Waiting in the Wings V2

[Alternative link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dNY-410tX8aABLCm3wvWUH-Z563H2dJuev2TjR7eV7w/edit?usp=sharing]

Chica’s Party World was destined to fail.

Or so they thought.

 To spin off Chica--the least popular of the Fazbear mascots--into her own restaurant? The Imagination Station first thought the Fredheads had lost their minds. Alternatives like “Foxy’s Treasure Trove” or “Juan’s Jungle Jamboree” were cobbled together and pitched, only to be turned down. They soon realized that whether they liked it or not, Chica was the “future” of the company.

The Station eventually relented, and began work on “Chica’s Party World”. After much gnashing of the teeth on what exactly a “party world” should look like, and several heated arguments on how to make Chica stand out as the head of the restaurant, a unified aesthetic that combined pastel and pastoral themes was settled upon, and blueprints were drafted. A month after commission, the foundations of Chica’s Party World were presented for approval.

They were returned with coffee stains and suggestions scribbled on the sheets. Most of them were written in blue ink.

“No tank legs”, someone wrote on Candy Cadet.
Another scrawled “Need eggs” on the egg-bound Chiclets’ blueprint.
On Mint Chip’s sheet was the profound question of “Be lumberjack?”

Most perplexing of all were the notes on Chica’s blueprint. A vague, rectangular shape was drawn in the center of her torso, and surrounded by crude arrows pointing inward. In black ink was “Oven=future,” tucked away in the bottom left corner.

After some arguing, Candy Cadet kept his tractor wheels and Mint Chip was allowed to remain an ice cream vendor, but the board wouldn’t budge on the oven, which soon developed into a major point of contention between them and the Station. As it turned out, someone was very, very passionate about the idea of Chica housing an oven rack for baking pizza inside her. As the days went on, the demand became two oven racks and then eventually three, once the practicality of one rack was called into question.

Reluctantly, the Station complied and reworked Chica’s animatronic. She would be considerably bulkier and more expensive than they originally planned, but she’d have the oven, and she’d have the racks, and she would be ready for production.

Several months later, Chica’s Party World opened and was a smashing success, leaving the Station dumbfounded as it performed beyond anybody’s expectations. Merchandise of the new and improved Chica was flying off the shelves, along with her Pastel Pals who quickly outshone Freddy’s bandmates. Fazbear Entertainment, desperate to capitalize on this success, signed off on everything from an arcade machine to an animated series, one which would take the spot of Fredbear & Friends in Saturday morning scheduling.
The winning streak was to meet its end on a hot summer night, shortly after Chica wrapped up a story about the time Candy Cadet accidentally backed over Porkpie while sowing his Sweet Seeds. Porkpie was fine, of course, but if he ever talked a little funny…
“Now you know why!”

While the audience laughed at her anecdote, Chica closed her beak and began to count down the seconds.
To them, she was holding for laughs.
To her, she was bracing herself for the inevitable.
15, 14, 13...
Each and every time a pizza was ready, she had to say her catchphrase.
10, 9, 8...
Even if she was in the middle of telling a joke or singing a song, or just didn’t want to say it, she had to.
3. 2. 1.

Chica forced a chuckle, and yelled “Pizza time!”

Three racks slid out of her abdomen, bearing a piping hot pizza on each tray. That was the cue for Paulie to grab three pizza boxes and trudge over to the Coop. Since Chica was too big to roam around the pizzeria, she had to be on her stage all day and night. Attempting to walk down the steps would only lock up her joints, and signal on-site workers to grab a forklift and return her to the Coop.

As the purple-clothed man approached the steps, Chica stepped forward, placing one foot in front of the ledge. She watched Paulie approach, and then turned her gaze to Porkpie and Mint Chip, who were walking in the crowd and delivering mudpies and ice cream to customers. Children greeted them with high-fives and showed their favorites the toys they had of them, but Chica would never even reach the gate that separated her stage from the fans. She pondered this as Paulie put the wrong key in the lock, cursed to himself, and tried another.

When he opened the gate, Chica was staring down at him. He ascended a couple steps before she slipped off the stage and tumbled down, pulverizing Paulie.

His head had become a crushed egg, and from its cranium pink yolk spilled out onto checkered floor tiles. The rest of him, laying underneath the combined weight of three stoves and an industrial-strength robot, didn’t fare much better for Chica’s stoves were still jutted out when she fell. Somewhere in Paulie’s wreck of a body was a piping hot shrimp and jalapeno pizza, drizzled in barbecue sauce and drenched in blood.

Amidst the trampling and the dry-heaves, backstage the lids of three plastic eggs lifted up to expose its hairless, saurian occupants.

Though the Chiclets were blind, they could hear everything that was transpiring in the Party Room and began to chirp in distress, waving their stalky necks to and fro. Recognizing that the chicken had flown the coop, they predicted a future most fowl.