Security Breach Adventures

Return of a Friendly Critter

In which Sun is so, sooo tired, but he's just too stressed to get a proper night's sleep. But what will happen when a familiar, smiling face comes back to say hello? (Continuation of "Deep Sleep," I have no idea where this falls in the timeline of SAMS, tbh. Maybe somewhere in mid January.)

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"2:30 am, the unusual ungodly hour line-up, keep on the chores and sweep 'til the floor's all cleaaan," I sing in a croaky-sounding whisper, trying to stimulate my mind in some way as I sweep all the dirt on the tile floor into a single, ever-growing pile. I have to wonder how long it's been since this floor has been swept properly for the pile to be so big. "Something something, mop and shine up. Start on the floors and sweep 'til the chores all cleaaan... That's not how the song goes but that's o-kay. Sweep again and by then it's, like, 2:33!"

I hate this. I hate this so damn much. I hate just walking around the daycare when it's so dark, much less standing right within the dark, all sides exposed and with almost no visibility as I stumble around in the pitch black, struggling to clean up the forgotten corners of the daycare because I need to be up and about to stay awake.

Just when the nightmares were finally going away... He had to come back. He had to come back and go right back to making our lives hell. Why doesn't anyone bad ever stay dead? Why do the good stay gone and the bad come back with a vengeance? And now Moon is losing it, acting like a madman, and Solar can't calm him down and I can't calm him down and Earth won't try and we have no idea if we can trust Ruin and everything is just falling all to hell...

Sighing, and then yawning, I rub my eyes and get back to sweeping. Slowly, feeling like my circuits are made of lead, I sweep out the bathrooms and corral the dirt in them to the main pile, and since those were the last sections I needed to do I sweep the dirt onto the dustpan and dump it into the trash. Then I grab the flashlight in my chest compartment and shine it on the trash, realizing that it's full already.

"Mmgh..." I grimace at the thought of lugging it all the way to the kitchen compactor in the dark of the nighttime 'plex, but I already know I'm going to do it anyway. Because if I take it out and leave it in the daycare, then Moon's gonna know that I was cleaning after bedtime and he's gonna yell at me for not sleeping, but if I don't take it out then I can't throw away any more trash and if I can't throw away more trash then I have to stop cleaning and if I stop cleaning then I start dozing, and if I start dozing... The nightmares get me. Not July 16th, not this go round, but of all the shit Eclipse did to me and my brothers, and fears of what he may do in the future.

The dark is the lesser evil. I take the broom and dustpan back to the supply closet and grab a trash bag, coming back to the can and emptying it before I replace the bag. Then I heft the full bag up and start walking out of the daycare, trying not to be too noisy but sure as hell not taking my time with it. The farther I get from the daycare, the more afraid I feel of the darkness around me...

Barely anything is illuminated at this time of night. Not the walkways, not the elevators, not even the escalators or neon signs advertising points of interest in the Pizzaplex. I know it's to save on power, and it's good that they don't light the whole building all night! But just this once, I wish they would. This place is just awful when it's dark. I also wish I could activate my glow feature, but that'd be a huge drain on my already drained battery that I can't afford. Not to mention, something in my mind says that if I shine in the dark, they'll see me and know where I am. Who's they? I dunno. Figments of my stupid, over-active, terror-inducing imagination, probably.

As I tread through the back corridor leading into the kitchen, I only start to feel worse. There's this awful tension creeping up my endospine and making me bristle up like a cat raising its hackles, and I swear that with it comes the feeling of being watched. I glance everywhere around me, behind me, in front, to the sides, even above, yet I don't see anything.