Could mechanical things Stop trying to kill me...for FIVE MINUTES?! [Kaden and Sun & Moon]

[StageGhost]

It was unbelievably convenient that the coordinates were actually in range of his navigation unit. Considering the utter size of this planet, he expected it to be further. Maybe the universe was giving him a break. Or maybe his luck was a few portal jumps back, trying to catch up with him. He wasn't going to complain - just take advantage of the time he was afforded. The repairs he needed to complete were simple; getting the pieces needed for those repairs however, was not. The planet he'd been shunted to from the last skirmish was well outside the range of his galaxy's scope, or any other galaxy he knew of for that matter. He wouldn't call it primitive, exactly, but...well, their conflicts still remained on a local scale, and they hadn't even terraformed their closest neighbor yet.

His plan was relatively straightforward. Locate the complex, find a way in, do a quick recon, and get the hell out. Quick meant an hour. This was just supposed to be a preliminary sweep, more of a scan to see if anything was even salvageable before he considered trying to lug anything around. His zero-space access had started acting finicky in the last jump, and he didn't want to risk stowing a vital component only to find it stuck and have no other replacement. But that also meant carrying things on his person, which was inconvenient at best. He was also concerned about just how abandoned the complex would be. High end technology wouldn't just be left without any surveillance; humans were nothing if not incredibly protective of their developments. ...now didn't that sound familiar?

He knew well enough that "abandoned" didn't always mean "free of surveillance," so it was also a camera check. He didn't want any humans spotting him, even after the fact; that would just get messy. It was a blessing that the planet had its own network fraught with image and video depicting its primary species. He was able to tinker up a holographic disguise without needing to interact with the nearby populace. Other research had also discouraged him from attempting any contact. He didn't need another army chasing after him. For sake of caution, he risked using some of the battery charge on his approach just after dark, waiting until he'd squirmed his way through a gap he leveraged in a bay door before letting the human visage drop away to familiar kinetic mesh and amber fur.

The smell hit him first: a train-wreck of rotting sweet with an underlying smell of mildew. His nose wrinkled, and he exhaled sharply to stifle a sneeze. He'd known the place was abandoned when he found the news article about it, but that didn't quite prepare him for the utter state of disrepair he found the building in. Even stepping lightly, debris crunched underboot; the place was musty, and it had just a feeling of decay eating at it in the dark. His ears flicked, listening to how his own bit of noise echoed off the space, giving him an idea of how large it was. The ambient glow of his nav unit gave him more than utter blackness to look into, but it wasn't enough to make anything useful out. He snagged a flare from his boot and lit it, squinting past its initial spark to get a better look at the space. His best guess was that it was some sort of loading bay. He wondered how long it had to have been abandoned for all the trash to have piled up. In any event, he wasn't going to go digging in trash for salvage if he could help it. The complex was massive; there would be better places to look first. He could do blood, rust, and dirt, but he drew a line at anything that could start growing something.

The most accessible exit of the bay was across the room. He fiddled with his nav unit as he crossed, checking the limited charge and debating whether to spend some of it on map tracing. He decided against if for now; he didn't plan on going far, and he was a pretty decent navigator. It would be just like the caves he explored in his youth- and continued to explore whenever he could sneak away from work. The smells changed as he crossed the threshold to the next room, the smell of mold and rotting food assaulting his nose. This room turned out to be less straightforward, bulkier debris filling the room with only a snaking path to get around it. He skirted around a particularly suspicious looking pile, hoping it didn't try to come to life and eat him. Wouldn't be the first time.

About halfway through the room, it occurred to him: the room was a kitchen. He took a step sideways and tilted his head at an appliance that was, probably, an oven. It made sense that a complex of this size would have many; maybe food safety issues got it shut down. It occurred to him that he'd never fixed the stove back home after the fuel incident. He'd ruined a perfectly good pie in collateral damage. His wife had been furious. The memory made him want to laugh as much as it made him want to cry. He did neither, turning away from the mess to make his way to the next doorway. He ignored the pang of hunger that needled for attention, trying not to think about how long it had been since he'd eaten. He didn't think he'd find anything in this mess anyway.

The next room was a jungle of shelves, and he did some hopeful searching as he meandered between the rows. Disappointment was his only reward. There didn't seem to be anything particularly useful, and he worried that he might have to explore the complex a lot further before he would. Maybe other scavengers had come through, he considered, or the company cleared any of its high-end stuff out before leaving the building to its fate. He was just beginning to consider his mapping function again when his boot sent something rolling away from him. He tracked it, meeting a pair of dead optics as it bumped a shelf corner. The flood of curiosity was a welcome feeling as he shuffled closer and inspected it with his flare raised.

"Hello, you," he mused in a murmur. He set the flare down on the ground and picked up the object - what looked to be a poor robot's head. He turned it over in his hands a few times, finding its seams and ports. His tail twisted with interest as he scrutinized the bolts, considering how likely it was that one of his tools would be able to jimmy them out of the sockets. Just as he started reaching for the tool at his belt, his ear twitched. A beat later, he heard something clatter in the previous room, and he turned his head to look over his shoulder. He didn't think anything had been precarious enough to fall when he'd gone through. Vermin, maybe? Or a person - another scavenger? Or maybe he'd been spotted already; he hadn't been looking for cameras like he should have been. He flicked the dial for his hologuise, waiting for its unsteady flickering to settle and hold for a second before he set the robot aside and inched back around to the doorway, peeking back into the kitchen. He half stood when he didn't see anything immediately, scanning what he could see in the faint glow from the flare left behind him.

[NicTheDjinn]

Luck was on his side, it seemed. He hadn’t ended up on some unpopulated wasteland, but instead a heavily populated planet with technology just advanced enough to be of some use. A little hiccup being the vast majority, was held by the planet’s several military forces, but the furry alien had just enough luck that not only was a singular civilian source, but the most recent shut down happened to be fairly close by. Now all he needed was a disguise and a way in! Both proved quite easy, all things considered. The pink skinned aliens of this planet were fond of social media and so finding samples to replicate their appearance were laughably easy to find, though they came in a surprising range of colors and shapes.

Now he just needed to find a way inside, of which there seemed to be several. If cameras were a concern, coming in through what was clearly the main entrance was out of the question, even though there was a way to climb up to the partially broken front glass above the entrance itself. There were a few exits along the sides of the building which were all locked and some broken windows that were all boarded up or too high to easily reach. The loading dock was what provided an easy, but more subtle way inside. One of the shutter doors was damaged, not closing properly. It didn’t take much fighting to pry the door up just enough to allow for him to squeeze his way inside.

The darkness made the first thing to stand out a smell rather than anything visual. The sweet smell of rot had long since permeated the room. The vats in the next room now held little more than tar-like syrup, the sticky sweet substance sluggishly oozing from corroded pipes to pool in stinking puddles below. The loading dock itself contained much of what you’d expect, unopened crates that were stacked too high, forklifts, and a fair amount of open space to ease the coming and going of truck-loads of supplies. More out of place was the thick layers of dust, debris, and extensive graffiti, the latter confirming that people had been inside since the shut down and likely had been coming and going fairly regularly by the look of things.

The doors across the way might have helped him escape the sweet rotting smell, but one stink was simply replacing the other, this one a more distinct general garbage smell. It was like an indoor landfill… How did so much trash pile up in a single room like this? why even? At first, all the garbage made it hard to even recognize what the room’s purpose was, but half buried appliances and openly rotting food finally gave away what the room likely was. The fact it seemed to be a kitchen of some kind made the amount of garbage randomly piled and stuffed into the appliances that much worse…

This was where his luck finally ran thin however… Kaden was far from alone in this place and one of the only still semi-functioning residents had heard the scrape of the loading dock shutter and then attracted by the sound of the kitchen door squeaking as it opened and the familiar clank-click of it closing once more. Had someone returned to the pizzaplex? Had they gone into the kitchen? Oh! What if they were making pizza?! That delirious thought got the heavily damaged machine to move past the syrup vats and through the door into the loading docks. Her uneven shamble didn’t slow there, making an unsteady bee-line for the kitchen door.

In the next room, Kaden would discover his first former resident in the form of a very broken staff bot, this one formerly in charge of cleaning. Ironic. A pity one of the other still active residents was heading in his general direction. He got to enjoy the quiet company of an offline bot with a backdrop of dusty shelves stocked with miscellaneous items for only a few moments before his unseen stalker stumbled into the now empty kitchen and paused. A scan of the room revealed to her that it was empty, but she had been sure she’d heard someone come in here.

She stood there, damaged processor trying to understand the situation. She had heard someone come into the building and then enter the kitchen. A staff member most likely considering they had come in through the loading dock, guests were not allowed back here, after all. But she was here now and there was no staff member to be found! That didn’t make any sense… The door leading into the next room creaked open, the robot turning her head to face the door and then going stock still as her processor raced to comprehend the new change. Well… Raced as much as the broken hardware could anyway. She could not see the door thanks to all the trash, so she would have to put together an answer based on what little data she had. As damaged as she was, she was in no condition to figure something like this out.

In the end, she did the only obvious thing one can do when they think someone is in the room with them, but they can’t actually see the person. She called out to them. The sound that ripped through the room was ear piercing! Insects and rodents alike fled at the sound, stuttered and glitched screeching filling the filthy room. Time and again she tried, the sound completely nonsensical, containing no words at all, just mangled, stuttering feedback. Worse, because she had an idea where this mistery staff member was, she started to move as she excitedly called. She’d been alone for so long! She was delighted that she would have someone to talk to again! Maybe they would take her to parts and service so they could fix—-

The source of the horrific noise came around a pile of garbage and broken kitchen appliances only to freeze. An animatronic in even worse shape than the one he’d found outside. This one was clearly more advanced as well! It was impossible to tell what the poor thing had even originally been meant to look like. Much of the thing’s outer shell was either shattered or missing entirely, the metallic skeleton within fully visible. Some sticky substance spider-webbed its way across several gaping holes in the mostly white and pink animatronic, including the gaping hole where the thing’s mouth must have originally been. Perfectly spherical eyes shown in the darkness of the dark kitchen, one of them flickering violently in an attempt to remain lit, the eyelid on that side gone entirely, the eyelashes that lined it bouncing uselessly in the middle and partially obscuring her vision on that side. There was no question though, she’d seen him with the way she fixated.

It took several terrifyingly silent seconds before her processor concluded that whoever this was, their face was not in the staff registry and so an intruder. With that conclusion, the animatronic suddenly sprang into action! The horrible screeching once again lashed out at the air, the animatronic moving with shocking speed. She was visibly off balance leaning into her charge recklessly, both arms reaching menacingly out at the uninvited guest, one a naked servo while the other nothing more than a stump with dangerously dangling wires. There was no question, nothing good would come if Kaden allowed himself to be caught and this robot had a dangerous lack of self preservation.

[StageGhost]

He couldn't see anything in the dark. He trusted his ears more, head tilting as he listened. A pitch of static and a stuttering mechanical noise warned him that something was there. Then a noise tore at his ears, rending across the room and echoing a painful dissonance. He recoiled, pressing his hands over his ears - which on the hologram looked more like pressing the sides of his head. His limbs felt weak, his heart stuttering anxiously. What for Zoni's sake could make a noise like that on this planet?

A flicker of motion made him look up, ears still aching from the horrid noise. He wasn't sure when he'd ended up on one knee and leaned against the door frame, but he had to look up to see it. What he saw was a pitiable thing, left to rot in its disrepair. Neglected and torn apart, abandoned with the garbage like it wasn't anything better. Sure, it was a little frightening - as many things could be in the dark - but Kaden was one to think logically. The poor android was in a devastating state of disrepair, and left all alone; of course it would be upset. In that beat of silence between them, Kaden thought he might offer to repair it.

In the next moment, logic no longer mattered, sent out the window and over a cliff into a ravine. The screech, the aggressive lurch of movement- Some primal instinct responded instead, flooding him with fear and adrenaline, and his feet were moving before he had a chance to rationalize it. The flare skidded across the room as he failed to grab it in passing, knowing there was another exit to the storage room. There it was! The moment he spotted his exit route, he kicked on his hoverboots. The corners were tighter than he usually practiced in, but the shelves made good pivot points. The moment he hit the second door, he leaned in on the accelerator to get some distance. It was noisy, but keeping quiet wasn't the priority right now. He bee-lined for the first hallway he saw ahead of him, hopping an obstacle in the next room before his boots sputtered out and died.

“Fuck!” He scrambled, grabbing onto something that kept him from landing flat on his face, and immediately got himself standing again, eyeing the path behind him. It was still too close, far too close - he could hear it stumbling along. To his luck, another doorway was very near, and he quickly ducked through it, following the next hallway in the direction firmly away from the aggressive android. He didn't risk trying to get his boots working, for fear the noise would tell it which way he went, so he sprinted down into the dark. He took the first left turn he found after that, pressing back against the wall as he tried to get his breathing under control, to get his heart to calm down while straining his ears for noise of pursuit. The pause only lasted a moment. He inched along the wall away from the long hallway as he listened. His ears were still ringing. He really hoped he wouldn't have a repeat of that encounter.

[NicTheDjinn]

The severely damaged animatronic was uncoordinated and clumsy, but that didn’t stop her from running right for what registered as an intruder. Sparks flew as she did her best to catch up, screeching as she knocked into something and fell. What that something was, she didn’t know, but it was a struggle to get back up onto her feet. Once she had, she lurched forward again, bursting into the hallway only to stumble to a stop and scan. She could no longer see him. She entered search mode then and started to slowly move forward, shreiking time and again in an attempt to call out some of her scripted lines. Needless to say, it didn’t sound quite like how it used to…

As he continued to more quietly flee, the horrific distorted screeching faded away into the distance, only for a new sound to filter in, in its place. Was that… Sobbing? Considering what he’d just run from, it was understandable that someone else trapped in here might be crying and considering how easy it was for him to get in here, it wasn’t a leap to think someone else might have gotten in too and very much regretted doing so. The sound echoed through the halls, growing louder as he pushed open another door to reveal a new storage room. The first storage room by the loading docks contained general supplies for the pizzaplex varying from party supplies to cleaning supplies. In here though, the items clearly had some sort of theme. There were dusty, broken go-karts, helmets, go-cart parts, and several broken simple animatronics like that one he’d first found, though these had helmets. There were a few boxes of party supplies here as well, but these had a purple and green color theme and a logo that read “Roxy Raceway” with a checkerboard pattern around it.

The sobbing continued on, bouncing off the walls of a stairwell revealed as he opened the next door. The sound echoed louder as he climbed till a final door brought him out into a huge indoor space. Faux stone lined the walls to give the illusion of being in a canyon, though the warehouse-like ceiling could be seen far, far above. Just over the lip of one of the “canyon” walls was what appeared to be a massive window, though it was too dirty to tell what was on the other side. There before him was the raceway, or at least what was left of it. It seemed that many structures had collapsed. The black asphalt was the only thing that really gave away that this was the “raceway” as there was little left of the original track. There was rubble everywhere and piles of race car tired that once may have been neatly stacked, but not just contributed to the mess, not to mention the broken artificial plants. Vicious looking things too, covered in spikes, though a close inspection would reveal the spikes to have rounded points and actually be bendy so they didn’t actually prick you.

Here was where the crying came through clearly. Without the echo of the hallway, it became obvious that the distortion wasn’t just said echo. There was something digital sounding about the voice, artificial. Still, there was no question, that was sobbing, and unlike the last animatronic, this one was still capable of speech. There, sitting on a tire, was the damaged animatronic. This one had more of her still intact, but the damage was no less obvious. One of her arms barely had any shell left on it while the other had none at all, even lacking the acid green claws of the other hand. Her chest plating had been mostly shattered away and her mid-torso was gone entirely, all exposed endoskeleton and wires. One leg was badly cracked, but otherwise intact while the other was shattered with parts missing, particularly at the foot. It was hard to see the face at the moment as both hands were occupied with holding it, two roughly triangular pads sticking out of the top of her head held low to make the poor thing look that much sadder. There was little hair left on her head, just a few wisps of silver and a singular green stripe to match her remaining claws. At her back side was the stump of what might have been a tail, though it was little more than a ridged tube with wires sticking out of it at this point.The wretched creature held her face in her palms, rocking as her shoulders shook from the force of her sobs.

“I… I’m not a loser! You’re not trying hard enough! We’ve looked everywhere! He’s gone! Don’t give up! He is still hiding… Somewhere! Winners don’t give up! Never give up!” It went on and on, each sentence was interrupted by distorted sobs, clearly not having noticed that she wasn’t alone anymore. Considering this one was coherent enough to talk, perhaps this encounter might go more smoothly. If nothing else, it was clear that she was in desperate need of not only repair, but comfort.

[StageGhost]

It was with shaky, tentative relief that he realized the horrid sound had finally faded into the distance, and its source was no longer in direct pursuit of him. Maybe it would try to find him, but for the time being he could avoid it and try to find a different way out of the complex. He couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor thing, though. It wasn't something he could help. The engineer and inventor in him really wanted to take a crack at fixing it. Or at least get a look at its insides. He didn't get to see much in the dark, regrettably, but he also wasn't sure how he'd get close again. The hostility was one thing, and manageable besides, but thinking about the screeching sounds it emitted made him cringe, ears twitching.

He shook his head, focusing on the sights and sounds of the present only to realize that he'd already been following a new sound on instinct. The sound of sobbing. Concern scrambled to the forefront of his mind, wondering if someone had gotten lost and frightened by the animatronic he'd just encountered. That thing had spooked him, and he didn't usually have a fear response to even aggressive robots; he couldn't imagine how a human would feel about it. Most of them didn't even have basic combat experience, of course they'd be terrified. Never mind the fact that he had just been terrified, but he could blame that on the paranoia. It was fine. Totally fine.

Following the sound led him upstairs. He hesitated a moment but decided that it would be easier to avoid the hostile robot if he changed floors. Hopefully that would put him out of its patrol range. He could backtrack later if he really couldn't find another way out, though surely he should be able to. There had been multiple entrances to the building; he'd just entered through the one least likely to have active cameras or patrols. Well, maybe not so much the latter.

As he continued to follow the noise, he also continued his search among the remains of the complex, although it was mostly cursory glances and cataloguing so he could backtrack after he'd investigated the sounds of distress. The most fascinating part to him was how similar things were to what he knew. He recognized the party supplies for what they were, and he wondered how far the cultures crossed over. Granted, they did things differently on Fastoon, but other parts of Polaris had similar customs with similar decorations. Incredible what a planet of people would do when left uncontacted.

Opening the last door made him think for just a moment that he was actually still in Polaris, waiting impatiently at the doors of Krell Canyon's mines for his best friend so they could race each other into the dark - no deadlines, no anxieties, no betrayals... The feeling was gone in a blink, emptied by a sense of loss as he saw the melted plastic and discarded junk for what it was. Then he noticed where the sound was coming from, or rather what, and he froze.

Another one. Of course he would be wary after encountering the first, but the anxiety was shoved aside by a sense of concern. Was this normal? This couldn't be normal. They wouldn't just leave highly advanced engineering to rot on purpose, would they? Surely it was counter-intuitive. That didn't even bring into question the morality of it. He'd done some research about the pizzaplex's attractions and technology from when it was still operational, and from what he could tell, these robots were incredibly advanced for human technology, on par with bots back in Polaris. Not your average consumer bots either, but things indiscernible from sentient if not actually so. This was the second one he'd come across.... How many others had been abandoned? Thus far, Kaden hadn't formed much of a strong opinion about humans apart from a very healthy wariness. Now, however, he was beginning to think he disliked a good sum of them. The ones attached to this Fazbear company in particular.

On the bright side, this one could still speak! Coherently, nonetheless. Well...relatively. As much as one could be when upset. Though, the state of it wasn't very comforting. Not quite as broken as the last one, but still in a very sorry state of disrepair. The things he could pick up from what she said weren't particularly reassuring either, if the translator was working correctly. Maybe he could get a dialogue going with her, see what's got her so upset, give her some reassurance, offer to get her fixed up. Yeah, that sounded like a plan. Totally flawless. (Every time you say that, something bad happens.) He did have enough sense to approach her with some caution, stepping to approach her side and glancing for potential escape routes in case the interaction didn't go as he hoped.

"Hey,” he called softly. “Did you lose someone?”

[NicTheDjinn]

He'd managed to leave one animatronic behind only to find another one. This one could at least talk in full sentences, even if it was concerning that she was talking to herself. What she was saying wasn't particularly reassuring either, divided between being frustrated at not finding someone and self loathing. The latter was arguably the more important bit of information to gather. To be able to hate yourself, you needed a sense of self. Self loathing was a very complicated feeling as well. These were clearly not pre-programed responses, proving that these poor things were full on advanced AI. Robots empowered with sentience.

Unfortunately for him, a lot of that processing power was railroaded by strict programming and that included company protocols to respond to intruders and less than official protocols to acquire specifically designated children. The former was what he was about to tangle with and as damaged as she was, she was stuck in the over aggressive state of her tampered with code. His fate was sealed as soon as he spoke.

Her behavior changed radically, whipping around to face him. Of course, she doesn't have a face… Unlike the previous animatronic that had a hole where a mouth might be, this one lacked any sort of face covering. She had empty eye sockets imbedded in a wider inset, making her look almost owl-like. The ear-like structure's on the top of her head swiveled sharply, proving that, yes, those were ears, and the way they zeroed in further proved they didn't just look the part, but actually did pick up audio. His audio.

“I hear you!!” She announced, getting up onto her feet jarringly fast. Damaged though she obviously was, she moved MUCH better than the last one. She wasn't shy about showing just how well she moved as she lunged blindly in his direction, barely missing the alien before landing with a deep clang, suggesting she was build solidly enough to be very heavy. Common sense would suggest if she did manage to hit him, it would hurt and that was being optimistic. She snarled as she realized she hadn't managed to pounce on anything, ears once again starting to swivel.

Apparently, if the ears and stillness where anything to go by, she was completely blind. If that was the case, then hearing seemed to be her main form of taking in her surroundings and she was dangerously close to him so any sound he made would surely give him away. Of course, his life couldn't be simplified by simply holding still and silent till she wandered off. No, of course not. The universe was rarely so kind. The faceless animatronic tilted her head back and made a snuffling sound. Sure enough, she slowly turned to face him once again, following his scent.

“There you are…” It was time to go. Now. Very quickly! It was highly unlikely she would miss her attack a second time and it was clear that while hearing was her main sense, she was very capable of smelling him too and he was too close for her to overlook. She dropped down low, clearly about to pounce a second time.

[StageGhost]

A pang of horror hits him when she turns her face to him, and all he sees are empty sockets, her remains hardly a shadow of what she might have been before this. A twinge of anger mixed with the sorrow of such injustice shown now two of these creations. Not that he could convey any sort of sympathies; he picked up on the hunting posture before she pounced and managed to skirt sideways to avoid her first attack. He held his hands up as he backed off and sidestepped to put the tire between them, though the gesture was ineffectual in the face of her blindness.

“Hey now, I know you’re upset, but I don’t think breaking my bones is gonna make you feel better,” he said as the noise echoed off the walls. He tried to keep his voice light, hoping the initial attack was just some residual anxiety of sorts or the dregs of a program that could be overridden with a little gentility. “How bout we settle down a second and-"

"There you are."

Terror squeezed his chest. A chill settled underneath his fur, as he was thrust back to an instance of burning plasma and raking metal, a desecrated city and a looming-

He bolted.

He didn’t think at all about where he was going. Just that he needed to get as far away from the threat as possible. Any logical aspect of his thoughts had scattered; he was working on instinct and an all too recent memory. His fear-addled brain thought he really was on Lumos for a moment, and it nearly got him cornered. Something about his surroundings was different enough from his memory to jar him into some semblance of sense, thankfully before she could get ahold of him properly.

She was fast, he found out quickly, and she was relying on hearing mostly, maybe a bit of smell. (A part of him was dazzled by the advancement she displayed in such innocuous behaviors, which he quickly tucked aside to think about later, when he was not actively running for his life.) Distance and difficult to access were his primary goals in his retreat. A brief moment was all he gave to thinking about backtracking the way he'd come. Just the memory of that other bot's horrific screeching was enough to reject the idea.

He took stock of the terrain around him, reminding himself that he'd been in bigger binds than this with deadlier things. Despite having been decorated like a ravine once, the attraction did feel a bit like an authentic one now. Barriers and heaps of junk, the remains of whatever they'd built here having fallen apart in whatever disaster had struck the place. It felt just like the scrap yards on Lumos, he figured. Easy. Just mind the rust. And the unidentifiable, probably-deadly ick. (Don't say it-) No problem. (Dammit, Kaden.)

The mess turned out to work in his favor ultimately. Nimble as he was, Kaden got out of her charging range with a quick hop and scramble over some debris. With the brief advantage of height, he looked for an alternative exit and found one higher up. There had probably been spectators seats up there at one point. Now it just looked like the victim of environmental fallout like the rest of the room. He might think about why it was so wrecked here where the outside suggested no such structural damage, but later. Much later, when the danger to his person was no longer imminent.

Tracking which direction the animatronic had decided to give chase, he kept to higher ground as much as he could. When he had to drop down to her level, he found something to toss away and make enough noise to lure her away from him. She'd probably figure out his game eventually, so he didn't dawdle about it, trying to keep as quiet as possible and fast when quiet wasn't an option. Eventually, he managed to scramble up the debris at the far end. His weight shifted something as he reached the upper floor, and though he latched onto sturdy ground, debris went sliding and tumbling down in a cacophony of noise.

Kaden winced, shoulders tense. Hoping that moment of hesitation wouldn't come bite him in the tail, he hurried for the door. Maybe he'd get somewhere she couldn't access if he just kept moving.