Let's play 20 questions! :D
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You yank on Chica’s leg as hard as you can, trying to drag her across the floor and only succeeding in moving her a few inches. Even when you throw your whole weight into it, your progress is pinfully slow. It takes you actual hours to get back to the lobby. When you finally make it, you shove Chica’s body near the wall, propping her up next to the broken cardboard cutout of her and Roxy, then sit next to her. Your arms and legs feel like spaghetti, and you’d definitely strained your back pulling the heavy animatronic along the halls.
“Ugh, I really hope this doesn’t become a pattern,” you sigh, resting your head on your hand as you check her over. There’s significant damage to her face and arm, but the movement difficulties could just be chalked up to a combination of low power and garbage in places it shouldn’t be. The attempted aggression was also a problem. If you started fixing her body and she could move as fast as Sun did, that would be a problem. You’d need to take a look at her code and see what was up.
But you don’t want her sitting there stinking up the entrance while you wait for info on how to do that. You don’t have cleaning products, but you could at least try to clear out the garbage and food scraps.
“Friend! You came back!?” Sun bounds up to where you’re sitting, leaping between his color-coded objects with the grace of a ballerina. He stops a few feet away from you. “Why are you here?”
“There isn’t another way out of the Pizzaplex,” you press yourself against the wall. He was too close. “Besides, with the building collapsed, management said this was the place to take recovered animatronics.”
“They shouldn’t have sent anyone.” If he could frown, he probably would be right now, but his face remains stuck in a wide grin. “It’s dangerous.”
“Yeah, I know that,” you motion at the bandage on your temple. Sun stiffens, but you continue speaking, jabbing your thumb to point at Chica’s body. “This one over here was the same way as you were yesterday, just a lot slower. And also apparently with a worse battery.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“What is this, another interview?” you laugh. “I took the job ‘cause I need the money. Simple as that. Now, down to business. Can’t be caught slacking on my second day, now.”
You look at Chica, taking a moment to steel yourself against what you’re about to do. With a grimace, you plunge your hand into the cracked-open side of her torso, closing your fingers around something warm and slimy. You pull it out, fighting the urge to throw up as you drop it onto the floor. It lands with a wet slap against the tiles. You think it might have been alive at one point, but you can’t be sure.
Sun gives you a disapproving hum.
“Okay,” you say, reaching your hand back in to fish out a small, dripping trash bag. “My turn to ask a question.”
“Your turn?” he asks.
“Yeah! You asked me a question, now I get to ask you a question.” You grin mischievously. Surely, Fazbear programmed their animatronics to engage in play with the children. Hopefully you could trigger that same response and get some answers.
“...Okay,” Sun sits across from you, legs crossed and arms propped up on his knees. Oh! You hadn’t expected that to work so effectively. What should your first question be? You had so many!
“Why does your personality switch depending on the light level?” you decide to ask first, still fishing for trash inside of Chica’s chest. “Is it a separate AI or just you with different behaviors?”
“That’s two questions, friend.”
“Oh, fine. Just answer the first one, then!” you huff, debating chucking your handful of sludge at his face.
“It was meant to be for when the daycare children had naptime.” Sun rubs his wrist, playing with the edge of the red ribbon tied there. “I was in charge of playtime, and Moon put the kids to sleep.”
“That thing put children to sleep!?” you ask. There’s no way those kids didn’t have horrible nightmares. Heck, you’d had nightmares about it last night when you got home.
“Uhp bup bup,” Sun wags his finger at you. “My turn.”
“Ugh, fine,” you roll your eyes.
“Why won’t you leave?”
“Like I said, I need the money,” you shrug as you shove your hand down Chica’s mouth hole, pulling out some yellowish slime that clings to her, leaving a long string of… cheese? Maybe? Between her mouth and your hand. “This place was hiring.”
“Surely there are other establishments who could use your… skills,” he says, watching as you pull more garbage out of Chica’s throat.
“Hey! Don’t get sarcastic on me!” you glare at him. “I got lots of skills! Just because Fazbear didn’t hire me for them doesn’t mean I don’t have ‘em!”
“Of course,” Sun responds in a customer service voice, grin seeming impossibly wider and more strained. “Like, perhaps, hacking into the staff records to put yourself in them?”
“I didn’t–” you snap your mouth closed, thinking. “Okay, so I did hack into them, but I do work here! It was just to get that freaky moon you to stop trying to kill me!”
Sun is silent.
“My turn for a question,” you point an accusatory finger at him, hand dripping with garbage juice. “You asked two, so now you gotta answer my second question: are you the same AI following different directives or two separate processes?”
“Curious one, aren’t you? Let’s see…” he taps his chin thoughtfully. “Two.”
“Wait, then how do you know about the database?” you ask. “Moon was the one in control then. Can you both access the same memory files? Or are you always active, just unable to pilot? Or–”
“You are asking a lot of questions out of turn, friend!” Sun tuts. It sounds like he’s scolding a child. You stick your tongue out at him.
“...Fine,” you roll your eyes. “You take your turn asking a question or whatever, then answer mine!”
“Hmmm,” he spins his head 360 degrees. “How about we play a different game? This one is called ‘clean up’. I play it with the kids before they go home for the day!”
“I mean, what do you think I’m doing now?” you motion at Chica. Despite the pile of garbage you’d pulled out of her, she looked just as disgusting as when you’d begun.
Sun flexes his fingers, curling them slowly before letting them fall slack. You continue peeling gunk off of Chica, dropping it into the slowly-growing pile near her feet.
“I mean, if you want to play ‘clean up’, you could fix what you did to the room,” you gesture in the general direction of the entrance. The grid of organized plushes, pop cans, and junk was definitely going to get in the way eventually. “I don’t know what possessed you to color-code all the junk lying around the lobby, but I kind of can’t walk to the doors without knocking something over.”
Sun looks between you and the door.
“You can just make a walkway for now, if it's too much to pick up?” you suggest. “I’d just shove it against the wall or something.”
“Of course you would,” he says, looking back down at the dripping mass of garbage you had left on the floor. You flick a piece of green pepperoni off your hand, adding it to the pile. “You make messes.”
“This whole place is a mess,” you shout, gesturing wildly at the room.
Sun just smiles at you.
“You know what, fine,” you sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose with the hand that hadn’t just been elbow deep in Chica’s trash-packed torso. You stand up quickly and snatch a flashlight off the ground from where it had been organized, clicking it on before marching into the dark giftshop. Sun stands, tilting his head to watch you leave.
It doesn’t take long to find what you were looking for. Stood in the corner was a giant metal basket, likely meant to hold stuffed animals within view of children, who could then nag at their parents to buy them a toy of their favorite character. You grab it with one hand, dragging it behind you as you walk back towards the entrance.
You shove it in front of Sun without comment before going back in for the second basket you knew was on the next floor, yanking it onto its side and rolling it down the stairs before depositing it next to the first.
“There,” you say, sitting back down next to Chica. “You can organize the junk into the baskets. Go ham.”
Sun stares at you for a moment before wordlessly picking up a nearby Monty plush and dropping it into one of the baskets. You decide to leave him to it, focusing again on Chica’s sorry state. You grab at the web of cheese strung across her chest, pulling it off with a wet squelch. Attached to the strings is an assortment of moldy cupcakes, bits of popcorn, chip dust, and empty candy wrappers. A few cockroaches skitter out of her.
You keep working at the wet gobs of food.
Eventually, thankfully, your shift nears its end and there's not much more to peel off. She could use a wash, but there’s not rotting food wedged into every crevasse of her body.
You wipe your hands off on your pants, momentarily mourning the loss of your jeans. (You would never get the stains out. Maybe burning them was a better idea than trying to toss them in the wash.)
When you turn to look at the doors, you can see a thin walkway Sun has made through his grid. He seems to still be trying to color-code the items, but as long as you can get to the door, you don’t really mind. You find your backpack sorted into the ‘black’ section of the array and pick it up, checking to make sure everything was still inside before slinging it over your shoulder and tiredly walking towards the exit.
You turn to lock the door, only to catch a glimpse of Sun as he works. He looks more relaxed than yesterday or even this morning, but he’s still broken beyond belief. You can’t imagine spending months trapped in this run-down building, body slowly deteriorating, split personality or no. And the fact that Sun apparently knew things that happened when he was Moon…
“Hey, Sun?” you call out, and he pauses his clean-up, turning to look at you with that same vacant smile.
“Can you pass on a message to that Moon you?” you tap the side of your head, trying not to feel weird about what you’re asking. Surely, if Sun knew about the database, Moon would know what you said somehow. “That I’m sorry for the light thing? I broke my promise yesterday, and I try to not do that.”
Sun’s head twitches to the side, rays flexing and shoulders drawing up. It only lasts a moment, but the glitch is concerning to say the least.
“...Keep the lights on,” he finally says, turning back to his organizing.
You watch him for a moment before locking the door and heading home for the night.
Ok. So I mmmmaybe wrote this a literal month ago and just uhhhhhh forgot? To post it? Or that this existed? In my defense I was busy getting married so uh. Yea. Here's chapter 5.
Everyone say thank you to @cassjoyse for commenting in all caps on three of the other part of this because idk if I would have done anything else with the story if they hadn't.
First┃Prev┃Next
You must have a death wish, because at 6 AM the next morning, you’re back in the Pizzaplex parking lot, backpack tossed over one shoulder as you stare up at the building. You had emailed Fazbear Entertainment that you had found Sun, and the response was almost immediate, which was surprising considering the lack of communication up to that point. Nevertheless, you had a better idea about what was expected of you now. Find the animatronics. Get them clear of the rubble. Run diagnostics. Report back. Fix what you could. Toss what you couldn’t.
You take a deep breath before unlocking the door and heading inside.
You wonder how Sun handled the night.
The lobby is completely different from how you had left it yesterday. The grime and debris is still there, but the trash littering the floor is nowhere to be found. Or maybe it was still there under the color-coded grid of plushies, garbage cans, plastic balls, and S.T.A.F.F. bot parts. The area directly in front of you has pink soft drink cans spaced evenly apart, next to what looks like a small army of Chica plushes standing in formation. You carefully step between the various objects littering the floor as you make your way towards the eastern wall, along which most of the lights you’d plugged into the generator were now strung up.
Sun is crouched over the ‘green’ section of the array, carefully placing a hairclip on the ground, then nudging the side with its finger until satisfied with the orientation.
“You’ve been busy,” you say, dropping your backpack onto a clear area of floor.
“Wasn’t able to clean up with the lights out,” it doesn’t turn to look at you while it speaks, instead focusing on the objects in front of it. Its voice warbles with… anxiety? “Can’t work with the lights out.”
“Weird that they’d program your behaviors differently depending on the light levels,” you hum. With its back turned to you like this, you can see the tangle of broken wires poking out from the back of its head. Your eyes land on a silver node with a crescent moon next to it. Maybe you could turn that off? This version of the animatronic was preferable to the other one. You step closer, trying to get a better look at what kind of cable you could plug in, but it looks pretty unique. No doubt a Fazbear Entertainment-exclusive tool.
“Hm, looks like you need some specialized tool to access your CPU. If I could just-”
You reach forward, trying to push a wire off to the side to see its circuits better, and it bolts upright. Its head swivels on its neck, looking at you without turning its body at all.
“NO!” It clamps its hands over the back of its head, protecting its wires from your reach (as if you could reach the back of its head while it was standing up). You startle backwards, and in the process accidentally kick over a green can of soda.
Both you and the animatronic freeze as you hear it hit the floor. You bend down to pick it back up, only for the can to explode, the top cracking open and spilling sticky syrup across the floor, your shoe, and the organized objects closest to the can.
“Ah, shoot,” you lift your now very wet boot out of the puddle forming on the ground. It smells like chemicals and limes.
Sun bolts forward, snatching the can off the floor and putting it upright.
“No no no,” it sounds absolutely devastated, but there’s a level of panic in its voice as well. “Shouldn’t be here. Making a mess, mess, mess.”
“Jeez, sorry,” you carefully step away from the robot. “I can get out of your, er, rays. I’ve still gotta see if there’s a way through to the rest of the building. I’ll, uh–”
The animatronic stands and flexes its fingers, glaring down at you. It’s head twitches to the side once.
You stare at it. The bandaged cut on your temple suddenly feels much fresher.
“Oksorrybye!” You jump over the few objects separating you from the turnstiles and practically sprint through the giftshop, up the stairs, and through the large metal doors leading to the daycare pickup.
You slam your back against the closed doors, chest heaving as you try to catch your breath.
Why had you bothered coming back to work today!? You should have sent your resignation letter yesterday as soon as you found out there was a killer robot on the loose!
It’s fine. Sun hadn’t done anything. It was just… organizing. And you had messed it up. You’d be pretty miffed if you’d spent all night sorting a room by color and then someone spilled soda all over it. Should a robot even feel miffed, though? Maybe it was just glitching.
Gradually, you regain your composure. There wasn’t anything to do about that now. Hopefully, you could manage until Fazbear Entertainment told you how to fix the damn thing. Maybe it could be refocused in the meantime? If it wanted to organize stuff, you could have it start clearing a path through the lobby and into the atrium. Although you’d probably need to fix up its leg first. How the thing was so nimble while missing a whole foot was a mystery, but it probably shouldn’t be putting too much strain on its body.
That’s a problem for future Y/N. Time to get exploring.
You flip on your phone flashlight, lamenting that you had left your headlamp in the lobby. Still, it wasn’t all bad. At least today you had a map of the place, which you had saved to your photos gallery last night after finding it on the website. It looked like there was a way to get through the daycare and into some maintenance tunnels, and from there you could see if there was a way into the atrium or the minigolf course. That did rely on the passage not being locked or covered in rubble, though.
You gaze woefully at a tipped-over vending machine. Chica’s smiling face greets you, advertising her pink lemonade-flavored Fizzy Faz. You can just barely remember going to a Freddy Fazbear’s pizza as a kid. Maybe you were just nostalgic, but you missed the yellow feathers she used to have. The smooth white body of this version didn’t look very chicken-like.
Come on, time to get going, you try to shake yourself out of it. You needed to find a way through the building. You could worry about the …thing in the lobby later.
You slide down the collapsed wall, stopping before you fall completely into the daycare and instead jumping down onto the balcony. The hall below you was littered with arcade games and what looked like animatronics without casings. You make a mental note to ask if you’re supposed to haul all of those up to the lobby, too.
The party rooms on the upper level are in surprisingly good shape. Sure, they’re absolutely filthy, but they all have four walls and a ceiling. You step over a fallen S.T.A.F.F. bot, double checking your map. There should be a maintenance hallway right around… here. With great effort, you push open the sliding door near the back of one of the party rooms.
The hall behind the door was very clearly only meant for staff and perhaps animatronics visiting the birthday parties. The fluorescent lights are somehow still on along the ceiling, so you stash your phone in your pocket. The winding hallways are absolutely filthy, with overflowing cans of garbage spilled across the floor. Most of it is unidentifiable sludge, but the smell tells you it must have been food before the roaches and rats moved in.
You plug your nose as you walk down the hallway, drying desperately not to think about what you’re stepping in.
The branching pathways are a bit too much for you to keep track of, and you soon find yourself hopelessly lost. Were you supposed to turn left or right at that last intersection? Was the atrium to the west or north of you now?
You push open a heavy metal door and find yourself in what used to be a walk-in freezer, although whatever food it stored has long since thawed. The shelves are piled high with what looks like cake, though their frosting is completely grown over with white and green fuzz.
“This is so nasty,” you groan, stepping around a puddle of something to get to the other end of the freezer. It lets you out into a kitchen. Every counter is piled high with garbage and rotten mush.
You gag at the smell. It seems worse here, somehow.
Covering your nose and mouth with the collar of your shirt, you make your way into the kitchen. You can hear rats scurrying amidst the piles of slop, and the unmistakable sound of something chewing.
You round a corner, and the thing making the noise comes into view. There’s an animatronic crouched over a pile of garbage, shoving food into its face. Whatever goes in quickly falls back out of the massive hole in its torso. Its head is half-missing, and the half that’s still there is smooth and white, almost like a skull.
What animatronic was this meant to be? Surely not Freddy. This location didn’t have a Bonnie or Foxy from what you remember, and the other two… Roxy and Monty? Is that what Phone Man had called them? They were a dog and crocodile, neither of which looked even remotely similar to whatever thing was in front of you. By process of elimination this must be…
“Chica?” you lower your shirt collar, peering at the animatronic hunched a few yards away from you.
She jerks her head in your direction, and you can see her face clearly. You’d never seen her when she was put together, but last you checked, chickens are supposed to have beaks. Or any mouth, really. Not a cracked, gaping maw strung with melted cheese.
She rises to her feet and begins limping towards you, hand outstretched. Her other arm is a broken mass of wires.
You step back. You’re not afraid of her, per se. She seems pretty slow and unsteady compared to Sun (well, Moon, but you’re still not sure how its switching worked). You just really don’t want her to touch you with all that rotten food covering her.
“Heeey,” you take a step back towards the freezer, “you’re not gonna try to rip my face off, are you? Because I’d really prefer if I only had to deal with one animatronic that might want to kill me.”
She just keeps shuffling forward, sparks flying from broken wires in her neck.
You take a few more steps back, and she follows you, hand still stretched out like she’s about to strike.
You decide to keep some distance between the two of you.
You take a few steps back. She hobbles forward. It’s not hard to out-pace her. You honestly feel kind of bad for her.
You lead her through the freezer, back into the maintenance tunnels. It would certainly make your life easier if you could just… walk her to where you need her to go. But your life could never be that easy. Chica makes it about halfway to the daycare before she lunges forward in one last attempt to grab at you, then slumps forward, face-plainting onto the floor.
Dead battery.
You curse, trying to think of a way to get her back to the lobby without needing to touch her. When, after much hemming and hawing, you come up with no other ideas, you grit your teeth and set about dragging her down the hall.
Her head lolls to the side as you yank on her leg, her arm splayed out above her. It looks like you’re dragging a corpse, but she’s about a ton heavier and six times as smelly.
Bit of a transition chapter here so we can get into the real meat and potatoes tomorrow. I got plans >:]
First┃Prev┃Next
“You want the lights on? Are you sure?” you ask. “You seem, like, in pain any time there’s a light on you. And I specifically promised you no lights.”
“Yes I’m sure! Lights on! Lights on!” The robot sounds panicked as it presses its face plate harder against the TV. “Please.” It adds on the end in a warbly, pathetic attempt at politeness.
You have a difficult time believing this is the same thing that not an hour ago was practically hunting you for sport through the daycare. Still, with how desperate it sounds, you don’t bother questioning it too much, instead reaching for your phone and turning on the flashlight. You hold it out to the machine, and it quickly snatches the device out of your hands, shining the light onto its face. Now that you’ve got a better look at it, something about the head on the robot is different. You swear that earlier it was only wearing a hat, but now it’s also got six jagged spikes jutting out of the sides of its head.
“Soooo…” you say, regarding the robot uncertainly. “Do you want, like, a flashlight or something? I think I dropped my headlight back in the daycare.” When you swiped at me, you frown, but decide better than to antagonize it.
“Shouldn’t be here,” it mutters, still focused on shining your phone’s flashlight directly into its eyes. “Not allowed out of the daycare.”
“Oh, well, I don’t think there’s really a daycare anymore. Plus, apparently it’s my job to get you out of there, so…” you shuffle your feet awkwardly.
“No nonono no!” The robot sounds like it’s about to have a panic attack. “Need the lights on. Can’t work in the dark. Never work in the dark.”
“Do you want to go to the entrance? There’s a massive window there so you can get more light, if that’s what you want now? Not sure why you changed your tune on that so suddenly…” You mutter the last sentence to yourself, but the robot responds anyway.
“That wasn’t me. That was the other me,” it whines. “Need the generators. Need the lights on. Need to reboot… him.”
The robot sounds absolutely terrified.
“What do you mean ‘other’ you?” you furrow your brow, glancing again at the spikes on its head. They kind of looked like… sun rays. You think back to what the robot had said in the daycare. ‘No more light. No more sun.’ You had assumed it was talking about THE sun, but what if…?
“Is your name Sun?” you ask. It nods, making what might’ve been a quiet, warbly ‘mmhm’.
Freaky.
You try not to dwell on the apparent Jekyll-Hyde situation Fazbear Entertainment had programmed into one of their animatronics. After a long silence, you continue.
“You said this place has generators?” you say. Obviously there was some power in the place, given the TVs and dangling, sparking wires, but a generator would certainly make your job easier. Especially if this thing needed light on it constantly to prevent it from turning murderous.
“In the daycare. Need to go back,” it groans. “You shouldn’t be here. You need to go.”
“I work here, man! We went over this!” you cry indignantly.
“Wasn’t paying attention. Busy,” Sun groans. “Still, you shouldn’t be here. Safer that way.”
“I kind of need this job,” you mutter.
The robot doesn’t move. You’d say it was content to stare into the flashlight, but scared seems a better word for it.
“Tell you what, you said you needed lights and a generator? I can go get them from the daycare. You hang tight, bud.”
Before it can answer you’re bounding your way back up the stairs, using the light from the neon signs to guide you. Back through the pick up door, across the checkered floor, and down the collapsed wall. You find your head lamp on the floor, glass cracked but still functional, and strap it back around your head. You hiss as the elastic brushes against the cut on your temple and make a mental note to find a first aid box when you’re done here.
It takes a while to locate the generators in the daycare. The only reason you know where to look is by finding a wire leading from a massive floodlight up through the jungle gym. You squeeze yourself through the tunnels, following the wires through the maze-like structure until you find the generator perched at the top of it.
Had these been placed here when the daycare was still operational? That seems like a major safety hazard. Well, so did the robot, but what were you expecting? That’s Fazbear for ya!
You debate how best to get the generator back up out of the daycare. It’s small enough you might be able to lift it, but you probably wouldn’t be able to carry it very far. And dragging it back through the play structure was an absolute no-go.
You find some rope nearby, and sigh.
An hour and a half later, you’ve managed to pull a single generator up to the pick up area by using a rope as a sort of pulley. It bangs against the rubble, and you nearly drop it on more than one occasion, but eventually you get it safely onto the upper floor and collapse next to it, panting from the exertion.
You are never doing that again.
You rest for a few minutes before collecting yourself and trying to pick up the generator. It’s hard to hold, and even harder to lift, but you manage to get it in your arms. You make it ten steps before needing to put it back down again, all the while cursing your decision to take this stupid job.
You pause, catching your breath, before picking back up and making it another ten or so steps. It takes ages for you to inch your way along the daycare entrance hall and into the lobby, and even longer to get down the gift shop stairs. Still, you make it.
You wipe the sweat from your brow, glancing around the room to check for the robot.
It’s gone.
“Sun?” you call out into the dark gift shop. There’s not many places to hide. You can clearly see nearly the whole room from anywhere in the store, save for maybe the other side of the center shelf, but a quick check reveals the animatronic isn’t here.
Was it on the prowl again? Had it somehow slinked back into the shadows and was now waiting to strike? Or maybe it had gone back to the daycare? But how would it have gotten past you? Unless it climbed over the debris? It certainly seemed nimble enough to manage that.
And it still has your phone.
You take a breath. No use getting worked up now. You’ve still got work to do. Even without the animatronic, you can still fix up the entrance with the generator so you’ll have a reliable source of power.
You find Sun sitting next to your mass of tools. You drop the generator next to it, but it doesn’t even react, it just keeps staring out the massive hole in the papered-over window. It’s twitching and gripping the sides of its face as it mutters to itself.
“Won’t work. Can’t work. Shouldn’t be here. Against the rules.”
“You good there, man?” you ask. “I got that generator for you. Pretty sure I can hook it up to light up the room so even at night you’ll have some light.”
“Yes. Good. Do that,” it doesn’t look at you, just curls up tighter into itself, gaze never leaving the window.
Okay Mr. Bossypants, you roll your eyes and dig into the mass of tools and wires you’d bought earlier. You had purchased a few lantern-looking things to light your way, all connected together with a thick black wire. A shame they wouldn’t be used for making your exploration of the Pizzaplex easier, but setting up a base of operations in the lobby seemed like a pretty good idea, too.
It takes you a few minutes to get the lights wired up and screw in all the light bulbs into the cages of the lanterns, Sun doesn’t move the entire time you’re working. It’s only when you finally flick the switch on the generator to turn it on that you see its shoulders sag.
“There, lights on, like you wanted,” you give it a strained smile. “Can I have my phone back?”
Sun drops your phone into your outstretched hand.
“Thanks,” you switch off the flashlight and stuff the device back into your pocket.
“Well, that’s one of you down, I guess,” you look the daycare attendant over. To say it’s in rough shape would be an understatement. Half of its face is torn off, it’s missing a pant leg and foot, not to mention its general disposition. “I don’t really have any parts to repair you with right now, but I guess I could try to take a look at your software and make sure everything’s all squared away. That’s more of my specialty area anyway. I’d just need to find one of the computers the maintenance teams used to use and–”
“No!” Sun springs to its feet, taking a step back from you before clutching its head, flattening the sun rays against the sides of its head as its fans kick into high-gear, which you suppose is the robotic equivalent of hyperventilating. “No maintenance!”
“Okay! Okay!” you back away from it, “Gotcha! No maintenance.”
“Bad things happen in Parts and Service,” it mutters, face twitching side to side again.
“Then we won’t go there,” you try to smile reassuringly. “You can just stay here in the lobby. I’ll message Faz Ent and let them know I found you.”
“Not supposed to be in the lobby,” it says. “Not allowed out of the daycare.” It digs its claws into the side of its face, muttering to itself about ‘rulebreakers’.
“Ah geez, don’t do that,” you panic. Just what you needed! A robot that refuses maintenance AND tries to break itself. “You’re allowed out of the daycare!”
“No. Not allowed.”
The metal of its face bends slightly under its fingertips.
“Well, uh,” you mentally scramble for a response. “Well! I’m the only employee, so that makes me the highest ranking one here, right? So, I’m like the boss of the Pizzaplex! That means if I say something’s okay, it is, right?”
You’re not even convinced of that yourself, but Sun pauses, releasing its face. It looks you over, spins its head, then sits back on the floor without another word.
You guess that’s a win?
You glance at your watch. It’s already late afternoon.
“Oh dang! I didn’t realize how late it got! My shift was supposed to be over half an hour ago!” Fazbear Entertainment had very strict rules about overtime, from what you remember when you signed the paperwork. Namely, you don’t get paid for it, and staying on the clock too long was a great way to get fired. You turn to the animatronic on the floor. “I gotta get outta here, but I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
It watches you push your way out the doors.
The moment you’re safely on the other side, you collapse, leaning back against the boarded-up glass of the door and pressing the palms of your hands against your eye lids. This job was already far more than you had bargained for. You knew it was bad going in, but killer animatronics with multiple personalities were definitely not in the job listing.
At least now you knew why they had made you sign so many NDAs and health insurance stuff. You don’t doubt the last unlucky sap to take a job in this building is still in there somewhere, getting gnawed on by feral robots.
You wipe the tears that had slid their way down your cheeks. The whole situation felt so hopeless. You needed this job.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
You stand up. You walk to your car. You pull out of the empty parking lot, eyeing the building in your review mirror as you drive away.
Even killer robots fear something.
First┃Prev┃Next
You shove your shoulder into the door. It doesn’t move.
You kick it.
Somewhere in the distance, you hear the robot laugh.
“Can it, scrap for brains!” you shout. “I still got a light! And I ain’t afraid to use it!”
To prove your point, you hold your phone forward a bit more, waving it back and forth in two hands like you’ve seen police do in TV shows.
“It won’t work!” It growls back from the darkness, poking its head out from a plastic tunnel a few yards away. Too close for comfort. “No more light! No more Sun!”
“Sun?” You ask, stepping back across your marker line and into the safety of the desk area. “Wait, are you supposed to be a moon? Dang, you got messed up.”
You shine the light over its face, realizing now that it did kind of look like a crescent moon.
“Naughty. Naughty," it hisses, ducking down into the pipe. You don’t even hear it as it scurries through the tunnels and pops back out on the top of a slide. “No more light!”
“I’ll shine the light where I very well please, thank you very much! You tried to kill me!” you cry indignantly.
“It’s time for your nap,” it says, climbing across the outside netting of the play structure. “Naughty children must be punished.”
“I’m not a child! I work here!”
That seems to give it pause, and its head spins a few times while it… thinks?
“Not in the database,” it finally says. “Rule breaker. Liar. Intruder.”
“I literally just got hired. It’s my first day,” you cross your arms, not caring about keeping the phone light on the creature now. You had an argument to win. “And I doubt they’d be updating your ‘database’ or whatever with new hires. If you haven’t noticed, this place is kind of closed for the foreseeable future.”
“Still not in the database,” it says.
“There is no data-” you cut yourself off with a frustrated growl. Why were you arguing with a robot? You were a programmer!
Wait a second. You’re a programmer!
You turn around, eyeing the pristine computer on the desk. Somehow, it had remained completely untouched amongst all the chaos in the room. You quickly press the power button, hoping against all hope that it had power.
The screen blinks to life, and you let out a triumphant woop before grabbing the chair off the ground and parking yourself in front of the keyboard.
Finally, familiar territory.
Your fingers fly across the keys as you bypass the computer login and begin poking around in the files.
The moon animatronic inches closer. Perhaps it’s curious. More likely, it’s no longer being frightened off by you trying to shine a light in its eyes.
You find the employee records. There’s only a small handful of people listed, but you suppose that’s to be expected from the robots they had all over the place. Why pay a salary when you can buy a machine?
You copy the template from the other staff entries. Basic information you’d give a company when filling out a job application like birthday, address, all that good stuff. The only thing missing is a picture, so you pull off your particulate mask to take a quick selfie with your phone, then use a nearby cable to transfer the file from your phone to the computer.
The photo is very obviously different from the professional ones the other staff had, but hopefully it will be enough to fool a robot. Or at least to stop it from viewing you as a threat.
“There!” you call out to the animatronic. “Check your precious ‘database’ now!”
Its head spins a few times before it responds.
“Naughty. Rulebreaker. Liar.”
“Aw come on! Am I or am I not an employee here!” you huff.
“Still naughty. Time for a nap,” you swear it smiles wider as it approaches the desk, clicking the tips of its sharp fingers against the wooden surface as it peeks up at you.
You lean back in your chair. You’re within reach of it, even if it won’t go behind the desk, it still feels too close.
“Why would I nap? I’m an adult!” It doesn’t seem to have a response to that, so you continue. “I’m an employee, right? You know that now. I can’t sleep on the job. I need to get you and the other animatronics out of the way of the incoming construction crews or whatever. Honestly, still not sure how that’s gonna work.” You mumble the last part to yourself, but you’re sure the robot hears it anyway.
“No more crews. No more generators. No more Sun!” it leans forward suddenly, inches from your face and dangerously close to crossing the desk completely.
“Sun? … That’s right! The sun!” You point triumphantly up towards the destroyed ceiling. “When the crews get here, they’ll need to take apart the roof to fix it, which will let a whole lot of sunlight in. If I take you somewhere else, then you won’t have to be in the light.” You try to force a smile. Were you really bargaining with a machine? Still, if it was so adverse to light that it fled from it, maybe that would convince it?
It thinks for a long time, mask-like face twitching left and right.
“No lights,” it says.
“No lights,” you promise, holding up your palms as a show of peace. “But also, don’t try to hurt or kill me again? Truce?”
“...Truce,” it parrots.
“Pinky promise,” you hold up your pinky, glaring down the animatronic nearly twice your height. It tilts its head one way, then the other. Did you seriously just ask a killer robot for a pinky promise!? Like that would actually be legally binding!
By some miracle, it doesn’t question it, just holds its own hand up, pinky extended. It tips its head waiting.
It can’t cross into the desk area.
After a moment's hesitation, you close the gap between the two of your hands, wrapping your pinky around its large metal one. It’s cold, and there’s a layer of grime covering it, but that’s the worst of it. It doesn’t lunge for you. It doesn’t grab your wrist and drag you out into the open. It just stands there, pinky interlocked with yours.
“Oookay,” you retract your hand, wiping the dirt off on your pants. “Um, let’s see… I’ve got a pile of S.T.A.F.F. bots in the entryway, but there’s also a giant window there, so it’ll have lots of sunlight coming in. The bosses didn’t really give me much direction about where to fix you up. Or even that you existed…”
You trail off, thinking about what to do with the machine before you.
“I guess the safest place would be the gift shop?” you say. “It’s pretty dark in there, so you should be comfortable, but it’s still close enough to the entrance that I can fix you once they send me parts. And besides all the destroyed statues and boxes, the building in that area seems in pretty decent shape, so I’m willing to bet that the construction crews won’t need to spend much time there once they actually show up. How’s that sound?”
The animatronic doesn’t respond, instead twitching its head back and forth. Finally, its head jerks, rotating right until its face is nearly sideways, and it takes a step back.
You let out a breath you hadn’t known you’d been holding.
“Cool beans,” you stand up from the chair and walk around the desk, stopping at the marker line. You look down at the line in front of your toes, then to the robot to your left. It must see the fear in your face, because it laughs. The sound sends chills down your spine.
“Pinky promised,” is all it says, a threatening smile in its voice. You hope it’s just mocking you.
“Okay, I’m trusting you here, man,” you step over the line, squeezing your eyes shut as you do and bracing for impact. It never comes. You open one eye, glancing at the robot.
It’s standing right next to you.
You let out a string of cuss words that would make a sailor blush, jumping sideways and into the wall.
“...Naughty.”
“Oh, don’t start with me! You nearly gave me a heart attack!” You plant your hands on your hips, huffing indignantly.
It just smiles down at you.
“...Fine. Be that way,” you roll your eyes and march back towards the collapsed wall of the daycare. The robot could stay in this room for all you care! You just wanted to go home, and now you could at least turn your back on the machine without fearing for your life.
It takes you a few minutes to climb up the various play pieces to reach the floor above, and when you finally do, the moon robot is already waiting for you. The smile on its face, ever unchanging, feels smug.
You grumble under your breath as you begin to lead it down the hall. You shove open the door to the lobby balcony with probably more force than necessary. Then, for some reason, you hold that door open for the robot. It clicks its head once to the side, but says nothing, so you continue across the walkway to the next door.
And then you remember.
“Oh, hold up, I think this room had a lamp or something above the door,” you say. The last thing you need is to break your truce three minutes in and get murdered when you were so close to the doors. “Lemme go see if I can turn it off for you.”
You open the door, and dim light spills from the door. The robot hisses and steps back. Its hands reach towards you, inches away from your neck, and you flinch backwards. It flexes its fingers twice, then lowers its arms. You gulp, and step back into the lit room, letting the door close between the two of you.
The lightswitch is easy enough to find, so you quickly flick it and pop your head back out the door. The animatronic is right where you left it, staring directly where you popped your head through the doorway.
“Uh,” you stare back at the unblinking, red eye. You’re pretty sure you’ll see that thing in your nightmares for a few weeks after this. “I. Got the light. You should be good now.”
You push open the door farther, letting it grab the open door and follow you down through the room and down the stairs to the gift shop.
You’re just about to turn around and tell the animatronic that you made it, safe and sound with no lights, when the TV next to the stairwell suddenly flickers to life, shining bright light onto your face and the robot’s. You throw up your hand, shielding your eyes from the unexpected flash and in the process completely missing the image of a shadowy figure that appeared onscreen for a few seconds.
The robot screeches, clawing at its face as it stumbles backwards.
“Aeegh! No! No! No more Sun!” It screams
“Ah! Shoot I’m so sorry I swear I didn’t know that was going to happen.” You reach forward on instinct before pulling your hand back, trying to help but not knowing how. It just sounded so much like it was in pain.
The whole upper half of the robot whips forward, pressing the face plate directly into the now-lit screen.
You take a step back, preparing to run to the safety of the well-lit entrance and maybe the parking lot beyond. But something makes you stay. Curiosity? Concern? You’re not sure.
The robot shudders for a moment before falling still.
“You okay there, buddy?” You ask, taking a half step closer.
“Light,” it groans, its voice sounding less predatory and more pathetic than it had only a few minutes ago.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. Like I said I didn’t know that would happen. I can try to unwire the TV if that would help-”
Reader buys a bolt cutters. This action will have consequences.
TW: blood
First┃Next
Your trip to the store is largely uneventful. You pick up a bolt cutter, as well as a few general tools, particle respirators, and a proper head lamp. The cashier gives you an odd look, but doesn’t comment on your menagerie of supplies. The electronic card the guy on the phone had given you pays for it all.
It occurs to you that he never told you his name. ‘Phone guy’ hardly seemed like a proper name for him, but what else was there to go off of? He had sounded older, like a grizzled mechanic that you might meet at a car shop. Old phone guy? Grumpy phone man? Maybe just Phone Man. You mull it over as you hop back in your car.
Before you know it, you’re back at the Pizzaplex, dumping your tools on the ground and marching up towards the daycare with a light on your head, a respirator on your face, and a bolt cutter in hand. The chain around the door handles clinks softly as it hits the ground.
You follow the hallway into an open room with checkered floors. This area, it seems, was spared from whatever happened to the lobby. After wedging yourself underneath a metal shutter, you find a mass of jungle gym parts and tangled netting forming a smooth drop into what must have been the daycare. The area to your left has completely collapsed.
Did the roof cave in or something?
With no better path forward, you climb your way down, careful to test each foot and hand hold before trusting your full weight to the shifting pile of what used to be a play structure. When you reach the bottom, your light shines on the destroyed room. Jungle gym pieces are scattered around the room, and large boxes hold hundreds of plastic balls for a ball pit. You jump over the low wall of a plastic slide, standing on top of some unidentifiable piece of play equipment. You can see most of the room from here, and it’s in quite the sorry state. Still, there’s a decently clear path to a large set of fake wooden doors on the far side of the room.
Something skitters in the darkness, and you swear you hear laughter.
“Hello?” you call out, glancing around the looming play structures. You don’t see anything, but the hairs on the back of your neck prick up. You feel like you’re being watched. “Anybody there?”
You hear bells jingle in the distance, and whip your head in that direction.
It laughs when it sees you notice it, a cruel, robotic laugh. A single red eye glows from the dark side of its face, which spins in quick, jerky movements as it watches you from the side of one of the play structures. It’s clinging to the netting like a spider, crouched in a way that seems downright predatory. You can’t even imagine what this animatronic used to be.
This must be the daycare attendant Phone Man mentioned, you think.
“Uh, hiya! I’m the new tech they sent to get the place fixed up!” you call out to it. “Well, technically I’m just a programmer, but to be honest I don’t think they looked at my resume too closely.”
You nervously grin as the robot scuttles down from the jungle gym on all fours, laughing in a way that sends chills down your spine.
You typically don’t have the best track record in recognizing dangerous situations (you were working for Fazbear Entertainment for crying out loud), but even you can tell. Something’s wrong.
You have just enough time to scream as the robot lunges for you, clawed hands outsteached. It knocks your head light off your head as it shrieks. You’re still holding the bolt cutter. Instinct takes over, and before the thing can get its hands on you, you swing at its head.
The faceplate snaps backwards, pivoting on a ball and socket join in the neck.
It growls.
The head pivots back to look at you, and somehow, its unmoving face seems to glare at you in annoyance.
You don’t waste time turning tail and sprinting for the large doors, plush floor sinking slightly under your feet with every step.
“Naughty, naughty,” the robot says, voice sounding more demented than any machine had a right to sound. You’ve no doubt that it’s chasing you down, but you don’t dare turn around to check.
The massive wooden doors are only a few yards away when you feel the air near your head shift. Without thinking, you duck into a roll as the robot’s needle-like fingers slice at the air where your head was mere seconds ago, the sharp tips catching against your temple.
You land behind the desk next to the door, and waste no time in scrambling for cover behind a knocked-over chair, arms over your head and knees pulled up to your chest.
This is it, this is how I die. You lament to yourself, shaking as you wait for the robot’s metal claws to pierce your skin. You wonder briefly how long it will take people to find your body, if Fazbear would even send people to look for it. More likely the robot will turn you into a skin suit or eat you or something. You don’t exactly know what killer robots do with their victims, but you’re about to find out any second.
… Any second now…
…?
Slowly, you lower your arms and turn your head to where you know the robot was. It’s standing just at the edge of the desk, fingers digging into the wood while it stares at you with murderous intent. Every so often its head twitches to one side or the other, spinning and jerking and reminding you very much of a rabid dog.
You stare at each other for a few moments. There’s blood dripping down the side of your face and your heart is still pounding in your chest (from your impromptu cardio session a few moments ago or the fear you’re not sure). Still, the robot just… stares. Is it waiting for something?
“Uh, hi?” you try, waving once at the thing that had just swiped at you with intent to kill.
It doesn’t respond, instead continuing to stare at you with its one red eye.
“Um,” you try again. What do you say to a killer robot? ‘Boy some weather we’ve been having lately, huh?’ You lick your lips, suddenly very aware of how dry your mouth feels. “So… come here often?”
You mentally kick yourself. Sure, you weren’t great at making conversation, but that was bad even for you.
The machine digs its fingers deeper into the wood of the desk.
“Well, I’m just gonna… go,” you awkwardly inch your way closer to the door, keeping your eyes on the robot. It tracks your movement. If it was an animal, it would look like its muscles were coiling, ready to pounce. Like a cat about to jump at a laser pointer. But it doesn’t move.
You take one more step past the edge of the desk, and that breaks the spell. The moment you aren’t fully behind it, the animatronic lunges, leaping with astonishing grace. You scream, tripping backwards into the safety.
The robot smoothly catches itself before it can smash into the wall, standing on one hand for a moment before slowly twisting its torso around so its feet are also on the ground. It reminds you of a horror movie, the way its back arches and limbs skitter effortlessly.
It’s waiting for you again, just beyond the arch of the desk. Watching.
Hesitantly, you stand up. Its head turns to follow your movements. You wipe at the blood still dripping down the side of your face as you consider your situation. What was this thing’s game?
You decide to test a theory. Opening a few desk drawers, you find a marker and uncap it. The robot tilts its head inquisitively.
You sit down in front of it, criss-cross applesauce, marker in hand. Then you make the dumbest decision since applying for this stupid job: you lay your hand flat on the floor and slide it forward, watching the animatronic as you do so. The closer your hand gets to the machine, the more excitement you can feel radiating off the thing. It’s poised to pounce again, tracking your hand as it moves across the dirty play mats.
You inch your hand forward. Nothing.
A bit farther.
Still no reaction.
One more inch.
The robot’s hand shoots forward, intent on grabbing your wrist. You snatch your hand back just in time. Then, you make a line on the playmat, tracing what you deduce must be the edge of its ‘territory’.
You repeat the process again, a bit to the right of where you started, then again a bit farther down. Each time you snatch your hand back, the robot seems to grow more frustrated. The last time you do it, it snarls at you. But eventually, you have a shaky line of marker stretching from the edge of the desk to the wall.
“Huh,” you regard the line thoughtfully, capping the marker as you survey your work. “Can you not go behind the desk?”
The animatronic’s only response is a growling, groaning, strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a scream.
“Ooo-kayy,” you frown. “So, are you going to let me out, or am I stuck here?”
It chuckles.
“I’ll take that as a no,” you sigh, reaching into your back pocket and finding your phone blessedly still there. You tap on the screen, trying to think about who to even call in this situation, only for the decision to be made for you when you find there’s absolutely no signal. You could probably still call 911, but you’re sure you’d get fired if you needed emergency services your first day on the job.
You tap the screen, scrolling through the apps. You need a plan. You need some kind of way to get either to the door or back up the way you’d come in. If the robot couldn’t get behind the desk, maybe it also couldn’t leave the daycare? That was a risky guess though. There’s no way to outrun the thing if you’re wrong.
A bead of blood drips from your face onto your phone, and you wipe it off with your sleeve.
Maybe there were first aid supplies behind the desk somewhere?
The broken TV on the wall sheds enough light to dimly illuminate the area, but you turn your phone’s flashlight on anyway and begin searching through the drawers, keenly aware of the eyes watching you from the shadows.
Your search turns up nothing but a few stray craft supplies. Disappointed, you shut the drawer and turn your attention back towards your captor.
The moment your flashlight shines on the robot’s face, it shrieks as if in pain.
“Aeeeegh! No light, no light!” It stumbles backward, clutching at its face.
Bingo.
You step forward, brandishing your phone in front of you like a gun, and the robot retreats into the shadows. You aren’t sure where it disappears to, just that one moment it’s there and the next moment it’s gone, not even the glowing red eye to give away its position. You back towards the door, making sure your back is to the wall and not the open room as you do, all the while keeping your phone light shining in front of you.
You lean back against the door, pushing against it in an attempt to open it.
Reader is the newest (and only) employee of Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex! Although the company hasn't exactly been forthcoming about what they'll be doing in the destroyed building. Look, they need this job, okay?
(My meds kicked in and chucked me full speed back into my FNaF hyper fixation from middle school. Now I've got 5 chapters of this thing written and show no sign of stopping. Send help.)
Chapter 1 (you are here)┃Next
Fazbear entertainment was notorious for cutting corners, but even this felt like too much. When you applied for the position last week, you had imagined doing some basic coding and debugging, comfortably behind a desk and in no physical danger whatsoever. You had not imagined standing in front of a burned, half collapsed building and being told you were to “retrieve and repair company assets”... whatever that meant. The email had been extremely vague.
Still, a job was a job, and you weren’t in a position to be picky about it. Staring up at the papered-over doors wouldn’t do much good, so you push through them into the entrance of the ruin that used to be the Mega Pizzaplex.
The walls are covered in graffiti and torn-up posters, and the floor is a level of grimy you don’t want to think about. A pathetic banner over what used to be the main turnstiles asks visitors to ‘Pardon our mess!’ and that ‘We’ll be back soon!’. Why the sign is on the inside of the building where nobody but squatters would see is beyond you, but it’s reassuring that someone has been inside the building since… whatever had happened to it. At least the roof won’t fall on you.
As you pick your way through the mess, glass crunching under your boots, you wonder where in the mess you’re even meant to start. This decision is quickly made for you, when you find both the center and left turnstiles completely blocked. Hesitantly, you try the right side, hoping you’ll find something. The turnstiles on this side of the entryway are thankfully clear of rubble, but what grabs your attention first is against the wall: a twitching, headless robot, which appears to have somehow fallen onto a cardboard cutout of the animatronic cast. You recognize Chica, but the dog-looking one on the other side of the cutout is a newer character, and the two in the middle are unrecognizable given the condition of the sign. Still, if the robot here wasn’t a “company asset” you weren’t sure what was, so you grab the outstretched arm of the thing and tug, letting the flashlight it had been holding fall out of its hand and roll across the floor.
It’s heavy, and you’re not exactly used to hauling weight around, but inch by inch it rips free from the cardboard cutout. When it’s free, you see that the robot doesn’t have legs, but two wheels, so, thanking whatever Fazbear tech decided to make your life easier, you prop it up on its “feet” and push it closer to the doors.
You leave the headless robot standing in the middle of the entry before doubling back to the right side of the room. The turnstiles here are free of debris, so you jump over one without an issue. Then you pull out your phone to turn on the flashlight before continuing down the hall, through a picked-clean giftshop, and up a staircase.
You find another robot in the next room, this one with a head on its shoulders and already standing up. You walk up to it, planning to push it back to stand with the other one, only for the thing to suddenly lunge forward at you, emitting a garbled shriek as it shines its flashlight directly in your eyes. Then, it slumps forward, dropping the flashlight.
You hadn’t realized the robots might still have power.
Hesitantly, you reach forward to poke the robot’s shoulder, leaning backwards as you do to keep as much distance as possible between the two of you. It doesn’t move. You push it harder. Still nothing.
Satisfied the thing had spent the last of its battery, you shove the bottom edge of your phone in your mouth so both your hands will be free to push the robot back the way you came. Sure, it’s still heavy, and your arms will definitely complain later, but the wheels must rely on power to lock, and without it, you’re met with little resistance.
Until you reach the top of the stairwell.
Dang it!
Before you can even think about how to get it down the stairs, the wheel catches on a snag in the carpet and you stumble forward, sending both you and the robot tumbling down the stairs. The phone slips out of your mouth as you yelp. The noise of metal hitting concrete echoes through the empty building. You curse as you sit up, rubbing your elbow. Nothing broken, but falling down the stairs on top of a giant metal robot was hardly comfortable. You climb to your feet, surveying damage to the bot. It had been in such a state of disrepair you can’t even tell if dropping it down concrete stairs had done any damage. Your phone lays next to it, screen cracked but flashlight still shining.
You sigh, then go about getting the robot standing back up on its wheels and push in back towards the entryway, leaving it to stand next to its decapitated brother.
You check your phone.
Your shift had only started an hour ago, but you already want to go home.
Just one more trip in, you tell yourself, heading towards the turnstiles. Find something worth reporting back to the higher ups about. Wouldn’t do well to be caught slacking on your first day on the job now, would it?
You make your way back up the stairs, through the room you had found the second robot in, and into what must have used to be the lobby. There’s a chained door to your right, which according to the wall is the Super Star Day Care Pick Up. A piece of graffiti ominously advises you to “RUN”. You try the door, pushing aside a few loose planks of wood, but someone’s wrapped a chain around the handles. You’ll need to come back with bolt cutters. For now, you continue onwards toward the main lobby area. Unfortunately, your path ends at an open elevator shaft. You shine your phone light into the open doors, looking up the dark shaft. The elevator itself was still on the next floor up, but you don’t like the way it’s swaying. You step back, deciding you’d rather like to end the workday without getting crushed by a falling elevator, and hear something sharply crack under your boot.
You pick up your foot. A broken walkie talkie in the shape of the dog mascot stares up at you. It makes a few pathetic static noises before falling silent.
“Huh,” you kick the now useless piece of plastic away, letting it skid across the floor and nestle itself between some trash. You instead turn your attention to the debris and boxes blocking the rest of the walkway. No hope of getting through there without hauling at least a few things out of your way.
With no idea what to do now, you decide to pull up the phone number of the guy who had conducted your interview over the phone. It rings for a few seconds before connecting to a robotic answering machine, asking you to explain your issue in clear wording.
“Uhhh, sorry,” you begin awkwardly. Why you’re apologizing to an AI chatbot is beyond you. “This is Y/N? I just started my shift at that Pizzaplex place y’all sent me to, but there’s not really a way to get through the rest of the building. I found two robots, but they’re in pretty rough shape and I’m not exactly, uh, trained to fix mechanical issues?”
There’s a pause on the other side of the line.
“... I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that,” the robotic voice says cheerily. “For payroll, please say ‘payroll’, for part ordering, please say ‘parts’, for-”
You don’t bother listening to the rest of her spiel.
“Can I please speak to a human?” you try. Maybe the bot could only respond to certain phrases? ‘Human’ seemed as good a trigger word as any.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that,” it responds. “For payroll, please say-”
You rub your free hand over your face, sighing deeply as you restrain yourself from yelling at the phone.
“Human. Please may I speak to a human.”
You hold your breath at the pause before…
“Looks like I can’t help with that. I’ll connect you to one of our representatives. Please remain on the line.”
“Thanks,” you mumble, though you’re not sure why. Probably just habit. Still, there’s another strangely long pause before you hear a click, followed by some calm, jazz-adjacent hold music.
You walk back to the Day Care Pick Up doors and pull a mostly clean looking box out of the pile to sit on as you wait.
Thankfully, you don’t need to wait long before a gruff voice on the other end greets you.
“What’dya need,” he asks.
“Oh, uh, hi! I was just calling about the-”
“Yea, yea,” he interrupts. “Bot sent over the recording of the call. What’dya need?”
“Umm, to get into the Pizzaplex? The entrance is blocked off. I think I could get into the Daycare? If I had some bolt cutters. But the lobby’s covered in debris. I can’t really… get anywhere?”
“Jus’ use the VR mask. Didn’t you watch the trainin’ videos?” He grunts, then begins chewing something next to the receiver. You pull the phone away from your ear so you hopefully won’t hear the crunching.
“Training videos?” You ask, dread building in your stomach. “I was just emailed that I got the position and I was supposed to ‘retrieve and repair company assets’. Did I miss a message?”
“Of course the big wigs upstairs overlooked yer trainin’. Figures,” the man on the phone sighs. The line is silent for a moment, and you’re about to ask if he’s still there when he continues. “Look, says here the ‘plex is gettin’ fixed up. I’m bettin’ the bosses want their million dollar bots outta the way of the construction crews. You told the bot you found two? Which ones were they?”
“I dunno,” you lean back, letting your back rest against the daycare door. “The one didn’t have a head, but it looks nearly identical to the other one I found. They’re, white? At least, I think they were.”
“S.T.A.F.F. bots, by the sounds of it. Nah, they’ll want you goin’ after the expensive ones. Y’know, Freddy, Chica, Roxy, Monty? ‘N prob’ly the daycare attendant, too. You should grab anything worth keeping, ‘n S.T.A.F.F. ‘re good fer cleaning if you can get a few up ‘n runnin’, but just make sure you get the main cast.”
“Oh! Okay, that’s more than they told me in the email,” you chuckle nervously.
“Yea yea, they don’t ‘xactly got the budget to spend too much on the ‘plex before they fix it up, so they probably skipped a lot of yer trainin’. Still, you shoulda gotten a VR mask to make movin’ around the ‘plex easier.”
“Like I said, I think I can get into the daycare with bolt cutters,” you try to offer helpfully.
“Hmmph, that’ll have to do for now I s’pose. Shoot us a message if you find anything,” he grunts. “I’ll get’cha a card to purchase tools with. Check your email in a few minutes.”
Before you can ask more questions, the phone clicks. You look at the screen. He hung up on you. You sigh.
“Welp, this’ll be interesting,” you mutter to the empty, destroyed room.
As you get up from your boxy perch, the door you had been leaning against slams closed. You squawk, whipping your head around.
You yank on the door handle, and the chain has just barely enough slack to allow it an inch of opening. Cautiously, you peek through the small gap, taking in the dark room.
had this on my mind for a month, but the chain with a reader who is a magical girl, like the chain thinks the reader is just a regular person, then they’re suddenly in a dress that’s impractical for battle, but they’re absolutely kicking ass.
I don't want to put too much pressure on you writing an entire thing for this, so I would just like headcanons of their reactions or if they had a feeling that the reader was hiding something :3
sorry if this is written a bit oddly, I tried my best to make sure it was clear TwT
That sounds hilarious ngl. Hope you don't mind I kept these on the shorter side this time!
Chain x Magical Girl! Reader
This was bad. The monsters just kept coming. The chain was getting exhausted. You had to help. With a determined nod to your animal companion, you reach into your purse and pull out your wand. The clearing is bathed in light as you transform, momentarily making the fighting cease as monsters and heroes alike shield their eyes.
Your traveling outfit, drab but practical, melts away into something more fitting for the occasion: tall boots, a skirt, and, of course, dozens of flowing ribbons.
The first monster doesn’t even have time to react when you launch yourself at it, leaping up and kicking it directly in the face. The heel of your boot digs into its eye, and it screams before collapsing into a pile of dark sludge.
You cut through the rest of the monsters like a hot knife through butter. Leaping gracefully about the clearing, bashing in skulls with your wand as your outfit flows gracefully behind you. Moments later, the forest is quiet. You turn to your companions, about to ask if they’re okay, only to be met with their shocked expressions.
“Y/N, what in Hylia’s name was that.”
Sky isn’t sure what he’s looking at, at first. How did you change so quickly? Why were you suddenly so good at fighting? Were you an incarnate deity, like his Zelda? He’s got a million questions that he’s too polite to ask you.
Four’s jaw is on the floor. How could you get rid of so many monsters wearing such a weird outfit? He’s going to try to figure out how your wand works so he can give you actual armor when you transform. Don’t get him wrong, your outfit is cute, but there’s practically no protection!
Time immediately thinks of the Fierce Deity. Your ridiculous outfit change seems a bit too familiar for comfort. He’ll ask where you acquired such a power, and try to figure out what kind of deity would dress… like that.
The only thing Hyrule can think to compare you to is a fairy. Your pretty clothes and the way you seem to float around the battlefield are downright magical. He can feel the power radiating off of you, and honestly, it kind of scares him.
Legend just assumes you have an incredibly powerful magical artifact. Technically, he’s not wrong. He might scold you for not pulling it out sooner.
Twilight knows what it’s like to transform, but his is a lot less… fancy. He had a suspicion you were hiding something (because HE’S been hiding Wolfie and can recognize when someone is keeping a similar secret) but he was expecting you to have a “dark” power like he does, not… glitter city.
Warriors will chew you out for not telling him that you could do that sooner. Having another magic user on the team is useful, especially with how competent it makes you in battle. (If he had a nickel for everyone on the team that could suddenly transform into a super-powered version of themselves accompanied by a complete outfit change, he’d have two nickels. Please reassure him it’s not like FD. He already worries about his kid so much he has gray hairs at 25).
Wild is no stranger to magical clothes. He just assumes the outfit boosts your attack or something. It is cool how you can change so fabulously, though. Can you teach him how to do it?
Wind wants to use your wand. He can borrow it for a little bit, right? Please? He wants a magical girl transformation, too :[
Ok, I think I finally got my LU masterlist sorted? It got so long that every time I linked a fic it would unlink a different fic, so now it's split up lol.
Been thinking about those humans are space orcs posts. I know I'm not the first person to think of this, but the idea of humans just being built different than Hylians has been living in my head rent free.
You had been traveling with the chain for a while now. Long enough for them to notice you were different from them. For one, your ears were round, not pointed, but that difference was easy enough to dismiss. No. It was apparent that you were built… different.
It had all started when the group was transported into Wild’s Hyrule, directly onto Mount Hylia. Wild had been quick to pull out warm clothes for the group, but even bundled up in cloaks everyone couldn’t help but shiver in the icy wind. That is, everyone, except for you, who had declined Wild’s offered cloak and seemed completely unbothered by the fact that you were on top of a mountain in nothing but shorts and a T-shirt. When asked, you merely commented that the wind was a bit brisk, but not too bad.
Then there was the incident with the Wizzrobe. Legend had reluctantly agreed to give you and Wind a tour of one of the dungeons he had cleared during his adventure. Unfortunately, whatever dark entity that seemed to be toying with the group had uncleared the dungeon. Legend saw the magic hit you square in the chest. He expected to see you at least stumble backwards from the blast, but you didn’t. You didn’t even flinch. You just looked down at where you had been hit, then back up at the Wizzrobe.
“Umm… Was that supposed to hurt?” you asked. The Wizzrobe responded by teleporting away, never to be seen again.
The final nail in the coffin was when you, Time, and Warriors had been cornered by a Lynel. The rest of the group was off exploring, so you couldn’t wait for backup. Before Time could even try to formulate an attack plan, you had up picked up both him and the captain, tossing them over your shoulders as you sprinted away.
“HOW ARE YOU LIFTING US? WE’RE WEARING ARMOR FOR HYLIA’S SAKE!” Warriors yelled, a bit indignant at being carried like a sack of potatoes.
“Do we even weigh anything to you?” Time pondered, resigned to his fate.
“Nah,” you grinned, still running, “It’s like holding a bunch of grapes.”
I actually have some more ideas for scenarios regarding isekai reader, if you don't mind answering them.
Imagine telling the Chain that your favorite saga isn't The legend of Zelda, but another Nintendo series, like Mario.
Wind: So how does it feel to meet your favorite heroes from your favorite game series, cool huh?
Isekai: Oh, well Meeting you is great and all, but you're not my favorite series, actually, heh.
Chain: w h a t
Isekai: Yeah, so Nintendo's most popular series is called Super Mario and i LOVE their games, they're my all time favorite and-
Isekai reader reader proceeded to ramble about Mario and his games.
All of them are going to be so offended lol. What do you mean they're not your favorite!? What's this plumber have that they don't? >:[
“So, tell us, Y/N, what’s it like finally meeting your favorite video game heroes?” Warriors has a sly grin plastered across his face.
“Huh?” You’re caught off-guard by the question. So off-guard, that you don’t have time to censor the next words out of your mouth. “You guys aren’t my favorite video games.”
“WHAT!?” Wild gasps from halfway across the camp. Turning to look towards him, you notice the entire chain seems to suddenly be focusing on your’s and Warriors’ conversation, although some are better at hiding it than others. Time at least has the decency to look away, but based on the not-so-subtle glances he keeps making in your direction, you can tell he’s still listening.
“What do you mean we’re not your favorite!?” Wind sounds half-offended, half-heartbroken at the news. “I thought you loved playing my games.”
“Ah, I do,” you smile nervously. “It’s just that I like other games better, you know?”
“What could be better than our games?” Legend fiddles with the rings on his fingers, trying to pretend not to care. He’s not very convincing. “I thought you said some of mine were so popular they got made multiple times?”
“Yeah,” you agree hesitantly, “but those aren’t even my favorite Legend of Zelda Games.” Legend’s eye twitches at your confession, but he remains silent.
“So what games do you like?” Hyrule asks.
“Probably Mario,” you light up at the chance to talk about your favorite game. “He’s kind of like you guys, in that most of the games involve saving a princess.”
“Oh, so he’s a hero like us,” Sky nods. It would make sense if you liked their games that you would like other similar games.
“Err, no. He’s a plumber,” you chuckle nervously.
“A plumber?” Four raises an eyebrow. “As in the guys that fix pipes?”
You nod.
“So what makes him better than us?” Twilight blushes at his own question. Apparently, he had not meant that to come out. Still, he seems to be eagerly awaiting your response.
Was he jealous?
Looking again at the boys, they all seem invested in what you’re about to say next.
“Uhh,” your tongue feels heavy in your mouth as you try to respond. What were you supposed to say? That you liked jumping from platform to platform, stepping on turtles, more than you liked solving dungeon puzzles? That your ideal character was a mushroom wearing a mining headlamp? “I don’t know? Mario games feel a lot less lonely, I guess?”
“Lonely?” Time seems puzzled. Ah, so he was done pretending not to eavesdrop and had actually decided to join the conversation.
“Yeah. Most of them have multiplayer, so my siblings and I could each play a different character and we could beat the level together,” you smile at the memory. Many lazy summer afternoons had been spent yelling at the screen with your siblings, scolding each other for falling off a platform only to fall off the same one moments later.
“Wait, but I thought my games were multiplayer?” Four points to himself, confused.
how would you think the chain would react if they found out that reader is biologically a woman (maybe found out from an injury near the chest or something and they bind), they’re androgynous so they just assumed, and reader just doesn’t care anyway.
(I'm taking this as a sort of Disney Mulan situation? Where reader still identifies as a woman but passed as masc for some reason or another.)
I don't think they'd question it too much, all things considered?
Some of the Links might question why reader was binding her chest, and will get VERY flustered if she's blunt about how uncomfortable larger breasts can be when trying to exercise and adventure.
Sky, Legend, Wars, and mmmaybe Hyrule and Twilight will probably be a bit more hesitant to continue doing any "guy things" they had been doing with the reader, like play wrestling or certain conversations. They have a pretty instilled idea of what a relationship between a "hero" and a lady is, and they haven't exactly been following that script! Mostly they're just embarrassed they didn't realize you were a woman the whole time and are thinking back on every gross/unbecoming thing they unthinkingly did in your presence when they thought you were a man.
Four and Wind legit don't care. Time is dad enough to know he can't start treating you differently now, so he just keeps on doing the same things he's been doing. Wild is probably very aware of being mistaken for/passing as the opposite gender given his thing with the Gerudo, so he'll give you an understanding pat on the shoulder before moving on with his life (he's got diner to cook!).
Ahhh I love the isekai reader ones so much - no one else really does them
They give me such lifeeee
I'd be holding the Hyrule Historia like the Bible. "Let me tell you all what little we know of the Link the fandom dubs 'First'..."
Based on Jojo's comic for the 40th anniversary, First will eventually be in the comic!! So when he shows up Isekai!Reader will be able to corner him for answers >:]
