Archive of Our Own

“You made wet floor sign robots?” Roxy deadpanned as she stared at the maintenance workers who were currently bringing the tiny bots up from Parts and Services. The four Glamrock animatronics were standing together in the main atrium, where they were told to go for this meeting. Apparently, only a few of them actually knew what the meeting was about beforehand. 

“They’ve been talking about them in the logs for weeks now,” Chica told her. She was extra squeaky clean at the moment, having just gotten her recent meal washed out of her system earlier that day. 

“Like I pay attention to all of those.”

“You really should,” Freddy said. “They hold important information that we might need to know.”

“They’re boring and repetitive,” Roxy argued. Monty nodded in agreement. The two of them had a bad habit of ignoring the logs. This was not the first time they were surprised with new procedures or information that was available to them for weeks. 

“We reused some old code to give them enough memory to know how the Pizzaplex works, but they are not advanced enough to do much else than move to their next location and stand still,” one of the maintenance workers told them, drawing their attention back to the situation at hand. The worker set another robot on the ground as she spoke. 

“They can move pretty fast when they want to,” another said. “They need to be able to get anywhere in the building quickly. There’s quite a few of them, but you all already know how many messes there are here everyday.”

A lot. There were a lot of messes, and the cleaning bots already struggled to carry around the supplies they already had. Wet floor signs took up even more of their space and time, so the company thought that making these caution bots would make it easier for cleaning bots to get from place to place faster. They didn’t have time to find and set up a sign every time a child spilled their drink on the floor. 

“Keep those things out of my room,” Monty growled. He did not feel comfortable with those things getting into his personal space and watching him. He just knew that if one of them pissed him off enough, they were going to end up as a mangled mess in the corner of his room. “I’d rather have the puddle.”

“Don’t worry, they’re programmed to leave an area when asked, and they should not have any trouble staying away if you request them not to go somewhere.” 

Maintenance already discussed keeping them out of Monty’s room due to not wanting to have to replace eight of them everyday, but they were not going to tell him that. 

Once every single bot was set down on the ground, the workers went down the line to switch them all on. As they booted up, the other animatronics waited in anticipation, wondering if they would be as boring as they were expecting them to be.

The first bot came online, and immediately its eyes found Freddy’s. The bear cooed at the thing quietly, finding it hard not to with how adorable they were designed to be. The children were definitely going to love them when they saw them out and about. 

The next bot turned on, and it also caught Freddy’s gaze. As each one came to life, the Glamrocks were all shocked to find them all staring at Freddy intensely.

“Why do they look like they want to eat me?” Freddy asked, his voice just barely holding back a glitched stutter. Their stares did not look threatening, but with how many there were, he couldn’t help but feel slightly uncomfortable. 

Almost as if the words woke them fully, the hoard of caution bots all barreled towards Freddy at once. Freddy yelped as he stumbled backwards. He tried to turn and run, but they were all too quick, and he was surrounded in no time. The caution bots pressed in closely to him, and he could swear that they were nuzzling against him.

“They like you!” Chica laughed. All three of the others were roaring with laughter at the scene. Not a single one of the bots approached them while Freddy was practically drowning in the sea of them. They found it hilarious. 

“But why? Why are they only doing this to me?!” Freddy asked. One ran into his leg at a bad angle, and he found himself falling to the ground.  He almost fell on top of some of them, but they moved out of the way at the last second. Once he was on the ground, he had yellow bots shoving themselves in his arms in desperate attempts to be close to him. They surrounded him so closely that the others saw more wet floor signs than bear. His next words were muffled: “What is going on?!?!”

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” one maintenance worker said. “They shouldn’t be acting that way. Maybe we need to start over on their AI.”

His words seemed to snap the caution bots out of their frenzy. They all backed away from Freddy, showing a surprising amount of restraint now. They must have been scared of being decommissioned before they even had their first day. 

“Okay, well, there we go,” a worker said. “Looks like they got it out of their system. Let’s work on testing whether or not they will do their jobs correctly. It’s going to take all night to get them situated before we open in the morning.”

The workers began to lead the caution bots around, leaving three cackling Glamrocks and one very confused one behind. 

“Are we not going to acknowledge what just happened?” Freddy squeaked out, but his words were ignored by his laughing friends. He had a bad feeling that the bots did not get that behavior out of their system, but nobody listened to him when he voiced his concerns. 

~

Performing on stage wasn’t the same as it used to be. Before, Freddy would be excited to get up there and rock out with his friends. He should have been feeling extra happy now that Monty was up there with them. However, without Bonnie, things were not the same. Instead of putting Monty on the drums like the company was originally planning, they had him replace Bonnie as the bassist. It wasn’t right, not to any of them. Even Monty felt wrong about it turning out this way. His dream was to perform with all of them, not to replace one of his friends. 

It had been months since Bonnie disappeared. None of them could get any answers from the staff about what happened to him. There were no mentions of him in the maintenance logs, not since his last regular system update. He was there one night, hugging Freddy close before bed, and then gone the next morning. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow!” Bonnie had said as he left Freddy’s room that night. “I’ll miss you so much tonight.”

“Then stay with me tonight,” Freddy had begged. They all had their own rooms, but they were mainly there to give them the chance of their own space and to keep up appearances for guests during the daytime. They had free roam of the place, especially at night, so none of the staff cared when they recharged in each other’s rooms or spent the entire night out in the attractions.

“I can’t, darling,” Bonnie had said, a frown on his face. “I promised to help set up for a birthday party in the bowling alley tomorrow morning. I’d ask you to come with me, but you need to relax and get charged up. I know you pushed yourself hard to make the kids happy today.”

“I will rest only because you asked me to. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

And with those last words, Bonnie had disappeared not only for the night, but from his life completely. Freddy had been heartbroken at the time, and he was still heartbroken now. The past months had been spent with him and the others searching high and low for Bonnie, but they could not find him anywhere. With each day that passed, Freddy gave up more and more hope.

He was never getting the love of his life back again. 

~

Cleaning bots were working tirelessly on Freddy’s room when he requested for it to be scrubbed extra that night after some rowdy kids messed it all up. One would think that the older children would be more mature, but this group was the opposite of that. They spent their entire time meeting Freddy throwing things around and trying to break his belongings. Luckily, they didn’t get too far on breaking things before they were escorted out, but enough was messed up that special attention was needed to clean the space up. 

One cleaning bot was mopping away at the floor, and one of the new caution bots sat nearby, waiting for its chance to guard the wet floor. It seemed ecstatic to be standing in Freddy’s room. There was a new light in its eyes that Freddy hadn’t seen from them before, and he once again found himself wondering why these little robots seemed to be so enamored by him. Whenever he glanced at the bot, he found it already staring at him. 

Once the cleaning bots were done, they all left. The only one staying behind was the caution bot, as the floors were still drying. Freddy smiled down at it, thanking it for doing its job. It wobbled back and forth on its wheels a little bit at the praise.

He didn’t say anything when it stayed long past the floor being dry. He didn’t mind the company, even if the bot wasn’t advanced enough to communicate with him. To be honest, Freddy had been feeling lonelier as each day passed without Bonnie, so it was nice to feel the little bits of love that came from the caution bots. He didn’t understand why they favored him, but he wasn’t going to complain about the extra company. 

When Freddy exited his recharge station the next morning, he was shocked to find that the wet floor bot had already left his room. He was expecting it to put up a fight before going to its next location, but it was gone without any signs of a struggle. 

As he readjusted some of the furniture in his room to his liking, a sound came from the doorway. Freddy looked up towards it, looked back to the lamp he was positioning perfectly on his desk, and promptly snapped his head right back to the doorway when what he saw registered in his mind.

There were two caution bots now. Freddy wasn’t completely sure if one of them was the one that stayed in his room overnight, but he could guess that that was the case. As they entered his room, they carefully pushed in a mop bucket that was partially full of clean sanitizer. 

“Um, what?” Freddy asked out loud as he watched the robots push it further into the room. Did the cleaning bots not finish his room the night before like he thought they did? Why were the caution bots bringing the mop bucket in instead of them, then? What was going on?

Both of the bots stared Freddy dead in the eyes as they managed to tip the bucket over, spilling the liquid onto the floor to create a sizable puddle in the middle of the room. Luckily, it did not spread too far towards his things.

Freddy and the bots stared at each other, two out of satisfaction and one from pure shock. The bots had intentionally done this, Freddy was sure of it. A few seconds passed before Freddy snapped out of it and called for cleaning bots to come dry mop up the mess. The two bots positioned themselves over the last bit of the wet spot as soon as they were done, never taking their eyes off of Freddy.

This happened four more times before maintenance decided to just station two of the bots in Freddy’s room at all times. It didn’t matter if the floor was wet or not, they were always there.

Freddy still could not bring himself to be bothered by it. He was feeling slightly less lonely because of it. 

~

Monty roared in victory as he hit another hole in one at Gator Golf. It was after hours, but every now and then, Monty would go through his whole course to make sure everything was working properly. There was a lot of technology being used to make his golfing experience super advanced for the children, and any malfunctions would ruin the experience. Besides, it never hurts to keep practicing. He had to keep being the best, of course. 

He was getting to the end of the course. There were a few holes left, but the next one was the one that tended to have the most malfunctions come up. Whenever somebody got a hole in one at this hole, which was known to be the hardest one out of the whole course, the giant bucket overhead would spill ball pit balls down to a vacuum that would suck them right back up into the bucket again. It would give the illusion of them falling right at the children before being sucked away at the last second. 

Most of the time when the bucket malfunctioned, it would simply refuse to tip. Sometimes it would tip a little bit and only a few of the balls would spill. One time before Gator Golf was even opened to the public, the vacuums refused to work, and the balls spilled all over the course. Employees had to spend all day picking up each individual ball themselves. 

If Monty tested the course out after hours like this often enough, he could catch the glitches in the system before they became too noticeable to the public. Maintenance could work on it first thing when they got there the next day, and nobody would have any idea that anything was going wrong hours before. It was a perfect system.

Monty lined up the shot to the hole, knowing exactly how he had to position everything and how hard he had to hit it to get the hole in one. Once he knew it was perfect, he drew his club back before letting it fall forward and hit the ball. He watched as it swished past the obstacles on the course before landing directly in the hole.

Another roar of victory left his mouth as he glanced up at the bucket. It was tipping just like normal, pouring out the entirety of its contents towards him. The vacuums were barely audible as they began to suck the balls out of the air before they could hit him. Only a few escaped from their fate, but that was never a problem. Monty did not mind if one or two of the balls got stolen by the kids. The company could afford to replace them if they ran low, whether they wanted to spend it or not. The parents could decide if they wanted to let their kids pick up the balls and risk getting pinkeye. 

While watching the balls fall towards him, fear suddenly overcame him. Something larger was in the midst of them, seemingly falling faster than the balls. Monty watched in horror as this child-sized object got sucked up the giant vacuums to be thrown right back into the bucket. 

Monty sprinted off the course, desperate to get to the catwalks so he could climb into the bucket. It felt impossible, but he feared that a child was stuck in the bucket. The object had not screamed as it fell, but if the child was hurt - or worse (expelled) - then Monty would never forgive himself for not knowing they were up there. The entire Pizzaplex would know if a child was missing there, especially if they were there after hours, but safety systems had the potential to fail. What if their system failed?

Jumping into the bucket, Monty began to desperately search through the balls for the child. More balls were being thrown on top of him from the vacuums, but he did not let them bother him as he frantically searched. Finally, he managed to grab onto something larger than a ball, and he pulled the object out of the depths of the bucket.

Lifting it up, Monty growled in anger and immediately flung it over the side of the bucket, not caring where it ended up landing. 

It. Was. A. Damn. Caution. Bot. 

How it got in the bucket, Monty did not know. He couldn’t imagine anyone would toss it in there even if they did have the strength to do so. Only one of the animatronics would be able to get it in there… unless it got up there on its own somehow. 

Damnit! The stupid bot got up there by itself! Monty was going to kill it for scaring him like that. 

When he got himself out of the bucket, he was unable to find where the bot had gone. It was smart enough to escape before he set his wrath back on it. Monty spent the next week glaring at every single caution bot he ran into, and there were many instances of others stopping him right before he tore one apart. 

~

The caution bots were turning out to be complete menaces. 

Sure, they typically kept out of the way of guests, workers, and the other animatronics. They could always be found standing along the wall during the day when they were not needed, out of sight and out of mind. They stationed themselves obediently at puddles and freshly mopped floors. They let the kids fawn over how cute their little “Freddy-like ears” were. Overall, they were a hit.

But they were menaces. They surprised everyone with the levels of mischievousness they all had. Despite not having arms, they got away with an absurd amount of pranks. They were always pulling them on the Glamrocks and the Daycare Attendant. Somehow, the pranks were going unnoticed by human workers. How these things that were supposed to be programmed to only stand still by wet floors ended up being sentient enough to cause such shenanigans was beyond any of them.

The prank on Monty with the ball bucket was only the start of it all. A few nights later, the pizza that Chica was making in the kitchen suddenly had her least favorite toppings put on it while her back was turned. The only thing she could see in the room with her was a caution bot sitting innocently in the corner. 

Roxy was getting especially annoyed by the new obstacles that showed up on her racetrack whenever she decided to drive around at night. She didn’t know how the tiny bots were moving such large props into the middle of her track without her noticing, but she theorized that a large group of them were ganging up together to push them there. There was even a long pile of debris covering the finish line one time that prevented her from finishing the race!

Not even the Daycare Attendant was safe from the pranks. Sun knew that the bots were responsible for the knocked over blocks that he found all the time. Sometimes they surprised him when he jumped down into the ball pit. They’d pop up at him as he stood up, making him jump since he wasn’t expecting anything to be in the pit with him. Moon had similar experiences, and they both had to stop the bots from trying to turn the lights on or off when they were supposed to stay on a specific setting multiple times. 

The only one not getting bombarded with constant pranks was Freddy. Sure, they still pranked him, but most of their pranks towards him were mild and ended with the bots getting the opportunity to be near the bear more. 

“How did you get the caution bots to fall in love with you?” Chica asked after seeing three bots stationed around Freddy after one of their small pranks on him. 

“They are not in love with me!” Freddy denied.

Chica snorted. “They totally are. Look at them! They follow you everywhere! They fell in love with you at first sight, and now they do everything they can to be near you! It’s hilarious!” 

“They are not-“

“Freddy… What did they do the other day when they found you crying over Bonnie?”

Freddy looked down in embarrassment. “They comforted me.”

“They comforted you! They don’t comfort the rest of us! All we get is relentlessly pranked! Just accept it! They’re in love with you!”

Freddy shook his head in amusement. Okay, sure, he knew they were all in love with him, but what was he supposed to do about that? He wasn’t about to date them or anything! Even if he thought he’d ever date anyone ever again after Bonnie, he wouldn’t date a hoard of tiny caution signs. It just wasn’t possible.

The bots never seemed to mind that he didn’t feel that way towards them, though. Freddy straight up told them a few times when they got really cuddly with him, and they never hated him for it. They always managed to convey that they did not mind. They did not have shoulders to shrug, but Freddy could imagine them doing so anyway. 

The next prank was on Freddy that night, but he thought he could handle a bunch of caution signs staring at him through his window (startling him when he noticed that pretty much all of them were out there looking in) if it meant that he did not have to get cleaning bots in to clean up puddles of water again. 

~

“You’re a stupid fucking robot! Why they think you’re good for kids is beyond me! When I was a kid, we didn’t have fancy technology like this, and I turned out just fine! We don’t need to be exposing our kids to such things!”

Not everyday could be flawless. Most days weren’t. However, some days, like that day, were absolutely horrendous. 

Freddy knew that it was impossible to please everybody. He understood that there would always be angry people out there and that not everyone would like him. Each day, he hoped that those that hated the animatronics or anything they represented would stay at home and not come to the Pizzaplex.

Some days, they followed their family to somebody’s birthday party. Some days, they couldn’t keep their mouths shut.

Freddy hadn’t done anything particularly wrong to make this person upset with him. He was entertaining a birthday party for the sweetest little girl, and all of her family had shown up to have fun with her. All of her family, including one snooty aunt who thought herself above everyone else.

“They let those things near the kids?” That was the first thing she said when Freddy showed up to the party. All of the children cheered when they saw him, immediately running over to talk, hug, and get autographs. She whispered it to one of the other adults there, but it was loud enough for Freddy to hear it.

“Of course they do!” The other adult said. “Isn’t it special? It costs extra to get one of the animatronics to come to the party for a bit, but it’s worth it when you see how happy the kids get.”

The aunt didn’t answer, but she had a disgusted look on her face as she gazed upon the children. She bit her tongue during the time that Freddy entertained the kids while they ate. However, when it was time for him to go so that the kids could roam around the Pizzaplex and have fun, she cornered him.

She went in on him, accusing him of a multitude of things that made no sense. She thought him a bad influence just because he was a robot and not real. She yelled, and she yelled, and she yelled. It got so bad that a crowd began to form, and some parents were trying to get her to leave.

“Somebody call security!” Somebody said as she pushed people off of her, continuing to berate Freddy for doing his job. Freddy knew he should just leave the room and ignore her, but her words were getting to him. Nobody had ever screamed at him this way before. It hurt a lot more than he expected it to. While he knew that she was spouting nonsense, she was making him feel extremely insecure. 

Security was called, and Freddy’s link to the main network told him that they would be there in a few minutes. Before they could get there, though, something incredible happened.

One of the caution bots crept over from its spot against the wall nearby. There was always at least one in every room that Freddy went into, almost as if they memorized his schedule so that one could be with him whenever they weren’t on duty somewhere. Nobody paid any attention to the small bot in the middle of the chaos, and that gave it the opportunity to plant itself directly in front of the woman as she tried to storm towards Freddy again.

The crowd watched, jaws unhinged, as the aunt tripped over the caution bot. Blam! She fell flat on her face, her legs in the air above her as they got stuck on the top of the bot as she toppled over. It sounded painful, yet nobody moved forward to help her up. They simply stood there in silence, secretly glad that she was too shocked by her fall to make anymore rude comments at anybody. 

Security showed up to find her like that. As they pulled her to her feet, she started screaming about how she was going to sue the place for intentionally trying to kill her. She hollered as they escorted her out of the Pizzaplex, issuing a lifetime ban from ever coming back.

That lawsuit never showed up. Whether that was because she came to her senses and felt embarrassed by how she acted or because her family begged her not to, nobody knew. When maintenance looked into the caution bot’s system later to see why it had moved to trip the woman, they couldn’t find any sort of malfunction. It was brushed off as the bot thinking there was a mess because of how chaotic things were getting, and it was labeled as an accident. 

Freddy made sure that bot got the honors of being one of the ones staying in his room that night in thanks for coming to his rescue. 

~

The Pizzaplex after hours sometimes felt more chaotic than during the day. Somehow, the competitive games that the animatronics got into outshined the rowdiness that thousands of kids could create. It was normal to find them having intense races in Roxy Raceway where the stakes were high and the chances of broken parts were even higher. Golf tournaments involved a lot of thrown golf clubs and golf ball shaped holes needing to be repaired the next day. Before Bonnie’s disappearance made all of them reluctant to enter Bonnie Bowl, even their bowling tournaments got intense. It was just how they were, and they enjoyed every second of it. It was always worth getting berated by maintenance afterwards. 

While those nights got insane, the nights where the complete opposite occurred were treasured as well. Sometimes they just needed a night to relax and do something quiet together. There was one time where they read together, but they quickly figured out that trying to focus on words for that long was not something that interested all of them. Now, when they had quiet nights, they did their own thing while being in the presence of each other.

Quiet nights took place in the Daycare, as there were always enough supplies in there for the more creative of them to focus on art for a while. Currently, Freddy was finger painting with Sun. It was his favorite activity to do during quiet nights, and Sun was always happy to have a finger painting buddy. 

“How does this one look?” Freddy asked when he finished his third painting of the night. He held it up for Sun to see, who proceeded to clap excitedly as he complimented the piece. 

“It looks so cute!” Sun cheered. “You’re such a good painter, Freddy!”

The painting was of all of them hugging. His friends were his normal source of inspiration while painting, so a lot of his artworks depicted them doing one activity or another. Each of the other animatronics had cork boards in their rooms where they hung up the paintings that Freddy made for them, as he always made sure to gift his best work to them.

“You should paint the caution bots next!” Chica said from the beanbag she was slumped in, a magazine in hand. 

“I’m sure they’d LOVE a painting made by their one true love: Freddy Fazbear,” Roxy snickered.

“That is such a good idea!” Freddy said. “I will get right on that.”

“Careful,” Monty said, “or else they’ll all want one.”

“They will have to make due with one for now, but maybe I will paint for them more in the future.”

Freddy decided on making them their own self portrait. He didn’t know where they were going to put it since they didn’t have their own room, but he was sure they would find a spot where nobody would throw it away. 

He painted a caution bot surrounded by flowers, being careful to add as much detail as he could get. It was hard to paint anything small while only using his fingers to paint, but the messy look was charming, so he was sure the bots would love it. 

When it was done, he gestured for one of the caution bots that were staring at him from across the room to come closer. There were two, and they seemed to fight over which one would go over before both of them came together. When they got to him, Freddy taped the painting to the front of one of them. 

“There! Do you like it?” Freddy asked. They couldn’t say anything, but he felt that they were very pleased with their gift. However, as the one with the painting rolled around happily, the one left without anything looked at Freddy sadly.

“See?” Monty laughed. “It wants one too.”

Freddy frowned, upset that he made one of them feel left out. Without thinking, he lifted his finger that was still coated with red paint from the last flower he painted and drew a small heart on the side of the caution bot.

The wet floor bot seemed to overheat for a second, shutting down for a worrying second before booting right back up. It spun in pure joy before both of the bots booked it out of the Daycare. 

“You broke them,” Roxy said. 

“I did no such thing!” Freddy protested.

“That one literally shut down from how flustered it was.”

Freddy never saw the caution bot with the heart drawn on it ever again. He assumed one of the maintenance workers scrubbed it clean before releasing it back onto the floor, but since there was no way to distinguish between the different caution bots, he would never know for sure. 

~

“Why do these wet floor signs keep following us?” Gregory asked as he and Freddy made their way through the Pizzaplex. 

“There are many of them around the Pizzaplex,” Freddy said. “I am sure that we will run into a lot more.”

“Yeah, but they follow us whenever I’m with you. They stay against the wall whenever it’s just me.”

Well, at least that confirmed to Freddy that the caution bots had not turned murderous like his friends had. They were still just obsessed with him and nothing else. 

It was around one a.m., and Freddy was unsure of what was going on. He severely malfunctioned during the performance today, powered on to find a child hiding in his stomach hatch, and watched as his friends tried to capture and hurt - potentially murder - said child. It should have been impossible for any of that to happen, yet here they were. Freddy vowed that he was going to protect this kid while he figured out how to get his friends back to normal. 

“Do they follow your command or something?” Gregory asked as he spotted more caution bots watching them. “It’s kind of creepy.”

“They have always favored me over all of the other animatronics for some reason,” Freddy explained. “They like to be near me. It is quite cute, in my opinion. I have gotten through some difficult days with them comforting me.”

“Huh. Weird.”

Gregory observed the caution bots for a moment, watching as they seemed to beckon him towards them. It almost felt like they were trying to get him to follow them somewhere.

“Do they always follow you or have you ever followed them to where they want to go?” Gregory asked, wondering if this was just their normal behavior.

“They only ever stay by the walls, stand over wet floors, pull pranks, or accompany me. I have never seen them go elsewhere,” Freddy said.

“Pranks?”

“So many pranks.”

Gregory decided that was something to question once he was no longer in danger from everything around him. 

“I think the caution bots are trying to lead me somewhere,” Gregory said.

“Oh? Would you like to follow them?”

“They could be leading me to my death.”

“They do not appear deadly like the others do. I would assume that they are trying to help you instead.”

“Okay, well, you’re coming with me just in case you’re wrong.”

With that, they followed after a caution bot that had been waiting patiently for them to finish talking. The bots had never acted this way to Freddy before, so he wondered why they seemed so adamant about whatever they were bringing them to now. Would this help keep Gregory safe at all?

They made their way through the Pizzaplex, carefully avoiding the other animatronics whenever they spotted them. It was nerve-wracking, but they managed to get through. The bot was leading them straight towards one specific attraction, and Freddy suddenly felt a lot more hesitant to follow along.

Freddy shuddered when he saw Gregory follow the caution bot into Bonnie Bowl. He could do this. He had to do this. Gregory needed him to stay calm and be strong for him. He could enter Bonnie Bowl without breaking down and crying immediately. He could do this. For Gregory.

Walking in, Freddy found the caution bot rolling down one of the bowling lanes. When it reached the end, it knocked every single pin down: a strike. The mechanics of the bowling alley were turned off at the moment, so luckily the bowling pins were not being reset as Gregory made his way into the area behind the lanes.

Freddy knew there was a door that led behind there, so he opted to use that instead of trying to crawl through the machinery like that. When he caught back up to Gregory, Freddy found him standing in front of a large, open vent near the ground.

“The caution bot just went in there,” Gregory said. 

“I can see why it wanted you to follow it,” Freddy said. “I would not have been able to fit through there. I wonder how long it has been searching for somebody small and willing enough to follow.”

“I don’t want to run into that music man thing again,” Gregory sounded scared. Freddy did not blame him. He was scared for the boy as well as for all of his friends. That night felt like a nightmare that came to life, and Freddy worried about how it would end.

“The caution bot would have found it by now if it’s in there,” Freddy reassured him. “We would be hearing a scuffle right now, so I think it is safe.”

Gregory stared at him unsure for a moment before he nodded and began to climb into the vent. Freddy made him promise to tell him where he ended up as soon as he figured it out so that he could find another way to wherever the bot wanted them. 

The only sounds that could be heard were those of Gregory crawling through the vents, but eventually Freddy heard the metal stop shifting from each press of his knees to the ground.

“Holy shit,” Freddy heard Gregory say from a distance.

“Language,” Freddy automatically said, but he was too quiet for the boy to hear.

“You need to come in here!” Gregory shouted back through the vents. “You’re going to want to see this right away!”

“I need to know where to go,” Freddy called to him. “I cannot determine your location easily on the Fazwatch right now.”

Gregory did not respond after that, but soon Freddy was watching in amazement as a secret door was being opened further down the wall. There was nothing to indicate that it was there before it was opened, and when Freddy approached, he saw that Gregory had pushed a ton of large furniture items out of the way to get to the door itself. It appeared to have been barricaded for some reason.

“I have never seen this door before,” Freddy said. “I did not know there was an extra room behind here.”

“Well, he and whoever did that to him obviously knew about it,” Gregory said as he pointed to what laid behind him.

The room screamed comfort. There were cushions thrown around the place, practical furniture pushed into the barricade, and artwork hanging from the walls. It… it was all paintings done by him. Every single one depicted him and Bonnie, together and in love. He remembered painting them. He remembered giving them to Bonnie. He remembered Bonnie taking them and saying he had a special spot for them that he could never find. He had assumed that maintenance had found them first after Bonnie disappeared, and they would have thrown them away when packing up Bonnie’s room. However, they were there, all intact. Even the poster of Freddy that he had written a note on and given to Bonnie hung on a wall.

In the middle of such a sweet room confused and broke Freddy at the same time. There were four caution bots sitting there. One had to be the one that Gregory followed. Two of them were special, though. One had the painting that Freddy made for them all those months ago taped to it still while the other had the red heart he had given it that same day. 

They were standing around Bonnie.

Glamrock Bonnie had definitely seen better days. Freddy dropped to his knees beside his previously missing lover as he surveyed his condition. He was dirty, grimy, and falling apart. His casings were cracked and dented, his endoskeleton was exposed in multiple places, and the wires were messed up badly. Freddy didn’t even know if he would function at all if he tried to recharge him. He looked… dead. 

“What happened to you, my love?” Freddy whispered, heartbreak in his voice. This was so much worse than the company simply decommissioning him. Bonnie had obviously been attacked before being left behind in a room nobody else knew about. This was terrible.

Freddy carefully leaned down to gather Bonnie in his arms. There were no signs of life to him as he stood up, cradling him against him. It made his wires ache.

“Are we going to help him?” Gregory asked.

“We are going to do everything we can to repair him and then some,” Freddy said. He was going to get his boyfriend back. Nothing was going to stop him.

“What if he wakes up and wants to murder me like the others do?” 

“We will lock him up in Parts and Services if that happens, but I do not think that he will cause any problems. My friends’ malfunctions are hopefully a recent problem that Bonnie has not received the update for before being attacked.”

On their way to Parts and Services, neither of them mentioned the influx of caution robots that tagged along. 

~

Fixing Bonnie was easier said than done. There were a lot of parts that needed to be replaced, and most of the spare parts they had for the bunny animatronic were tossed to the back of piles to make room for more relevant parts to the company. Freddy and Gregory spent a good amount of time searching through box after box in order to get what they needed. Eventually, they found most of the parts that coincided with Bonnie’s design. There were one or two parts of his casing that would need to be ordered when they convinced the company to reinstate Bonnie in the Pizzaplex, but he would be functional without them.

Freddy was grateful for the amount of technology that the company decided to use to help make repairing all of the animatronics faster and easier. Without it, it would have taken days to repair Bonnie as much as they were able to in only an hour or two. 

“Now we just have to recharge him,” Freddy said as he stepped back from the repair cylinder. Bonnie still looked roughed up, but they had found enough replacement parts that most of him looked fine again. In fact, despite the bits of damage littered here and there, Freddy still found him as beautiful as he ever did. He didn’t think there would ever be a time where he didn’t find him attractive, though. 

“Can he recharge in there so that we can keep the cylinder closed if he lashes out?” Gregory asked. 

“Yes, we can. He has been powered down so long that I doubt whatever is going on with the others will affect him, but we can never be too careful,” Freddy said.

Freddy was more worried about the potential of Bonnie not powering back on at all than he was of Bonnie turning violent. Finding Bonnie’s damaged body fueled a lot of conflicting emotions within him. He felt anger towards whoever did this to him, relief over finding him at all, and sadness for all of the time he missed with his boyfriend. He missed Bonnie so much, and he hoped with all of his heart that this would end with him getting him back forever. 

The repair cylinder’s doors closed around Bonnie, trapping him inside. Gregory got the honors of pressing the button that would start the recharge cycle, and he and Freddy watched in anticipation as they hoped for something good to happen. If Freddy had a physical heart, he knew it would be pounding. He was either going to be reunited with his love or filled with grief once again. He didn’t think he could go through such heartbreak a second time.

A moment passed. And then two, then three, then two, then three, then four, then two. It seemed like it took forever, but finally with one more bit of waiting, it happened.

Bonnie opened his eyes.

He stared at the ceiling of the repair cylinder for a second, confusion evident in his gaze. Slowly, his head tilted downward as he tried to comprehend where he was and what was going on. His fingers twitched as he got used to the sensation of being alive and moving again. Eventually, his gaze landed on the window out of the chamber, right onto Freddy and Gregory.

“Freddy,” Bonnie said, the name smooth with his new voice box.

It was clear to Freddy that Bonnie paid them no threat. His tone was not dangerous like their other friends’ had become, and he was focused more on staring at Freddy than he was watching Gregory. Freddy wasted no time opening the door to the repair cylinder - ignoring Gregory’s protests - and ran to Bonnie’s side.

“You are okay,” Freddy said, not knowing if he was more so reassuring Bonnie or himself at that point. He pulled the other animatronic into a hug, the angle awkward from how Bonnie was laying. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too, darling,” Bonnie said, hugging him back just as tightly. “You found me.”

“Gregory found you. It is thanks to him that I have you back now.”

Bonnie smiled over at where Gregory was hesitantly standing near the opening to the repair cylinder. “Thank you, Gregory, for following my caution bots and finding me.”

The two of them stared at Bonnie in disbelief.

“What do you mean?” Freddy asked. “They were made after you were gone. How are they yours?”

Bonnie giggled. “When I was hidden away, the company decided to reuse some of my old code in the caution bots in hopes that they could use the bots to find where I was too. Unfortunately, they made that plan, but they never followed through in actually following the bots anywhere, so they never made their way back to where I was hidden. The code connected them to me, though, so now I can see through them if I really want to and command them to do my bidding.”

“So… when the caution bots were always following me around, it was you watching over me the whole time?” Freddy asked.

“I never wanted to leave you. I would have led you to me, but the door to the room was barricaded and unseen from the other side, and you would not have fit through the vent.”

“And you kept the bot with the painting and the heart on it by you this whole time?”

“I wanted to keep your heart forever. It had to stay by my side.”

Freddy could cry right now if he had tears. He leaned forward to press his snout against Bonnie’s in the sweet way that they used to kiss each other, reveling in the fact that he could do it once more. He missed this sensation so much. His happy place was back. The reason he used to smile everyday was in his arms.

“I love you so much,” Freddy said. “Please don’t ever leave me again.”

“I love you too,” Bonnie grinned. “After we get through tonight, we’ll have maintenance fix me up fully, and then hopefully I’ll be part of the Pizzaplex again. Even if they don’t, I’ll hide away and come find you at night. You’ll never have to go through another day without me.”

“Uh, Bonnie?” Gregory interrupted. They both totally forgot that the kid was there, to be honest, but they were good at pretending like that was not the case.

“Yes, superstar?” Bonnie asked as he sat up from where he laid. Gregory beamed at having been given that nickname by both of these animatronics.

“What happened to you? Why were you back there?”

Bonnie sighed. “I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I was attacked. I was putting the finishing touches on the room back there. It was supposed to be a surprise space for Freddy and I to be able to hang out at night without anyone bothering us like they would in our regular rooms or anywhere else in the Pizzaplex. There was a woman wearing a bunny suit that came in. I remember being bummed that somebody else had already found the spot and getting prepared to beg her not to report it to management. Then, I seemed to have glitched for a moment because next thing I knew, she was destroying me. I should have been able to handle her attack, but something about this weird glitch kept me from fighting back. She ripped me apart, and then she managed to power me off completely. It was terrifying, especially because the glitch felt like a person holding me down.”

“I wish I could have been there to stop that,” Freddy said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t insist on going with you that night.”

“No, I’m glad you weren’t there. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it if something had happened to you too.”

“Still. I looked for you everywhere, and you were still laying there in Bonnie Bowl. I should have done better.”

Bonnie cupped Freddy’s face, forcing him to look at him. “You did wonderfully, darling. You kept the Pizzaplex going even as you grieved over me. I’m so proud of you.”

He gave Freddy a light kiss before pulling away to get down to business.

“I promise we can have a proper celebration of my return later, but for now, we need to find a way to turn the others back to normal and figure out what is going on here.” 

“Do either of you have any ideas on what to do?” Gregory asked.

A look of excitement spread across Bonnie’s face. “I have something I’d like to try.

~

Bonnie was insane. Amazing, but insane. Freddy already knew of this, what with the amount of trouble he got up to in the Pizzaplex before. He should have known that Bonnie had something to do with the pranks the caution bots pulled. Gregory was discovering this fact for the first time, though, as they watched Bonnie summon every single caution bot in the place to their location in the atrium. He claimed that they would be useful in their endeavors of stopping the evil taking over the Pizzaplex.

They could hear Chica wandering around nearby, but she had yet to discover their location. They were hiding behind some of the random cardboard props set up to look like the older animatronics on a stage. In front of them gathered the hoard of wet floor bots. 

“There are so many of them,” Gregory said.

“They have to cover a large space,” Freddy said. “Maintenance had to build enough so we would never be short of them.”

“There are SO MANY of them,” Gregory reiterated. “What even is the plan for this?”

“Well,” Bonnie said as they watched the last of the bots catch up to them, “in my time of observing the Pizzaplex through these bots, I’ve noticed something strange in Roxy Raceway.”

“They are doing construction there right now,” Freddy said.

“Yes, and it has been behind schedule because of complications. Apparently, there have been a lot of issues with electricity draining over there, and my bots have noticed a door that the investigators of the issue keep going into. Something is there. Something bad. Whatever it is, I think it’s part of the reason why I was attacked and why the others have been corrupted.”

“So, what do we do, then?” Gregory asked. “Do we go investigate what is draining all of the power?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Bonnie said. “It’s okay, though. You can stay here while I take care of things.”

“No, we just got you back,” Freddy protested. “I will go investigate. I am sure I can handle whatever is there.”

“We can’t stand here and argue about who is going all day,” Gregory said. “We can all go. Together.”

“But-”

“No. Together or not at all.”

Freddy shared a long look with Bonnie before conceding. 

“Fine, then. We go together,” Freddy agreed.

Bonnie took Freddy’s hand as they started towards Roxy Raceway. “Ready to end this and get back to normal?”

Freddy nodded. He felt uneasy. He was definitely ready for this to be over, but he was not ready for whatever evil lied ahead. “Let’s go save our friends.”

~

Together, they entered the construction site at Roxy Raceway and made their way into where employees had been investigating the power drainage. They came across some barriers along the way that might have stopped them, but with the power of the caution bots, they were able to brutally force themselves through. There was a spot where Chica’s powerful voice box might have opened a door, but it was no match for a multitude of caution bots all pushing against the wire door at the same time. 

Behind that was an elevator that was definitely unsafe, and Freddy was worried that it would not hold all of their weight. They piled in, including all of the caution bots. As the elevator lowered, it shuddered, but it held their weight. Freddy did not want to think about how it would do taking them back up later, though.

There was a dark, gross looking tunnel at the bottom of the elevator shaft. As they walked through it, turning on generators and stepping over wires, Freddy couldn’t help but think that he had been down there before. Everything felt… familiar.

They reached the end of the tunnel. There was a filthy, rusting security bot rolling in circles, but it was easy for them to subdue it. Their attention was focused more on the giant lit up sign that said “Freddy Fazbear Pizza Place” instead.

“What the fuck?” Gregory said.

“Language,” Freddy replied, but there was no true intent to it. 

“What is this place?”

Freddy did not want to be there anymore. There were bad memories tied to this place. He could feel it. Something was not right in the slightest.

“I think it’s one of the old Freddy Fazbear locations,” Bonnie said. “There were multiple before the Mega Pizzaplex. I don’t understand why one would be underground like this, though.”

They walked into a large room that held old stages, tables pressed up against the side of the walls, and a giant hole in the middle of the room. 

“We have to go down there, don’t we?” Gregory asked. He was met with silence. Looking up, he found that both Freddy and Bonnie were staring at the hole with looks of despair on their faces. “What’s wrong?”

“There is so much anger down there,” Freddy whispered. “So much pain.”

“Our friends are crying out in pain,” Bonnie said.

“Wait, the others are already down there? How could they have beat us?” Gregory asked.

“No… our friends from before.”

Gregory was super confused. “What do you mean?”

“I-I can’t remember,” Freddy said.

“It just feels wrong,” Bonnie agreed. “But we have to go down. There’s nowhere else to go but down.”

Freddy had Gregory climb into his stomach hatch just in case the climb was dangerous. If he fell, at least Gregory would be more protected in there. The caution bots went down first. If the situation wasn’t so terrifying, the way they threw themselves over each ledge and into the darkness would have been funny. Taking a second to get their bearings straight, Freddy and Bonnie began the journey down the hole as well.

It was only a few feet down when they saw it.

“That’s so messed up,” Gregory said from within Freddy’s stomach hatch. “Ew, no, what is that? That can’t be real.”

Freddy stared at the amalgamation of robotic parts in front of them with complete sadness. This was where the anger was coming from. Multiple souls screamed in agony from within this blob, begging them to help them exact their revenge. Freddy knew that whoever they had it out for was going to be revealed deeper in the hole.

Down they went until they finally reached the bottom. They came across an old security office, complete with working doors and cameras. Something sparked as they entered, and they watched in horror as the security footage in front of them showed a recharge station in a further room open and release a monster.

The old yellow Bonnie suit. 

William Afton.

Freddy knew this to be true. He did not know how he knew it to be true, but he recognized this thing. He was evil incarnate; the devil himself; the reason everything terrible happened in the first place. He felt it to his core. He felt it deep in his wires, far deeper than any of his code went. A jumbled mess of memories flashed through him, and he was unsure of whose they were. Were they his? Did they belong to the angry spirits in that blob above them? He wasn’t sure, but they were oh so deranged. 

And now Afton was trying to take control of him.

“I am of no help,” Freddy said. “He is trying to control me.”

“Me too,” Bonnie said. “Gregory, be careful. We might become dangerous.”

That might have been so, but there was one thing there that Gregory had that proved not to be under Afton’s influence: the caution bots. Bonnie could still feel his connection to them. They had his code, but they did not have his physical remnant. He gave them an order before shutting off his connection to them, not wanting to risk Afton somehow managing to get to them at all. 

“There’s a flame thrower,” Gregory said as he went around to test out what the buttons in the room did. “Maybe we can burn it to death.”

“That could burn the entire Pizzaplex down too,” Freddy said. “We don’t know how much of its weight is supported by this place, either.”

“The bots will take care of it,” Bonnie said. “Gregory, you just stay safe. I can hear the others coming.”

Gregory worked at keeping the others out while most of the caution bots went to find the room Afton was in. Gregory shut a door to keep Chica out, a vent to stop Monty, and even had the help of a few of the caution bots that stayed behind to hide him from Roxy. They piled on top of him and pretended like he wasn’t there when she came busting into the room. He couldn’t believe that that had worked, but it had. 

Soon, he was watching on screen as the caution bots found Afton. The crippled suit turned towards them in confusion, a gargled laugh coming out of its straining voice box. Its amusement soon turned sour as the bots ganged up on it. They piled together, pushing each other on top of one another until they were a giant wall of wet floor signs. They surrounded him, pushing closer and closer while he struggled to move. 

It was very anticlimactic, to be honest, even when the blob thing finally moved into the room to finish the job itself. The head of the thing opened as it screamed, dragging Afton away forever with one of its tendrils. However, Gregory could only watch the caution bots as they celebrated their victory. He felt numb. He felt that this entire thing was stupid. All of this had happened tonight, yet the big bad creature was subdued by caution bots? 

He needed a nap.

Turning back towards Freddy and Bonnie, Gregory was relieved to find that they were acting normal again. They were no longer glitching out in their movements or their speech. He took it to mean that it was finally over.

“We should see if the others are normal again,” Freddy said. “And you should be getting back home, Gregory.”

~

The other animatronics were shocked to find themselves wandering around a rotting pizzeria underneath the Pizzaplex. Last thing they remembered was Freddy breaking down on stage, and now they were being told that they had been chasing after Gregory all night and trying to kill him. They felt so much guilt over that, but Gregory assured them that he knew that they weren’t in control. He forgave them already. 

They were even more surprised to see Bonnie when they came to their senses. There was a lot of crying as they embraced their friend, so happy that he was back with them. 

Once they managed to get everybody back up into the Pizzaplex, including all of the caution bots, they set about finding the last bits of what they were missing. They found that the Daycare Attendant had been half possessed too but that Moon was so messed up that it was affecting Sun’s memory too. They learned that Vanessa was Vanny, the dancing rabbit that attacked Bonnie and wanted to kill Gregory. She hadn’t been herself, either. Afton had somehow corrupted her mind, and she was feeling intense guilt about it too. 

They even found out that Gregory was homeless, and they decided that their first steps when management came in before opening would be to force them to agree to letting him live there with them as well as completely repairing Bonnie and reintroducing him on stage.

But that was to happen in a few hours. For now, they focused on each other and tried to start healing from all that had happened. Gregory found a new family. Vanessa had a lot of guilt and trauma to work through. 

And Freddy had all of the time in the world to spend with Bonnie.