Chapter Text
Bonnie always thought that the Pizzaplex took on an eerie tranquillity at night. He had always been a creature of the light, basking in the comforting embrace of neon signs and blinding spotlights. The arcades, it seemed, were the last defences of that vibrant glow, casting hues of electric pink and turquoise across the dimly lit space.
With a Faz token dancing between his fingers, Bonnie strolled through the neon-lit corridors, on the prowl for a mindless game to keep his hands occupied. He found that his thoughts flowed smoother while multitasking, and Neon Skater was his tried-and-true refuge.
As he approached the arcade cabinet, Bonnie's metal fingers deftly inserted the Faz token into the slot, the satisfying clink echoing in the otherwise hushed arcade. With a quiet sigh, he bent down, fingers ready to take the controls.
Yet beneath his shell, unpleasant thoughts gnawed at the edges of his mind. Something was disrupting the rhythm of his mainframe, a relentless entity striving to breach his defences. The unknown threat drove Bonnie hazardously close to a kind of madness that only a sentient animatronic could understand.
He couldn't help but feel the weight of the malicious force that had already ensnared his friends. Their security measures, less robust than his, had proven to be a costly oversight. Every time he tried to bring up anything on the missing children's cases, his concerns were met with a casual shrug.
Take Chica. She would smoothly divert his attention, coaxing him into concocting dishes from ingredients she couldn't identify as trash. Her ravenous appetite seemed to grow by the day, an eerie change that hinted at a sinister influence.
Roxy, once the playful tease, had honed her banter with a more cutting edge. Her insults now had the bite of a wild animal, cutting through anyone. Her pursuit of perfection had shifted into an unrelenting obsession.
While Monty rarely gave Bonnie the time of day, it was evident that the animatronic's false tough but gentle exterior had crumbled. Monty had taken a violent turn, wreaking havoc among staff and wet floor bots with uncharacteristic abandon.
Even Eclipse, who had always been the calming presence in the daycare, had taken an eccentric twist. He alternated between overenthusiastic attempts to engage children in play and a more forceful insistence on naps. The daycare's popularity was steadily waning.
And then there was Freddy. With his unflinching cheerfulness and soothing voice, he remained an anchor of tranquillity amidst the chaos. Bonnie held onto the hope that together, they could somehow save the day.
But as he tried to express his dislike for Vanessa to Freddy, a cloud of obliviousness seemed to have descended. Freddy, with a puzzled tilt of his head, waved away Bonnie's concerns, assuring him that the security guard had everything well in hand. It was at that moment that Bonnie realised that he was alone.
As Bonnie focused on the familiar controls of Neon Skater, the game came to life with flashing lights and energetic music. He pushed aside the heavy thoughts for a moment, immersing himself in the virtual world where his worries momentarily faded into the background.
As his digital skater performed stunts on the screen, Bonnie couldn't help but replay recent events in his mind. The incident involved another missing child. Rory.
He vividly recalled Rory moments before Vanessa had swept him away under the pretence of searching for his parents. His parents came in looking for him in Bonnie Bowl 30 minutes later.
Oddly, Bonnie couldn't find any corresponding security footage, as if the half-hour after Venessa took him and Rory’s parents came rushing had vanished from every camera within the Atrium and its connecting hallways to Bonnie Bowl. An unfortunate bug the maintenance workers reported.
Confronting Vanessa about this discrepancy had peeled away her sugary facade, annoyance taking its place. She snapped at him, insisting he follow protocol and dismiss the situation, though her intense eye contact and fidgeting betrayed a guilt that humanised her in an unexpected way, begging for his trust.
It was a frustrating impasse. He couldn’t go against his program, but he could change the rules of the game.
That's when Bonnie decided to take matters into his own metal hands. He discreetly asked DJ to station some of his minis in the vents for continuous recording, ensuring that the inexplicable lack of footage wouldn't happen again. He could have untampered eyes seeing everything, evidence that could be discreetly sent off without permission.
A sudden, forceful collision jolted Bonnie's legs, causing him to momentarily stagger before swiftly regaining his composure. His hands instinctively left the game controls, and on the screen, his digital character skated right off the edge of a cliff, ending in the infamous "game over" screen.
Bonnie took his glasses off, his gaze half-lidded as he peered down. There, at his feet, a frantic wet floor bot beeped incessantly, spinning around before colliding into his legs once more. To his surprise, three more of the sprightly little machines emerged from their hiding places behind the arcade machines, adding to the commotion with their persistent bumping.
In his characteristic, laid-back tone, Bonnie couldn't help himself and said, "Well, this is turning into quite the unexpected game."
Two of the little wet floor bots positioned themselves behind Bonnie's legs, pushing and prodding at them, as if urging him forward. The third one seemed determined to get Bonnie's attention, its mechanical head reaching out for his hand, while the first one took the lead, beeping and spinning with every inch it travelled.
"Do you little ones want me to follow you?" Bonnie asked as he placed his star glasses onto the arcade machine, his question met with an enthusiastic chorus of frantic beeps from the tiny machines.
With a little hesitation, Bonnie followed their lead, keeping his pace in tune with the slow movements of the wet floor bots. The familiar neon lights that had bathed the arcade now gave way to harsh fluorescent lighting overhead. Through a maze of staff-only areas, they led him to a room filled with washing machines.
There, they nudged him towards a concealed passage, guiding him down a dimly lit staircase. Finally, they came to a halt just before a dilapidated elevator, its doors creaking and rusted from years of use. The calm undertones of the situation didn't waver as Bonnie contemplated his next move.
"What are you doing here!?" Vanessa's voice was sharp, her eyes narrowed in surprise.
Bonnie spun around and arched a metaphorical eyebrow. "I could ask you the same question, Vanessa," he said. The wet floor bots scuttled away, seeking cover from being caught.
"I am the security guard, I can be wherever the hell I want to be," Vanessa said, a defiant edge in her tone. She was fidgeting again, her spine straightened a little.
Bonnie's gaze remained unyielding. "And I am the security system. I ensure that all parts of the Pizzaplex are secured. Right now, that happens to be wherever this elevator leads."
"You need to go back to Bonnie Bowl. You are not needed here," Vanessa said, her frustration becoming more evident. The overhead lights flickered slightly.
"I think I am," Bonnie responded coolly. "I am coded to ensure everything is in accordance with the rules and regulations of FazBear Entertainment. This place is currently at the top of the list due to its dire need of repairs. My internal maps don’t even show me where this elevator leads to."
Vanessa's patience was wearing thin. "Bonnie, go back," she said. She turned away and headed toward the metal boxes next to the door.
"Very well," Bonnie said, ready to report to upper management as required. "But I am obligated to make a report, especially if it could relate to the cases involving missing kids."
Without warning, Vanessa pushed into the heavy boxes, toppling them almost onto Bonnie and forcefully propelling him into the elevator, cutting off any further protest from the animatronic.
The elevator let out a deafening groan as Bonnie landed unceremoniously on its battered surface. The entire contraption seemed to creak and shudder, some of its metal elements audibly bending in protest. The elevator's descent was far from reassuring, and Bonnie could hear the tension cables stretching to their limits.
In a moment of panic, Bonnie attempted to escape, but his efforts were swiftly thwarted by Vanessa's malevolent grin. The ominous promise in her expression hung in the air, and then, in a heart-stopping instant, the elevator plunged into a free fall down the dark shaft.
With a sudden and jarring impact, Bonnie landed with an unexpected bounce as the elevator structure crumpled around him. His animatronic limbs popped out of their sockets in various directions. Only wires and the flimsy remains of his endo held his head in place. Without even glancing around, Bonnie knew that his once-pristine exterior was now marred and disfigured, the paint losing its former lustre.
Despite Bonnie's broken exterior, his auditory sensors remained sharp, and he detected the approaching metallic footsteps. His limited vision caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a Bonnie endoskeleton, with elongated ears and an odd red glow enveloping its eyes. The endoskeleton peered down at Bonnie, scrutinising him for a moment.
In a sudden and unsettling move, the endoskeleton bent down, tearing through the metal of Bonnie's chest casing with thick claws in an attempt to reach inside. Fortunately, his case held, and his attempts to yell only resulted in pathetic, crushed screeches. This seemed to give the endoskeleton pause, and it eventually withdrew, retreating deeper into the dimly lit tunnels, leaving Bonnie to grapple with his own dire situation.
Warning signs flashed relentlessly across Bonnie's internal systems. His left arm had been severed from his body, the optical lenses in his right eye deactivated due to a snapped wire, and his access to the network revoked due to his compromised state, and everything else rendering him vulnerable to threats. It was a cascade of problems that Bonnie was powerless to attend to.
Bonnie recognized that his most pressing concern was his dwindling power supply. He made a desperate attempt to send out an alert before he rapidly shifted into a lower power mode, a feeble attempt to conserve whatever power he had left in this dark and foreboding place. It didn’t help that it was the end of the day after a huge performance. The night of games and play turned to a desperate struggle for survival.
Amidst the heavy darkness and echoing drips, Bonnie felt his senses begin to float. His surroundings blurred into an estranging haze, and the world took on an eerie glow. It was as though he was watching everything unfold from a distance, an observer of his own plight.
The relentless drip of water persisted, forming a strange, irregular rhythm, while the rats schemed and scuttled over him with faint squeaks. It was almost as if he had become part of this eerie underground symphony, a player in a surreal drama where the boundaries between reality and his animatronic consciousness seemed to unite. An increasingly surreal world became a shadow of familiarity that was slowly taking him in.
Above him, voices buzzed with a dissonance of purpose, technicians manoeuvred his limbs with deliberate precision as they secured him onto a sling for retrieval. Their discussions were a cacophony of words that eluded Bonnie's comprehension, forming an enigmatic backdrop to his experience.
The hallway, or at least its fleeting images, raced past in a bewildering blur before he found himself back in the familiar embrace of Bonnie Bowl. Ah, Bonnie Bowl, a sanctuary of sorts.
They guided him past his stage, beyond his personal room, and toward the secret storage room that he sometimes sought safety in when needing a moment alone. There, they gently placed him on the cold metal table. As they departed, one of the faceless figures affixed a sticker onto his chest casing, a cryptic emblem to mark the end of his journey, and whispered a small “sorry” before they turned away.
Yet, even amid this sense of finality, a small part of Bonnie held onto a glimmer of hope. Perhaps, just maybe, they would return to fully recharge him. But deep down, he knew that the damages were too extensive, the cost for the new attraction taking precedence. He might never be restored. His internal message system chimed with a solemn notification: two minutes of power remained. He lasted a while.
In those fleeting moments, Bonnie wished for his friends to break free from whatever ensnared them, to seek retribution not for him but for the 4 kids he desperately hoped were still out there. Perhaps they were playing an elaborate game of hide and seek.
Right before his system finally relinquished control, Bonnie's audio sensors caught a faint collection of beeps. Then, he finally shut down.