Chapter Text
Michael Afton considered himself a reasonable person. He wasn’t the type of man to get unreasonably angry at workers and demand to see a manager, but he was starting to want a talk with whoever was in charge of the universe because really, this was getting ridiculous. He was under the impression that once Henry set the pizzeria ablaze, he’d finally be able to rest and move on, be able to see his family again without his father there to taint everything. He hadn’t thought this would happen.
He looked down at the metal paws of the animatronic he was now inhabiting, growing increasingly more annoyed as they responded perfectly to him. This was not what he wanted in the slightest.
He’d been back for a while, waking up for the first time with the animatronic, but forced to take the back seat while final diagnostic tests were run. He had only gained control over the body after parts and service had brought him up to what they called a green room and left him to his own devices.
He looked into the mirror in front of him and almost wanted to cry. Freddy. Why the hell was he stuck in a Freddy? Though he supposed it could have been worse, he could have landed himself in a Bonnie or a Foxy. Now those would have been their own kicks in the teeth. Maybe this was his own type of punishment, never being allowed to rest. He honestly thought it was fair, he wasn’t exactly a good person.
He was brought out of his moping by a gentle knock on the door, followed by a head peeking around the corner. Wow, Chica certainly looked different.
The chicken animatronic smiled brightly at him and invited herself inside. “Hiya Freddy! I just thought I’d pop in and see how you were doing.” She put her hands behind her back and started rocking back and forth. It all looked so… human. It was more than a little unsettling.
Michael considered his next words. He’d have to pretend to be Freddy, wouldn’t he? Who knew what they would do to him if they thought something was off? Besides, the technicians had been talking about how advanced the new AIs were, and if the way Chica was acting was any indication, they were all probably capable of some pretty advanced conversations, so if he was stuck here for the foreseeable future, he might as well try and get along with the animatronics, right? It would at least be better than sulking on his own.
He put on a smile and met Chica’s eyes. “I’m doing fine, I guess. A bit disoriented, but that’s probably to be expected, right?”
Chica nodded. “Yeah, I get that. I had to just sit in my room for a while and collect myself. Suddenly having access to so much information can be a bit much.” She clapped her hands. “Anyway, me and the others were going to go and look around now if you wanted to come with us?”
Michael looked out of the window at the front of his room that led into the hall beyond and saw the new Bonnie and Foxy models talking between themselves, no doubt waiting for Chica to return. He guessed there was no harm in looking around, it could even benefit him to get a feel for the place.
He sighed and turned back to Chica with a smile. “I’d love to.”
She clapped her hands in excitement. “Great! This will be so much fun!” With that, she grabbed Michael’s arm and tugged him outside with a lot more strength than Michael thought she was capable of.
“We’re back!” Chica called out with a wave, practically skipping over to the other animatronics with Michael in tow. “Freddy’s coming too!”
The others looked up, pausing their conversation in favour of greeting Michael.
“Freddy! Hey man, how you doing?” Bonnie asked, coming over and grabbing Michael in a hug.
Michael floundered for a bit before tentatively patting the rabbit’s back. “I’m, uh, I’m doing good. You?”
Bonnie gave Michael a quick thump on the back before pulling away. “ Oh I’m excited as hell, look at this place! I honestly can’t wait until it opens, now that is gonna be fun.”
Foxy nodded in agreement. “Think I heard one of the techs talking about stage mechanics so no doubt it’ll be flashy.”
“Ooo that sounds interesting.”
“Ok, ok, enough chit-chat, let’s go explore!” Chica said, physically inserting herself into the conversation and practically vibrating with excitement.
Bonnie chuckled and saluted. “Yes ma’am.”
Michael watched as the other animatronics left to explore, Chica excitedly leading the pack, and closed his eyes. After all those years of hiding from and fearing these god-awful robots, he was now about to go explore and chat with them like old friends.
“Freddy?”
Michael opened his eyes to see Bonnie peering around the corner with a look of concern on his face. “You coming?”
Michael shook his head to clear it and smiled at the rabbit. “Yes, I was just thinking, is all.”
~*~*~*~
The robot looked around the room it was in. The various notes it had written and stuck up were littered around the room with no discernible pattern. It looked down at its newest set of notes, various messy attempts at writing in that alphabet that had slowly been trickling into its mind. It seemed this was a good idea, because the more it wrote, the more memories started to present themselves.
It was starting to remember names, although it could only recall three.
The first name that came to mind was Elizabeth. With the name, came the vague image of a girl. It had drawn the girl to the best of its ability, ending up with a vaguely human shape with long hair and a bow on their head.
The second name that it could recall was Michael. That name made it feel a lot of different feelings, often ones that conflicted, like both fear and longing. It confused it too much, so it had quickly sketched out another roughly human shape, this one with a mask, and moved on.
The third name was Cassidy. This name brought a sense of comfort, but also the thought that it needed to find whoever they were. It drew out another vaguely human shape, this one with their hair tied in two pigtails and two black streaks running down their cheeks.
There was another name, one that felt more… personal than the others. It floated on the edges of its mind, but whenever it tried to focus on it, the name seemed to disappear.
The robot stood and walked over to one of the pillars in the room and stuck the notes on it. It would figure all of this out eventually, it would find out who it was and it would find these people, whoever they were.
~*~*~*~
Michael looked up at the tunnel above him that he and the rest of the animatronics were about to ascend through. This was going to undoubtedly be the first of many shows he would have to perform as Freddy Fazbear himself and he was more than a little nervous, but also quite a bit excited. There was a period of time while he worked at Fazbear Frights that he was just a normal nightguard watching over the place instead of trying to keep his undead father from getting him. During this time, the nights were pretty quiet, so to keep himself occupied, he had grabbed a broom from the supply concert and put on his own one-man concert. He was under no impression that his voice sounded anything less than horrendous, but it had given him plenty of time to practice all sorts of tricks with the broom that could no doubt be translated to the mic stand he had been equipped with.
Suddenly, his arm was being shaken frantically. He looked over and saw Chica clinging to him while bouncing excitedly. Over the past week he’d spent exploring the so-called ‘Pizzaplex’, he’d gotten to know the animatronics, so this level of energy from her was hardly a surprise, in fact, he was surprised she’d made it this long before letting her excitement out.
“Freddy! Freddy oh my god, can you believe it!? We’re going to perform! On a stage! In front of people! Ahh, I’m so excited!” She squealed, upgrading from light bounces to full-on jumps.
“Really? I thought we were just going to the arcade.” Bonnie said, voice laced with sarcasm, but also amusement.
Michael put his hand on Chica’s shoulder to steady her. “This is exciting, huh? But be careful, you might break something.”
“Oh, right, sorry.” She said, backing up and continuing her bounces.
Foxy chuckled at her antics from his spot at his drum set. How they expected him to play the drums with a hook, Michael had no clue, but the fox didn’t seem too concerned, so Michael supposed he had some sort of trick up his sleeve. “This’ll be good for ya, lass, letcha get all that energy o’ yours out and give the rest o’ us some peace.” He joked.
Chica immediately stopped bouncing and glared at Foxy before turning around and crossing her arms with a hmph.
Suddenly, music started playing through the speakers, accompanied by the sound of a voice announcing the animatronics as the platform slowly started to rise.
“Is that Hand Unit?” Michael muttered to himself.
Michael took a moment to steady himself and looked back up in time to see the ceiling spiral open. Michael smiled to himself and tightened his grip on the mic stand. He had always said he wanted to be like Freddy Mercury when he was little, so he supposed he was finally achieving one of his goals.
With that final thought, Michael smiled wider and jumped away from the group and through the fog covering the entrance as the platform reached the top, and began to sing the song that had been pushed to the front of Freddy’s programing.
So what if this wasn’t exactly what he wanted, he was finally free from the constant threat of his father. He was finally free to live . Well, to live as much as a ghost possessing an animatronic can. He had been brought back and there was nothing he could do about it, so why not live out one of his forgotten childhood dreams? He was Freddy Fazbear now, the face of the company, the centre of attention for once in his life. For the first time in a long time, people were looking at him, and not because he’d just caused his brother to get his head crushed in an animatronic, or because he was a walking corpse strolling down the street. No, this crowd, this sea of people were looking at him in excitement, they were happy to see him. If this was the life he was now being forced to lead, then it wasn’t all that bad.
~*~*~*~
Evan. It- no, his name was Evan.
He was starting to remember more about his life before he woke up in this room, images of a party, a group of people in masks towering over him, and a close-up of a bear’s face before everything went dark flashing through his mind.
He wrote and drew these things as they came, quickly filling up more and more space on the various surfaces of the room. It seemed that once he remembered his name, everything came flooding back.
Evan walked around the table that sat the various robots he had dragged back to his room after his few brief adventures outside of it. “This is daddy,” He mumbled, adjusting the hat on it. “Mummy, Lizzie, Mikey,” He finally came to stand behind the last bot. There was something… wrong with it. He gripped its head, twisted it, and yanked it off. “And me.”
Evan dropped the head to his feet, looking over his makeshift family. This was all of them. So where was Cassidy? Who was Cassidy? He needed to find her. She was important, he just knew it.
~*~*~*~
Cassidy panted as she slashed through another of those damn rabbit things.
This was not going according to her plan at all. The plan was for her to find out where Afton had escaped to, find a functional animatronic of some kind to possess, find Afton himself, then drag him back to hell with her. Easy, right? Apparently not. No one trusted her to go out alone, which, fair enough, if she was known for one thing, it was her anger, and Evan had volunteered to go with her. Things were going smoothly, she’d found an animatronic to possess, a cool wolf-looking one that looked like she could kick serious ass, but right as she was about to fully possess it, some strange force grabbed both her and Evan and dragged them off to who knows where. Now, she was stuck inside some video game being taunted by none other than William Afton himself, with no idea where Evan had ended up.
She ran down the corridor, narrowly dodging the rabbits floating towards her. This was all her fault. She should have listened to the old man and let go of her anger, she should have let Afton just burn instead of keeping him in her own special purgatory. Maybe then this wouldn’t have happened.
Maybe he wouldn’t have escaped.
Maybe she wouldn’t be trapped here.
Maybe Evan wouldn’t be lost out there somewhere on his own.
That poor little crybaby, he just wanted to help. He was probably terrified right now and it was all her fault. He was alone and probably scared out of his mind and not finally resting with the rest of his family because of her selfishness.
Cassidy wasn’t exactly one for apologies, they often felt awkward and uncomfortable, but as soon as she found a way out of here and found Evan, she was going to grovel for his forgiveness. Not that she deserved it, but she’d try anyway.
She turned a corner and came to a dead end. “Shit.” She muttered, turning around to face the hoard of rabbits closing in on her.
The silhouette of a larger, more glitched rabbit rose above the smaller ones with a twisted grin. “Game over, little princess.”
“Eat shit and die, Afton.” She spat out before the rabbits converged on her and everything turned black.