Chapter Text
“I still believe in the potential of the poppy flower. Its unusual properties lead me to believe that the proper mixture and procedure could have life altering properties. The poppy flower has for a long time carried heavy symbolism, and I don't believe that's for no reason. Perhaps something larger than a rat would yield different results.”
- Elliot Ludwig
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Paxton Bennett, also known as the Playtime Butcher, or Poppy’s Angel, or “The Player” by the toys near him, thought he was dead.
He should be, by all means, he had survived a train crash, an overdose of Poppy Gas, falling a frankly ridiculous height, more exposure to red smoke, and another train crash, it was common sense that he wouldn’t have been able to tough it out and walk it off at some point.
That didn’t mean he appreciated being run through by The Prototype's hand, which might have been survivable, had he not then decided to take the hand out, a chunk of his flesh going with it.
And now he was inside a vat of Poppy Gel, struggling to both move and breathe as the viscous gel began pouring itself down his throat, it stuck itself to all his wounds, internal and external, solidifying and limiting his movements even more.
He tried to breathe, but found he couldn’t, no air was reaching him, and yet he didn’t feel the usual things that came with not breathing, he was sweating, panicking, eyes looking around the vat of poppy gel in fear, trying to force his hands or feet to hit the side, maybe topple it or something.
Soon, he felt a sharp pain in his abdomen, even greater than the one that came with being stabbed, and he tried to scream, anything, but no sound came from his body, like always, his mouth never made any noise aside from wheezing and coughing after the car accident that stopped him from coming to work during the Hour Of Joy, he couldn’t even move anymore, his body shaking as he began to lose energy, his eyes beginning to close against his will.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t smell, and all he could feel was the cold poppy gel solidifying around his wounds.
He could’ve stayed like that for seconds, days, months, years, even. He couldn’t tell, however, just as he was going numb, he was suddenly ripped out from the experience, literally, and dropped onto a cold hard floor.
He tried to move, but found he couldn’t, he wasn’t even breathing.
Was he dead? He couldn’t be, he could still feel everything, sure, he couldn’t move, and he wasn’t breathing, but he felt alive, like he was in some weird kind of coma.
A sudden, painful, electric shock coursed through his body, sending every nerve into overdrive as his eyes snapped open and he took a big, heavy, gulp of air, a stray thought wondering if this was what Catnap had felt before he died.
The bright lights on the roof hit him and he closed his eyes, groaning and turning on his side, his arms curling over his midsection.
“Butcher? Are you ok!?” The noise was suddenly too much and his arms shot up from his torso, curling over his ears, it was just so… loud.
Slowly, he opened his eyes again, avoiding the light as he took in his surroundings, he was in the train station, specifically where he’d gotten stabbed through and lost a chunk of flesh to the prototype.
A wave of nausea hit him as he noticed it laying a few feet from him, and he gagged, quickly sitting up and looking around.
He found Giblet staring at him worriedly, his eyes alternating between looking at his face, and his torso, which he now realized felt much better, but a sudden feeling of hunger overtook whatever good feeling he had, and he curled over, groaning in pain.
“Butcher!? Answer me!” Giblet rushed over to him, letting Paxton lean on him.
“Hungry…” He gasped out, his voice raspy from disuse, before freezing, and his hand shot up to his throat.
Had he just talked? That- that shouldn’t be possible, his larynx had been incredibly damaged after the accident and he didn’t have the money to pay for a surgery, he shouldn’t-
But he did, didn't he? He’d also groaned earlier, and it was audible, he- he had heard his voice again, a raspy, weird version of it. But he had talked. He- He was able to speak-
He choked up, his other hand quickly wiping tears from his eyes.
“You can talk!?” Giblet’s sudden comment startled Paxton, making him flinch and jump.
“Uh… couldn’t, before” He said, still in awe of hearing his voice again, he tried to clear his throat, but it soon became obvious he’d need water.
The only kind of water he’d seen recently was undrinkable, and the one that was had been a water bottle he brought that got lost in the train crash at the game station.
He sighed. Turning to look at Giblet. “You got water? Food?” he asked, trying to keep his sentences short.
Giblet nodded, for some reason refusing to look anywhere near his torso, he would’ve asked about it, but his throat felt like it did everything it could until he got some water in there.
Giblet walked off, motioning for Paxton to get up “Come on, Butcher, I found some supplies Poppy left hidden in here.”
He slowly got up, realizing he still had the grabpack on, but he also felt too tired to get it off, besides, he could need it soon for all he knew, and slowly followed Giblet into the door for the Data Centers, and they entered the room.
It was… underwhelming, for all that Poppy and Giblet had been hyping it up as the answer to defeating the Prototype, it was just a bunch of servers and things you’d find in a typical data center room, nothing that would yell at you “HEY!! THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED TO BEAT THE BIG BAD SPIDER JESTER”
Giblet jumped into the closest cabinet, disappearing into it “C’mon Butcher! This way!”
“Uhm…” He croaked out, gesturing at himself to show that he wasn’t of a small enough size to fit.
“Oh, right, heh” He chuckled, looking embarrassed, and if his skin wasn’t inside out, and a toy’s, it would’ve probably flushed, running into the cabinet and coming out with a cloudy half-filled water bottle he offered to Paxton. “Here you go Butcher!”
He smiled, taking the bottle and deciding to thank him after his throat had been revitalized.
He took a swig, nearly crying in joy as the lukewarm water went down his throat, getting rid of all the dryness, it was pure heaven, even if lukewarm water was the worst kind of water, nothing could compare to the feeling of it right now, filling him with a sense of relief he hadn’t felt since the hour before he got Poppy’s letter, before he knew what was going on under this hellish factory.
He hadn’t realized he had drained it all until Giblet tapped him on the leg, snapping him out of the weird trance he’d gotten in.
“You hungry, butcher?” He asked, holding up a can of tuna with his hands, it barely reached his chest, it was.. cute, like a child offering you a drawing kind of cute.
He smiled at Giblet, putting his hand on his head and ruffling the little tufts of hair that peeked over the stitched skin. “Actually, my name is Pax-”
Suddenly he felt his torso open up, and a tongue suddenly shot out and grabbed the tuna can from Giblet’s hands, and he felt it, he felt his torso open like it was a mouth, he felt the teeth, the saliva, the tongue in it, he felt the cold metal of the can on his tongue and felt it when it ran back inside his torso and began chewing, he felt his other teeth breaking down the metal and swallow it to- somewhere.
“Wh-what the fuck!?” he stepped backwards, tripping on his own feet as he stared at his torso in horror, specifically, his stomach, where there was a mouth he had somehow missed before.
Suddenly he remembered Giblet had refused to look at his torso, very pointedly too, he had already known he’d suddenly gotten a mouth in his torso and hadn’t said anything.
Panicking, he pointed at Giblet, crawling backwards, trying to futilely get away from the mouth in his stomach, failing miserably, as it was connected to his body and everything. “Y-you knew about it! Why didn’t you tell me!?”
“I- I didn’t want you to freak out! You- you were just- just dead in the gel! You didn’t need more stress!” As Giblet pleaded to him, it suddenly hit him that this was a child, a mutilated and traumatized child in a toy’s body, he could’ve been like Riley, waking up during the surgery as his organs were removed.
He felt bile rise up his throat as he forced himself to calm down, Giblet was still mentally at best a twelve year old, and didn’t know any better, he was doing what he thought was best, even if it was heavily biased.
He sighed, avoiding looking at his satiated torso as he sat up and approached Giblet. “O- ok, it’s fine, don’t worry about it Giblet, I appreciate it” He was seriously out of practice with kids…
Giblet’s previously wilted ears perked up, and launched himself at Paxton, throwing him back onto the floor and snuggling onto him “Th-thanks for not being mad…”
As Giblet sniffled while snuggled up to him, Paxton just patted his back as he slowly sat up, it felt like picking up a child, they weighed about the same as well.
While he looked around, he quickly found the places to put the grabpack hands. Seriously, why was there so much of this stuff around?
Vaguely, he could remember seeing a Pianosaurus dance along with music that appeared out of nowhere before disappearing after he hit a random one of those.
But these weren’t random, matter of fact, they asked for the omnihand, twice.
Now, the problem was Paxton didn’t have an omni-hand, not since Huggy took his old grabpack and left it somewhere in the elevator shaft about a thousand feet up.
Therefore, Paxton decided to do something he hasn’t done since entering here and getting a grabpack, which was stupid, and that was punching.
He went to the gym, he knew he was strong and he was in tiptop shape now that he’d been submerged in the poppy gel and healed of all previous injuries he had.
He had not been cleaned though. Whatever.
He slowly set a now sleeping Giblet down, away from the glass so he wouldn’t get hurt from the glass, and turned to see the scanners.
“Ok- let’s do this!”
Would it work? Probably not but he still had a LOT of pent up rage since he found the letter and thought it was a cruel joke.
So, he lifted up his fist, and after a deep breath, shot it at the first scanner with all his might.
The omnihand worked by overriding anything that the door needed to unlock in terms of scanners, and Paxton had a way to override those himself.
His fist went through the glass with surprising force breaking it into shards that dug into his hand painfully before somehow rapidly dulling in sensation, sending sparks flying as a current was sent through the scanner and into a locker that slowly and ominously began opening on its own.
He shook the shards off his fist as he stared, confused.
That was weird, but not the weirdest thing out there, like seriously, there was a dead not-dead child right behind him somehow still fast asleep.
He checked the locker, it had a computer inside, one that looked terribly old despite not being older than 15 years old at most.
It probably had to do with the layer of dust all around it that made the place smell musty, and he could swear there was black mold behind the thing.
He closed it quickly, no need to give him or Giblet any more problems with Poppy and Kissy gone.
Speaking of Poppy, where was she? All he could remember was the shadow of The Prototype’s hand looming over her before he passed out.
It made him angry, like really angry, he’d just found out they were SIBLINGS, and he couldn’t even bother to treat her properly, hell he was basically abusive towards her and her friends, he was- he was a horrible person, but he couldn’t stay mad for long, knowing a child, a probably abused one too, was there, it just- it made him so angry towards everything basically, how he could be such a horrible person while preaching about safe places and Poppy being the problem.
He pulled back his fist and punched the other scanner with much more force, sending glass shards flying, some even crossing his face, but it didn’t hurt either, hell, when he looked at his hand after shaking the glass off, it wasn’t even hurt, like glass hadn’t just embedded itself in it.
Did the Poppy gel do more than heal him and give him a second mouth?
Giblet sputtered awake, looking around “Butcher!? What happened!? Is anyone hurt?” He quickly got up and ran over to Paxton, looking around for danger.
“Nothing happened Giblet, I just- took matters into my own hands since we don’t have an omnihand” he explained, rubbing his knuckles as he went to open the locker again, warning Giblet to hold his breath.
Once he was sure Giblet was doing so, and was behind him, he reached out and opened it, it was on, with a slight green tint over it as the playtime co logo stared back at him.
The text under was asking him to press the enter button, so he did, if this was the key to defeating The Prototype and getting out of this unrealistically deep factory, then he’d do anything. (except putting more children in danger than he already did, though to be fair, they were trying to kill him)
The logo changed to a loading screen, soon after, the computer lost its green tint, gaining a familiar purple one, and then that godsdamned eye appeared again, staring at him mockingly.
“Well, well, well, isn’t this a rather interesting turn of event-”
He didn’t get to finish before Paxton punched through the computer.
There was one more thing he was not willing to do.
The Doctor’s eye appeared again on one of the security cameras “WAIT! LET ME FINISH! HOW RUDE-!”
He threw one of the glass shards at the camera, shattering it.
“Shut. The fuck. Up”