currently, it felt like he was lost, or rather the place itself was lost. It was like everything in the area was pulled out from somewhere completely different and just… ‘placed’ inside this old factory. Moxxie had never had a feeling like this before.
As he came to the end of the hallway it opened into a new area. Observing the surroundings Moxxie was quick to notice the room contained a weird assortment of items, such as a cabinet, several blue pillows and a large doll house in the corner.
It looked like a kid’s room.
Moxxie at this point didn’t know what to say and at this point he felt like he would just be repeating his questions. So, he just decided to move on forward and continue making his way through the room.
As he made continued through, he noticed there was a door just peeking out behind the cabinet. Moxxie went over and moved around the cabinet to try and use the door handle.
It was locked, because of fucking course it was, as Moxxie rolled his eyes.
Upon a closer inspection of the door, Moxxie was able to notice two things that stood out about it, the first thing he noticed was that the keyhole was designed to look like a poppy flower.
The other weirder oddity was the fact that both the locker and the door handle were remarkably lower to the floor compared to other doors, in fact he could reach the door just fine without any assistance, almost like the door was designed with a smaller person in mind.
‘This place just keeps getting more confusing, the sooner I leave the better.’
The imp did contemplate just using his pistol to blow the door lock off, but with only one bullet left in his gun, it would be a waste, and he would rather save it for something more important than a door. So continued to explore the rest of the area.
On the other side of the room was another hallway like the last one. With the same décor and wallpaper covering the walls. The only difference was at the end of the hallway the last pairs of lights had a dim pink glow instead of a yellowish one that all the others had, and the there was a massive set of double doors at the end.
Moxxie just had a bad feeling about this as he carefully made his way down the new corridor and started to get a strange feeling about the door at the end, a feeling he couldn’t shake.
It was a feeling that Moxxie started to get as he started to descend the staircase but had steadily increased over time as he went further.
It was a feeling like he shouldn’t be here, like he wasn’t supposed to see any of this.
The feeling was causing his body to shiver, not helped by the melody that had slowly been getting louder as he got closer to the wooden door. As he approached it all just felt off, as if the door’s very presence was threatening the imp.
The only evidence on what was on the other side was the pink lights from the other side that emanated from the bottom of the door and the melody that was coming from within. Every moment that passed, made the idea of just shooting the door feel a lot more enticing to the imp.
He closed his eyes and with one last deep intake of breath Moxxie braced both his hands on the doors wooden frame and pushed, to his luck (Or misfortune) the door seemed to be unlocked.
As the doors departed the deem pink glow radiated through the now open doorway blinding Moxxie for a split second, as he began to adjust and make sense of his new environment before him.
The room on the other side was similar in design to the others before, this one however was in worse condition. The same wallpaper decorated the walls, only in here it was damaged with several parts peeling off the walls at random points across the room, giving off the impression the room hadn't been used in ages.
The entire room was also illuminated in the same pink glow as the hallway, the ceiling light displaying different patterns as they danced across the room to the melody.
But the most notable thing in the room was a massive case placed in the centre of it, while Moxxie couldn’t make out clearly what was inside, due to a combination of both the dim lighting and the height of the case blocking his view. He was able to see what appeared to be some kind of small figure visible behind the glass of the container.
As Moxxie approached the case, he tried to get a closer look to what was inside but still had trouble getting a closer look. He figured he needed something to give him a bit more height.
The imp put his hand under his chin to think of a solution, before he noticed in the corner of the room was a small desk. Making his way over Moxxie grabbed onto the legs of the desk and pulled it across until it was right in front of the case. Once that was done, he pulled himself up on the wooden desk.
Now that Moxxie had a better view, he was able to get a closer look at what was behind the case. He was able to now see that the figure in question was a doll, only a bit shorter than he was.
Though it was a little tricky at first to see the colours completely in the dim pink light of the room, Moxxie was able to make out that the doll had pale white skin and curly red hair that was placed into two ponytails with blue bows. She also seemed to have red lipstick, red checks and freckles (Which Moxxie liked). She was also wearing a very nice detailed blue dress with a blue bowtie tied around her neck.
Now that he was able to get a better view of what inside the case, it only took a few seconds to realises what he was looking at.
It was a Poppy Playtime doll.
One of the most important toys in playtime co’s history, not only was it one of the first toys they had ever made but, it was also one of their most popular.
The combination of the lights, melody and the case made the whole thing look like a shrine. Moxxie could only assumed it was set up by the weird guy in the costume as some sort of place of worship.
Moxxie could also sort of understand the appeal of this toy, even though he wasn’t the target audience he could see the quality that went into making the toy, its design was Definity give a lot of work and was made with people with a love for the craft. However, his inspection of the toy led him to noticed something that caught his attention, grasped in the toys hand.
It was a key.
‘Maybe this is the key, that can open that door back there’ Moxxie thought as he started to examine the case. His eyes moved over to the handle on the side of the case, that presumably would be able to open it.
Moxxie rubbed his hands together before he grasped onto the handle of the case with both hands and pulled. It appeared to be more stuck then the imp had first thought as he tried to pull harder to get the case to open. With a bit more force Moxxie was able to open the case, exposing the doll to the outside world.
The case didn’t appear to be as secure as Moxxie had though as what appeared to be a weird dust flew out of the case and blew straight into Moxxie's face, causing him to slightly cough, forcing himself to shut is eyes as he brought up his arm to waft away the weird dust.
Once the coughing had ended and he could open his eyes, they fell back on the key still firmly grasped by the doll and so he reached his arm over to grab it.
But as he did, his eyes began to feel a little heavy and his arms started to feel weaker suddenly. Moxxie had no idea where this drowsiness came from as he tried to keep his head straight.
Suddenly the lights around the room began to flicker on and off, for a few seconds. Turning his attention back to the doll’s face, he could have sworn in between the flickers of light that her eyes were starting to move.
The flashing went on for another 2 seconds before the lights seemed to blow out, leaving Moxxie in utter darkness.
The imp’s mind began to feel heavier; he fought to try and keep himself awake in the darkness, but for some reason he had a really hard time doing it. Possibility a combination of both the fight from earlier and the melody that still filled his ears.
However, in the end it seemed that Moxxie lost the fight and began to drift off, but as he did, he heard a voice from the middle of the dark room.
“Y-you’ve opened my case.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deep below, in the depths of the factory. A giant room was laid; the place was almost completely covered in monitors and almost hide the walls themselves behind them.
The room was dimly lit, save for the light produced by the monitors themselves.
Most of the monitors were currently turned on, each one displaying a different area around the playtime co factory.
Siting in the middle of the room was a figure, his body shrouded almost completely by a dirty white lab coat, that was torn from constant years of use.
The only parts of the person that were visible were their mechanical hands and legs and peeking out from under the hood was the figure’s face, a Tv monitor with an eye displayed amidst a purple background.
The figure watched all the monitors, as he glanced from one side to another, observing them with boredom.
On most day this would be the norm; however, the last few days had proven to be quite different as something or rather someone had caught his interest in a select few of the monitors.
Playing on one of the screens was a video of a strange unknown individual and Huggy Wuggy. The person watched the entire Monitor with interest, not really saying or doing anything as he let the video play through. He glanced across from one monitor to the next, following along with the adventure this new individual had taken with Huggy Wuggy before the person had done something he didn’t think anyone would do. As he witnesses Huggy falling into the pit and out of the cameras view.
“Well” A robotic male voice said from the individual, cutting through the room like knife through flesh. “This is indeed an interesting development.” He said as the video displayed began to remind and play over again.
“Oh, 1170, I never thought I’d see the day you would be outwitted.” He said disappointed.
It was only the other day that another individual had entered the factory and was almost immediately eliminate by Huggy, now not a day later a new person enters and not only was he able to avoid Huggies wrath, but they were even able to best him, something which immediately caught the person attention.
Although he was having a hard time identifying what the individual even was, it had strange horns on its head and was definitely too small to be a normal human, it looked like one of toys that playtime would have made, although he doesn’t recall the company making something resembling that.
‘Am I misremembering an experiment I conducted, or is this another experiment made from a toy produced after my ‘Betrayal’, that I would have no knowledge of?’ The person questioned as he brought his metal arm up to the bottom of his screen face. He doubts he would misremember such a thing, especially for such a seemingly worthwhile experiment to just not catch his attention.
‘Although that does add the question of where this individual has been hiding this whole time, perhaps a resident of that ‘Safe Haven’ that’s only just decided to explore the factory?’
He moved his head over towards another set of monitors in the room, all of them displaying various areas near the front entrance of the factory. “Intriguingly, it appears he entered through the front entrance and not from inside the factory itself, Unfortunately, I’m unable to determine where from exactly, as I sadly don’t have access to the cameras occupying the exterior of the building.” The robot said in an annoyed tone, he really was intrigued where this new toy had come from. But being unable to figure out where from was bugging him.
‘I only know of the one passage from the Shelf to the surface and I know he didn’t go through there, which means there could potentially be another, which I’ll have to located immediately.’
As he spoke another creature emerged from shadows from the side of the room and made its way towards the cloaked figure. It was a lionlike creature moving on 4 legs, its mane and coat were comprised of multicoloured strands of yarn that formed a rainbow mane. It had a spherical head with a large pair of cartoonish eyes and a big grin with three triangular teeth sticking out, with big sharp claws on each of its three toed feet. The large frame almost dwarfed the cloaked figure, yet this large lion moved towards the man with caution, like a animal moving towards their master.
Once it got within an arm reached, the robot raised his hand up, causing the lion to stop on the spot, before lowering its front half and wagging its behind in the air, a sound of anticipation emitting from the large animal.
The TV display on the figure quickly flicked to a display of the eye looking upwards before changing back to normal, seemingly to indicate an eye roll and motioned for the creature to come closer.
Seeing the gesture the robot did, the Lion moved closer to the person and as they got closer, the cloaked figure reached out his hand and began to pet the large lion on the head, a gesture that the lion seemed to enjoy.
‘Usually, I wouldn’t indulge in these gestures of…. affection, but I’m feeling generous today.’ The robot thought to themselves as they continued to scratch the lion.
“What do you think Yarnaby?” The cloaked figure, asked as he turned to the lion creature, now known as Yarnaby.
Yarnaby didn’t respond, it just seemed to appreciate the head scratches, as it began to roll around on the floor making noises that seemed to indicate it was enjoying itself.
Suddenly the cloaked figure suddenly felt a weird feeling as all the monitors almost seemed to flicker for a split second simultaneously before they all went back to normal.
“Hm, it appears the little guest has unlocked something he shouldn’t have, and something tells me a certain someone isn’t going to like that development.” The robot said as he continued to talk the Yarnaby creature.
“At the very least it should prove to be a bit of entertainment, and now with 1170 out of the way, it should be much easier for 1349 & 1351 to finish their task.”
Notes:
Looks like we're finally out of the first part. The story will start to take a bit more of a turn now, and I'm not sure what people are going to think about what I have planned next.
Also, suprise! Someone has gotten an appearance much early then they should have.It seems that some people already figured what the others were going to think of Moxxie.
I also notice while making the chapter, does the Doctor & Yarnaby together remind anyone of Vox & Vark from Hazbin Hotel?
Thanks, have a great day.
Chapter 8: The Nightmare(s) Begin
Summary:
Moxxie now find himself in a worse situation then before.
Luckily helps comes to him in a form he never expected, but as he started to go deeper another presence lurks in the shadows.
Notes:
Hey, so finally starting the next part, luckily I've had a few days off work, So I could get this done a bit early.
This chapter might have some things in it that might be controversial, but we'll have to wait and see.
Also the word count ended up being MUCH longer then my previous chapters, I think its over double the length of my other longest, I really have no idea how it got that long.
Hope you enjoy.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 8 – The Nightmare(s) Begins
It was morning at the playtime co factory, an average workday for everyone.
It was currently 10.58am inside the playtime co factory.
Inside one of the many rooms was a massive table with 5 seats placed around it, with currently only one occupied.
The man was an older gentleman, indicate by the few wrinkles on his face and his brown hair showing a few stripes of grey. Wearing a formal business suit in a black colour. The man had an aura of arrogance radiating off him as he took another annoyed look down at his wristwatch to check the time.
He had small name tag was on his suit with ‘Leith Pierre’ was written on it. He was the head of innovation at the playtime co factory and currently the head man in charge.
Leith Pierre groaned as he sat down at his seat at the table and adjusted his glasses and rubbed his head in mild frustration. Today was the day he and the other higher ups had their meeting, well he’d already been in a meeting already today, but that was for the discussion on the toy and manufacturing side of things.
This next meeting was a more secret one that the true higher ups had, to discuss the more ‘discrete’ actions that the company participated in. He hated them, it was just another moment to deal with the stress of all the new issues that had occurred over the factory, not currently being helped by the lack of said higher ups not being here.
‘They should be here in a few minutes, I said at 11am and I expect them to be here.’ He said as he once again to a quick look down at his watch.
No sooner had he checked his watch again had the doors to the meeting room opened and two more men and a women walked in a began to take their seats around the table.
The first was a rather tall and intimidating gentlemen with brown hair, wearing a formal black suit. The man held a very professional demeanour, his eyes seemed to glare around the room as he took his seat. The name tag on his suit reading ‘Eddie M.N.R’. He was the head of Research.
The second male was a much smaller person in comparison with black hair, his eyes seemed to dart around the room as he quietly sat down. Leith could tell he didn’t really want to be here. He was wearing a more standard yellow shirt with grey trousers like most of the other employees of the Factory. His name tag read ‘Jamie B. Honay’. He was the current head of security.
The female had a more of a kind and nice presence about her. Much younger than the other people in the room with long flowing brown hair. Her attire was blue business suit with a white shirt underneath, with a name tag reading ‘Stella Greyber’. She was head of the Playcare.
Once everyone sat down Leith down at his wristwatch one more time.
“10.59am, good to know you just made it in time, so let’s get started on this meeting then we can get back to our duties.” Leith said to the individuals everyone around the room, hoping to just get this all out of the way. Though on another glance of the room, he could see they were missing someone else. But that particular individual was only needed for a particular thing so he could get on with the rest of the meeting before he arrives.
“Eddie, how is the construction on the Shelf coming along?” Leith said as he addressed the man.
The man known as Eddie began to clear his throat before speaking “The construction of the Shelf is on schedule and should be done by the end of next month, although we did run into a small problem the other day.” Eddie said in a British accent, his voice going quieter when saying the last part of his sentence.
Leith rolled his eyes before looking back at Eddie slightly annoyed, “And… what would the problem be?” He really didn’t have time for more issues today.
Eddie sighed before continuing “Well, it seems Mr Silva decided to start asking questions about why we even needed the Shelf?”
Leith expression didn’t seem to change “Well, it doesn’t really matter he’s under contract to complete what we want.”
“Which I was quick to remind him, but it does raise concerns though, we WERE asking him to make a holding area, of course he was going to ask questions, I think we may have to consider 1160, if it gets bad.”
Leith gave an annoyed sigh as he began to rub his head, he knew it was only a matter of time before something like this would happen. “This is becoming more of a problem the longer it goes on, for the most part we’ve only had to deal the employees, now we have to deal with the people in the Warrenbach construction company.”
Eddie was quick to raise his voice to Leith.
“And we’ve been able to keep it under wraps every single time Leith, even if they do end up going to the authorities, we have a deal with them to keep this all quiet. Even if we didn’t, then it’s not like they’ll believe anything they say, not to mention we have plenty of ways to both move or even dispose of the evidence, if the need arises.” Eddie said to ease the annoyed head of the company.
“Well, I prefer if we didn’t to get rid of years of work just to avoid trouble and it’s going to become harder to explain some of the disappearances.” Leith said as he removed his glasses from his face. “We’re still dealing with the fallout from the Theatre incident; we DON’T need another on top of this.”
“Once the Shelf is built, those problems will be dealt with. Anyone that’s come into ‘possession’ of any of our secret has been dealt with quickly and quietly.”
Leith looked at Eddie before for a few more seconds, Eddie could have sworn he saw a slight hint of fear on the man’s face before it disappeared behind the annoyed expression the company head was more known for.
“That’s…not the main thing I’m concerned about Eddie, most of the people that have come to express what they’ve found has either been too scared to tell anyone else or too innocent to see the real scope of the whole ordeal. But, what if we eventually get someone that catches on to the whole thing, and instead of going to any kind of authority to expose us, they instead try to take matters into their own hands.” Leith says in a very serious manner.
Everyone in the room, soon looked around at each other as they slowly digested what the head of innovation was implying.
Eddie was once again the first to speak. “Are you suggesting that they might try to target us directly.” Eddie’s voice carrying a slight hint of the worry.
Leith slowly gave a nodded, confirming the rest of the company head’s thoughts, “Honestly, I’m surprise it hasn’t crossed anyone else’s mind yet. Everyday were getting more of these ‘Experiments’ going crazy, someone was bound to notice, it was bad enough when it was just the little ones, but now the ‘bigger’ ones are starting to get riled up.”
“So, what do we suggest we do about all this then?” Eddie asked, hoping that Leith must have thought of something, giving he’d been thinking about this for some time.
Leith gave another sigh as started to address the other people in the room, he knew what he was going to say would not be the best bit of news he’d given.
“I’ve already discussed the issue with Sawyer, and he said he’ll have something to provide for us, once he gets here of course.”
Everyone in the room felt a chill go up their spin at the mention of Sawyer’s name, a name that was already bad in all their eyes but had tipped over following the most recent ‘incident’, involving the company. Even Eddie, who through the whole conversation had kept up his professional demeanour found himself slightly shivering at the mention of the man's name.
“A-Are you sure you want him to do anything else? I don’t understand why we’re even keeping him around. He’s the reason we’re even constructing the shelf in the first place.” Eddie said as his calmer and collected personality seemed to almost fad away and was replaced by angry and worry.
Still Leith kept his cool, he knew how bad this would go but he had no choice. “I know, but rest assured once the Shelf is built and Dr White has what he needs it won’t be a problem anymore.”
“C-Can I bring up something now?”
Everyone in the meeting room now turned towards Jamie, who had only now just now decided to join the conversation that
Leith and Eddie had been having. Leith knew that Jamie didn’t really want to be here, the guy mostly kept to himself, but when he had something important to say he would say it.
“Very, well what do you want to say Jamie” Leith replied calmly, knowing it was the only way to really talk to the boy.
“W-Well, while we’re on about the Shelf, I want to talk about how many people I’m supposed to have down their working.
Because from what I’m seeing it’s not going to be many, and we’re dealing with some of the worst experiments this company has manufactured, I fear it won’t be an efficient amount for the job.” Jamie said before sinking back into his seat.
“It’s going to be one of the most top-secret areas in our facility, we can’t exactly have tons of people down there, the employees down there have to be trustworthy and monitored at all times, so we have to keep it small.” Eddie replied.
“Well, I think I’ll require more people, or are you forgetting about the time 1170 escaped the facility and we ended up losing 11 security personnel, if something like that happens down below, we’re going to have a problem, and he’s considered one of our ‘tamer’ ones.” Jamie was quick to say.
Leith decided to speak up on the matter “That incident was down to lazy staff and complacency about procedure, if you do your job, it should go well. Besides you have more state-of-the-art stuff down there to deal with any problems.”
“Yeah, besides it wasn’t 11 staff killed, it was six, five more went missing.” Eddie chimed in.
“Don’t try and spin it, those other five weren’t found because there was nothing left to find.” Jamie argued with the others.
“Ahem, am I interrupting?”
A new voice had entered the room, his sudden appearance causing Leith to almost jump out of his chair.
At the same time, everyone in the room all turned their heads around to the new person in the room. The man had a very creepy appearance with a worn-out lab coat on that appeared to be slightly ripped at the bottom and black scruffy hair and unkempt facial hair along with a very annoyed and tired look on his face.
It was Doctor Harley Sawyer, Head of the special projects.
Leith quickly recovering from his show of unprofessionalism took a deep breath before addressing the new approval.
“Ah, Doctor Harley Sawyer, pleasure for you to final arrive, I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show up.”
“Well, I was preoccupied with solving one of the many problems that require my expertise. But I’m forced to attend this meeting instead.” The man known as Swayer said to the room.
All the people sitting down apart from Leith himself, seemed to feel uneasy around Harley, he had a bit of reputation for being unnerving to work with, the only reason he was still around was due to his knowledge, otherwise no one would tolerate him.
Despite the unease, Eddie thought enough was enough and decided to speak up following the doctors’ comments.
“Well, all the problems were currently having all relate to YOUR experiments, dear Sawyer." Eddie said hostilely to the man in the lab coat.
Harley Swayer rolled his eyes with the same bored look on his face ignoring the man’s outburst, “I’m given limited time to construct multiple experiments, I’m not responsible if the work isn’t up to the standards with the time and equipment I’ve been provided.”
“A poor craftsman blames his tools.” Jamie replied quietly.
This comment however didn’t seem to sit well with the Doctor as he made his way over to the Jamie.
“If you require a steak dinner, the food demands the right amount of time to cook and the correct amount of ingredients to be added. IF you insisted that the meal, be rushed you shouldn’t be complaining about it being undercooked, but please continue to quote someone else’s words to give yourself an air of intelligence, dear Warden.” Harley Sawyer said in a condescending voice, as he kept pushing his face closer to Jamie’s during the conversation, so by the end of his rant both of their faces were just a centimetre away from each other.
Jamie didn’t have any kind of rebuttal, he just stood in stunned silence, too afraid of what the doctor would do next. Fortunately, Leith appeared to come to his rescue.
“Alright, that enough Sawyer.” Leith said, causing Harley to back away from Jamie as he started to address him.
“You know why I called you in here Doctor Sawyer, you said you had a solution do our ‘issue’ so I take it you’re here to present it?”
Sawyer turned his head back over to Leith. “Yes, I’ve also been made aware of the fact that your ‘Shelf’ is also going to have issues involving staff and your worried it won't be up to the task of handling my old failures, but luckily for you I’ve been able to formulate a solution to fix both problems.”
Everyone around the table looked at him waiting for him to give his answer.
“I’m aware of the fact that the scope of this project has led to questions being asked, People have begun to poke their noses where they don’t belong and your now worried about what sort of ‘ramifications’ it will bring.”
Sawyer strolled around the room while continuing his speech as everyone kept their focus on him. The Doctor made his way around the tables before placing both his hands on the table. “That’s why I'm proposing the production of a few new types of experiments; these will be suited for personal protection, as well as able to monitor various highly packed areas of the factory.”
Just from the way Harley was talking they could tell he was already working out all the details of what would go into these new ‘toys.’
The others in the room looked at each other, before Eddie decided to speak up again. “Wait, your solution is to have experiments follow us around all the time as protection?”
Jamie was also quick to speak up after, “You want to use experiments…. to guard the experiments?”
Sawyer looked back at the people in the room, but his focus was mostly on Jamie, “Oh, don’t worry Mr Honay, since you seem incapable of handling the Prison by yourself, I’m offering my assistance, these new experiments will be much more advanced than my previous works.” He replied in a condescending voice.
Jamie felt cornered with the way the Doctor was talking to him, but while talking he was quick to realise another issue with what the eerie Doctor was suggesting.
“Wait, what’s going to stop these new experiments from also going rogue? Last thing we want is our own protection and security going haywire; we’d just be perpetuating the problem, do you not remember what happened with 1170?” Jamie Honay said, hoping to get a good answer from the doctor.
The Doctor just looked at Jamie, as he prepared another long lecture for the boy.
“Simple, Experiments like 1188, were designed with their job in mind, delicate care and time was put into making them function and finding the perfect candidate for the task, as a result no such serious instances have occurred. While others like experiment 1222 were given their role after testing showed where they would be best suited. So, if you wish for these experiments to work correctly, the former must be done and so I require time, the consequences produced by 1170 were down to failure to account for such outcomes.”
Leith sighed, he may not like Sawyer, but he was always correct in these sorts of subjects. “Very well, if it requires you to take more time to ensure these experiments are the best they can be, then taking a little longer to create them would be fine, if there’s anything you would require?”
“I’ve already taken into account how many candidates I will need to get this to work correctly, and I already have two particular candidates in mind” Sawyer turned his attention to Eddie. “I’ve also been made aware that one of our construction workers has been asking too many questions. I believe it was the one by the name of Mr Silva, I’m correct in that assumption?”
Eddie took a second to understand what the Doctor had just said, before his eye widened once he realised fully what he was implying. “Um, yeah, but what makes you think he’ll be useful?”
“In truth, I wasn’t sure at first but since my dear 1160 is being considered, I figured it would be such a waste of a value opportunity. The experiments have shown on countless occasions to keep various memories of their pasts and experiences.
While such outcomes can be mitigated, I believe that his knowledge of the facility will be ideal for the job at hand. Won’t really make a difference for your job with the worker’s sudden ‘Departure’.”
“Ok, that will be fine” Leith decided to jump in to prevent the conversation from becoming a bit dicey, as he was sure it was going to get to. “What about the fact he’s an adult, we’ve seen the outcome with people like Thomas Clark, so we might run the risk of losing an asset.”
The Doctor once again glanced over to Leith, “If you’re referring to the 1199 incident, I can assure you that the reason that occurred was most likely due to the individual in question being an employee of the company, so in this case him not being one would minimise that risk. Also, with the role I have planned for him, it’s unlikely that he would run into other experiments.”
Leith didn’t know what the Doctor had planned, but from what he was saying it was clear he already had worked out all the details for what had to be done. But he did still have questions regarding what he had already said.
“You mentioned you already had another few candidates in mind?” Leith asked curiously.
Sawyer face shifted slightly to a more serious expression, a stark contrast to his much more bored face that he always wore. “Yes, and I would like to make a special request involving a ‘certain’ individual located in the lower labs.
Leith face looked confused for a few seconds, before eyes went wide in realisation, shocked that the Doctor was even suggesting it. “Wait… You’re not talking about…. “
Sawyer nodded in response. “I’ve currently ran into a few small hurdles with 1006, I still know he’s hiding something, but I think it might be time to try a similar method with our other ‘Subject’.
“So, you want to use them in this new line of experiments? How do you even intend to use them in their current state?” Leith asked, already knowing that the Doctor properly had an answer planned out.
“I’ve been meaning to try something like this for a while with them, I’ve already thought of a new procedure, unique for this circumstance. With you permission we might be able to ‘extract’ the correct information from them and get what we want. If so, we’ll be able to speed up our progress in obtaining our goal.”
Leith’s calm demeanour seems to have dropped slightly as the conversation went on, he knew the risks involved with letting the Doctor handle this situation, but he also saw the potential that it could bring if it was successful.
Leith looked Sawyer dead in the eyes. “I’ll allow this to go through, BUT ONLY if you can guarantee it won’t fail, we can’t lose the subject!” Leith commanded.
All Leith and Sawyer did was stop and stare at each other, the other three in the room just looked at the two in anticipation, you could cut the tension with a knife.
The Doctor was the first to speak, “You have my word that the outcome will benefit us both.”
Sawyer then turned towards the table and looked at one individual currently sat at the table. “Miss. Greyber.”
The lady in question almost jumped upon hearing her name being mentioned, she’d been quiet for almost the entire meeting so far and had just let the other discuss before saying her piece.
She turned her gaze up and looked right at the Doctor, who she’d been avoid contact with the whole time do far. “Y-yes, Mr Sawyer?” She questioned the man still not sure what he wanted.
“I’ll require access to the Playcare, a few of the children inside have caught my attention and I think they’ll be very suited for this new experiment.”
This raised a few questions among the room, usually Sawyer would just get the documents provided and not want to interact with the children in any way outside of the experimentation itself.
“W-Why do you want to go inside the Playcare? I thought you said you never wanted to set foot in there.” Stella said questioning the Doctor.
“For this job, I’m going require a thorough look at the materials required, and a few individuals inside have already caught my attention, that I know will be ideal for this experiment.”
Everyone in the room, now seemed even more confused, it was very odd and out of character for the Doctor to take interest in anyone to this degree. For him to do so could mean he had something big planned.
Stella simply nodded in response. “Very well Sawyer, I’ll provide you what you need.”
“Thank you, Miss Greyber.” Sawyer said as he started to walk toward the door, “Well, since I’ve got my job to do, I feel that I should begin immediately.”
“Fine, you can leave Sawyer, but I expect constant updates from both you AND Doctor White.”
Doctor Sawyer, then proceed to exit the room, once it was clear he’d left the room the other three people let out a sigh of relief.
“Why must be even put up with him, he’s shown to be really dangerous, now were going to trust him with this job.” Eddie was the first to speak.
“Yeah, after the Theatre incident I don’t see how we can even trust him with these new experiments.” Jamie said chiming into the conversation.
“We have to keep him working so he doesn’t get catch on that we know he was involved in the incident.” Leith said. “Also don’t worry you two, Dr White and the rest of the lab staff have been informed of this and are going to take great measures to both monitor and assist Sawyer in the task to ensure nothing can go wrong.” Leith said trying to ease the tension in the room. “Once White has what he needs and the Shelf is constructed, Mr Sawyer will no longer be a problem, and White can pick up where he left off.”
“Well, that’s good, surprised it took this long” Eddie said in a satisfied tone.
"Well, is there anything else we must go over?” Leith said addressing the remaining people.
“Actually, I have one thing I need to go over.”
The three men in the room turned towards the Stella once again who had.
“Ah Mrs Greyber, good to see your finally contributing to the conversation.” Jamie said joking,
“Thank you, I would like to go over an incident that occurred involving ‘Mommy’.” Stella said.
Leith decided to speak up as he looked at Stella, “1222? What incident are you talking about?”
“Other members of staff have started to notice that she’s been acting off, it only seems to occur when she hasn’t had any interactions with the children for an extended period of time.”
This news seemed to spark a reaction from Leith “Is this a new occurrence?”
“It's relatively new and that’s mainly because we’ve been using the Game station less than usual due to the slowing down of experiments and the recent incidents have caused as to postpone its use to check over the other toys. I’m worried that her behaviour could become worse and could put the children she works with in danger, if not put in check.”
Leith seemed to take the situation a bit more seriously now he got a better understanding of what Stella was talking about. “Do you have a preferred solution to what he could do Miss Greyber?”
Stella gave a small node to Leith. “Yes, I believe it could be beneficial if we can’t get more children in the game station, we could at least bring a few children over to her to keep her company. This could help benefit her and it’ll benefit some of the children that want to see her more often.”
Lieth gave it a bit of thought, he thought the idea was good, while it was unorthodox to bring children to the toy’s rooms, in this case it could help. Like Stella had said, keeping Mommy happy would be in everyone’s best interests and this would save on some future problems before they developed. “Very well, that sounds like a smart idea, I’ll have to run it by some of the people in the holding area, but we should be able to work it out.
Stella smiled back a Leith knowing her idea was seen as good, “Thank you Mr Leith.”
Stella internally gave a sigh of relief, despite her place in the company, she was concerned for the experiment’s wellbeing. Compared to the other people in the room the mostly cared about the profits and damaged Mommy could cause if this wasn’t taken care off.
‘I’m just really worried about her, the longer she goes without someone to talk to, the angrier she seems to get, I could only imagine what would happen if she was left alone for even longer than she currently is.”
*******************************
Moxxie groaned as he walked around the weird children room again, he hadn’t been able to find a way out of the room at all. He couldn’t even tell how long he’d been down in the room for due to his only source to tell time was currently destroyed.
As Moxxie prepared for another check around the empty rooms for a way out, a massive glow began to envelope the middle of the room, causing Moxxie to shield his eyes.
Once he was able to get a clear look again, he found himself looking at a weird diamond shape floating in the middle of the room. Moxxie’s eyes lit up in happiness. It was an Asmodeus portal, Blitz must have finally decided to come, he knew he would.
Moxxie strolled up to the diamond shape and noticed something off about it. Normally these types of portals would have the location opened already, but for some this one didn’t seem to have any clear image through it.
As Moxxie got within a short distance of it, and arm shot out of the distorted portal and grabbed the imp tightly by the collar. Before the imp could even reply he found himself being pulled through the portal with extreme force.
“Oof!” Moxxie uttered, as he found himself landing face first on the floor.
He groaned in pain and try to see where he was. But as soon as he tried to get up someone grabbed him from behind and had lifted him up once again.
Moxxie was lifted off the ground and now found himself looking into the very angry eyes of his boss, Blitz.
“Moxxie, where the fuck have you been?!” His boss replies angrily to him, not letting of Moxxie as continued to dangle from his arms.
Moxxie could tell from both his boss’s expression and his voice that he was not happy. So, the imp tried his best to give an explanation.
“S-Sorry sir, it’s just my phone broke so I couldn’t call yo-”
“GOD DAMNIT MOX, I gave you one job, hoping that you would be able to do it right this time and you fuck up again!” Blitz said practically spitting the word as he dropped Moxxie to the ground and began to tower over the smaller imp. “Fuck, fine I’ll just go in and take the picture, maybe I can salvage this job.” Blitz said as he turned back around to the go through the still open portal.
Moxxie didn’t know what to say at this point as he laid still on the companies floor, he knew he had to tell Blitz the disappointing news and for some reason he just felt his felt his chest tightening at the fact.
“I-I’m so sorry Blitz, I-It’s just that the body kind of fell into a massive hole and I don’t know where is” Moxxie said his whole body shaking in fear at the thought of what Blitz will have to say next.
Blitz had immediately stopped in his tracks before slowly turning back around to look at his employee, his eyes shifting from their former yellow to full on red. “So…. you’re telling me that you not only wasted ANOTHER WEEK on a target, but you, heaven knows how managed to lose him, so that we CAN’T get paid. Am I hearing this all correctly?” While Blitz had said it in a relatively calm voice, it was clear by how he said it that he was on the verge of a meltdown, and he was the target.
Moxxie couldn’t stop his shaking as he gulped hard, dreading what had to be said next, he felt his throat getting dry.
“Y-Yes Blitz, that is correct, and I am so so sorry, its j-just during the fight, we were on this catwalk and I-I needed t-to-”
“Don’t give me another of your excuses you wimpy failed excuse for an assassin, You’re a fucking disgrace!”
“Yeah, I agree with Blitzy here.”
“My Dad is right, your terrible.”
Moxxie turned around, only now noticing that both Loona and Stolas were also in the room with them. Both were also just looking down at Moxxie in disappointment, even Stolas who usually didn’t pay much mind to the goings on in the office seemed to look very angry at him.
*SLAM*
The small imp was once again taken of guard by the sound the office door right behind him slamming open as he turned towards it, hoping to peel his eyes away from all 3 of his disappointed colleague's faces.
Standing in the doorway at the front of the office was his wife dressed in here normal attire, a very noticeable bulge in her abdomen from the baby. The appearance of his wife brought a bit of happiness back into onto the Imp’s face.
Slowly she stomped her way over to the other four in the centre of the room, her face obscured and expression unreadable.
“M-Millie, it’s so good to see you how was your-”
*SLAP*
Moxxie was once again unable to complete his sentence as he soon found himself on the office’s floor, clutching his cheek with his right arm.
Millie had just slapped him.
Moxxie looked back up at his wife’s face while still completely taken off guard by the events that just occurred. Her face was morphed into one of both anger and disappointment, matching the others in the room.
“M-Millie? W-Why did you-”
Whatever Moxxie was attempting to utter was silenced by his wife stomping her foot right next to the Imp, and stomp that had left a noticeable crack on the floor.
“So, you messed up anther mission? What was your ego hurting again?” Millie sputtered out in an almost mocking tone.
“N-No of course not I just had trouble-”
“NO more of your pathetic excuses, bitch boy.” Blitz said cutting off Moxxie’s again and jumping back into the conversation. “Because of you not only did we lose a payday, but our company looks bad, I think letting you join this company was a mistake.” Blitz replied in a very cold manner.
“We could have bought things for the baby, do you want our child to just think you’re a loser, maybe we should rethink this marriage.” Millie also replied coldly.
Moxxie didn’t know what to say, he couldn't believe what he was hearing. The worst part was he really didn’t have any excuses this time. All he could do was try to avoid the gazes of the four individuals that were constantly staring down at him, as if the very stares themselves were weighing him down.
“You’re a joke”
“Disgrace”
“Loser”
“When are you going to wake the FUCK UP!”
Moxxie just sat there he didn’t know what to say at all, the only thing he could sort of respond with was a whimper as he almost curled into a ball and shut his eyes. He expected Blitz to say some bad things, even Lonna, but not Millie. It all just felt off, as they all continued to berate him.
“Just wake up already.”
“Wake up.”
“Wake up.”
“Wake up.”
*******************************
“Wake up.”
Moxxie groaned and began to rapidly blink, in a split second all his co-workers had disappeared from his vison and now were replaced by a new individual that was currently standing over him.
“Are you alright?” The figure lowing over him said in a worried tone, which Moxxie recognised as a girl’s voice.
As Moxxie’s vision adjusted more until he got a clearer image of the girl who was speaking.
She was a small girl with pale skin and red cheeks, wearing a lovely blue dress. While she was looking at him, her face had a worried look.
“Hey, are you alright?” The young girl said addressing him as she leaned in closer to try and get a better look at the imp.
It was only then that Moxxie had realised that she was in fact talking to him and so decided to respond.
“Oh, I’m sorry yes I am fine.” Moxxie said trying to be as polite as possible.
Slowly Moxxie picked himself of the ground, for what felt like the 3rd time that day and tried to adjust himself to his surroundings. He now only realised that he wasn’t back at the company’s office and was still in the playtime co factory.
He had never left in the first place and it hadn't been a week since he left.
Moxxie turned to his left and watched the young girl walk over as she picked something off the ground, before walking back over.
“Hey, take this.” The girl said softly while handing something over to the imp.
Moxxie looked down and noticed that the item in question was a white handkerchief, which appeared quite big compared to the girl holding it.
Moxxie didn’t want to be rude and reached his hands out to take the gift from the girl. “Um, thank you.” Moxxie responded a bit confused.
The girl seemed to cheer at a little bit upon Moxxie taking the gift from her hand as a small smile began to appear on here face. “It’s for your tears, my dad says there’s nothing worse than not seeing someone smile.” She said pointing her hands up to her own face.
“T-Tears?” Moxxie asked confused as he brought his hand up to his eyes and noticed that it was indeed a bit wet.
‘It was just a dream, b-but it felt so real.’ Moxxie thought as he brought the new gift up to his eyes to dampen it.
“Thank you again.” Moxxie said, putting the handkerchief into his pocket.
“Yeah, the case I was in contained a small amount of the ‘Red Smoke’, when you opened it, it escaped into the open room, and you ended up inhaling it. Since it was such a small amount, I figured it would just cause you to pass out for a little bit. I was going to go ahead and check the place out but then I noticed you started mumbling to yourself and then you started to freak out, so I stayed behind to make sure nothing bad would happen.”
Moxxie took a second to digest what the girl had just said. “Wait…? You’re the girl that was inside the case?” Moxxie said trying to question what a girl was even doing inside the place.
The imp then attempted to picked himself up off the ground. However, as he did, he started to feel a little woozy and as he clutched his head. Before he saw the girl walk up and grip on to his side to try and keep him steady.
“Yes, I was in the case, thank you for freeing me.” The girl said with a smile before it shifted back into concern. “Also, are you sure you’re ok? I’ve never seen such a small amount of the Red Smoke have such a nasty reaction on someone, we better be careful you don’t get in contact with anymore.”
After a few more seconds Moxxie was able to get a better balance of himself. “R-Red Smoke?” he questioned.
“Wait, you don’t know about the Red Smoke? It’s the smoke the ‘Staff’ here used to use to put things to sleep, but in a high enough amount or a lot of exposure can cause nightmares.” The girl explained.
‘Oh, well that explains…. that.’ Moxxie thought, that nightmare just felt so real to him. At least one of his questions was answered.
Now that Moxxie had been given more a second to readjust to everything, he now released that he forgot to ask A very important question. “So, who are you exactly and what are you doing in this factory?”
“My name is Poppy, Poppy Playtime, I’ve been here for a long time, waiting for someone to free me from my case.” The young girl now known as Poppy said.
“Poppy…Playtime?” Moxxie said really confused. So, she didn’t just look like the toy, she also had its name.
Was she a robot then? He recalls in his research that the Poppy doll was well known for being ahead of its time in terms of what interactions it could have with kids and could do full conversations with them. Was this just a copy that had been sealed up and so was still fully functional, was the ‘Red Smoke’ just a sort of security measure to ensure she didn’t get stolen. Moxxie had so many questions.
Poppy nodded in response to the imp’s question “Yes, I’m the Poppy Playtime, I can explain more later. But first I think we should try and get out of this place.” Poppy said as she began to walk out of the room and down the hall.
Moxxie didn’t really have much choice and decided to follow behind her. She said she knew a way out so whether she was a robot or not she might be his best bet for getting out of this facility at this point.
As they made their way back through the areas Moxxie started to notice that some of the lights down the hall were no longer functioning, and others flickering occasional. He recalled just before he passed out and opened the case the lights went off briefly. Did opening the case cause some kind of electronic multifunction across the facility or something?
They soon found their way back into the room with the dollhouse, nothing had really changed much as far as Moxxie could tell. He watched as Poppy made here way over to locked door that Moxxie had tried opening before, now only remembering the reason he even tried to open the case in the first place.
As she approached the door, she reached into a small compartment that seemed to be in her dress and pulled out the key that Moxxie tried to get early. ‘Oh, so that’s why the handle and lock is so low to the door.’ Moxxie thought in realisation.
Poppy walked up and using the key on the door, soon after the door slowly opened with an eerie creak, revealing the other side.
Another hallway was on the other side; the walls no longer bared the weird out of place wallpaper and were back to looking like the factory with the checkered tiles and mascots adorning the walls, he had seen previously. Honestly it felt like a breath of fresh air.
Moxxie soon attempted to go through the doorway when he eyes caught a brief glance down at Poppy. Her body appeared to be slightly shaking, and he could see that she almost took a small step back.
She appeared to be scared.
The imp felt a weird urge overtake him at the sight of the young girl trembling and made his way over to here crouching down ever so slightly to her level. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he said in a very soft voice, making sure not to invade her personal space.
Poppy stopped trembling slightly at the sound of his voice and turned to look at him, Moxxie could see in here face that she was unsure about something. “W-Well, it just I haven’t been out of this room in ages and I’m not sure what to expect up ahead.” Poppy said, her word laced with uncertainty.
Moxxie slowly raised his arm up and held it out to the girl in front of him. “Why don’t we hold hands then, we can both go down together.” Moxxie encourage.
Poppy looked down at his hand for a few seconds before a small smile crept on to her face and she reached out and grabbed on to his hand. “Ok, that sound like a good idea.”
Slowly they both made their way down the long hallway, passing by a few murals of Huggy Wuggy and a red dinosaur, the overhead lights while providing light were flickering occasionally with some of them almost falling off form the ceiling. Looking up at the ceiling Moxxie also noticed that several of the roof tiles were lose and had fallen out, the place really was falling apart, how the power was still working was anyone’s guess.
Poppy gave a small sigh as they both walked down the hallway. “The last person I walked down this hallway holding hands with was my dad, that was a long time ago.” Poppy said sadly. Moxxie immediately noticing this tried to lighten your mode. “You dad sounds like a great man, what was he like?” Moxxie asked curiously.
“My dad was very busy all the time, but he always wanted to make sure everyone could smile, it’s what he did his whole life and when he was running this place?”
“Wait, running this place?” Moxxie asked, trying to see if he heard that right.
Poppy nodded in response, “Yes he always wanted to make toys and help children that needed it the most, his office is right up ahead.” Poppy said pointing her arm out.
Moxxie then looked forward to where she was pointing, up ahead the hallway split up into 3 pathways, the two sideways seemed to lead down further into different areas. But the middle path seemed to be a small arch way with a door underneath, the door was red with a small golden plague just above it.
‘Elliot Ludwig’ was written on the plague.
Moxxie read the plague again, to make sure he was reading it right. As he did, he watch as Poppy let go of his hand and made here way up to the door. “This is my dad’s office; he made my room right near it so if I ever felt lonely, I could just walk down to him.” She said as he moved her hand around the doorway, seeming to look for something.
‘Her dad is Elliot Ludwig?’ Moxxie thought to himself. I guess that would make sense. If Elliot created the doll, then it would make sense that she would consider Elliot her father.
Moxxie made his way up as he watched Poppy seemed to still be moving her hand around the area by the door for something. “What are you looking for Poppy?”
He was given his answer when she pressed down on a small part of the wall by the door and a compartment slide out from the wall revealing a keylock with a poppy design that resembled the one seen in the other room. Poppy did the same thing and put her key into the lock, and as she did the door to Elliot’s office began to open.
“My dad gave me a key which his used to operate a few of the areas around the factory, not all of them are able to be found unless you know where to look.” Poppy told Moxxie as she made here way inside.
Moxxie followed the doll into the room and was rather impress by what he saw inside.
The entire office was mostly comprised of vintage wooden furniture; a small wooden desk was in the centre of the room with a lovely decorative carpet under it. Around the corners of the room were a couple of wooden bookshelves and two leather couches with a small table in between them. A big overhead light hung just above the desk, illuminating the room. The walls around the room were decoration with a similar wallpaper to the one Moxxie had seen in the room just before. The one thing that Moxxie was also quick to notice was the several drawings feature the factories toys that were decorated around the office walls, drawings clearly down by children.
The entire room, while identical in layout to the other, gave off a completely different vibe to the imp. The room before had this very uneasy feeling, with the combination of both lights and decorations used, while this room gave off a warm and almost innocent feeling.
The room felt like it hadn’t been stepped in in years, the entire area gave off this old fashion appearance, from the sights and decorations.
Even the very smell of the room, gave of this very nice vibe as the old wooden furniture giving off a nice aroma of earthly vanilla and…. coffee?
Moxxie took a quick pause as caught the weird scent in the air that seemed to not match the rest of the room. Taking another small inhale of the room, he was quick to notice a distinct scent of Coffee in the air, but he also was just able to catch a small hint of…bubble-gum? Why was he smelling these scents?
Moxxie gripped on to the shirt and brought it up to his face to smell it. Was the scent coming from him? He had drunk some coffee before at the office so the idea of his shirt smelling like it wasn’t a far-fetched concept. Even the smell of bubble-gum was something that could have been explained, as both he and Loona would frequently chew the stuff while in the office and had even brought and shared it on occasion, for both boredom and as a stress reliever.
However, he currently didn’t possess any and Loona had been out of the office for the last day. Had it been because the stress of the job had cause him to not notice the smell before? Was the Red Smoke still causing him to hallucinate the scent? Can you even hallucinate smells?
“Hey, I need your help over here.”
Moxxies thoughts were interrupted as he turned towards the young girl who he almost neglected in favour of admiring the room. She currently was by the side of the room, just above her was what looked like a vent of some kind which she was currently point up towards.
“The other ways are blocked but we should both be able to get through this ventilation system, to the game station.” Poppy said as she tried to reach up to the vent, a challenge that was proving to be much too difficult given her small size.
Moxxie went over to where she was standing. “What’s the game station?”
“It’s this big play area that used to be run by the company for the children; there’s a train we can take that can get us out of here?” Poppy replied to the Imp.
Moxxie just looked at here more confused. “A train? As in an actual train?” the imp asked trying to make sure he heard the girl correctly.
Poppy nodded “Yes, it was originally used to get the everyone around the factory quicker. We can use it to get out of this place, we need a code to get it to function, which I should be able to get, but I can’t seem to get into the vent….” Poppy stopped talking for a second when she realised something. “Oh, I’m sorry I never asked what your name is.” Poppy said sounding slightly embarrassed by the mistake.
Moxxie gave the girl a small smile “Hey, its alright, my name is Moxxie.”
The imp’s response seems to cheer up the girl as she smiled back at him “Pleasure to meet you Moxxie, is it alright if you can help me up here?” she said once again pointing to the vent above.
Moxxie looked confused as he looked up at the vent. “Are you sure this is the right way? Isn’t there another path we can take?” Moxxie said concerned. Surely there must have been a better passageway to reach this ‘game station’ area.
Poppy shook her head “Sadly, there isn’t, with the power in the factory being off in several locations we can’t access certain rooms, even with my key. We also don’t have the correct piece of equipment to turn the power back on. The good news is that we’re both small enough to fit in this vent so, it’s just a little stroll through to reach our destination.”
Moxxie sighed and with no other reasonable option he picked Poppy up by the waist and raised her up to the vent. Poppy grabbed the sides of the vent before it came off and she dropped it just below as it made a soft clunk sound on the wooden floor. Poppy then began to climb into the vent.
The imp quickly followed the doll into the vent by jumping up and gripping on the edge, pulling himself up. As he got inside, he noticed that the vent was a little bigger than he had anticipated. However, he was also quick to note that the way forward was quite dark, making navigation a bit more difficult.
Poppy seemed to understand this issue to as she began to pull something else out, which Moxxie couldn’t seem what it. That was until the area ahead started to brighten up, it was only then that the imp noticed that she had brought a flashlight.
“I knew this place was going to be dark, luckily my dad thought it would be good to have this in case I needed to see at night.” Poppy said as she started to make her way further through the tunnels, with Moxxie starting to follow closely behind here. He hoped they would find a way out soon.
*******************************
“Hey, are they gone yet?” A male voice said, his voice weird muffled by something.
“Shhh…., give me a second so I can hear.” A female voice said.
“Sorry, I just want to get out of here, also your butts in my face.”
“I said shh… also grow up.”
Silence once again fell on the two individuals in the vent system, currently trying to listen.
“Ok…. their making their way down the other way…yep, I don’t think they’re going to be coming back.”
“Does that mean I get to open this vent now?” the voice replied exited.
“Yes, Icky but be quiet.”
A second later the other vent inside Elliot Ludwig’s office began to be opened from the inside. Just as it was opened a long pink appendage began emerging from inside and wrapped itself around the vent hatch and lowered it down onto the floor below, before the pink appendage seemed to retrack back into the vent.
Immediately after an individual slowly crawled out from the vent and made his way down the wall. The figure’s hand and feet appeared to stick to the wall as they descended the wall, before detaching themselves from the wall with a small pop sound, as they landed on the office's floor.
Soon after the figure stood up and stretched out his limbs. “Oh, feels good to be out of that vent, finally.”
The creature was 10 feet tall, its fur/skin was a mix of black and yellow that that was spread across his body in a weird pattern. It had very long arms that ended with webbed hands and small balls on each of there long fingers. It also had large hindlegs that were much longer and ended with similar webbed feet and balls on their toes. Its face had a perpetual wide toothless grin that didn’t appear to move with a long pink tongue that seemed to just roam around the area. The creatures’ pupils were massive with small white glowing irises inside. Its entire appearance made it look like a poison dart frog.
Around the creature’s neck was a pendent that looked like a black biohazard sign encapsulated in a red outline. Across the creatures’ shoulders, hips and torso were what appeared to be stick marks.
A second after the creature had made his way down a second figure began to climb down, as the first figure grabbed onto her and pulled her down.
The creature had a similar body type to the first, only it was standing at about 9 feet tall, her torso fur was completely white, with slightly more around the collar area and a small fluffy tail. Her legs were pink ending with foot that were magenta. Her pink arms were much different from her partners as they replaced with wing membranes, with small hands at the end. Her face was mostly white with two massive ears and a few bits of fur sticking out at the top of her head and around her cheeks. She had the same wide permanent grin as her friend, along with the same black pupils and white irises, with an added set of two large fangs inside her mouth. Magenta colouring was placed around the creatures’ eyes, almost giving off the appearance of a mask. The creature looked like a massive bat, with similar stitching marks across the body and even more across her wings.
A similar pendant was worn across this creature’s neck, only it looked like a bit blood drop.
The bat turned to look at the frog
“Ok, Icky we can finally begin.”
“That’s great Rabie, let’s do it.” The creature said, its words slightly muffled by his tongue.
Notes:
Well another chapter is done, hope you enjoyed this very LONG chapter. Not sure if the anymore chapters will be getting this long, but we'll see.
Yeah, there was a reason that the character tags were up there.
Also, I did look it up and you can in fact hallucinate smells.
Thanks for watching.
Have a great day.
Chapter 9: The web begins to weave
Summary:
The two new figures begin their job, as Moxxie and Poppy begin to go further into the factory.
However a new face makes itself know to them, that is sure to cause problems going forward.
Notes:
Hey, was able to get this one done much quicker then the last, don't worry it isn't nearly as long.
Also just got done watching the new Helluva Boss short, I'm really glad we got a more serious solo Moxxie episode, that also didn't end with him being humiliated. I was honestly kind of worried we were just going to keep getting just Blitz and Stolas stuff, and the others were going to get nothing.
Anyway I hope you like this next chapter
Enjoy.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 9 – The web begins to weave
The two creatures now known as Icky and Rabie began to glance around the office for a few seconds, taking in the room as they appeared to be searching something. Before Icky turned to address Rabie.
“Hey Rabie Baby, what are we looking for again?” The poison frog asked his companion confused.
Rabie Baby, rolled her eyes “Licky, did you even listen to what Soi-Soi was saying before he told us to come up here?”
Icky Licky just stood still for a few seconds. “Why would I have to? Isn’t that your whole job?”
“Just because I have good hearing doesn’t give you the excuse to not listen. Rabie groaned, annoyed that Icky once again had failed pay attention.
“Ok, fine I’m sorry ok, but seriously what are we looking for?” Icky moaned.
“We’re looking for a small book.” She says putting up both her wings to form a rectangle shape (Or as best she could with wings), “It’s about this big, Black with a red poppy flower on the cover, with some weird pattern around the edges.”
Icky turned and started looking at the few bookshelves placed around the room. “Well, this shouldn’t take too long.” He said happily, feeling it was going to be a quick job now.
Rabie put up one of her hands right in front of Frog’s face, “Actually, according to Soi-Soi, the book is quite valuable and would most likely not be placed in plain sight and is probably hidden, check under the shelves too.” Rabie said as her wing pointed to the bottom of the shelves.
Icky looked at it for a few seconds before turning back to the Bat, “A-Are there any insects under there?” Licky said in a slightly frighten voice.
Rabie sighed slightly, “Yes, there nothing else in this room, but you and me currently.” She still had no idea how a frog could have a fear of insects.
“Are you sure?” Icky replied taking quick glances between the bookshelves and his friend.
“Yes, my girls never lie” she said, pointing to her ears, as they wiggled on her head.
Icky Licky gave a small nod “Ok” Before he crouched down all four limbs like a frog. As his tongue began to slide under the bookshelves, searching for anything out of the ordinary.
Rabie meanwhile made her way over the office desk, opening it up, before her wings began to rummage through the nicely assorted items inside, hoping to find the item in question.
While Icky continued to look, he decided to have a conversation with his bat friend. “So, why does he need this book again?” the frog said as his appendage slide under another part of the bookshelf.
Rabie shrugged in response “I’m not entirely sure, you know he doesn’t like us asking questions like that Licks.”
“Also, why are we only checking up here now for it? Didn’t we have like 10 years to look for this stupid thing, why are we only looking in this office now?”
“The same reason we were stuck in that vent for the past 2 days, Huggy Wuggy.”
That caught Icky’s attention “why would he even attack us? Aren’t we on the same side?” The frog said confused.
“Don’t you remember what his job was? Hugs’s job was to patrol the top floor and to kill anything that came up to it, whether that be people entering the factory or people trying to get out. Anyone that enters up here, he was told to kill them.” Rabie responded as she shut the desk draw and strolled over to the walls with the drawings. “The only problem is that Hugs can only seem to pursue one target at a time, Soi-Soi has a weird thing down in his lab that senses any vehicles that pass over it. He detected someone was soon going to be entering the factory and thought it was the perfect time to send both of us up while Huggy was distracted.” Rabie replied as she started remove some of the drawings from the walls, hoping to find anything behind them. Afterward she started knocking on the with her ear next to it, hoping to hear something, before moving on to the next part of the wall.
Icky got up after looking under the first desk and moving over to the next one along. “Wait, why does he have a sensor to detect vehicles in his lab?”
Rabie brought both her hands “I have no idea and unfortunately our little ‘visitor’ ended up getting killed by Hugs almost immediate and then because SOMEONE accidently triggers one of the many sensors that I warned him about and we both had to hide in a dark and cramped vent for 2 days.” She says looking directly at her frog companion, clearly referencing him.
Icky continued searching, but rolled his eyes at the accusation, “It wasn’t my fault, it’s not fair that the sensors are all tiny and can’t be seen.” The frog moaned, annoyed at what she was insinuating.
“Well, they wouldn’t be very good if they weren’t made like that, you really need to stop with the excuses.”
Another day with this frog and he already was making a tone of excuses for himself.
“Well, so what if we were detected? Couldn’t we just go back to the shelf, you know ‘better luck next time’, right?” Icky replied trying to lighten the mood.
“The only problem is once Hugs sees someone, he’s tasked with not stopping until he kills them. I think he might have even chased us down to the lower labs if we got spotted. Also keep in mind that he was connected to all the sensors on this floor, so if any are tripped, he would immediately know where to look.” Rabie replied.
“S-So, if he spotted, us he wouldn’t have stopped until we were permanently gone?” Icky replied horrified, but with a better understanding of why they had to be so sneaky and the actual scope of what tripping the alarm meant for them.
“Yes, which is why you should pay attention to what is being told to you and where you’re going. But luckily for you, Hugs will no longer be a problem for us, or for anyone.” Rabie said, with a bit of relief in her voice.
“Are you sure that Huggy is dead?” Icky said, with a clear bit of optimism in his voice.
The bat nodded to him as she turned back around and started removing some more of the drawings from the wall. “I know what I heard, Huggy was chasing that new person around for a while, then all of a sudden I hear a few large bang sounds, then I don’t hear hugs anymore, just silent.”
While Rabie was trying to keep her cool, she was very aware of how close they both came to being killed, the fact that this ‘Moxxie’ person had even shown up at all was pure luck. If he hadn’t there was a good chance they wouldn’t have been able to make it out. Even more lucky that he had been able to kill him in the first place.
Icky who just finished checking under the second bookshelves suddenly got to his feet, before he started to look up at the ceiling. “I-I just can’t believe he’s dead, I mean he was the main reason none of us tried to escape for all these years. The way out is completely unguarded right now.”
Rabie immediately turned around once she heard what the frog was implying and started to make her way over to him, “Don’t even thing about Licks, you know what would happen to the others if we tried that!” she said angrily.
While they couldn’t move their mouths to expresses much emotion, they had become good at reading each other’s expression using only their eyes. Icky could really tell from her body language that Rabie was very pissed and so raised both his arms up in defence. “Wait a minute Rabe, I’m not saying we should try and run out the front door, there no way I would leave the others behind.” Icky replied, slightly upset that she would assume that.
Rabie looked at her friend’s face and could tell he was telling the truth and took a step away from him. “I’m sorry Icky, but you are right, it is tempting to want to run, but we would need to make sure we can all leave together.”
Icky just started to look around the room unsure of what say next. “I would never try to escape without them.” He said, very aware getting them all out would be difficult, especially Mags and Ali.
Even though she knew they couldn’t run it was extremely tempting. It was still kind of hard to believe that someone was even able to beat Huggy in the first place, and yet she witnessed it, or rather she heard it happen.
“Also, what do you know about this ‘Moxxie’ guy that killed Huggy?” Icky said, Icky didn’t have Rabies hearing and so she had to provide commentary for him on the whole fight.
Rabie raised her arms again. “As far as I can tell nothing, but he must be pretty scary, and tough if could take on Huggy by himself and win.” Rabie said.
“Wait don’t you know what he looks like?” Icky asked confused.
Rabie looked at Icky with an annoyed look. “Licks for the last time I can only hear good, that doesn’t mean I can magically see what people look like. Although I can’t deny from what I’ve heard he must be dangerous, after all he almost found us out.”
Icky Licky looked at his friend confused. “Wait, what do you mean he almost found us?”
“He smelt our scents, might have caught us if Poppy hadn’t called him. Whoever he is he must be incredibly tough and powerful.” Rabie said putting on of her hands under her chin as she attempted to visualise what ‘Moxxie’ even looked like.
Icky saw the look she had in her and decided to get back to looking under the other shelves. “Whoever he is, it would be bad idea to get involved since he’s currently with Poppy. Also keep in mind now that she’s free, stuff around here might get bad fast.”
Both continued to check around the room, looking through every shelf, under every floorboard and even double checking all the areas just to make sure.
Rabie continued tapping on the walls of the room, hoping to find something. “Have you found anything yet, I’m not finding anything.” The bat said pulling her body away from the wall, not having any luck in located this elusive book.
Icky at the same time seemed to be done checking under the shelves as he started to pull himself off the ground on back onto his hindlegs. “No, I’ve not found anything, not secrets underneath any of the furniture in here.” Icky replied in a worried tone. “What will the Doctor say if we don’t come back with what he wants.”
Rabie agreed with Icky, she was very aware of what Soi-Soi was like when stuff didn’t go his way. So, she tried to think about they could do next, they at this point had checked the room over and not found anything.
At that moment, Rabie thought of another idea. “What if we one of the other exclusives found the book and it’s hidden in their offices instead?”
Icky put his hands on his head in frustration. “AW, so we have to check all the other offices now too?” Icky complained, not wanting to check through the other areas. “How are we even supposed to get to the other offices, all the doors are locked.”
Rabie, ignoring his complaints, brought her wing up to her chest area and parted the small fluffy fur around her collar, revealing a small zipper. She gripped it and pulled down, revealing a small compartment in her chest area. After she placed her hand inside and pulled out a red and blue object.
Icky took a closer look and realised she was holding a pair of robotic hands “Are those grabpack hands? Where did you even get those?” He said intrigued.
The bat turned to him “You can thank Toots for these, while they aren’t attached to a grabpack they should still function like them, meaning we should be able to access the other offices at least.” Rabie said as she slower had strolled her way over, to the offices’ front door. “Let’s head out this way, we should be able to get to the other-” Rabie Baby immediately stopped talking and froze in place.
Icky was quick to notice this change in demeanour and went to go ask what was wrong, before he was then able to observe that Rabie’s ear were pricked up, a sign that she was listening intently for something, before she slowly turned around towards him.
“Um, Icks? You didn’t happen to get over your fear of insects in the last few minutes, did ya?” She asked half-joking.
Icky was confused by the question, but judging by the way she was acting it meant she had most likely heard something bad, a feeling that didn’t sit well with the frog “N-No w-why do you ask?” he tried to reply, knowing he wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Because the big one is coming and she might be a problem.” Rabie says as calm as possible.
Icky looked confused for a second “She? who’s sh-” Icky’s irises shrunk as his body began to shake. “No, you don’t mean-”
*************************************
Moxxie followed Poppy through the vents in silence, the torch illuminating the way ahead with their footsteps moving across the metal floor being the only sound keeping them company. They had been walking through for just a few minutes at this point, luckily the vent was big enough that both could walk through it with having to duck down, so it was an uncomfortable walk.
“Hey Poppy, how much longer do we have to go?” Moxxie asked his companion.
“Not that much longer, it should just be right ahead.” Poppy said, as she kept moving ahead holding the torch. “We need to get out the vent up ahead then the slide should take us to the station.”
“Theres a slide here too?” Moxxie said not sure what to think now, a slide was just par for the course at this point.
They continued to make their way through the vents for another minute, they stopped as they made their way to a shut hatch, with small streams of light beaming through into the vents.
“Ok, right just need to go through here.” Poppy said as she attempted to pull the door off but seemed to struggle with.
Moxxie noticing that she was having trouble moved up and passed her. “Here, let me.” He said as he gripped onto the hatch and pulled it off, before dropping into the room. Taken a quick glance around he then turned around and held out his hands “Here, jump, I’ll catch you.”
Poppy jumps out of the vents and lands in the imps’ arms. “Thank you, Moxxie.” The girl replied happily.
“You’re welcome, Poppy” Moxxie said happily, as he placed here down on the ground. Before making her way over to the door and pushing it open.
Moxxie didn’t know why but he had a strange urge when around the girl, like this weird sense to protect her at all costs and make sure no harm could ever come to her. The imp didn’t know why he was having this protective drive while around her, but he would make sure that they both got out of here, as he followed her into the next room.
As he made his way in, the room bared the same look and style of the other rooms he’d seen in the factory, with five large archways around the room with plagues above each of them, like the ones he had seen early in the main lobby of the factory. One difference was that all of them appeared to be sealed off by big metal grates, meaning there was no way forward. The plagues above each of the rooms read Game Station, Innovation, Playplace, Research, and Production.
The biggest thing that took the imp’s attention however was the massive hole that was near the centre of the room, it almost took up the entirely of the floor in front of them both, on closer inspection the tiles appeared to be going inward implying that the floor itself had caved in, making the imp feel unsafe in the room.
He turned to his side to find Poppy, only to see her already ahead of him making her way up to the large hole.
Moxxie felt a weird wave of panic overtake him as he saw the young girl approaching the hole and immediately sprinted up to her and snatching her of the ground, before backing away from the hole. “Hey, what are you doing?” Poppy replied taken off guard by being suddenly being picked up.
“Oh, crumbs, that is a very large hole, how about we step away from that for now.” Moxxie said as he back away slowly, while checking to make sure that the rest of the floor wouldn’t collapse.
“Moxxie, that’s the way we have to go, down the hole leads to the game station.” Poppy replied in a slightly angry tone as she tried to escape the imp’s grasp.
“Well young lady, that doesn’t look safe, so how about we find a safer way down. One that doesn’t involve the possibility of both of us sustaining serious injuries.” Moxxie said keeping an iron grip on the girl as she continued to struggle out of his hands.
“Can you just let me go!?” Poppy relied in a slightly panicked state as still tried to escape.
“Not, until we get away from the hole and we think of another way ou-” Moxxie stopped for a second, once he heard that the girl seemed to be rapidly breathing, it was then that Moxxie realised that she was panicking from being held and immediately released her.
Once Moxxie let her go, she began to put one arm to her chest and continued to breath heavily with a panicked look on her face.
Moxxie took one look at her face and then realised that the girl being held in that case for ages, had most likely had a negative impact on her, and being held tightly by him had almost triggered something. At that moment, Moxxie’s face shifted into one of guilt as he took a simple step away from Poppy to give her some air. “Oh crumbs, I am so sorry, it’s just you were getting so close to the hole and I just-” Moxxie continued stumbling to explain his actions.
Until Poppy raised her hand up, her breathing returned to normal “I-It’s alright, you didn’t know.” Poppy said as she took a few more deep breaths.
The imp felt terrible about what he had just done, he was aware of how bad a panic attack could be, and he’d just gone and nearly done it to someone else. “Again, I am so so sorry” Moxxie said not knowing what else he could really do. He wasn’t even sure what came over him, its just once the possibility that she could have been in danger crossed his mind, he jumped forward without a second thought.
Once a few more seconds had passed Moxxie decide to try and reason with her, the look of guilt still present on his face. “Surely there has to be another way down into the game station that doesn’t involve something this dangerous.” He said addressing the massive hole.
Poppy looked back up at the imp “If there was, I would take that way, so you’re just going to have to trust me-”
While the two of them had started talking again something sprung out from the big hole in the ground a made its way over to them at an incredible speed. Just before it reached them Moxxie was able to catch it in the corner of his eye and was quick to noticed whatever it was, it was aiming for Poppy. “Poppy, watch out!” he said as he jumped in front of her to shield her.
The second later Moxxie felt something grip on to his waist, looking down he noticed it was extremely long pink arm and seemed to be coming from inside the hole in the centre of the room.
The imp didn’t waste another second to react as he attempted to use his arm and reach for his weapon. However, as he was about to pull it out, another pink arm shot out from the hole and made slithered its way over to them both. Before Moxxie could react to the new development, the arm holding him began to pull him towards the hole with such force that Moxxie felt his head being pulled back before slamming right into the factories floor once again.
Moxxie began to feel dizzy before his vison began to go black.
The last thing he heard was Poppy shouting his name.
Notes:
Well, I hope you enjoyed this chapter.
Just remember some stuff will change for this next parts coming up.
Also, I think its better if the chapters are relatively shorter compare to the long one, last time.
Thanks for reading.
Have a nice day.
penguinbandit523 on Chapter 1 Tue 05 Aug 2025 01:25PM UTC
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Knilous_the_Silver on Chapter 1 Sun 07 Sep 2025 07:54AM UTC
Last Edited Sun 07 Sep 2025 07:55AM UTC
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