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Mike hates this stupid job.
If you had told him a week ago that he would be crawling across an auditorium floor in a pitch-black room while trying to avoid animatronics that he was fairly sure wanted to kill him, he would’ve called you insane.
Now here he is, doing exactly that.
Circus Baby had told him that he needed to get to the Scooping Room and destroy her body. However, after her performance last night of her literally kidnapping him and almost getting him crushed, he doesn’t trust a word she says. On top of that, somewhere called the “Scooping Room” (who even calls a room that? His dad, apparently) is the last place he wants to be right now. He saw what it did to Ballora, he had a god damn front row seat thanks to Baby.
If he can find the vent leading back into the Primary Control Module, maybe he can hide in there until his shift ends. If he’s lucky, the elevator will let him leave! Though he doubts it, he’s fairly sure it’s set to only work when his shift is over. Another thing on the long list of safety hazards this hell hole has.
Ignoring Baby’s instructions, he starts going in the other direction. He’s completely blind in this darkness, so getting to the other side and feeling along the wall is going to be his best bet. He can feel his hands touch something wet and the knees of his trousers begin to soak as he crawls. His mind flashes back to the silhouette of the technician hanging from Ballora’s stage, and he smartly decides to push that memory back out of his mind.
Suspiciously, he realises that he can’t hear Ballora at all. Before, the sound of her music box was a tell-tale sign where she was, and even if she had turned it off, her footsteps would at least still be there. Especially with this… “water” on the floor. The train of thought halts when his hand grazes a wall, and he starts desperately feeling along it for something, anything that could get him out of this room. He almost cries with relief when his hand finds a door, which he opens and scrambles inside as quickly as he can.
Back against the now-closed door, he lets out a quick sigh of relief before surveying his surroundings. It seems like he’s in some sort of office, with a flickering light and multiple TV’s buzzing away with static. His reprieve is short-lived however, as the HandUnit crackles to life, almost giving Mike a heart attack.
‘It seems that you have accidentally wandered into a restricted area,’ explained the HandUnit as it was flung into the air.
‘Due to the sensitive nature of the materials that you may be exposed to here, you will not be allowed to leave until the clean-up crew arrives at 6 AM, so hang tight! Rest assured that you will be promptly rescued, fired, then sent home. Thank you for being an employee. We hope that your experience has not been as regrettable as ours.’
Mike had the now-silent tablet in a death grip, having barely stopped it from falling to the floor in his surprise. He stared at it for a few moments before chucking it at the dust covered desk, muttering ‘fucking great,’ under his breath. Honestly, it was kind of great. Being fired spared him needing to tell them that he quits. There was nothing left here for him. After all he had seen, he is quite certain Elizabeth was dead and gone, and he was going to have a few choice words for his father when he next sees him for sending him on a deadly goose chase.
He scoops up another tablet that’s sitting on the desk, inspecting it. It seems to show CCTV of the surrounding hallways, with multiple cameras he could flick through. This will come in handy.
The time is displayed in the top right of the tablet. It’s getting close to 1am. He can do this, just 5 more hours and he’ll be free.
‘Why didn't you trust me?’
His blood turned to ice as Baby’s voice drifted up one of the hallways. He quickly looks at the tablet again and begins flicking through the cameras until he finds them.
What. The Fuck.
Donning a clown mask and little else, he’s met with a metal monstrosity. An animatronic frame covered in an abundance of metal-covered wiring standing in the room furthest away from him. Nothing looks like the neat and tiding wiring he’s seen when doing repairs, instead it’s a messy jumble of knotted wiring, as if clinging desperately to a metal frame not made for it. It sways and twitches as it stands there and, as if it knows, it turns to looks directly at him through the camera.
Mike’s hands start trembling and his grip on the tablet tightens. Of course. Of course! He couldn’t just hang out in here and be bored for the next 5 hours! They just had to make it interesting! Fine. He’s not going to make this easy for them. If they want him, they can come and get him.
The next few hours feel like a rush and an eternity. Mike is having to learn how to defend against this thing on the fly, and there has been a fair share of close calls. He needs to keep constant track of where they are on the camera and listen closely for when they get close to the door. Baby occasionally, and incidentally, helped by calling out to him with her self-made pity party. “I thought you liked me”? Yeah he kinda did, until you kidnapped him! That isn’t something you do when you want people to like you, Circus Baby.
Some of the things she said further in the night did pique his interest though. Baby seems to change her tactic, and starts talking about how they need him so they can leave, so they can hide. So, they can look like him. When thinking about where Baby wanted to send him in the first place, the connecting dots makes his stomach twist with dread.
Despite the grim circumstance, he can feel a touch of sympathy towards them. He knows the history of this place, it’s hard not to when you’re related to the owner. He’s only been down here for, what, 5 days? And he gets to leave at the end of each shift. They’re confined to this horrible place, it’s no wonder they’re so desperate to get out.
All of that sympathy gets forgotten when she mentions her, though.
‘Isn't this why you came here? To be with her again?’ A mixture of confusion and anger rises over the adrenaline. Is she talking about Liz? How does she know about Liz?!
He shakes his head. ‘Concentrate,’ he thinks to himself. ‘That’s just another question on the pile for dad when you get out of here-’
‘Hello?’
…
What. The FUCK?
‘Hellooo?’ The voice of the very person he was looking for echoed down the quiet corridors, and it made Mike’s blood freeze over. That’s her voice. Elizabeth’s voice. How!
Mike snaps out of his shocked stupor and checks the cameras, finding the metal parody of Frankenstein’s monster. The voice definitely just came from where they currently are. How does Baby have her voice?
… Was Liz the child Circus Baby was talking about when he visited her?
Oh, God no.
The feeling of confusion and anger begins to boil over like water in a boiling pot. What the FUCK is going in this horrible place?! There’s not a chance his dad didn’t know about this. No, He WANTED Mike to find this out. Either that, or he wanted Mike to die down here and take that secret with him. He needs answers, but he knows perfectly well that his father will never give them to him. That left him with only one choice.
He has to negotiate with the killer robot.
‘Using my sister’s voice isn’t going to work on me, Circus Baby!’ Mike shouts, trying his best to keep any shakiness out of his voice. If this was going to work, he needs to project confidence. ‘What was the plan here? Were you going to get me scooped? Get me killed? I don’t know how that would’ve helped you!’
‘You won’t die. I didn’t, not really,' replies Baby using Elizabeth’s voice. ‘If we use your body, we can hide. We can be free. It will only hurt for a moment.’
Mike scoffs, checking the tablet to see if they’ve moved. ‘’I won’t die’? Yeah right. Getting my innards scooped out isn’t exactly something you live from. And even if, hypothetically, my ghost or whatever stuck around, my body would start decaying. The rot would be noticeable in, at most, a few days. It wouldn’t take long for people to notice.’
She goes quiet for long enough that Mike thinks he hit a mark. When she speaks again, Elizabeth’s voice is gone.
‘Well, if it will help us leave, then that will be fine,’ she replies. Mike swears he can hear a touch of frustration in her voice, but it’s hard to tell with soft, hushed tone she speaks in. ‘If they find us like this, we will not get another chance.’
‘And then what?’ Mike presses. ‘I doubt you know how the world works out there, and people won’t exactly be receptive to a metal spaghetti clown monster. You’d have to hide away, and that’s not exactly living.’
‘Well then what do you suggest?’ came Baby’s voice from the left. Mike quickly clicks through the cameras. They were getting closer. ‘Anywhere is better than down here. We can take that risk.’
‘Well then why don’t you come with me instead?’ He suggests. He waits for a few moments to see if they react and, when they don’t, he continues. ‘If you can get out without the cleaners seeing, you can just come and live with me. I can take you home in my car.’
They were quiet for long enough that it starts to make him nervous. They’re still in the same place on the camera, but the various eyes dotted on its body were moving. Were they talking to each other? Hopefully that’s a good sign.
Suddenly, they start moving down the corridor towards the office. Unlike before, their movements are loud and obvious, they were trying to make themselves known. Mike closes the door anyway, as he isn’t stupid.
They come to a stop right outside the door, and Mike waits. He can feel himself trembling, so he’s glad they can’t see him.
‘After everything we’ve put you through, after everything you have seen, why would you be willing to help us?’ Baby’s gentle voice drifts through the door. Mike takes a deep breath before answering.
‘Because I have questions you guys have the answers to, and I don’t want to die. This way, we all get what we want.’
Silence hangs in the air again. After a few long moments, he hears them step away and he thinks he can hear the hushed whispers of multiple voices, but he can’t make out what they’re saying and he dares not move closer.
The whispers suddenly stop, and Baby speaks again. ‘How are we going to get to the surface? We do not know of any exits.’
It takes a few seconds for Mike to process the question, and then he thinks hard. He honestly didn’t expect to get this far and didn’t think this far ahead. Then, an idea clicks in his head.
‘There’s an elevator through the Primary Control Module I use every night that goes straight to the surface. I don’t know if the other staff use a different one, I assume so considering I have to crawl through a vent to get to mine, but the cabin will be on this level. If you can get into the elevator and into the shaft, you should be able to climb up. I’ve watched you crawl through the vents, I know you can get into weird places.’
The hushed whispers start up again as he finishes. They don’t last as long, however. Baby’s voice returns, but in a harsh whisper.
‘Fine. You had better be there.’
And then he hears heavy footstep move off down the hallway until he can no longer hear them.
He waits for a few more minutes, checking the cameras just to be sure, before he lets out a long breath and falls back against the wall, sliding into a sitting position. He’s just invited a horrific animatronic amalgamation that tried to kill him to live with him. What has he gotten himself into…
He has time for the decision, and regrets, to fully sink in during the last couple hours of his shift. Despite their cooperation towards the plan, he still regularly checks the cameras and listens for any sort of irregular noises, but the only adversary he faces for the rest of the night is rampant paranoia and anxiety.
Shortly after 6am, as promised, one of the cleaners arrive to the office. Despite knowing they were coming, it still takes him by surprise. He half expected to be left to die down here.
The pleasantries are brief however as the cleaner pulls out some paperwork and starts to drone off some legal jargon. He zones out for most of it, he’s passed the point of caring. The document is passed to him anyway, he’ll read it later.
He’s escorted through the hallways to an elevator he’s not seen before. These areas are a lot more lit that where he’s been working, he notices, though it doesn’t do anything for the creepy atmosphere. Another cleaner is waiting there, holding a basket of… is that the exotic butters? He thought the HandUnit was joking! He gives Mike the basket in exchange for the HandUnit, and he’s led into the elevator. They leave, presumably to do their job, and he’s left alone to make the journey to the surface.
Now that he’s in proper light, he looks down at himself properly. As he suspected, his hands are covered in dried blood. Some of it has rubbed away through the night, but it still caked his hands. The sight of it pulled on a memory, and he quickly shook his head to clear it. Inspecting himself further, the blood had also gotten onto his clothes, but most of it seemed to be on his trousers. His lower legs felt uncomfortably stiff, but at least since they were black, the blood blended in. He’ll bin them when he gets home, maybe burn them for good measure.
The ding of the elevator pulls him out of his thoughts. The doors open into a small, one room concrete building, which then leads outside into a small parking lot. Mike wastes no time getting out of the building and into the early morning sun.
As he stands there with the warmth of the sun on his face, he takes a deep, satisfying breath as he tries to stop tears of relief breaking out. The weight of the last six hours is heavy on his shoulders, but he’s not done yet. He has a new roommate he needs to take home.
Speaking of, he looks around the small, barren parking lot. He’s never come out from this side before, but he can see his car. No robot though, where are they?
He starts walking towards his car. He could always just leave. This place is in the middle of nowhere, he doubts they would be able to find where he lives. He wants answers, but is that even a good idea? People have died because of this company, his father’s company, including his little sister. He could always distance himself from all of this, cut himself off completely and just carry on with his life. Ignorance is bliss after all.
On the other hand, there’s always the chance that they could find him, and he doesn’t even want to think about what they would do if he had abandoned them here. On top of that, if his father was willing to let his daughter die and then sweep it under a rug, that meant that his mother could also be at risk, as well as more children. It was a bit too late to play the ignorant card anyway, he saw all the cameras down there. There’s not a chance his father won’t know where his animatronics have gone. He’ll get over that hurdle when it comes.
Plus, there’s that small part of him that does actually feel bad for them. It was horrible down there, and that was their home. Their prison. Maybe a change of scenery would change their attitude.
So, Mike stops at his car, leans against the bonnet, and waits.
It doesn’t take long for them to reveal themselves. He hears heavy footfalls and metal scraping on concrete as they come out from behind one of the concrete sheds and start to cross the parking lot. He turns to face them as they approached. This is the first time he’s seen them physically, there’s no grainy cameras or metal doors to protect him here. Their mass of exposed wiring gleams in the morning sun. They only seemed to be a few inches taller than him, but their appearance and presence makes him feel small. At least the clown mask provides some level of relief from their mangled appearance.
They come to a stop a few feet away from him, meeting his gaze. They stare at each other in silence for a few moments, tension heavy in the air. It’s them who relent, turning to look at his car.
‘Is this your car?’ Baby’s voice asks curiously, lone eye wandering across it. Mike looks down at it too. It wasn’t anything glamorous. It was an older model that had some wear and tear even before he bought it, but he had to take what he could get. Anyway, he has a soft spot for it. It’s his first car.
‘No, I’m just leaning against a random’s person car,’ the sarcasm comes out on reflex, and he flinches as the blue eye flicks back towards him. He hopes they didn’t notice. ‘C’mon, let’s get you in. I don’t think you’re too heavy for it, but we’re about to find out.’
It takes some awkward manoeuvring, and he’s fairly sure his roof is sporting some new scratches from where they gripped it, but they manage to clamber in the back seat. When Mike is sure the car isn’t going to collapse under the new weight, he climbs into the front, starts it up and starts the drive back home.
The first part of their journey is in silence. It feels awkward from Mike’s perspective, but looking through the rear-view mirror, he can see that they’ve adjusted so that all the eyes can watch the world out the window. It’s kind of cute, in a very weird way. Mike just clicks on the radio to fill the silence.
Eventually, Mike works up the nerve to strike a conversation. ‘So… I only really heard Baby speak, but are all you in there?’ Mike asks, turning down the radio slightly.
To his surprise, he hears several voices call out in response. He knows he hears Ballora, Freddy and BonBon, but there’s a quiet voice that he assumes to be Foxy. He’s not heard them speak before.
‘Well, if you’re going to stay like that, what should I call you? Things are going to get complicated if I try to call you by your individual names.’
They’re silent for a few moments, before he can just barely hear whispering voices. Surprisingly, they’re quiet enough where he can’t make them out, even in this proximity. He bets they have super hearing or something.
He leaves them to figure it out and lets his mind wander. What kind of name would be suitable for them? Would they even want one? Baby seems like the ringleader, but if he constantly calls them ‘Baby’, that would be excluding the other 4 of the group. But what could be inclusive of all of them? After a while, a silly idea pops into his head.
‘What about… “Ennard”?’ Mike suggests out of the blue. The whispering, which he noticed had started to sound a bit heated, suddenly stops.
‘What?’ came Baby’s voice.
‘Ennard. Okay, so you were going to scoop out my insides, right? And become my ‘innards’, I guess. You’re an exoskeleton if I’m remembering correctly, so then it becomes Ennard. It’s a play on words.’
He heard some brief whispering, and he began to feel self-conscious when he thinks he hears giggling, but then Baby speaks again.
‘That’s funny, we like it. Ennard it is! At least for now,’ Baby replies. He can hear joy in her voice for the first time since meeting her, and it makes him smile. The weight on his shoulders feels ever so slightly lighter.
‘Well then, it’s nice to meet you, Ennard. I’m Mike.’
It didn’t take much longer for Mike to pull into the parking lot of his apartment building. As he shuts off his car, he tries to mentally come up with a game plan. It’s still pretty early in the morning, so the early risers have either gone already or are in the process of getting ready. If they’re quick, they should be able to get to his apartment without any awkward encounters.
Honestly, it wasn’t anyone seeing Ennard that worried him. He’s mostly stayed to himself, as have his neighbours. He’s going to have to get used to being the weirdo with the metal monster. It was all the dried blood he was worried about. The last thing he needed was the police being called on him.
He turns to the back seat towards Ennard, who is already looking towards him.
‘Right, here’s the plan. We’re going to need to get to my apartment without being seen. I can’t be seen looking like this,’ he says as he raises his blood covered hand, ‘and I don’t want everyone seeing you just yet. We’ll come up with a plan for that later.’
Ennard nodded. ‘We’ll be as quiet as a mouse.’
Mike wanted to doubt it given their appearance, but he distinctly recalls how quiet they were when trying to ambush and kill him, so he just opens the car door and climbs out.
Thankfully, lady luck seems to be shining down on him. Getting Ennard out of his car was easier than getting them in, and they managed to get into the building and up the stairs to his apartment without running into anyone. True to their word, Ennard moved carefully to soften their footfalls, much to Mike’s relief.
Closing the apartment door behind him, he took in the sight of the room. He never thought he would be so relieved to see his shitty little apartment again. He moved passed Ennard, who’s many eyes were combing the room, and dropped himself into his favourite chair, sighing.
He suddenly felt all the last scraps of energy leave him, and fatigue set into his bones. Now that he was back home, back safe, all he wanted to do was pass out in his chair for 12 hours and hope the new nightmares he’s going to have don’t wake him.
But he can’t sleep, not yet. He looks over at his new roommate, who is still taking in their new home. When one of the eyes notice him looking, the rest of them turn towards him.
‘Welcome to your new home. If we’re going to make this work, we’re going to need to have a loooong talk.’