Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"We are getting a new technician sometime this week!" Freddy said as he adjusted his bowtie, glancing down at Gregory, who was sitting on the couch in his greenroom.

By now, Gregory had become a permanent fixture, though nobody could agree on exactly whose son he was. Primarily, he'd just gotten out of it by shrugging it off and going to play with some other kid - usually Cassie - or by glaring at the offending animatronic. Nobody'd ever believe it if he told them, that it was Freddy who'd let him in and allowed him entry over and over again, well, except for the Daycare Attendant, but Sun usually gave him a wide berth, and Moon hated him.

"Oh yeah? What? Ol' Mikey not doing too hot?" Gregory asks, flopping over the arm of the sofa and letting his own arms dangle. A tiny plastic gachapon falls out of his pants pocket.

It was an open company secret that something was very wrong with Michael, not to mention William or Luca, who seemed to be equally cagey, and equally gross smelling, on the best of days. Cassie's father had mentioned a group betting pot that they all contributed to, including the three objects of mystery. Though, out of any of them, Gregory had ever only seen Luca. They were pretty much the same age, and Luca went to the local high school that Gregory spent... maybe four or five months at.

Apparently, Luca had friends, once, and Gregory kind of felt that. Luca didn't really talk about it.

Luca didn't talk about much of anything.

"No, Michael is doing alright. Management simply decided we needed more assistance, with all of the parts of the Pizzaplex." Freddy says, giving up on messing with the bowtie, since there really wasn't a way to change how it looked. The smile on his face was about as lopsided and soft as it could physically get. "And with Tiger Rock and Ellie. You have seen how hectic it gets."

"Yeah, it's... kind of crazy seeing everyone on stage." Gregory doesn't like thinking about that.

Sure, he saw the first show with the new cast members, and sure, it was fun. But something about the way Tiger Rock kept glancing over at him - enough times to feel deliberately aimed - made his hair stand on end. The guy was nice enough, a little awkward, and with way too firm a handshake, but it could all just be nervousness and first day on the job jitters. Still, it didn't mean Gregory had to like it, or him. Ellie, Ellie was fine though. She was some sort of fancy, souped-up version of that old Circus Baby character, but apparently, she made a lot of techs angry. Too many special parts, bad cable management, that sort of thing.

Freddy's laugh takes him out of the thought, and he smiles so hard his face hurts, looking up at what's basically his dad. At least the others had enough tact - after their repairs - to put on brave faces and pretend like they didn't want to punch Gregory into the stratosphere, or Timbuctoo. Whichever was funnier probably.

"There is a chance they may start tomorrow, even." Freddy adds, coming over to the sofa and sitting down next to it, a hand ruffling Gregory's hair. "Can I count on my superstar to be on his best behavior?"

"Oh Freddy!" Gregory smiled, this time, it didn't even reach his eyes all the way, but the little chuckle made it clear it wasn't any less genuine. "When am I ever not?"

Freddy could probably think of a few occasions, all of which coincidentally occurred on the same night almost three weeks ago. Truthfully, whatever he did was only like half his fault, and he would stick to that until the day he was either dead or until the day Freddy could really adopt him. Though, he knew better than to say the quiet part out loud.

"Yes, yes, a perfect little angel, you."

Gregory absolutely preens under the semi-sarcastic, playful banter and the gentle touch. He doesn't really remember the last time someone older than him - and Freddy is older, he learned - was this nice to him.

"Now, can I trust my little angel to not cause any problems on purpose when the new technician comes?"

"Yes, Freddy." Gregory says, absolutely drawing out Freddy's name, as if he were a normal teenager saying, "yes dad" and imagining that world in his head.

Out of all of the animatronics Freddy would probably be the best dad. Cassie always said Roxy was the best - feeding her ego, no doubt - and that Roxy would be her mom if she asked, and Tiger Rock was the only one who kept his head on straight when that one kid got trapped in the VR booth for five and a half hours. But none of them were anything like Freddy. Nobody was ever like Freddy.

"Good," Freddy says with a smile - and a touch too much relief in his voice - as he gently boops Gregory's nose with a finger. "I do not think Sun would extend any grace if you had to be babysat."

"Oh, ew, I'm too old for a babysitter anyways!"

He sticks out his tongue and pretends that annoys him purely based on the age aspect. Freddy wouldn't understand otherwise, honestly, none of them probably would. Well, except the attendant but Sun always came across as a little ditzy, and Moon was an enigma. Either way, they were both the last people - animatronics - on Earth he'd ever want to talk to about it. So, he'd just put his silly little walls up and find some other kid or teen to play with whenever they showed up on the first day. Luca'd probably give him a free pass to Fazerblast, since he'd been banned from literally every other attraction. He'd really, really, wanted to try the escape room, but even at night when he swore he was alone, Luca would just show up and guide him away from it.

Gregory only now realizes he's never seen Luca without the sunglasses or the absolutely hideous blue and purple leopard print face mask. He didn't even know what Luca looked like.

Absently he plays with the tiny little gacha toy he'd managed to get the machine to spit out - obviously by paying the stupid little fee and not by punching it until it spat it out - popping the lid open and revealing a tiny plastic spider. It kind of looks like one of those glow-in-the-dark spider rings, except it's neither glow-in-the-dark, or a ring. Basically, just a really cheap, crappy plastic spider. If he actually liked the Dj, he'd probably think it looked like him, but they're not on speaking terms. Though, from what he's gathered by listening to the staff, and hearing Freddy talk, Dj's not on speaking terms with anyone.

He never had an actual voicebox implemented.

That must suck, he can't imagine never talking to anyone, but then again, he has no idea what Dj's really like. Even though that virus is more or less out of their collective systems, he's still not exactly eager to make friends with any of the other animatronics. Luckily Freddy doesn't blame him, at least not entirely. Sure, he knows they were all "sick", as sick as they could be as animatronics, but it doesn't mean that he wants to be anywhere near any of them - especially not alone - for the time being.

"Are you?" That could have been a joke, but Freddy's expression has enough curiosity to imply he means it.

Gregory just nods, taking the spider out of the capsule and turning it over in his hands. "Yeah, even when I was like, ten, mom and dad-" there's a lump in his throat that feels weirdly prominent even though it's been ages, "I was super, duper responsible. I didn't need one after I was like, maybe seven?"

It's been ages, and the hurt's mostly gone, but Gregory still can't help but miss them. None of it was ever their fault, but it definitely was harder to not blame them when he was younger. Part of him still felt angry, because if they really loved him like they promised they did they wouldn't have left him behind. Anger's not the best thing he feels now, just a lot of tenderness, and a roiling pit in his stomach.

The sound of a metal fist banging on a metal door snaps him out of it.

If it were a couple of weeks ago, he'd have probably immediately hidden, either under the couch, or inside Freddy's stomach hatch. But it's not a couple of weeks ago, so he remains firmly where he is. Even though it's Ellie and Tiger Rock, and for a split-second Tiger Rock's gaze is firmly on him. Like he's recognized him from somewhere. Gregory... he gets that a lot, apparently. Mike always talked about his baby brother Evan, and said they looked a lot alike. He'd even showed Gregory a few pictures of Evan when he was little.

He could kinda see it, if he squinted really hard.

All he knows is Tiger Rock and Ellie came in second hand, despite their pristine condition - and neither seemed interested in talking about wherever they'd been bought in from - so maybe that's it? He just thinks Gregory looks like someone he knew from his old job, er, old location. He still feels kind of weird, thinking of them as employees. Sure, they're all at the very least semi-sentient, Freddy more than the others, possibly - Cassie talked a lot about Roxy being that way, even if he never saw it - but to be employed generally meant to be paid. And there's no way they were being paid, at least not in and monetary way.

"Oh! Tiger Rock, Ellie, how nice to see the both of you!"

Ellie clasps a hand over a locket - it didn't quite fit the theme, but she insisted, since it was from a friend - and smiles warmly. "It's nice to see you too, Mr. Fazbear!"

Gregory snorts with laughter and doesn't fully notice the way Tiger Rock's ears flick back, but he does hear him speak. Theoretically, he does know of the fact he's speaking Hawaiian, mostly because that one kid mentioned how quick he picked it up, much to the tiger's chagrin, but it's definitely not a language Gregory knows well. "Ellie, ua ʻōlelo ʻo ia ʻaʻole e kāhea iā ia pēlā."

Freddy's pause lasts just long enough to piece it together with context. Makes sense, since apparently Tiger Rock just learned way quicker than the rest of them.

"Oh, please, that is far too formal. Just Freddy works fine."

"Aw, alright, it's still nice to see you!" Ellie giggles, her hands on her hips for a second or two, before she reaches out to take one of his. "We were thinking of checking out some of the stuff around here!"

Right, they're new. They don't really know the whole layout of the Plex yet, and even then, they were always adding new stuff. Gregory cringes at the fact that some of the animatronics could be considered anywhere near childish or inexperienced, but honestly, compared to one who knew too much and was alive longer than the Plex itself, yeah, this is the lesser of two evils.

All eyes are on him for a second, and he gets the distinct impression that Ellie and Tiger Rock are waiting for something. Tiger Rock even clears his throat - not that it does anything- and Gregory smirks. "What?" He asks, reclining on the sofa, "I'm not gonna tattle on you guys. Just make sure he's back by a reasonable hour."

Ellie has almost a second of silence before she proceeds to crack up, laughing so hard she almost doubles over and has to be held up by the other two.

Tiger Rock is rolling his eyes, to the best of his abilities, but he responds politely enough. "Thanks kid, we'll have him back before bedtime." He chuckles softly, giving Freddy what's got to be a noogie, or at least a close impression of one. It's kind of interesting how much he knows, but also how much he still seems to soak up like a sponge. Gregory was pretty sure that after a while their processors just got too overloaded to store anything without dumping something else. What kind of specs did this guy have?

No time to ask, since by the time he'd even figured out what to say, the three were out the door chatting to one another.

And he wasn't jealous, not at all. Not even a little bit. Even if they were all laughing and talking like they'd been friends forever, even if it'd only been a few weeks. Not even when he has to remember Freddy's nice to everyone, maybe a little moreso to him, but it's not something that only he gets to have. Because he doesn't get to have anything that nobody else does. Cassie doesn't get it, since her dad works here, she gets the perks. Luca doesn't get it since he doesn't go to school or really seem to care about his job or making friends, and that's fine but Gregory does.

He stares at the little plastic spider in his hands and has an idea.

If Freddy's right about the new technician, then who's to stop him from leaving them a welcoming present?

Chapter Text

It was an... ultimately uneventful day. Waking up not immediately barfing on the floor was always a plus, as was the fact her ex-husband - as much of an ex as he could be, considering they weren't legally separated yet - hadn't tried to stop by in the middle of the night. She originally found his stubbornness kind of endearing, especially because he'd gotten stubborn over things that impacted her, and he technically still did, just in a way that was impacting her negatively.

It almost felt surreal to have a full eight hours of sleep, rather than being disturbed by him banging on the apartment door halfway through the night.

Vivian was going to absolutely maim whoever gave him her new address.

On second thought, it might have been their daughter, in which case Jamie was going to be fine, if not scolded the next time they saw each other.

"Okay, up we go babs..." she says, bracing as she gets out of bed, rubbing the space between her eyes.

Her knees, and all of her joints, in fact, were not what they'd been before. Nearing forty, and having already had a child, with another on the way, had truly done a number on her physically. Mentally she'd absolutely deny any sort of issues, but she had to close her eyes any time she took the elevator downstairs or else she'd get horrifically misty-eyed, in the worlds most undignified way. But the stairs ended up a no-go after the fifth month.

A small part of her tenses, and she sucks in a quick breath, trying very hard not to think about the fact she'll be working with machines, possibly elevators. The thought of having to be on the top of one - that little panel up there - made her the tiniest bit queasy.

"Okay, okay," she kind of resents the way Simon was right, she does say that a lot, "think about it... they're not putting someone like me up there."

She'd put it in her resume and brought it up in every interview; she doesn't do heights. Something about them makes her brain switch off and completely dump everything. Anything above two feet off the ground terrifies her, and it's worse if she can see the bottom. Trying very, very hard not to dwell on the thought - and not look out her window - she puts on her uniform. It fits well enough, but it's pretty clear they hadn't expected anyone who was pregnant to try and work at the Plex, let alone as a technician.

But Vivian had some experience, being in the robotics club in college until she and Simon both left to follow their dreams. Truthfully, having been a stay-at-home mom, she had a little less time for dream following than he did, but he worked. And she couldn't blame him for that. Could she?

One breakfast bar later, she'd grabbed her keys, her purse, and was out the door.

"Oh, come on..."

She won't lie, it felt like Jamie was being intentionally difficult when she'd "borrowed" the ice scraper, even though she was staying with her father in Florida. There was no need for it, and with Vivian in Boston it was absolutely crucial in the winter months. And snow had picked up early this year, the first one coming in November - even if that's technically when it could start every year - leaving her with a snowy car and no ice scraper.

As long as she hurried, she could make the bus, at least, and she could just buy a scraper on her way home from work. That was fine, she could manage that. Sure, maybe the car wouldn't appreciate being snowy all day, but there was no way she'd be able to lean all the way across the windshield and clean the whole thing off. 

It ends up being a far, far closer call than she'd like, but she makes it to the Pizzaplex with barely a moment to spare, because as soon as she's in the employee breakroom punching herself in for her first day, she's besieged by her superior. Her direct boss, a man named William J. Lewis, according to his nametag, who absolutely stinks and has an almost full-facial covering and hard hat speaks in an eerily excited monotone. Something she honestly never thought was possible.

"Well, hello there! You must be Vivian!" He claps her on the shoulder, and it hurts way more than she was expecting it to.

Though she doesn't pull away, instead, she just fidgets with the waist-length braid. "Yes... are you my boss William then?"

"William?" He asks, quirking a brow and guffawing at her. "Please, just call me Billy, and none of this "boss" stuff. We're a family at Fazbear's."

The motto, sure, she knew it, she brough Jamie to the smaller location in their old town when they were all living together. That one with the Mangle, which closed sometime after Jamie started high school. She wasn't sure why, since nobody ever even brought it up, and she wonders if he knows.

"Okay, alright, I can do that."

"Now," his voice is warm, but still feels like it's got a monotonous, robotic quality to it, "how about we introduce you to the rest of the family before you get started?"

Vivian nods, glancing at the few other employees in the breakroom, all of whom seem entirely unfazed by the behavior. The first is a very, very intentionally uninterested blonde woman with a white polo and black jeans, who's mindlessly scrolling on her phone.

"Vivian, this is Vanessa, she's just wrapping up for the night."

It's barely eight in the morning, but the cautious brow raise actually prompts Vanessa herself to speak.

"I-" her voice is groggy and barely loud enough to pass for more than a whisper, "work nights, by the way."

Makes sense then. But that must be awfully rough on her. Vivian couldn't begin to imagine that sort of thing. It's something she personally would never be able to stomach, though April was more of a night owl than she ever was. The man sitting across from Vanessa smells too, but he seems to at least be more of a genuine sort of fellow. He's got a surgical mask on, and his eyes are sunken in and tired looking, but his gaze feels sincere when he looks at her.

"Me? Oh, yeah, guess we're goin' 'round robin style. Name's Mike." He extends a hand which is swaddled with bandages.

She takes it, very tentatively, and it feels slightly chilly.

As she opens her mouth to reciprocate the greeting - even though she knows his name and he heard her say hers - William squeezes her shoulder, giving her a sympathetic wince. "Hey, I know I said we'd introduce you but," his voice is the tiniest bit sheepish, "we got an issue. Can't open the Fazcade 'til we fix it." He seems needlessly contrite, and all she can think of is that someone must have tried to steal change from the machines. "And Grady's not able to work on it anymore. You think you got what it takes to make a big first impression?"

She nods, so fast part of her is scared her braid's going to turn into some sort of whip and smack him. As he leads her to the Fazcade through the back tunnels, he explains a little bit about why the Plex even has these paths. Otherwise, she'd be running around for practically hours, with the fact she'd have to travel between the breakroom, entryway, atrium, and besides, it was her first day. He'd rather her know the quickest ways around the place than have her walk the entire lobby. Part of that, she thinks, comes from her current condition, but he's her boss, he should know.

He grabs a metal pushcart of supplies and spare parts, and he has her just walk alongside him as he swipes his management badge to open the backdoor the Fazcade. Coming out from a small door just off the left of the stage, she just about screams when she sees the location's resident animatronic. However, she's far, far too dignified to actually scream, so instead she just grabs Billy's shoulders and squeezes tight. That cannot be what she's going to be working on.

"Billy, what is that?" She whispers with mounting horror as it begins to move.

"That," his voice is snappish, like this was somehow the turning point of his mood, "is DJ Music Man. He's your first assignment."

Her expression is significantly more distressed by the second, though realizing the DJ is awake and warily looking at them both - one of the eyes seems like it's busted, small trails of smoke coming out of the socket between the LED paneling. Maybe she's just hormonal, but even though she's scared out of her mind, she really, really wants him to like her. Or at the very least, she wants him to not hate her.

"D-did you not read my resume?" The panic in her voice is harder to get rid of then she'd like. "I don't do heights, Billy!"

Suddenly the wind seems to be taken right out of his sails, and she gets the sinking feeling he never actually bothered to read any of it. That she wasn't hired for her previous experience or even because he believed in her ability to improve and learn. No, she must have been hired because they just needed a warm body. She sighs and rubs the space between her eyes, trying to ignore the spot of light fixated on her as the DJ stares at them both.

"I'll have it all finished up in about an hour. Okay?"

"An hour?!" Billy's tone is close to angry, but she gets the impression he's just impatient. "Viv," why is he calling her that, he needs to stop calling her that, nobody calls her that, "we need it done in at most, half that time!"

He takes a half-step forward, only to be nudged backwards by an oversized hand poking him in the chest. It's not hard, but he stumbles back and proceeds to trip over his feet, falling to the floor with a thud and a clunk. That's not something she was expecting, both the actual fact the DJ would push him - she's worried that if he feels slighted, the DJ might push her too - but the fact there was a clunk. People don't clunk, that's a known fact. Though it is kind of nice that the DJ was trying to put some space between the two of them, making sure Billy doesn't get too close. It felt distinctly human, distinctly aware.

"Fine, fine! You get one hour!" He shouts, jabbing a finger in her general direction.

She hates the way it makes her want to shrink down and hide, even as he stomps off in the other direction.

There's a loud - but not so loud it's painful - querying trill, and she gets the impression that the DJ is concerned. Or as concerned as a giant robot spider can be. Turning around to face them, she runs a hand though her hair. She doesn't even need to look up to know there's catwalks she's got to be on, which is a very bad idea both because she's eight months pregnant, but also because heights scare her half to death. She's still offended that nobody read her resume. The DJ's expression is as close to concern as she thinks is physically possible, and she's actually kind of impressed that his mouth can frown.

It would make more sense for FazEnt to just put a permanent smile on him, especially since from what she could tell, he wasn't built to directly interact with guests. It would explain why he didn't have an actual voicebox either.

"Okay, okay, I'm uh, new here." Vivian cringes at her own really terrible first interaction, since that's obviously something the DJ had to have known.

Funnily enough there's a ding and the one unbroken LED eye lights up with the symbol of a bright green checkmark, as if responding to her. She has to actually resist the urge to smile and laugh at just how quick the response was, but she knows she's on a time crunch. As she walks over to the pushcart of supplies, she's distinctly aware he's looking at her, mostly because even with just the one eye working, he's still casting bright light over her.

"I think we'll need to start by unscrewing the-" she starts, rummaging through the bucket of tools until she sees something horrifying.

She leaps about half-a-foot in the air and has to scramble backwards to get away. The cart tips over when she jumps and she can feel tears pooling in the corners of her eyes, but this time not even biting her lip makes them go away. DJ's panicking, and she can hear the same trilling noise repeat itself, as a hand reaches out to stop her from falling over completely. His hands are soft, the palms and the fingertips padded. It doesn't help because she sees him move, she sees the rest of his limbs and she buries her face in her hands and cries.

It's embarrassing, and it's another way the universe seems content to screw her over whenever she tries to do something. Not only is she terrified of heights, but the little spider in the bottom of the bucket - which looks like it's plastic, now that everything's been spilled on the floor - is freaking her out. From the tiny gap between her fingers, she can see the DJ's optics scan over the pile of tools and scraps, and he clearly seems to notice, the light fixating on the tiny thing. Then there's a motion which feels very similar to a human's shoulders slumping, like he's just made the connection.

Anything he tries to do is going to be met with more of this.

"I'm sorry-" she chokes out, forcing herself to stand up straight, "-I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to cry."

Something about the way he looks away, and how he averts his eyes makes her heart ache. It's really probably only because she's hormonal - and because she knows Jamie used to do the same thing when she was little - that it makes her feel bad enough to ground herself, but coming out of the frightened stupor is easier than it usually is. Picking up the spider - it's plastic, it's a toy, it's a prank - and tossing it into the trashcan at the edge of stage she sighs softly, as she walks up the stairs to the platform. The fact someone put that there means yet again, nobody ever read her resume.

"Look I-" what does she say? What can she say that isn't horribly offensive to him? He already knows she's worked up; she can't just lie. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get so freaked out. You didn't - you didn't do that. You know that, right?"

She's taking a gamble on how much the animatronics really know, and how advanced they actually are, but it seems to pay off. Some small, imperceptible amount of tension bleeds out of his frame, and he slowly lowers himself to lay prone on the stage, allowing her to peer into his eye socket without too much fuss. Is he... trying to make her job easier? She can't quite look all the way inside, even with him laying prone, and even with her on her tip toes. She'd need a stool or a step ladder or something.

"Okay, can you hold that pose for me big fella? I need a ladder or something to really look inside."

DJ dings another affirmative, and he simply watches as she collects all the tools and spare pieces into the bucket again, hefting it onto the stage. At least she won't need to make any repeated trips up and down the ladder and off the stage to go get an Allen wrench or a Philips head screwdriver, or any of the hundreds of spare screws that had been shoved into old prescription bottles. Something about that feels distinctly weird, from a storage standpoint. Not to mention the fact some of them weren't just like old bottles of Advil.

It's a little funny, and definitely at least a little scary, how quickly and eagerly the DJ seems to be trying to work with her, like he's trying to anticipate her needs. She thinks it's really just because he - like all of the animatronics here - must have been preloaded with information pertaining to what they might see, which probably includes pregnancy. That must be the reason, the DJ knows she's in what her mother's always called "a fragile state" and is trying to work around it. Of course, remembering how Eiko talked about pregnancy made her skin crawl, so she shakes it off and squares her shoulders.

As she grabs the stepstool from off the little platform next to the stage - she's pretty sure the giant level on the wall is going to be enough of a temptation for some kid to duck under the "employees only" sign that's been hung from the handrails - she sighs softly. That comes from the fact she's more annoyed by the sheer disrespect on her first day. Something about the way Billy tensed up when she asked if he'd bothered to read her resume made her nervous. Did he care? Was this some sort of issue he had with her? If he didn't read it he wouldn't have known she was expecting - and that was a reason people got fired.

Simon had warned her about it and had told her it's why he thought it'd be better if she was a stay-at-home mom, because his business could cover their expenses, and it gave her freedom to prioritize her needs and her wants. At least, that's what he told her.

"So," she makes sure it's locked in place in front of him, that way when she steps up it won't fall, "we're gonna figure out what happened to your eye. Looks like the LEDs need to be removed for a start."

The DJ seems to tense underneath her, and she's a little weirded out by the fact he seems antsy, like he's nervous. Kind of like how April would get about doctors.

She's not sure if she wants to hazard a guess as to why it's the same.

"You make those, uh, noises, right? There's a noise you can make if you need me to stop, right?"

The silence is long, and painful, until there's an almost earsplitting electric buzzer drill, and the light suddenly turns red. His working optic's projection is a large, red X, and she swallows thickly. The LED panels that make up his eye are as big as her head. As the ringing in her ears dissipates, she begins to unscrew the panels of his injured eye, setting them on the stage in piles. One pile was for the ones that could be reused, and the second, smaller pile is the broken ones. A couple of them just have tiny cracks which she'll ask William about, but one of the broken panels had the casing popped off, leaving the individual bulbs exposed.

"Alright, that's that done." She says softly, patting the edge of his eye socket gently once she puts the last panel down. "You did really well."

He doesn't move, but she gets the distinct impression he's preening under the words. Once she grabs the flashlight from the bucket of tools, she flicks it on and peers inside. His head is weirdly hollow, but it makes sense because technicians would need to be able to operate on the open machinery within. There's a lot of exposed mechanical pieces, and she can see that one of the drive belts that connects the main motor to the optical motors is worn. Taking a quick peek at the other eye's optical motor she can see that belt's been replaced recently, which confuses her. Why wouldn't they do both at the same time?

"Alright, I think I got it, just need to replace a belt."

DJ lets out a sound which is clearly intended to be a whine, followed by the same loud buzzer, though it somehow sounds insistent. Vivian's getting the distinct impression he's trying to convince her he's okay and doesn't want her to do that.

"Oh, no, no, no. DJ. Your eye is smoking, and I doubt you can see like that." Her voice is soft, and she remembers talking Jamie through getting her Flu shot in the same way. "It'll be a quick pinch, and I can count you down from three when I replace it."

Part of her is relieved that he doesn't fight her on it, and another, stronger part of her is more confused than anything as to why he isn't fighting her on it. A tiny spot in her mind chides her in Eiko's voice for doing it again. It always starts this way, talking to something, and then it ends with her telling her boss to "say bye to the bus" or something equally childish. Eiko's voice has been chiding her for years and somehow it never, ever gets easier to deal with.

She pulls a new belt out of the cart's undercarriage and hoists it into the space inside his eye socket. As she climbs inside - with some major effort required on her part - she begins to murmur under her breath. It doesn't matter if the DJ overhears, since she's just reciting her grocery list over and over again until she settles into a spot where she can easily make the switch.

"Okay," she says, speaking loudly enough to be heard over the sound of machinery whirring and clanking, "I got the replacement, do you know if taking the drive belt off hurts?"

The buzzer comes quickly, and the vibrations almost make her fall, though she's quickly able to recover her balance - but she ends up taking the precaution to widen her stance and crouch slightly. She absolutely doesn't yelp at the noise, nor cover her ears to try and make the ringing less intense. It doesn't actually help. The buzzer's just far too loud, especially when she was inside his head - and could actually see the giant speaker which made the sound.

"I take it that means it doesn't hurt?"

The affirmative ding is actually a little less loud, as if he'd realized he hurt her ears and tried to be quieter.

"Good to know! I'll pop that off now!" Vivian chuckles, managing to pry the drive belt off - only realizing the machinery had stalled long enough to let her after she finished. "Oh did-did you do that?"

There's another long silence, where she's left alone in her head and his, trying to think of if it was just a fluke or if he'd intentionally done it somehow. If he hadn't, and if everything had been running, the idler could have crushed her fingers into paste. And she got the feeling FazEnt wouldn't have appreciated that sort of scandal. As she sat and thought, she almost missed it, but there was a surprisingly quiet ding.

It reminded her of Jamie.

And it reminded her of April. Mainly, when April was supposed to read a certain number of books in order to go to the theme park during the fourth-grade reading week field trip. She didn't read any of them, and when she couldn't go, she'd lied to their parents, and Eiko was angrier about the fact her daughter didn't do the assigned reading than anything else. Especially because by then Eiko had been set on the warpath for her daughter's unfair treatment.

"Alright, I'm gonna count down then, three..." she can feel him tense, "two..." there's a low mechanical whine, "one."

With a click, a pop, and a little elbow grease, she attached the new drive belt and could feel the DJ shuddering under her. Relief, he's just so relieved, she thinks, he feels better. One or two rudimentary practice spins later, there's no smoke, and he seems to relax further. As Vivian pops her head out of his eye socket she sees Vanessa walking by with Mike. Before she can even say hello she realizes they're talking to each other, and she hides her face, ducking back into the hollow workspace.

"Mike, it's not fair!" Vanessa's voice is faraway and hard to overhear, but she can make out the words if she strains hard enough.

"Fair?!" He shouts back, and Vivian flinches despite her own interests. "Nessie, none of this is fair! And you're gonna take someone else's side?"

"...I'm not taking her side, I'm just-"

"-Just what? Nessie, she's just a technician. She won't even be here by nightfall."

Do they want to get her fired? Is she going to be fired? What do they even have against her? She was positive their earlier interactions went well! She was sure of it! This wasn't fair, being targeted by her coworkers and subject to working in conditions she'd previously have found utterly inhumane.

"I-"

"Nessie. Whatever's going on, it's not her problem. It's ours."

"You're right, sorry."

Vivian waits, covering her mouth and holding her breath, until the sound of their footsteps recedes fully. Even then, she's scared that they'd still be there when she climbs out. Luck is on her side, and she pushes the beat-up old drive belt out of the eye socket first, climbing out afterwards, and stepping back onto the stage. Even though she'd been in an enclosed area where she couldn't see how high up she was, it doesn't make it easier, especially with knowing she had to climb to get in. Not to mention the ick factor of being inside someone's eye.

As she climbs out, her foot catches on the edge of his eye socket and she almost falls. Almost, because something soft catches her.

A giant hand.

His hands are weirdly soft for being a robot, but it makes sense, since his schtick is being a DJ his hands had to be soft, or he'd scratch up the decks. But even then, it's more than she expected, especially considering the padding. Sure, she saw it earlier, but it felt a little like those mousepads with the gel wrist support, and the pads were cool to the touch; very cool to the touch, to the point it makes her feel a little like someone's put a cool cloth on her neck and she finds herself sitting in his hand. For a moment or two they just stare at each other in complete silence, no music, no words, just peace.

Until the Fazcade's double doors slam open, and the DJ hastily sets her down on the stage.

It's Billy.

He's looking exceptionally more contrite, and he seems to have cooled off, though he doesn't look exactly happy. He's got a clipboard in a gloved hand - safety gloves, makes sense - and the other hand on his hip. As soon as he sees the piles of paneling, he looks like he's about to go off, but then he composes himself, taking a deep breath in and sighing. "Vivian, what is this?"

"Okay, yeah, this pile are the undamaged ones, and the other pile has a couple cracks on some of them." She gestures to one of the less damaged panels, with a hairline fracture from top to bottom. "There is one where the whole casing broke off, so I wanted to ask if we had any spares."

For a moment there's some actual recognition on his face, like he's impressed with the foresight, but then he rubs the back of his neck and shakes his head. "We're out. Are you sure you can't just reattach those ones? We'll put the order in, but we can't keep the Fazcade closed long enough for them to come in."

Her eyes dart to DJ, who is pulling off the single greatest "human statue" impression of all time. He's lying there, eyes off, not moving, like he was pretending to just be idle and in sleep mode. A far, far cry from what she'd just seen, and it makes her nervous. She doesn't like the implication that something - someone? - like DJ has to worry about people so much smaller, because if he's worried, than what about her?

"I... I can do that."

"Good, I knew I could count on you Viv!" He's back to being cheerful and giddy, and he claps her on the shoulder again, and this time she yelps. "I'll leave a notice on the door that it'll be closed for today, does that work? It's the longest I can leave this place closed."

He doesn't seem to notice, which is a small relief, but she's too busy reeling over the fact he wants her to reattach old parts. "Yeah, sure."

As he walks out, already working on getting that notice printed up, she can hear him lock the main doors. At least the employee only path is left unlocked, she thinks. Though the fact DJ seems to "come alive" again, his head perking up and his gaze wary, doesn't fill her with confidence. He looks like he heard everything, and the same, electronic whine confirms it.

"Can you believe that? Reattach old parts? Ugh, if I didn't need this job so bad-"

Whirling around, she comes face-to-face with the DJ, who's staring at her like he's looking at a particularly fascinating bug.

It's definitely weird to say the least, but she climbs back up onto the step stool with the screwdriver and shakes her head. "Sorry DJ, I... it won't hurt if I put these back on, right?"

She's never been so relieved to hear that buzzer, though she isn't sure if the mere thought of hurting him is enough to stop her. She needs this job, she needs to make rent, she needs to prove she is employable, she needs to get better. Working with the DJ might have helped a little bit - it really hasn't helped, but she wants to believe. One of those giant hands gives her a panel, and she's only mildly surprised to make the connection that he's helping her. He wants to make this easy for her.

For her.

While she's reattaching the broken LED panels.

"Thank you... thank you DJ." She says softly, as she screws the panels back into place.

By the time the last one's been screwed back on, it's just past noon, and a tiny part of her is tempted to tell her boss she's done, that they'd all been screwed back into place and his eye was working fine again, but another part of her didn't want to. Part of her recognized the same way that the DJ seemed to shrink around Billy. She sees herself in him, like they're just two sides of the same coin, and her gaze borders on pity.

"Do you... mind if I eat my lunch in here? I don't-" she pauses, biting her lower lip until she tastes blood, "-I don't feel like walking back to the break room."

A flimsy excuse, she knows it, and she'd be willing to bet money on the DJ knowing it too.

She just doesn't want to be around William, or Mike, or Vanessa. Simon had always warned her about her weird "fixation" on being the victim and thinking everyone was plotting against her, and she believed him, and she trusted him when he said he'd always be on her side. Fat fucking load of bullshit, she thought, grabbing the brown paper bag from the pushcart. But the fact she gets another trepidatious ding, she takes as a victory. So, she sits down on the edge of the stage and eats her sandwich.

"At least someone here likes me, eh?" She says with a nervous chuckle and a brow raise.

For once, the DJ's expression is aggravated and he's clearly got something on his mind - no speaker, no speech, no voice - and Vivian's painfully aware of just how hard it must be. To have something to say and no way to say it. As she absentmindedly finishes half of the sandwich she begins to think, mind going a million miles an hour. There's a chance, actually, that this may work. Certainly, she isn't sure if it will, but even just a hunch is better than nothing.

"Do you..." her voice is timid now that he's looking right at her, "do you know sign language?"

The way his head tilts is kind of cute, it's like a dog tilting their head, and for some reason the connection just makes her misty-eyed. Suddenly she's sniffling and trying to swallow around a lump in her throat, trying to compose herself again. He seems worried that he upset her for a second, and part of her is... comforted by the fact he's concerned.

"I-I'm okay, I just cry easy."

He only relaxes a tiny amount, but he still has that sort of stressed-out aura around him. She just pats his cheek and wipes her eyes with the other hand.

"Here, let me... I have to google it, but it's uhm..." she begins to fumble, but manages to save it, "it's a way to communicate but without, y'know, talking."

Immediately, he perks up. The lights of his eyes brighten, and he leans in close. Obviously, he doesn't want to get too close, and she gets the distinct impression he's trying to maintain a respectable distance. Though, she can't help but notice the way he just seems to get excited from the mere thought of being able to communicate with other people more often, and she laughs softly, pulling her phone out. The lockscreen is still a picture of her with Simon and Jamie - she needs to change it, but she's never been able to muster the will to go through with it.

Stomping out the urge to start crying all over again, she quickly begins to search for some easy beginner signs, deciding to start with the very basics.

Hello, goodbye, how are you, nice to meet you.

Honestly, she was a little surprised that hello wasn't just a wave, but it did make sense if she actually sat and thought about it. Making a specific sign based on a wave made more sense, because then instead of trying to guess if someone knew sign or was just waving, you could actually watch for intention. DJ seemed to be picking it up pretty quickly, though she did notice he had to keep squinting at her phone - and he was definitely annoyed by it - though she was modelling some of the signs for him. It seemed to help.

Yes, no, please, thank you, you're welcome.

She was watching him repeat his signs as she finished the second half of her sandwich. Somewhere inside her there was a dull aching, like someone had managed to wedge a knife between her third and fourth ribs and was twisting it. This just made her think about helping Jamie with her homework, which then became making cookies for the school bake sale, which became watching her daughter slip further and further away from her.

The sound of something tapping on the floor caught her attention and pulled her back to reality. Looking up, she saw the DJ fidget - a nervous tic, it was cute, it made them all personable - before trying to start a signed conversation. "Hello, how are you?"

"Yes." And she proceeds to crack up, before clarifying - out loud, because neither of them had gotten far enough to converse fully. "Sorry, I'm-I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at me for just saying yes."

He's surprisingly good-natured about it, and she makes the effort to try and work on some more parts of general conversations. Better to start with things he'd see more often, rather than just teaching him words he might never end up needing to say.

My name is, what is your name.

Then she realizes, his name is long. There are probably words for his name.

DJ Music Man.

"That's you. Took me a little digging, but that's you." She beams up at him, watching him practice the signs.

His gaze is focused, but weirdly enough, serious. He doesn't seem as excited as he did before, and she's worried she did something wrong. DJ doesn't seem exactly annoyed, but he doesn't seem to be especially happy about it.

"My name is DJ."

Oh, oh that makes more sense. She nods, and quickly searches to see if her name has a sign too. No? Well, she can use it as a way to broach the topic of fingerspelling. "My name is Vivian." Since he can hear, she says it out loud as she signs, making sure her hand movements are clearly visible as she signs her name.

"Nice to meet you, Vivian." He's back to smiling, and she smiles with him.

It feels like helping Jamie still, even though Jamie's far louder - loud music, loud outdoor voice, big clunky boots - and easily riled up. Despite the fact it feels weirdly emotional she maintains her composure the best she can. Even then, if her eyes get a little misty, he at least doesn't try to point it out. Not that he knows signs that ask if she's crying just yet, so it's hard to guess whether it's because he's being tactful, or because he just can't.

Even if her boss is overbearing and has already proven to annoy the shit out of her sometimes, and even if two of her coworkers are plotting against her she-at least she made one friend.

Even if he is a giant spider.

"Here, this one means friend."

Chapter Text

People always thought Sun was the personable one.

That he was the one who was outgoing and friendly and liked to be around people. They weren't necessarily wrong, but they also weren't necessarily right. Moon liked people too! He could be friendly - even if he was more introverted than Sun - the main issue was just that he didn't talk much. And people seemed to equate talking to personability. If you followed that sort of philosophy then yeah, he wasn't.

But he still went out of his way to interact with the others on his nightly patrols, whenever he could.

Something felt like it was curdling in his coolant tank, thinking about being sick. Sicker than he ever was before, sicker than Sun had ever been - he didn't even think Sun was sick in the first place - sick enough to want to hurt Freddy. Freddy was their friend. Moon's footsteps are significantly harsher than they needed to be, especially as he lingered in the doorway leading to Rockstar Row. He knew Gregory would be there, in Freddy's room, but he didn't care. Now that whatever it was they caught was gone, he just couldn't bring himself to care. So what if there was a kid in the Pizzaplex, it was a kid that Freddy seemed to trust, and he didn't want to be anywhere near the boy.

The sound of footsteps coming from the other direction however, surprised him, and he scrambled up the wall, all of his hands grabbing onto anything and everything that had enough leverage to help him cling to the support beams on the ceiling. It was easier with four arms, but the hanging light fixture seemed to protest holding him up.

"So, you think they know about us yet?"

Ellie.

He didn't know why, but he just felt weird about Ellie, she was too cheerful, and it made him nervous. It was entirely unfair, but she just made him uneasy. Sun might have found her nice, and been happy she could match his energy, but she creeped Moon out. Tiger Rock came into view behind her, following her closely. Something about the scrapes on his palms felt weird, since he shouldn't get that scuffed playing guitar. He stays quiet. It doesn't feel right, but he wants to overhear.

"No, I don't think so." Tiger Rock's voice is distant and nonchalant. "Not that it's a secret we need to keep that badly."

Ellie laughs and pats his shoulder affectionately, her other hand gently pinching one of his cheeks. Moon gets the distinct impression that Tiger Rock's not a fan, due to the way he huffs and rolls his eyes - though he also doesn't pull away or tell her to stop. Okay, it's just romance, part of him feels silly for thinking it was anything else. There wasn't anything else it could have been. The two of them enter Rockstar Row and as they disappear from view, Moon drops back down to the ground - very gracefully, if you ignore the big, loud thud. 

He stares in the direction they went, frowning in their general direction.

It's not- Moon don't do this. You've been doing really well! You were getting better!

No. No, none of that. Sun really has to stop doing that, it feels condescending - it feels mean - and he makes a point to turn around and finish their sweep of the Atrium. He doesn't want to do the whole Plex, even though he knows he really should. It's a childish response to feeling slighted, it's a gross overreaction, and it'll make Sun mad. But he's upset, and he wants to make Sun mad. 

People said Sun was bright, radiant and heated, that when he was angry - and only a handful of people had ever seen that - it burnt everything around them. Like a wildfire, chaotic and uncontrollable. They weren't wrong, Sun was prone to fury when he needed to be. Though, when they talked about Moon they were. Some of them seemed to think he couldn't get mad - that he just wasn't built to be able to - but he could. His anger was just more precise. He didn't wind up and unleash an aimless sort of rage like Sun, he was an arrow. He'd find his target, narrow in on them and fire off. Neither of them were terribly productive about their anger, but that was... someone else's job.

He'll come back, you know that, right? He's not gonna leave us alone forever.

I know. I just don't know why he didn't come back yet. We're better, he should want to come back.

Eclipse, God, they missed Eclipse, he knew what he was doing, he understood things better, and he was just... well, some people might think he was more stable. Rather than Moon's childish grudges and baseless distaste for people Eclipse cared about, rather than Sun's overcompensation and refusal to take anything seriously; Eclipse felt like a real person. Eclipse felt like he made sense. Eclipse was the one who got along with the others, Sun and Moon just tried to fill the void he left.

And they didn't do it well.

They both knew it, with the way the other Glamrocks seemed to tense around him, like they were walking on eggshells and trying not to disturb Eclipse's shallow grave. He disappeared and went dormant after they all got sick, and sometimes, Moon swore he saw pity in their faces. As he slips back into the daycare and slams the double doors a little harder than he needs to, he rants to himself.  "It's not fair, we didn't make him leave. They shouldn't -"

It's pity for them, for what happened, he knows they're not angry. He knows they're just worried about trying to manage until Eclipse comes back.

They know that Moony. He's gonna come back, we're all just nervous.

"Nervous?!" He shouts to nobody in particular, throwing his hands up over his head. "I'm not nervous!"

He walks through the ball pit, and the only reason he isn't kicking them around is because he'd have to clean that up later and he'd really rather not. But he does make it a point to stomp as much as he can without making too much of a mess. It feels petty and childish, and once again, far too unlike him. He doesn't get angry in this sort of way, he's not supposed to get angry in this sort of way, but he can't help it. Something about the fact everyone's been expecting Eclipse to come back any day now is putting a damper on his mood.

Then his foot catches on something.

And he goes down.

"Huh!?" His brows furrow as he rummages around for whatever it was he tripped on. Kids always did this, dropping their stuff and then forgetting to get it back. Whatever it is, it's easy to grab, but he's surprised by the heft. A backpack, it must be a backpack, or something else equally-

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

He's holding the wrist of a dead, mostly decomposed child.

Oh my God!

It's in the corner of the ball pit, like someone had tried to hide it and make it as hard to stumble on as possible. Moon's hands shake so badly that for a second, he thinks he'll somehow wiggle out of his plating. This isn't real, it can't be real. None of this makes any sense! Everyone here liked what they did, and nobody would want to hurt a child, not like this, especially not like this. When he lets go it just goes limp, and he finds it hard to breathe - he doesn't even need to breathe - and it feels like the coolant in his tubing's gone cold.

It's not new, the fact it doesn't stink to high hell and the fact most of the skin is gone leads to the fact it's at least-

- at least a couple weeks old.

It's been almost three weeks since they all got sick. And no matter how much they complained about not remembering anything, none of the techs could find any proof they'd had their memories tampered with. Nothing was deleted. It just seemed like no memories formed the entire time. Suddenly the temperature in the room feels like it's at least twenty degrees colder, and he goes stock still. There's - there's no way. Nothing in his programming would ever let him hurt someone, especially not a child. Even if he was the one who people liked less, and even if he was a little bit bitter, he wouldn't do this.

But now he's not so sure.

The dates match up too well, the fact it's here, in the daycare, the fact whoever did this wasn't caught means it must have been when they were alone with this kid.

We shouldn't be alone with kids!

Not now, Sun.

As he very, very tentatively approaches the body, slowly pulling it up from the depths, he's horrified further and further. It's like every inch that comes up is worse than the last. Not very bloody anymore, but the remains of the flaying skin start to catch on the joints in his fingers and he feels something inside him lurch. It's disgusting for every reason. But the worst part is the fact the head hangs limp, like bones in their neck are broken. The large still somewhat opened, battered scars and scuffs imply a struggle. Like someone had strangled them and snapped their neck - he's getting warnings in his HUD and all he can focus on is the warning about software instability.

He doesn't care.

This is worse.

He's got to get rid of it, but what does he do? He - he's pretty sure he didn't do it, but pretty sure won't hold up in court. Besides, from what he heard about court from parents who talked too freely, they wouldn't listen to someone like him. He's not a person. Not in any way that matters, and there are more than one.

What are we gonna do?

I have an idea.

Suddenly he's grabbing the corpse - it's cold, of course it's cold, the blood's all gone and there's nothing left - and picking it up. It's a little boy, blond with one of the wristbands. It's blue, that's the six-and-under bracelet. That makes it worse, why does every single thing he learns make the whole thing worse. It's already the worst thing that's happened to him in his life, but the amount of horror just never stops growing. This is wrong, he really can't go through with this, especially if he doesn't want to ruin things.

Eclipse will hate him whenever he comes back, because he is coming back.

As he slinks out through the vents into the Atrium, he makes a point to stay away from the bots - they're nowhere near as sentient as the animatronics with distinct programming, but it doesn't mean he wants to be seen like this. This is such a bad idea, it's going to ruin everything, but the risk of the body getting found is the only thing that makes it seem like a better alternative. His strides are both long and intentional, as he practically runs from the Atrium to the double doors leading to the West Arcade. If this works - and it will, he'll make it work even if he has to force it, even if he has to lie - then they're going to be okay. And they're going to be okay.

DJ is in sleep mode, limp on the stage and Moon can hear his fans whirring at the low hum that indicates his higher processes are off. Good, that - that makes it easier. Holding the corpse in two of his hands, he stares at the wall, before he begins to climb. There's less stuff stuck onto the wall in the arcade, but there's more little ledges for him to cling to. The tunnels - oh the DJ will hate him - they're the best place to hide it. Nobody liked going up into the tunnels to make sure they were clean and blockage free, so they tended to be seen less by staff. It'd be the place where this could go undiscovered the longest.

Besides, he knows how to open the panels in the tunnels, all that metal is hollow in there, something about acoustics. So, he sets the body down in the tunnel and cracks open one of the panels. It's maybe six inches deep, and he huffs softly under his breath as he tries to force the dead body inside. It's easy, it's too easy. It's distressing but it's ultimately far easier than he was expecting it to be. He doesn't even have to force the paneling back into place when he's done, though his hands shake when he locks it into place to make sure nobody notices.

We're going to be in so much trouble! What is wrong with you!?

Sun, stop! I did what had to be done!

They're gonna find out!

They are not! Nobody goes up in there except DJ and he can't open the panels anyways!

Though, speak of the devil, as he slinks across the dancefloor, a giant hand blocks his path, and he has to leap back before he's crushed. DJ's not so bad, but his stature and his complete silence had definitely put Moon on edge - not because he thought of himself whenever he saw DJ, no, of course not. He didn't sympathize with how some of the little kids cried about having to go to the arcade because their older siblings couldn't be bothered dropping them off, nor how some of those same little kids cried whenever the lights went out because they were afraid of him too. Was this kid afraid of him? Did they get scared when the lights went out and he woke up?

Did they die afraid?

"Hi DJ." Is all he can muster up, even though DJ knows he's chattier than people give him credit for.

"Hello!"

He knows sign language, huh? That's - he didn't know that last time. "Who taught you?" Moon asks, noticing how DJ gets nervous when he does it. Tone - tone's a big problem, he's always been the bristly one. "I'm... not mad. Curious."

"Friend."

This is where Moon realizes DJ learned from someone else and jealousy pools in his chest - he shouldn't be jealous, DJ is Eclipse's friend, not his - and he has to swallow it down. Well, even if a friend taught DJ, they didn't teach him very much, so he can prove that he's better. That he's worth being friends with. "I can teach you more, if you want."

He's definitely not feeling the tiniest bit of smug pride when DJ nods and dings - though the lights in his eyes don't change, due to him still being plugged in and prepped - because that's proof. It's proof someone likes him, even if deep down he knows DJ just misses Eclipse, and to be honest, he misses Eclipse too. Eclipse... would have done something else, would have done something better, maybe Eclipse wouldn't have even gotten sick if he'd just been around. Moon's eyes hurt, and he knows it's not really tears when the waterworks start. Just optical lubricant dripping from the lower lid, the HUD showing a warning about irritants and optical sensor misalignment.

It's neither of those things, he's just sad all of a sudden.

DJ's smile softens, the corners tugging downward like he knows what's going on, like he wants, so badly, to be sad too. There's a low mechanical trill that sounds like a whine.

"Here, I can teach you emotions."

Moon's patient, and methodical, and he's actually pretty impressed at how well this "friend" had been doing so far, because it makes it loads easier on him. That's probably not the best reason to be impressed, because it makes his job easier, but it's the only reason he actually has. DJ's a quick learner too, eager to take in all the information he can, though for the first few tries his signs are sloppy - he's tired. Of course he's tired, Moon accidentally woke him up.

"What are you doing?" DJ asks suddenly, brows furrowed, after Moon finishes their little lesson.

It's too close to the wee hours when he would get ready to make the switch again - and decompress a little bit, because sometimes doing the rounds made him nervous that it would happen again. Tonight was no different. And the time constraint is the only reason he doesn't teach DJ to sign Eclipse, it's the only reason, not because he's still reeling from the adrenaline high - or whatever the equivalent is - or because he's starting to worry that he might have been wrong about Eclipse.

"What?"

"Moon. Why did you come here?"

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. He postures, standing up straight for once - the maintenance staff and technicians were always telling him to stop slouching, but he didn't really care about them. They weren't his friends; they weren't Sun's friends. They were just handlers - like it was a zoo, or something equally stupid and dehumanizing. Then he squares his shoulders, sets his jaw and nods. It couldn't be less convincing if he tried any harder - partially because he was already trying his best, and partially because DJ was just... too clever for that.

For being the newest addition to the 'Plex, DJ was smarter than anyone could have anticipated, even though intelligence was supposed to start small and grow through experience.

"I-"

"What did you do?"

DJ's smarter than any of them were when they woke up, and maybe that's part of what freaks Moon out so much. DJ knows more now, after being online for just less than a year, than Moon does, and he's been online for more than a decade. Maybe it's because he's more advanced, he's newer, better parts, but that's not fair. It's not fair, but even though he doesn't get DJ, Eclipse likes him - they liked each other - so he can't fuck this up. Even if he's wrong, he's going to cling to the idea Eclipse will come back, and they're going to all go back to normal.

"Nothing!" He almost shouts it, and DJ's taken aback because Moon... is normally not that loud, not unless he was trying to convince someone of something - and he was never really good at that either. "I-Hypothetically," he sees DJ tense at the hypothetical, and it's fair, the last one involved a bucket of paint, a handful of thin mints and a liter of soda he stole from the breakroom, "if there was a... hm."

"Moon, what did you do? You did something bad, didn't you?"

"Hypothetically there's a dead body in your tunnels, bye!"

Before DJ can even begin to process that, Moon's turned on his heel and is taking off. He can hear the sound of something being unplugged, and the sound of a large machine fully booting up; the lights from his LED eyes get brighter and then focus on him like twin spotlights as he runs, attempting to sprint to the employees only entrance. DJ might be pissed - there's a deep booming sound and a hand very narrowly manages to grab him - okay, scratch, DJ is pissed, but he's not going to destroy the 'Plex over something this... trivial.

Trivial?!

Not. Now!

As moon slams into the double doors and forces them open - he's distinctly aware they haven't been oiled in ages because they very much do not want to open - and then scurries as far into the hallway as he can, he can see DJ scowling at him. DJ's so pissed, Eclipse is going to be so pissed. He's shaking, and he's pretty sure if he could breathe, he'd be panting heavily, as he trips over his own feet and continues to scoot backward.

"Moondrop?" Ew, why does Mike always use his full name, ew.... "What's wrong?"

Mike asks, poking his head around one of the staff tunnel's long winding corners, and Moon feels an exceptional amount of relief, before the nervousness sets in. Something about Mike makes him anxious, and unlike DJ where he can at least make an educated guess, Mike's general vibe was just... off. But right now, Mike was like an angel to him, because as much as he was wary of Mike, DJ was wary tenfold. Not even Eclipse knew why. DJ just... never brought it up, in any form.

"DJ got... upset with me? While I was doing my rounds." He says, brows furrowing as he looks up at Mike. "I just want to go back to the Daycare."

He's so very lucky Mike isn't great with his social skills, because if Mike was, then he'd notice the little tics that give away the fact he's not being entirely honest. But Mike was really, unintentionally terrible.

"He did? Huh... there was a new technician today."

Moon feels jealousy pool in his chest again, as he gets up and tries not to be too intimidating with his height. His favorite thing about Mike was the fact Mike seemed like he was impossible to intimidate or frighten, so he didn't have to slouch too much. "He told me."

"He-" Mike's expression falters, and Moon can see him grit his teeth, "-he told you? I didn't know he spoke."

"Sign language."

He feels annoyed at the fact he has to explain this to Mike like Mike's a child, but he deals with it as graciously as he can physically manage, which is pretty damn graciously. Eclipse probably would have taught him if he'd gotten a chance to, but of course, they all got sick, and he never did. Moon will leave a few special words out of the curriculum, so Eclipse can teach him them personally.

"Oh." Why does Mike sound sad, why does it sound like he was getting his hopes up.

Moon leans in, a big smile on his face, his eyes narrowed; he's got a set of his hands on his hips, and the other arms are crossed over his chest. "Why do you ask?"

"I thought-nothing. Don't worry about it Moondrop."

Moon stares at him for a minute or two, then he bows his head and nods, letting his arms hang limp at his sides. Right, why would anyone tell him anything. He's... a prop. They're all props, just attractions and not actually people. "Okay," though, for a second, he thinks he sees something in Mike's eyes that resembles concern, "I won't."

He just walks down the hallway.

Chapter Text

"Did you tell him what my phone number was too?" Vivian asked into the phone.

She's not even a little bit surprised when the landlord just hangs up without even addressing her, but it's pissing her off. Yesterday was a hectic first day and she was exhausted when she got home, but then her husband rang the phone at the oddest hours. Part of her is pissed off at the fact she feels grateful that's all he did; because whenever he had some sort of business meeting up on the Northeast end, he'd make a pit stop just to bang on her door.

This guy - the landlord - was starting to get on her nerves for the way he'd been doing this. She really, really didn't want to seem paranoid, but the fact he'd told her husband what apartment she was in, and then given out her apartment's direct extension... she felt a little paranoid. Though part of that might have been because her husband was... far too amicable last night. He hadn't been so polite or conscientious at any other point in the divorce proceedings, or even before that. He barely asked her how her days were when they were living together, but he'd called in "just to see how her first day at Fazbear's was." Liar.

"Don't trust him, never ever, okay?"

She asks idly, tying her hair up with a claw-clip and heading into the kitchen to brew a small pot of coffee and make breakfast. She'd picked up some microwavable packs of oatmeal, and as she puts the carafe on, the landline phone rings again.

"I cannot believe him-!"

"Believe who?"

Suddenly she feels so very embarrassed, and she begins to stutter and stammer, before letting out a little squeak. "April! I-I'm so sorry, I didn't... I didn't sleep very good last night."

There's a muffled conversation in the background, out of which she can pick out the sound of April talking to their mother. Vivian pretends that she doesn't hear Eiko blame her over the phone for that, like she'd intentionally woken up every two and a half hours.

"Oh, well, I don't want to keep you too long then. I just wanted to ask how it went!" April sounds contrite, but then speaks again. "You uhm... you forgot to text us."

"Ah, sorry, I put my phone on silent, I was... super busy. I got assigned to a damaged animatronic before I even memorized the breakroom code."

The phone's suddenly ripped out of April's hands by Maylee, who screams excitedly. "Auntie! Did you meet Roxy?" Yep, definitely Maylee, Maylee loved Roxy, maybe a little bit more than she even loved her. That's fine, it's really hard to be a fully engaged aunt when she's living over four hundred miles away.

"Not yet, sorry May-may."

Her niece's disappointment is absolutely palpable. Clearly the little girl thought nothing on Earth was as important as meeting her favorite Glamrock. "But auntie!" Vivian can still hear her wailing even as April takes the phone back.

"Sorry about that, she's got a real strong grip for a four-year-old."

"She's just like you, you know. If I looked hard enough, I could probably find the bald spot where you grabbed my hair."

"Oh, come on," April laughs softly, "you rip out one chunk of hair and you never live it down."

In the background she can hear her mother chiding her - and she knows it's her, because her mother is bringing up her inability to forgive and forget. Yeah right, she was perfectly content to forgive and forget when it wasn't either too funny to forget or too heinous to forgive. Hell, she was pretty much over the fact nobody read her resume - outside of a lingering twinge of righteous indignancy - because the job wasn't that bad. The human employees were something else though.

As they talked on the phone, she pours a small cup of coffee and pulls her oatmeal out of the microwave. "It was the big one, the DJ. The one that uh - that May's afraid of."

"Oh yeah? Should I tell her that her auntie's got a favorite of her own?"

Vivian laughs so hard she snorts and has to take a deep breath to calm down. "Absolutely not, he's still a spider." Even after the fact he'd - it'd - been so helpful yesterday, acting like there was some sort of conscious mind and conscientious soul was stupid; even after the sign language lesson - and she'd kept practicing well into the night after her ex-husband called and woke her up, this wasn't real. There wasn't a friendship.

She'd only been lying to herself when she taught it that word.

"You - you're still upset about that?"

April's voice is too nervous, too uncertain, when she asks that, and it's making her nervous too. Like she can't believe April would be over it, because it happened to her. "Of course I am, it's... I'm sorry."

"Viv," Vivian bristles at the nickname, "you've been saying that for years."

She knows, and her heart drops into the pit of her stomach, because she has been saying it for years, but she's never felt any better. Apologizing isn't supposed to be for your benefit, but you'd expect it'd help a little bit, especially when you were told you were forgiven, but the pain never went away. "And," she tries to keep the weepy wobble out of her voice, "I'll say it for years to come."

April laughs, and the conversations turns almost domestic, to the point if she focused more on her oatmeal than on the phone in her other hand, she could convince herself they were all still living near each other. That Simon hadn't convinced her to move further to the East Coast. Though, if you asked anyone, they'd still think New York was on the East Coast - just... a little less Oceanic. It would have been nice to still be living with them, even if it meant she'd have had to watch her father.... Whatever.

He'd made it clear his support was towards her ex-husband, though she knows that he'd have preferred them to just work it out and stay together. Part of her wanted that too, but it was too little too late.

"Anyways, I'm getting ready to head in so-"

"Oh!" April sounds sheepish, like she'd just realized her days off didn't coincide with Vivian's anymore. The loss of being a stay-at-home mother and the - in Simon's words - free time, that came with it was a unique adjustment. "Sorry! I'll call later tonight, how about that? Around dinner?"

"That works for me, okay, bye April."

"Bye Viv, have fun!"

She hangs the phone back on the receiver and shudders, appetite suddenly gone as she pitches the bowl of oatmeal directly in the trashcan. Well, at least some things never change, like the nickname. Though, the fact she could actually hear her mother over the phone meant one of two things, either April had gone to visit her at the care center, or April had moved her into their house. Their house wasn't very big, the last time Vivian saw it, but that was before Maylee was even born, so they might have moved.

Something in her chest hurts at the idea that she's never actually seen Maylee outside of a screen.

At work, she doesn't even make it to the breakroom at all, because Billy instead slings an arm over her shoulder and leads her to the arcade again. Any protests about how she hadn't even gotten a chance to punch herself in is met with vague statements and the fact he'd apparently done it for her. One day in and her boss was already altering her timecards - she knows it's happened before, other places, even in college at the robotics club, she'd get in and find out someone had gotten a senior member to punch her in early and out early too. They dropped her after realizing her hours worked and hours actually present didn't match. "Time theft" they'd said to her.

"Vivian, look, what you did was great yesterday." Billy's walking too fast for her to be actually comfortable keeping pace, especially considering her pregnancy, but she damn near tries. "But-" his voice gets serious, "-something else came up. Until we get someone specialized to take over, you're gonna have to handle it."

"What happened to him?"

Billy looks confused for a second, raises a brow the tiniest amount - his brows are nicked and partially shaven off - before shaking his head. "How did you-? Doesn't matter. The DJ's not responding to anything, it's just in the tunnels."

Vivian almost gets righteously indignant over the referral to DJ as an it, but stops short because her mother is there, in the back of her mind, the wound fresh from the phone call, telling her to stop being so childish. It's a robot, a thing. It's not a person, not really. But after yesterday it felt... like maybe he was. The fact that he'd kept her from crushing herself while she worked on the drive belt, the fact he could sign, could not only replicate signs but could put them together in a way which made sense, the fact he could show a preference to just being called DJ.

It feels intelligent, it feels lifelike, but that's always been Fazbear entertainment's thing.

As they walk into the arcade through the staff doors, she can see Michael standing on the dancefloor, speaking in a hushed whisper but waving his arms emphatically. DJ isn't even bothering to sign, in fact, it seems like he's receded into himself to hide. From Michael. Sounds about right, she thinks to herself as she walks over to the stage, Mike's got something to hide. "Okay, okay, I'm coming." She mutters, reaching out to gently coax Mike away from the stage; he steps back without much fuss. DJ seems to perk up at the sound of her voice, and a little part of her is proud that she really did make a friend.

"Vivian." He signs, hands shaking.

That takes her by surprise, and judging from the fact the other two in the room are quiet, it took them by surprise too. "Hey big fella," she says, steamrolling over Billy's attempt to shut her down, "what's up?" 

"Bad. Something bad."

Well, that's not good, obviously, something bad is something Billy would need to know about, from a technical standpoint, and Mike from a security standpoint too. Part of her is a little giddy that he'd learned more signs, because it meant he was wildly intelligent, moreso than even Fazbear Entertainment could imagine. But she can recognize... fear? apprehension? in DJ's behavior, and even if it's not really real, she knows she'd hate for someone to tell a secret in front of others. "He says it's a secret. That it's embarrassing and since I'm filling in for his technician," she emphasizes the words filling in, while pointedly looking at Billy, "I'll handle it. Gotta learn somehow."

Both men look like they want to question her, but they decide against it. The thumping, heavy bassline that practically shakes the walls definitely has something to do with how quickly they remember they have work to do outside of the arcade. Nothing about her, or how convincing she may be. Because she isn't.

"Now," she says once she hears the doors close after the two men leave, "what do you mean something bad?"

"Moon did something bad! I don't want to get in trouble!"

That's a bit puzzling, though she does recognize the name vaguely, from the interviews and informative packets they'd sent her home with. An animatronic daycare attendant, with a Sun mode and a Moon mode. That must be what he's talking about, referring to the Moon doing something, though if her mother is right - and she is, she always is - that implies the animatronics can break rules. "What did Moon do?"

DJ balks, glancing away, trying to see if the groups of people which were slowly entering through the main double doors had any indication of recognizing sign language. Even though they don't seem to - and even if they did, the kids all seemed preoccupied, including the one in the shades and the face mask directing everyone else - the DJ is apprehensive. Like it's shameful, like it's really foul. Sick and twisted and too horrible to even say.

"I don't want to get in trouble!" DJ repeats the signs, the hand motions more emphatic, the implication of a finality in his movements.

The conversation is over, the topic has changed, and he's not going to tell her. For once, it doesn't feel like he's keeping this from her by any fault of her own, but instead out of fear that someone else might find out, might overhear, might know sign language and rat him out. For once she feels like she might just be in cahoots with someone.

She just wished it was a real person.

And the tears threaten to come again, her eyes sting and it hurts worse this time because over the past week and a half she'd cried so much that her eyes were dry. Like she'd damn near exhausted every tear, every choking sob, and was trying to pour from an empty pitcher. A soft, padded hand gently pats her head, and the motion is tiny - for a second, she's not sure if it really happened, and that makes it worse. Because DJ is so huge he'd have had to have been so careful, he's so huge he could have crushed her under his palm, but he didn't.

Though his movements are tense and drawn in, like he's... overwhelmed. The crowd is awfully noisy, and awfully large, after the unexpected closure of the West Arcade yesterday it makes sense, but it seems like it's just a little much for DJ. He seems to be managing, even if she's noticed the way his second pair of hands is gripping the edge of the stage a little bit harder than they need to. The first pair of hands goes right to the headphones, like he was trying to block out the sound of the crowd.

"It's a little much, huh big fella?" She asks, only realizing what exactly she said after she'd already said it.

"Yes. Loud. Hurts."

The signs are disjointed and quick, like he was simply trying to get his point across as quickly as he could so he could go back to covering his audials. She leans in and sympathetically pats the hand closest to her, nodding and shaking her head slightly. "I get it, it's just too much sometimes, huh."

He doesn't respond, but she still gets the impression it's not because of her, instead just because he's overwhelmed. Because it's too much and he just wants to be left alone - though he can't quite do that in his state, with his responsibilities as the West Arcade's attraction. Part of her wonders why anyone would make an animatronic designed to play music and give it sensitive hearing. Seemed like a design flaw.

"It'll be okay," she says, the words sounding phony and fake even to her own ears. At least the DJ doesn't seem too offended by the obvious lack of an actual solution, because he nods quietly and hunkers down on the stage. Getting into position and trying to shake it off and calm down, he seems to right himself. At least he looks like he's cool and collected - as cool and collected as a robot can be - rather than disastrously overstimulated. They don't get overstimulated, the closest thing would probably just be lots of notifications or sensory data - similar, but not the same.

As she looks around, she catches sight of someone standing on the upper levels of the arcade, looking over the railing - looking at her. Someone in a costume - they didn't use costumes anymore, they just had fully functioning animatronics nowadays - that looked like a rabbit with a big bow on its chest and floppy ears.

"Hey DJ? Are there any conventions happening here?"

"What?" He signs back, his eyes snapping up to where she'd been looking.

"Well, there was that rabbit up there, and I was-" she starts, cut off by the confused query.

"Rabbit? There's no rabbit."

There's not? She feels only a little stupid when she points up to where the person in the costume stood, watching them turn around and walk away. She does feel more stupid when DJ reiterates that there was nothing there, he didn't see anything, but she tries to swallow it down. Because the last time anyone made her feel stupid it ended in her being told her daughter didn't want to live with her anymore. And that the courts didn't care what she said or did because her daughter was old enough to decide for herself.

Nothing was ever going to make her stay.

"I... nothing DJ, never mind, okay?" She says quietly, locking eyes - and optics - with him. Something in her is a little flattered by the fact DJ is at least putting on a worried face, though she has to keep reminding herself that's not real. The lights are on and nobody's home, DJ isn't a person, it's an idea.

"But boss-!" Vanny whined, fumbling with the rubber band bracelet on her wrist.

The other two behind her flinch back when the aforementioned boss whirls around to glare at her. He may have been shorter than any of them, but the Mimic terrified everyone in the room, even just a little bit. Something about his anger made them nervous, even without the spring system in his legs. They'd seen him kick doors down - doors that should be stronger than that.

"No!" He snarled, leaning as close to her face as he could get, hands balled into furious fists. "Don't "but boss!" me! Were you seen?"

"Just one girl." Vanny says flippantly, jabbing a finger into his chest - she's bigger, she's stronger, she's more or less better than him - "she isn't that important. Some new hire that'll be gone in a week."

The Mimic pinches his brow and sighs, steam rushing out through his metal maw; fangs clicking together with an audible "tsk" he turns to the other two.

One of them is a partially completed endoskeleton with only one full leg, the other ended just above the knee joint - a hinged synovial that was built wrong, and immobile, and had to go. They're the only one in the room taller than Vanny, but the almost immature, uncertainty in their posturing and the fidgeting of their hands signified they'd just completed their guest interaction education. And here they were, in the bowels of the Plex listening to orders from someone like him.

"You two, I'm trusting you here. Really trusting you."

They preen under the attention, and Vanny groans audibly. This was the worst part for her, and she shares a long-suffering stare with the only other person in the room who found these sorts of little teambuilding discussions to be overdone and annoying. She already knew this. But she's more upset that he's not including her in the group he trusts. Because he should, because she deserves to be included, because the last time she was excluded it made her so angry she wanted to hurt someone.

"Please, help me." He smiles and clasps his hands together.

"We all want the same thing."

Chapter Text

The day passes in a weird state of time where it feels like she's tripping over the hands of a clock. Time feels slow and sluggish like molasses, but once she actually looks at the clock, it's time for her to take her lunch. At least she can still spin the excuse of wanting to watch the current performance, she thinks, sitting down on a stool near the dance floor. Though, a familiar face shows up - Billy! what does he even want! - and approaches her. She distinctly dislikes the fact that he's somehow wearing more clothes than ever, and that he smells of heavy cologne. Reminds her of Simon, and it's... for once, not the most unpleasant thing.

He was nicer when they were younger, and he liked to talk about what she enjoyed too; sometimes he'd even bring her presents when he came back from business meetings. Little baubles and trinkets he knew she'd like - because back then he really did seem to care about what she'd like. Once he brought her home a bottle of perfume and even though it's been almost ten years, she still hasn't used it all up. He could take Jamie, because Jamie wanted to go, but he'd have to pry that bottle from her cold dead hands.

"Oh, uhm, hey Billy, what's up?" She asked over the music.

Even though DJ is still doing a set, something about it feels different, a little more forced, a little more strained. As if Billy's mere presence were an annoyance or a distraction to him - to it. Logically it was just another thing for the optics to watch, and while she didn't know how advanced that processor was, she wasn't sure if it could encounter an overflow error from too many things to focus on.

Billy has the decency to look apologetic as he realizes she's just now eating her lunch. "Can you eat on the way? I -" he pauses and rubs the back of his neck, "-I realized you didn't actually get to see everything on your first day, and I'd rather cross that hurdle now."

She raises an eyebrow but decides against saying anything out loud. She'd probably just ask why it was a hurdle to be crossed, and she didn't want to cross him.

"Yeah, okay," she pointedly ignores how he seems a little bit annoyed by her saying that a lot, "I can do that."

The music almost skips, almost stalls, and it's only barely avoided by the DJ hastily - as hastily as something like that can - slapping a record scratch over it to cover it up. Billy's eyes narrow in the direction of the stage, like he's judging the DJ for that. Vivian is gripped by a sense of wholly unfounded justice and wishes he wasn't her boss so she could be properly upset with him for that. But she takes a deep breath and smiles, because she doesn't want to do that. She doesn't want to end up embarrassing herself anymore, talking to inanimate objects, acting like they're real. It was cute when she was a kid, but now that she's nearly forty it's nothing near acceptable.

"I'll just give you a general tour of the Plex, and if any of them are available, you can meet the Glamrocks, yeah?" He asks, the question very much rhetorical.

She nods as she eats her sandwich while walking along with him, glancing around the Atrium at the sheer size of the place. No wonder DJ gets so overwhelmed, this place is huge and it's so noisy. Even without the loud music of the arcade it's wildly overstimulating and she has to focus very hard on Billy's voice in order to actually hear anything he says. Though, she's infinitely grateful that he's giving her an actual tour, as opposed to just plopping her out there with her lunch and no knowledge.

As they head towards the greenrooms she notices some kid in a ticketing booth, who looks a little younger than Jamie, maybe around fifteen or sixteen, with dusty blond hair, shades, and a facemask.  That kid from the arcade. How did he get here so fast? The nametag on his hoodie implies he works here - maybe they do hire highschoolers as long as they're not doing technical work? - and she gives a tiny wave.

He waves back.

"Hey Billy, who is that? I saw him in the arcade earlier."

"That?" He glances over, and Vivian doesn't miss how the kid shrinks back slightly. "Oh, that's Luca. He's a newer hire, little under a year. He's a good kid."

The tone of voice is wildly noncommittal, but there's an undercurrent of fondness, and it reminds her of movies where the wise mentor pretends to not care about his protégé. Or something. She gets the feeling that Billy's just like that, or that maybe all men are more like her father than she ever realized. The sort of person who doesn't connect with anyone else, who cares more about marksmanship than anything else, the sort who spends as much time at work or on the range as they can; like they were trying to avoid their family. The kind who says that they don't have a favorite child, but there's only one child whose birthday is ever remembered.

"He seems nice, ticket taker?" She asks suddenly, glancing over at the booth.

Billy gives another little noncommittal shrug, and she knows her hunch is right. He cares more than he lets on, and maybe they don't have to be enemies; maybe they don't have to be at odds. Though, she might just be wildly overestimating their interactions again, it wouldn't be the first time.

Rockstar Row isn't exactly empty, but it's emptying out when they arrive, groups of people who'd been observing the Glamrocks were now leaving, and Billy more or less had to drag her through the crowd. As bad as she may feel about that, the group's just too large for her to maneuver around in her current state, and she's grateful he's got an aura that keeps people away from him. Well, an aura and a smell. Even with all that cologne, he stinks.

"These," he says with an overly dramatic flourish, "are the greenrooms." 

She can see the animatronics through their respective windows, and part of her thinks of just how violating that would be. Of course, she doesn't think their programming, as advanced as it is, would allow them to necessarily dislike anything like that - no, it'd probably be limited to foods, music genres, colors, the usual stuff. But she knows she wouldn't like it if her bedroom had a giant window to look in. "They're nice. Cute." She says, throwing the empty brown bag away and trying not to stare too hard.

Avoiding eye-contact only works so well when the animatronics actually come to greet you. Because apparently, in Freddy's words "we have not had a new technician in a long time!" which she's taking to mean that it's such a good place to work that they haven't needed to fill any empty slots.

"Oh, oh my gosh, Roxanne-"

"Please," she bats her eyes, preening under the attention, "call me Roxy. My friends all do."

There is a collective eyeroll so hard she can feel it in her bones, and she has to fight the urge to smile. Though she notices the newer duo give each other a distinctly knowing look, and the tiger animatronic jerks its head in her general direction.

"Well, Roxy, my niece is a huge fan of yours." Vivian laughs sheepishly, already feeling more than a little awkward admitting this in their first meeting.

Roxy obviously seems to love the news, and she very intentionally checks her nails in a way that implies preoccupation with appearances more than anything else. Though, the most obvious thing she notices has nothing to do with the wolf animatronic at all; instead, she notices the Gator - Monty - almost shrink in on himself. Like he hadn't heard that sort of thing in a long while, if ever. Hm, that has her feeling a sort of way, and she wonders why someone would make a robot who could feel insecure. Capable of negative emotions to some extent, sure, makes sense, but insecurity and shame? That didn't make any sense at all, even for the highly developed and uniquely specialized Afton animatronics.

A little white lie can't hurt, right?

"Well, if it means anything to you, you're my nephew's favorite." She says, gesturing to Monty with an open hand. "And I'd take a fifteen-year-old more seriously than a four-year-old, okay?"

April's family didn't live close enough to come here often, and there was at least one point in Arlo's life where Monty really was his favorite. He might still be. Arlo was just a teenage boy, and teenagers are contrarians if nothing else. Her daughter is one, and she certainly was one too in her day. She bites her lower lip a little bit and scrunches her eyes up to make it look like she's smiling; honestly, she thought she'd never live that down, but in her defense, she'd seen people do worse and be fine. It just seemed like a problem with her. April got a tattoo when she was eighteen, without even telling anyone, but because Vivian occasionally ate candy with her braces on - and then brushed and flossed extra good to make up for it - she was the one in trouble?

It felt a little unfair.

Though, she's quickly pulled from her dour spiral by the way Monty gets excited. It's like lightning. His posture straightens right up from a bored slouch into something giddy, his expression no longer apathetic, but fully engaged and almost anticipatory.... It all feels human. It's distinctly not human, but it all feels human. Of course, even when the tiger animatronic slings an arm over Monty's shoulder and begins speaking to him, their heads leaned close together, it feels human too. Like two old friends reminiscing or simply enjoying each other's company.

"Really?" Monty's voice is deep, kind of like a bass guitar, but there's a gleeful little quiver he just can't hide. "I - Are they here?"

Part of her feels her throat tighten at that, because of course he'd want to meet a fan - she gets the impression that out of them all, he has the least - but also because of the sheer care and dedication to these characters. She'd noticed it in DJ, but even moreso here, where they'd all been programmed with distinct accents and quirks. Real, genuine behaviors she'd expect to see in people.

"No, he uh - his family lives in New York, sorry buddy. But they stay in Massachusetts in the summer, so... next year?"

The way they're all looking at her feels a little awkward, especially with how Billy had moved to be as far as he could from them. Like they were going to burn his skin. She's not sure why he'd have taken the job if that was the case, because if she hated robots that much, she sure would have looked for something, anything else. Hell, she was sticking around even though she hated spiders, and look at what animatronic she was assigned to.

Though, maybe he was like her, and they both needed the money more than they needed their dignity.

"Awh, cheer up Monty!" Chica - and she does know it's Chica because what other birds were there - says, leaning against his back, and reaching out to pinch his cheeks. "Time'll go by quicker than you think!"

She's acting like a mother hen, which is both funny because she is a chicken, but also because of the way she's fretting over the gator. Some part of her kind of sees herself, and it's... honestly throwing her a little off kilter. Do people think of her this way? She doesn't dwell on it, instead smiling and putting her hands on her hips.

"They're funny, huh?" One of the newer ones asks her - Ellie - with a smile and a little giggle.

All she can think to do is nod, but that doesn't deter the Jazz Clown.

"I think they're funny too."

"Yeah?"

Roxy flips her hair and frowns in Ellie's direction, like being funny is the worst thing she can be right now. In fact, everyone's giving Ellie a little bit of a side-eye, except Freddy, who seems like he was programmed with no way to be mean in general. She's... weirdly surprised that even Chica seems annoyed - because it does remind her of herself, in a weird little way. Tiger Rock takes two large strides over to Ellie, and he steps behind her, one hand on each of her arms, and his chin resting on her shoulder. He's not as tall as she is - she's the new largest of the main group from what it looks like - and she just knows he's on his tip toes to do it. It's almost intimate.

The way she lets him do that, invade her space and touch her face, and the way he doesn't overstep any boundaries. Just lightly brushes a curl of ruby red fake hair out of her face and gently look up at her with a fondness that feels like it could be love.

"Well, I don't think so." Roxy says curtly, and her tone also gives off the impression she's barely resisting the urge to say that she's right.

"Me neither."

"I think I am exceptionally normal." Freddy says matter-of-factly.

And then everyone starts laughing, even Billy, who's still standing off to the side like he's afraid of actually touching the animatronics. Which is kind of hurting the thought of this being a nice place to work if he's afraid to even touch them, and he's the head of maintenance. It doesn't feel like a plain old fear, but kind of like a phobia. Like how she's really, really scared of spiders and heights.

Though it doesn't last long, because Billy decides that it's the perfect moment to put a hand on her shoulder and lead her away, and she can't help the fact she tenses slightly when his hand moves, and when contact is made. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Tiger Rock is now watching her. Like he's observing. Like he's recognizing. Even if she wanted to ask what that was about, she was already being led back out, and Billy was talking a million words a minute.

"We're kinda running out of time, so what we're gonna do is introduce you to the Daycare and that animatronic, and then take you to parts and services and our storage tunnels. You'll probably end up needing supplies from down there, so I'll show you the maintenance lift."

If anything, she's more annoyed that he's trying to rush through the tour because it's the worst way to do it. Especially when he says "running out of time" because she wasn't aware there was a time limit to this; a self-imposed one at that, because Billy just made one up. That or he's horrendous at time management and had other plans, or more important work to do. It felt rude, to overcram your day and then either leave someone hanging or rush through something just because you have something better coming up.

"Oh, okay."

He looks at her with a slightly annoyed expression, and she knows she's saying it too much.

As they leave Rockstar Row, she notices something strange. A little glass observation case with a placard underneath it, that's been smashed open and then hastily wrapped in caution tape. There's a sign in front of it that says "Do not touch" in big bold letters, which feels a little bit redundant because that's what the caution tape should imply, but she's worked retail before in college, she knows exactly why they need to have both. The strangest thing though, is the fact it looks like it was broken from within.

"Employees don't have to pay admission for the Daycare." He says in a nonchalant way, snapping her out of her thoughts.

He says it like he already knows she will do just that. On the one hand, it's an assumption, and making assumptions just makes you an ass; on the other hand, she doesn't actually have the money to hire a babysitter in the future or plan for daycare. It's hellaciously expensive, so she will be taking him up on the offer. But the fact he just assumed.

"Oh, that's nice!"

"Yeah, besides, it's nicer than any of the ones that you would have to pay for."

He looks at her again, like he was studying a particularly interesting bug, and she just thinks of the DJ. Because he did that too. But somehow DJ felt more... real, more authentic. Like he was curious and wanted to know more about her, while Billy felt more like he was looking at an animal in the zoo. It's weird how something so inhuman, so distinctly removed from humanity as a whole can be so sincere. She'd hate to call it a bug, a glitch, or a product of malware - but that's exactly what it has to be. Nobody would want to do that on purpose.

When they arrive, she's actually pleasantly surprised to see he's right. It's clean, it's efficient, and it doesn't seem like it'd have any of the issues she's either seen elsewhere, heard on the news, or experienced as a child. Even the location centric animatronic seems nice, both from a construction standpoint and a personality-based one. Construction is good, they look soft; like their endoskeleton and casing were underneath a layer of stuffing and cloth. Not to mention the way they'd given this one more arms than average - four arms to be specific - in order to manage more effectively.

But it's face looks like ceramic. That doesn't seem safe, because it's so, so easy to break. They could fall, some kid could throw something... ceramic is sharp when it breaks. Even if it has to be ceramic for the patterns to look nice, and they couldn't use plastic, it still feels like a risky decision.

Ceramic could cut a kid's face up in a million different ways.

"Oh, hello there!" It says, turning to face them. Though, it doesn't turn, it's mostly just its head swiveling on the post. "Are you a new friend? Billy did you-"

Billy's let go of her arm, and has stepped back, and that sure seems to pull all the wind out of the poor animatronics' sails. Like it's offended.

And she doesn't blame it - him - them, whatever. She doesn't know what Billy's problem is, and if he wasn't her boss, she'd probably ask. After all, maybe the others with their big sharp teeth - even if they are just foam and plastic - could be a little worrisome, but this one looks harmless. And sad. Genuinely sad because it seems like they'd expected this, but like the hurt never really went away.

"I sure am!" She says, a touch too excited to be actually real, but hey, this one needs a real pick-me-up. "Name's Vivian, and it's a pleasure to meet you pal."

From somewhere behind her, Billy snorts audibly, and a tiny part of her swears she heard some sort of machinery stall.

"That's wonderful news! Oh - oh! You're the new technician, wow it is so nice to meet you!"

This guy was definitely a little high energy for her, regardless of her pregnancy, but he was at least polite and conscientious. It felt like he was making a real effort to tread carefully because he was bigger and stronger than she was, but he was programmed to operate around children, and they were even smaller in comparison. "And you are?"

"Ah! Wow, where are my manners, I'm Sun!"

She's already gotten that fact from the posters, from the fact he literally looks like a sun, and from the general behaviors and space theming of the daycare. But it wouldn't do any good to... well, not offend him, because he can't necessarily be offended at all in the first place, but it's the best way to put it. So, she felt like it was at least polite to ask, since outright assuming someone's name never tended to go well, even when you got it right.

"Well, it's very nice to meet you Sun." She offers a hand, which he takes immediately with two of his, giving her arm a very firm pump as he shakes her hand.

His hands are soft, which just reinforces the idea that he's supposed to be a giant plushie, though she does find it kind of interesting how different it is from other hands. Human hands are warm, and sometimes you can feel the lines and divots, not to mention the energy from them. DJ's hands feel kind of like a semi-set jelly, because of the pads, and the palms are just slightly tacky, like bread dough. A little bit sticky but not too bad. Sun's hands aren't necessarily warm, but they're soft, though she's sure if she squeezed hard enough, she could find the firm casing over his endo.

She's not exactly sure why she's got a ranking for most enjoyable animatronic hands to hold, but she's gotta say, despite the tackiness and the size, DJ's hands come in first. But that could just be because he helped her out of his eye socket, so she didn't fall. Could be biased. Not that she'd ever admit it.

"So..." he asks, drawing out the word as he finally lets go of her hand, his arms crossing over his chest, and the other two hands on his hips. "When'd you start?"

"Oh, uh, yesterday, why?"

Something in his face changes, but nobody seems to notice, and that makes it worse. Because that means it's like Simon, how unpredictable his moods were, how she could be washing dishes too loudly and suddenly he had a handful of her hair and was pulling and yanking. It's one of the things you learn to see after you live with it for a while, something that Billy - who looks unphased, and who doesn't react - will never understand. Though, her heart twists at the fact there's at least one kid who does get it. They're over at a table drawing, and they aren't even facing Sun, but they stop drawing, like all the air's been sucked out of the room.

"Huh. Well, I heard good things about you!" He says suddenly, in a voice that no longer feels like his sincere overexcited tone, but something strained. "You sure made an impression!"

That's... comforting? She's sure it's meant to be comforting, but it doesn't feel like that. It just feels condescending and rude. Especially when paired with the fake smile that fails to reach his eyes. Instinctively she takes a half-step backwards, out of grabbing range, before realizing his arms are definitely longer than Simon's.

"Oh... from who?"

"Why, DJ of course!"

Oh, okay. That's better, at least, she's pretty sure that's better. The animatronics have ways to communicate with each other, and that means the entire conversation might have actually been good things, since he seemed to like her work. At least, she thought he liked her work. If it hurt or annoyed him, he didn't really do or say... er... sign? anything to imply it did.  "Ah... well, I am his technician, at least right now."

Sun nods, clasping two of his hands together, that same phony smile on his face. It's enough to look real to anyone who doesn't actually bother to look too deeply, but being as close as she is, she notices right away. Especially how his eyes seem laser focused on her with an intensity that only the sun could achieve. Kind of like a burning hatred but way, way less intense, closer to a simmering resentment if she had to guess.

"Oh, well it's a good thing he got you then!" He chuckles, leaning in and gently patting her on the shoulder.

She's about to ask what he means, or to thank him, one of the two, but Billy finally seems to remember, again, that he has other plans. He stomps over in a way that implies he's not trying to make a lot of noise - for the children's sake, not so much her's nor Sun's. Then he grabs Sun's hand and pushes it off her shoulder, completely missing the way her eyes widen a little bit and her lips purse when she sees his arm move. It may be lost on Billy, but a glance over her shoulder as her boss leads her off - holding her wrist and more or less dragging her - shows that it was not lost on Sun.

It's weird but unfortunately, it's something he was programmed to pick up on, when a person didn't want to be touched or interacted with. Because then he could leave them alone and all parties could be happy. If he kept upsetting people's kids, they wouldn't bring them back, and that wouldn't be good.

"Bye Sun." She waves over her shoulder as she's dragged out.

"Bye! Come back soon!"

And Vivian laughs a little bit because of course she will, why wouldn't she? Even if it's not until after the kid's born, she will eventually be back, because of the fact she has no real other options. Though, as soon as they're out of the Daycare, Billy's dragging her over to a set of staff only doors.

"Don't do that next time."

"Do what?" She asks as he leads her through the tunnels, hearing the double doors close behind them both.

"Don't..." he falters for a second, "don't encourage that."

She really wishes he'd actually say what he doesn't want her to encourage. "Billy, you have to-"

"The sentience thing. The treating them like people. You have to stop."

Well, she knew that already. Because she's been thinking of her mother every time she saw one of the animatronics, scolding her for her immaturity and childish behavior. But something about the way Eiko would say it is different from the way Billy's saying it now. Because Eiko would be telling her it's some sort of fault of her own, that it's a personal failure, and that she's embarrassing their family. Billy... it feels urgent coming from him, less like a stern lecture and more like a warning. As if doing that is the worst thing she could do because it could be dangerous. It doesn't make sense, they were programmed to be around children, to be careful and intelligent and to feel almost realistic and human.

"I'm not doing it on purpose, I'm trying to stop."

He glances over his shoulder, eyes suddenly less firm and more open. "I - yeah. Just try harder."

As the two of them pile into an elevator that takes them into storage, the basement where they keep the parts for repairs and the extra stock and cleaning supplies, she stands as far from him as she can. It's not because of anything he did, but because he's taller than her, just like Simon. He punches in one of the lower floors and hits the doors close button, she doesn't like the way the floor lurches from underneath her feet. It's not a good elevator, and it doesn't feel quite safe.

Suddenly she bites her lower lip until she's sure she might actually draw blood, trying to take deep breaths in through her nose and to hold them - like how her dad would teach her about Tai Chi and grounding techniques. Honestly, she's sure he might be a little proud of her for using it, even if he thought her fears were unfounded... well, he'd be proud if he was still alive.

"Here comes...."

For a second, she thinks he's talking about the floor they're going to get off at, but no, he meant something way worse.

The elevator creaks to a stop between floors, and the light inside flickers.

What the fuck.

"Billy!" She squeaks a little louder than she intends to, suddenly squeezing herself back into a corner. Her chest is getting tight, and it feels like trying to breathe through a lungful of cotton balls, because the moisture in her throat's all been sucked out until it feels like every breath is scratchy and painful. "Billy it's stopped!"

"Hang on."

She slowly lowers herself to the floor with the assistance of the handrail inside the lift, tucking her knees in as close as they'll go at this point. Which, due to the pregnancy, is not very close at all. She's already dizzy and nauseous, and it only gets worse because she thinks of DJ and what her responsibilities are. He can't help her all the time, she will have to get on those catwalks eventually, and it's freaking her out. As she tries to fidget with her braid, her hands shake so bad she nearly pulls the hair tie out completely.

This is the worst thing ever, seconded only to visiting Simon at work.

Then Billy jumps, and the floor drops out from under them again, and for a split second all trains of thought run wild and begin smashing each other up and exploding, and then they're moving again. A quick glance up at him from between the spaces between her fingers shows that he looks both proud and entirely unenthused. Like he was both happy that he could knock the elevator back into proper working order, but also like it was a part of mundane routine.

"See, that wasn't so bad, was - oh."

"Yeah."

He doesn't need an explanation, he got one yesterday. She told him she didn't do heights, but clearly, he'd never bothered to think that through, just like he'd never bothered to read her resume. Okay, okay, let go of the resume thing. That's immature too, just like the pretending objects are people is. It's annoying and a little painful, emotionally, but she needs to stop before it becomes something more than just painful and annoying.

"It's... worse than I thought." His voice carries a note of concern, like he cares.

He doesn't care. If he cared, he wouldn't do any of the things he does.

At least he has enough shame to help her up, even if she knows deep down, he'd much rather just leave because he has plans. Though, something about the way he's being extra careful with her feels a little weird. It feels the same way it did with DJ, like he was worried he could hurt her on accident. Like he was inexplicably bigger and stronger than other people, even though Billy was only maybe a couple inches taller than her.

"Yeah. It - it is." Is all she can muster.

Once he gets her to her feet, he gently pushes against the spot between her shoulder blades to push her out of the elevator, following her and then grabs her wrist again. The darkness makes it creepier, more uncomfortable, and this time she can't hide the tension from him. Her shoulders raise and she gasps as he touches her wrist. Somehow, he either doesn't get it, or he doesn't bother, because instead he just shrugs and drags her like he did before.

If there was anything down here that was somehow creepier than Billy, it was the endoskeletons wandering. They're not doing anything particularly unsettling, but the sheer amount of them the place is teeming with puts a pit in her stomach. Though, maybe the fact they keep looking at her inquisitively has something to do with it. Like they're studying her.

Despite the conversation about not treating them like people, it feels like something a kid might do.

Then she sees it, the posters on the walls, the infographics, all about proper interaction and how to behave in social settings... these are the closest things to children for an animatronic.

As much as she knows they can't reasonably be upstairs with other children until they learn to behave, or emulate acceptable behavior, she does kind of wonder what sort of consequences there could be for that. Actually, she doesn't want to know. Looking at them is scary, even though their eyes are bright and inquisitive, their fingers taper into small metal claws, and the amount of exposed machinery is unnerving, it's so easy to get hair tangled in there, or to get a finger caught and ripped right off.

She grips Billy's arm, sticking close to him, even as the endoskeletons walk by, some of them not even reacting to them at all. In another room, in the corner of her eye, she sees an endoskeleton powered off, but sitting slumped over some sort of poker table. It's got this screen over its face, with wires and tubing which plugs in and runs up into the ceiling and seems like it might stretch for miles. It almost looks dead, because the position doesn't even pass for falling into too deep a sleep to notice slipping out of your chair. No. Instead, it's almost bent in half, and one of its legs ends right above the knee in a tangled mess of soldered wires and jagged edges.

"They're harmless, Viv."

"Harmless?" She asks, deciding to ignore the nickname for now, even though she's hated it since... forever. "Do you know how easy it is to lose a l-"

"Don't teach them about that." He suddenly puts a finger to her lips to shush her.

Teach them?

They can be taught, they're intelligent. They're capable of learning, of growth, and of mental development in some capacity. The endoskeletons are effectively children then, even if the comparison doesn't completely track because that's a human term. Perhaps it'd be better to think of them as juvenile animatronics, some sort of underdeveloped evolution to the ones on stage.

"It... messes them up and gets them all confused, is all."

His tone of voice is forced. Everyone around here feels like a faker. And she isn't buying it at all, not one bit. Then he stops in front of a room labelled 'replacement joints A-G' with his arms crossed, when she gives him a reasonably confused look, he jerks his head to the door and huffs. "Alright, show me your mettle, I've got a list of joints you're gonna need to grab. I'm gonna give it to you, and you're gonna find them all. And don't come out till you do, capiche?"

She nods, taking the list and looking at it - it's about twenty items long, all marked as being somewhere within the A-G range - before heading inside. It's not actually bad, it's weirdly quiet and that's sort of peaceful, at least until she hears heavy metal footsteps approach the door. Instinctually she reaches over and flicks the deadbolt from inside, turning the light off. Whatever it is, it's definitely not a person, those steps are too heavy to even be work boots. She knows that.

And so does Billy.

"Hey!" Billy shouts. "You're not supposed to be d-"

Thunk, thunk, clank.

It sounds like a scuffle, with heavy breathing, machinery whirring, and the sound of someone's head being bashed in. Something is out there, something that isn't Billy. And whatever it is, it won the fight. The door squeaks and creaks on the hinges as whatever it is pushes a couple times to test it. Then it seems a little like it's... chosen to give up, like it didn't think the eventually pay off was worth fighting a reinforced door.

She doesn't even breathe.

There's the sound of someone trying to pick up something heavy and uncooperative, like, hypothetically, a fully unconscious, possibly dead man.

"I know you're in there, girl."

It feels like the world's flipping on its axis.

"And you're lucky I need you alive."

This one sounds like an animatronic. Hollow, metallic, but it carries a level of emotion that doesn't feel like it should be possible for them. For any of them. Its voice is raspy, but deep, like it was talking through a broken megaphone; and it sounded like it had been laid over a loop of chattering teeth.

"Because I need you to keep someone happy for me."

Then, it leaves. The footsteps fully recede, going down one of the long, twisting hallways, followed by the sound of something being dragged off in the same direction. She doesn't even dare open the door until she can't hear anything anymore.

When she does, it's quiet, it's peaceful, it's just like before. Except for the pool of dark liquid at her feet. It's hard to tell in the light exactly what it is, but she'd bet money that it's blood. Though, it looks a little bit thick, and the way it's splattered on the wall but doesn't quite drip doesn't seem normal. But... nothing is normal. This wasn't what she signed up for. She signed up to be a technician, not... whatever this was.

Even though she's got a collection of replacement joints in the bag she'd been given, she doesn't know what to do. She hasn't known what to do in a long, long time. Ever since she was a child, she's just been doing what she thought was the right thing, but nobody's ever told her if it was. And now, there's not even a person to give her a hint. So, she wanders the hall that she didn't hear the footsteps disappear into, holding the bag kind of like a baby.

It weighs just a little less than Jamie did.

As she walks, the layout doesn't get any more recognizable, but the endoskeletons give her a suspiciously wide berth now. Like they either thought she was involved and were scared of her, or they'd been told to avoid her. Though, a couple times one tries to lean in and study her face, or reach out to touch her hair, only to be pulled away by another endo. Kind of like how when she and April were kids, she'd always told April to stop talking to strangers on the walk to school.

"Hello, can you... can you tell me where I am?" She suddenly asks, after what feels like an eternity wandering hallways that don't feel like anything more than a maze.

The pair of endoskeletons in front of her look at each other for a painfully long time before one shakes its head.

"Not allowed to talk to strangers."

The fact the other spoke, that it could, kind of surprised her.

It wasn't what she expected their voice to sound like at all, soft and timid and high pitched. Kind of like... a younger April, actually. She'd believe it if it was something they'd downloaded and ripped right from one of their school plays.

"Oh, okay then." She fumbles over the words, already walking past them both.

That's not exactly what she wants right now. She just wants to get out of here and go back upstairs and either hide in the breakroom and cry, or just go home early. As much as she needs the money, she's pretty sure she watched someone die, and she can't do that. No amount of breathing exercises is going to undo that death. She'll find something else somewhere else, and she can just avoid the doctors until healthcare kicks in there.

And then she trips.

"Ghk-!"

She almost goes down. Almost. But she drops the bag - probably not a good reflex to have if it was actually a baby - and uses her arms to catch the wall and then catch herself.

Looking down reveals another powered off endoskeleton on the floor, slumped over and covered in soot and grime. It's definitely not one of the newer models, in fact, it looks like it came from an older location, like the one with the Mangle... that's odd. And it doesn't appear to be in any way plugged in or damaged, just very, very dirty. So, she crouches down and rubs her thumb under one of the eye sockets, wiping away a layer of sticky black grime.

It's not particularly beat up, but the most noticeable thing is that one of its arms lacks an actual hand, instead the ball joint where one would attach is affixed to a knife. That's not safe, and the only thing she can even begin to guess at is this is some lesser staff bot, or some sort of prototype. Because it could be used for cooking, and there were staff bots with specific programming modules designated to cooking. 

"Okay, let's get all that gunk off you." She says, before she can stop herself.

A rag isn't terribly hard to find, in fact, one's right near her, and she doesn't even remember seeing it there before. Like someone had dropped it off for her. She doesn't dwell too long, because the endoskeletons are clearly more intelligent than people seem to think. Wiping along its face, and over the eye coverings, reveals that its eyes are stuck shut. A little WD-40 would fix that, but she'll wait until it's clean. The snout, mouth, and rest of the face come next. Without the grime, it's shiny enough to pass for brand new, even if it is an older model.

As she wipes the base of its ear, she's almost positive she saw it twitch, like that tickled, but then she blinks and it's as still as a statue again.

"Huh. Weird. Well, you're a model patient."

The chest plate has fewer open sections and visible wires, so it's easier to just wipe down and be done with, rather than trying to clean around all the parts of the newer endos. So, it takes the least amount of time to clean, but she doesn't slack. She'd know if she was sick and couldn't do it, that she'd want someone to take care of her. Maybe she's just like this one, in desperate need of a helping hand in an unusual form, and unable to ask.

That knife is something she's uneasy around, but she wipes that down too, having discarded the old rag for another new one which just seems to appear, like something or someone is bringing them to her. Though, she's more focused on the fact its construction is even more confusing than she previously thought. It's not just an older model, it's crudely built and slapped together. It doesn't have a plug because it isn't meant to last. The symbol on its chest, under all that grime, was a battery symbol, with a warning about not trying to recharge it.

"Oh... oh." she's not sure what sort of reaction she's supposed to have there.

It's not going to turn back on; the battery's most likely died out many years ago and nothing she does is going to undo that. But hey, she's come this far.

Why stop now?

The legs are crude too, and the knees aren't jointed, which implies it was never really meant to walk around or interact with anyone. Or do anything, for that matter. The poor thing probably did nothing, met nobody, and she feels a pang in her chest. Once she's fully cleaned it off, to the point it practically sparkles, she gets up and smiles proudly.

"Okay," she gently tilts its head in her hands, "you wait here, I'll get some WD-40 for your joints. And some compressed air if I can, for the spots between your teeth."

It won't leave, obviously, but she felt the need to say it anyways. It's the closest she's come to outright telling other people to say goodbye to other objects, other things. Finding the WD-40 isn't actually hard, neither is finding the compressed air; they're stored together, after all, in the same little closet-like room. Granted, finding that room was hard because there were at least ten other rooms like it with other supplies inside. But, once she has what she needs, she heads back to the endoskeleton and gently maneuvers its mouth open.

Then she pushes the tiny nozzle between the metal teeth, spraying loose dust, debris and sludge. All of the teeth were filthy, but they're at least much more presentable now, only slightly dull from age instead of covered in dirt. After that, it just takes a little WD-40 to the joints to smooth things out - the jaws, the shoulders, the eyelids, the neck, the elbows.... Hell, for simplicity's sake, she just goes over all the joints with a light amount of WD-40 to loosen everything up a little bit.

"Alright buddy, you're good to go!" Her voice is a little bit overexcited as she turns and gets ready to leave, but she's just cleaned up a whole endoskeleton on her own. "Don't run off on me now."

"I won't! But thanks!"

And her heart drops directly into her ass, because she can hear movement behind her. Like something big and metallic is getting up for the first time in a long time. As she turns around, her heart somehow drops out of her body entirely, because it's standing up, looming over her, staring with pale blue, glassy eyes. "You... you're-"

"Alive?" It asks in a weirdly familiar, jovial way, gesturing with the knife. "Course' I am, friend!"

"How?!"

"Oh, my, my, my. Why, didn't you know it's rude to ask an animatronic why they woke up in the mornin'~?"

The tone is so playful, almost teasing, that it throws her off kilter and slaps the fear directly out of her altogether. She just stares up at it, slowly realizing from the jerky movements, and the fact it's not actually looking at her, but in the general direction her voice is coming from, it might be blind.

"Do you... do you have a name?"

"You are so sweet!" It coos, body language coy, as it fans itself with its one hand. "I'm Donny! And you're lost!"

Chapter Text

"Look I -" she feels distinctly stupid for finding it hard to talk to the endoskeleton in front of her, "I am. I don't remember the way out of here."

The theory that "Donny" is blind, or at least partially so is confirmed, because his gaze tracks her, but half a second too late. Like he's really only following her voice. Part of her wants to test that, but she knows it's impolite, especially because the way she'd want to test it involved slapping him in the face.

"Well, you're in luck, because I do!"

From somewhere to her left, and high up on the wall, she hears noise - from inside the air vent, like someone was climbing around - and sees one of Donny's ears twitch. The endoskeleton slouches down and cranes its neck. It's one of the least comfortable looking positions she's seen anyone in in a long time, probably ever. It doesn't sound like a heavy sound, but it's grating in the same way that nails on a chalkboard are. Like metal on metal. Like something inhuman was hiding in there.

"You do?"

"Obviously!" He boasts with a flourish that definitely had not been programmed in, forcing her to practically leap away from the knife. "What? How'd you think I got down here?"

Saying she thought that they made him feels a little stupid now, especially since he is much, much older than any of the other endoskeletons now gathering around to watch. It was definitely like they'd been told to stay away but couldn't resist the draw of the excitement. That, or they knew Donny, and they liked him. It felt... weird, but not bad, to think of them as people for once, clumsy, often imperfect, but special. As long as she could turn it off when she needed to. One of the other endos stands behind her, and she can both feel, and hear its ventilations, like it's breathing against her hair.

"I thought - oh, I don't know." Vivian shrugs, cupping her chin in one hand, and glancing at the endo behind her.

It looks... well, if she had to try and explain it, she'd guess it looked like some sort of strange girl. It was taller than she was, and it was wearing leftover costume jewelry it must have stolen from the stock boxes down here. Things from Roxy Raceway and the salon, like little bracelets, BFF necklaces, and stage makeup adorned it in a way which felt like it understood, but couldn't replicate, the style. It felt like this one was some sort of fan girl, but its general aura and posturing felt a little scrunched up - if she thought Donny slouched, she was dead wrong - and... threatening? Threatening in a way that read of not quite understanding its own size and imposing strength, nor knowing that the broad, boxy shoulders and dominant upper body could be perceived of puffing up to look big and scary.

"Hey." It says, in a voice that's again, feminine, but dull, like there wasn't much emotion in it. "You're the new girl, right?"

Why, oh why does this one have teeth? The other Glamrock endos didn't really have teeth, their mouths instead empty and gaping, it was probably better from a safety point - so there was no risk of what happened before happening again - but it was creepy. Instead, this one's mouth looked sharp, with rusty metal teeth that honestly looked like you'd driven nails through the jaw-parts.

"Oh! I - yes, I am." Vivian laughs shyly, turning slightly and extending a slightly shaky hand.

Their hand is cold, but gentle when they take hers. It's so much bigger than she is, easily approaching six and a half feet tall, if not more. "Nice. I'm Stella."

"Stella...? That's a - that's a beautiful name. I'm Vivian."

"Thanks, your name is nice too."

Stella's eyes are that same sort of orange pupil as the other endos - except Donny, who's eyes are a pale, blind, blue - and they cast a little bit of light on her face when Stella looks at her - she also does not blink, like at all. Which is kind of weird, because even Donny blinks, with an audible squeaking noise. Vivian doesn't exactly feel comfortable standing there between two of them, because she's quite small for her age, and they're both quite tall - and metal, and sharp and pointy.

"Do... do you know the way out of here?"

"What?" Donny asks, offended, raising his arms emphatically. "You don't trust me?"

"I do it's just-"

"You're blind." Stella responds, snapping her fingers in his face and watching him startle. "It'd literally be the blind leading the blind."

"Hmph! Doesn't mean I don't know my way around!"

It would be kind of cute and endearing to see the two of them argue just like she and April used to, but under the current circumstances it's less than exciting to be around. Right now, she just wants to go back upstairs and find a dark little hole to crawl into and die inside. Well, okay, maybe not die, but she very much wants to find a way to disappear. As domestic as it is, just like it was when it really was her and April arguing about how to split the last of the juice - setting the glasses down flat and measuring to make sure it was equal - it really wasn't that, and it never would be.

"I - I don't quite care who shows me the way, I just... want to go home." She mumbles after a minute or two, shrugging helplessly.

That's one of the few minutes were both endoskeletons are blissfully quiet, at least, until Stella grabs Donny's hand in her own, giving it a good, hard, yank, and pulling him behind her.

"Wait-"

Stella looks over her shoulder and cracks a tiny, lopsided smile. "Come on Vivian, we don't have all day. Get your parts and let's go."

"I can walk on my own!" Donny protests with an honestly quite pathetic whine.

He was very dramatic.

"Not without a hand to hold Donno."

There's the sound of a mechanical wind-up, which she can hear clear as day as she grabs the bag of metal joints and hoists it into her arms. It sounds like a tea kettle about to boil over and start whistling.

"Do not call me that!"

As the two of them lead the way, the other endoskeletons part, allowing her a clear line of sight and a clear path to follow Stella, which she does obediently. She's infinitely grateful, especially because of the fact that Stella really does know her way around the basement, giving a better tour than Billy had, pointing out how to tell hallways apart, and which ones were connected to each other. Vivian doesn't like thinking about the fact that this is because Stella's been down here for so long. Longer than she'd been personally employed, obviously, but... exactly how long?

It's sad to think about, because Stella, and the other endoskeletons, all probably got sick of being down here after a while. There was only so much decorating that could be done to cover up the fact it's just one big maze, and that there's no people. Unless of course, programming dictated that they shouldn't know about, think about, or care about that fact until they're ready for their big debut. It's definitely something she thinks about for a long while, quietly following the two endos as they led her through the winding tunnels.

"Here it is," Stella stops after a while, pointing to a staircase with her free hand, "this one goes up into the staff tunnels behind Rockstar Row."

"You know what that is?"

"Why... wouldn't I?"

Stella and Donny exchange looks, well... Stella exchanges a look, Donny looks in the general area where he heard Stella last.

"I -" Vivian falters, "I mean you endoskeletons are kind of like children, right?"

"Oh! No, no, darling that's not us." Donny chides, waving the knife hand around in the same way a person might gesture. "I'm an older model, so I'm... older, obviously."

"I'm the prototype Glamrock." Stella shrugs lamely. "I'm older than the ones on stage." She sounds a little annoyed, but prideful too.

The air of superiority they both have is not at all lost on Vivian, and she suddenly gets the impression Stella's less of a Roxy fangirl, and more of the person who Roxy learned everything she knew from. Stella wasn't dressing like Roxy with the costume jewelry or the stage makeup, it was Stella who taught Roxy to care about that in the first place. She wonders if the Roxy that was on stage now was friends with her, if they had sleepovers in the service tunnels, if Stella ever did her nails and talked her up, if they were basically twin transistors.

Well, that's a weird, almost painful thought to have. If Stella's the prototype, she could never get stage clearance, because she's the iteration with all the bugs, all the glitches.

"Ah... well, you're both stunning." She's absolutely trying to suck up to them. "Don't look a day out of beta."

That's perhaps, the worst way to translate a joke about looking young into robot terminology she's ever heard, and she's the one who made it. It's so bad she can't help but cringe a little as she says it, even though she tries to not let it be obvious.

Both endoskeletons look at each other again, with Stella reaching out to grab Donny's face and pull him into the correct position to do so. Vivian's amazed by the fact that he hasn't used that knife hand of his to stab Stella in the stomach because of the way she grabbed him. It's something that implies they've known each other for a long, long time, and that he's used to this; something that implies they were friends, are friends, perhaps more than friends. If it was even possible for animatronics to feel that way.

It probably was.

"You flatter me!" Donny smiles, or tries to, but his jaw isn't quite able to get that far, even with all the WD-40 in the world.

Stella on the other hand, stares at her for a second as it loads in, before she says "oh" under her... breath? Her ventilations? "Thanks. You uh... look nice too."

It's entirely nonchalant and feels a little more than hollow, like Stella's just kind of guessing what the correct thing to say is. She's got to admit it's kind of funny in a familiar way. But she does have to go back upstairs soon, and by soon, she means right now. So, it's with an exceptionally awkward exit - she tried to shake Donny's hand and almost got a knife through the palm - does she finally leave them behind, hauling the bag of joints up the stairs into the staff hallway behind the greenrooms. The door at the top of the stairs shuts behind her once she's up, and she lets out a little sigh of relief.

There's a pushcart, and a bench, and honestly other things, but she focuses on the bench first and foremost. She really wanted to sit down, for a second or two, at least. As she takes a seat on the bench, she drops the bag of joints on the floor, hating the way it thuds. Her feet hurt, her ankles hurt, everything was hurting, honestly - all in different amounts. And mentally, that was shot too, since she was still trying to come to terms with... everything.

Just wrap her head around it.

Try and think of who it was down there, why they'd killed her boss, why did her boss act like they knew who it was? It didn't make sense, even know, especially now.

From what she saw, Billy didn't really... have enemies. He seemed like a mostly well-adjusted guy, maybe a little gross, maybe a little unsettling, but otherwise completely fine. Whoever it was had to be someone who was already here, and who knew their way around, probably, considering they'd jumped him in the hallways of the service tunnels. Though, that put a weirder, worse spin on what they'd said to her.

"I need you to keep someone happy for me."

Whoever it was needed her to do something, something she wasn't really good at, made all the worse by the sheer crypticism of the statement. She had no idea what they'd meant by keeping someone happy, nor who it was she was supposed to keep happy in the first place.

"Oh my god..."

She puts her head in her hands, just thinking - despairing - at the fact her new job was very rapidly descending into some sort of nightmare.

"I don't think he'd be cool with you saying that." A voice says, coming from an air vent on the wall above her.

That sure snaps her out of it, and looking up, she can see the vent cover wiggle hurriedly, like whoever was inside was on some sort of time crunch. She gets up, stepping back hastily and only narrowly avoids the cover popping off and landing right on her head. Instead, she stands there watching it bounce to the floor with a clank. 

"Hello?"

A boy's head pops out of the vent on the wall, followed promptly, by the rest of the boy.

He's kind of short, and he honestly looks like he could still be in grade school, and he's kind of scruffy - go figure, he's been crawling around in the vents for who knows how long. Once he's landed - very gracefully, having fallen directly on top of the bag of joints, on his stomach, he casts a dour look at the vent. Vivian follows suit and spots something else in there. It's hard to fully make it out, but it... why, it looks a little like the DJ.

"I hate those things!"

The kid's statement was punctuated with him sticking out his tongue at the vent, but somehow, the thing inside wasn't even a little offended. Instead, it simply turned around and left without much of a response.

"What are they?" She asks after a minute, watching the boy get up and dust himself off - he's got a scraped knee.

"Little music things, I dunno, but they're annoying."

She rubs the space between her eyes. "Look, kid, what are you doing back here? It's staff only."

"Wait," the boy suddenly gave her a scrutinizing look, before he noticed the fact her shirt literally had the word Technician on it, "oh. You're staff. Probably that new tech Freddy mentioned, that's why you don't know this." And... now the kid seemed to have some sort of weird arrogance, because he was puffing up like he was the world's most important ten-year-old, hands on his hips. "I'm basically staff too, I'm Freddy's right-hand man, you know!"

The self-assuredness in his voice, combined with the way he wasn't even tall enough to reach her shoulders - and she was absolutely measly at barely over five feet tall - felt kind of endearing. It felt like something innocent and harmless. She decided to breeze directly past Freddy mentioning her, because if he had, it had to have been neutral, at the very least. He'd seemed happy enough to see her, she didn't think he'd be spreading rumors.

"You are? You look a little young to work here."

"I - no - ugh!" He scuffs a shoe on the floor and crosses his arms. "I don't work here, that's boring. I'm his best friend."

"Uh-huh?"

The kid immediately seems to brighten, absolutely excited to explain exactly how and why he was Freddy's best friend. To be fair, Vivian really did want to know, especially considering it wasn't in any of the original programming - for any of them - to have favorite people; at least, she didn't think so. It certainly wouldn't do any good for some poor kid to hear their favorite animatronic talk about having a friend who wasn't them. It was terribly parasocially designed, but it was what was best for business.

"Yeah, he's like my dad or whatever."

"What?"

"I said, he's like my d-"

"No, kid I... I don't need you to repeat it." She says quietly, holding up a hand to placate him. "I just need an explanation. How'd that happen?"

At that point, and that question, the boy gets cagey, his eyes darting away to the hallway behind her, like he was watching something down there. Though, turning around, nothing was there, and so it had to just be nerves; it couldn't be anything, or anyone else. She's not sure why the kid is so resistant to telling her this, especially because it couldn't be worse than what today was for her. The animatronics were so... well, sure, cryptic and weird, but polite.

"Some rabbit lady... introduced us."

"Oh!"

And there's a point of interaction she can latch onto, and she smiles a little bit. He's seen her too. So, there is some sort of convention that happens here, and maybe the animatronics just struggle to recognize other mascot suits. They probably can't recognize the suits, just the people inside of them. The kid's already turning around when she gets enough of her wits about her to continue speaking.

"I saw her too."

He turns back around, eyes wide, a little... nervous? "You... did?"

"Isn't there some sort of, oh, I don't know, costume convention around here or something?"

"In July!" The boy cries, sounding both absolutely agonized and... frightened. "It's November!" Then he's reaching to his wrist, pressing a button on a tiny little watch, before he pulled it right to his face to speak into it. He's cupping his mouth with a hand, like he was trying to keep her from hearing him; it might have been a private conversation, but he lacked the inside voice skills needed to pull it off. "Freddy! We've got a situation, the crazy rabbit lady's back!"

She very, very politely pretends to not hear the boy talking to Freddy over the watch, and she pretends to not hear Freddy respond - though she is surprised he took time to do so, when the last she'd seen him, there had just been a huge crowd. This kid might actually be telling the truth, about Freddy being like his father figure, because it really wasn't really fair for any of them to prioritize one kid, but here Freddy was, responding to this boy almost immediately. Granted, she can't exactly hear what he was saying, but she could tell he was worried.

"Wait... crazy?"

"I-" the boy bites his lower lip, suddenly taking his hand off the button and dropping his arms to his sides, "she's bad news."

That's not ominous at all, and she gets a funny, sinking feeling in the bottom of her chest; maybe it's connected to the death downstairs. Maybe it's the same person, though the depth of the voice seemed like it wouldn't be possible; they couldn't be the same person. As much as she needs answers, she's terrified of what kind of answers she'd get.

"What does she... do, exactly?"

"She just creeps around the place like she owns it!" The kid blows a raspberry up at the vents, where the tiny machine has reappeared to watch.

It's not doing anything, merely sitting and watching, like it was waiting for something to happen. Or like it was doing some sort of data gathering. She can see it a little bit better now that it's actually sitting at the edge of the vent, and it doesn't look exactly like the DJ does, but it's close enough to be almost uncanny. It's got a different number of limbs, and only two of them are hands. The hands are both holding little cymbals, and the face isn't exactly right either. Different color scheme, different... well, vibe.

"So... she's got security clearance then, huh?"

The kid nods emphatically and then scowls. "I think it's Vanessa. She was trying to get me too."

It would make sense. Even if the kid phrased it weird, he makes a good point. Vanessa would have the necessary clearance to waltz around the entire Pizzaplex undisturbed, as a member of security staff she'd have high enough clearance to go anywhere, anytime. As she thinks it over, she finally notices that the scrape on his knee's not just cosmetic, but instead it's actively bleeding. Some of that maternal instinct started kicking in - even if her mother thought she never had any in the first place - and she crouched down to the best of her current ability.

"You're bleeding... do you need a Band-Aid, kid?"

"I-"

He makes a face, like he sucked on a lemon and didn't like it.

"Yeah. I'm Gregory... by the way."

She nods, getting him settled on the bench - even though he doesn't actually let her touch him, flinching away with annoyance - and going to grab the first aid kit at the end of the hallway. Though, she feels like she has to keep looking over her shoulder, just to make sure he doesn't run away. Not like he'd have many places to run to, knowing him, he might go right to Freddy's greenroom - but then again, he might not. She can't actually be sure.

"I'm Vivian." She replied, casting a small, friendly smile in his direction as she walks back with the first aid kit in hand.

He looks at the ground, sitting on the bench and kicking his legs idly, and she definitely gets the impression he's not happy that she's here. Though, he doesn't seem like a very happy kid in general, kind of scrappy and dirty like he'd been out at the park all day - like she used to be, just... dirtier. She'd never really been allowed to look too disheveled since it reflected poorly on her parents, and they really couldn't stand that sort of thing.

"Cool. I guess."

That's not exactly the response she was hoping for, but it's better than him completely ignoring her altogether. "You guess?"

She wipes as much blood off his knee as she can, before she starts applying ointment. Gregory sits as still as a statue and barely even breathes the entire time, just watching her closely. When she puts the Band-Aid on, he immediately pulls back, tucking his legs close to his body, and giving her an almost judgmental look.

"Why're you here anyways? Your animatronic annoyed you too much?"

He seemed hostile when he asked that, like he was accusing her of some sort of hatred. Some kind of hatred she most certainly did not possess, and it seemed like he was being irrational... but if what Billy felt about them - "stop treating them like people" - was true, then he was probably trying to defend their collective honor. A noble cause, but definitely not something a kid that young should be undertaking on their own.

"No, DJ's... - look, kid, where are your parents?"

Gregory looks a little surprised, a little afraid, a little angry - he looks a lot of things, actually, none of them good - and he rolls his eyes. Even though he has to look up at her, the way he scowls is similar enough to how her father used to scowl when he was alive, and it makes something in her chest tighten. But this is a kid, what's a kid going to do? "I told you; Freddy is my dad."

Is this what her job's come to? Babysitting some ten-year-old?

"Legal guardians then, they've got to be around, right?" She kneels down as much as she can, looking him in the eyes.

"Lady I-" there's tears, pricking at the corners of his eyes, that he's desperately trying to stop, "you're nosy."

She'd anticipated a lot of things, but to just be told she's nosy wasn't one of them, and so she puts a hand over her face, running it from her forehead down to her chin with a groan. This kid was a real case, of what? well, she wasn't sure. But he was a handful, and he seemed a little too defensive to just be a personality trait; he was too defensive to just be any old kid, at least, that's what she thought. She's been wrong before, paranoia and all that, thinking everyone and everything was coming together to torment her personally.

"And why're you here so late? You got something to hide?"

Gregory's voice snapped her out of it, and she glanced over at him. His eyes were narrowed, scanning her, like he was trying to find some sign of deception. She knows, because she's done it before too. She did it to her friends at school, to the women in her book club when she was a stay-at-home mother, and she did it to her coworkers here. It... doesn't feel nice on the receiving end, she knew that... people have been telling her for years, but she finally got to experience it and - yeah, they were right.

"No, my boss told me I needed to figure out the service tunnels. Because I'm a tech, y'know?"

"And it took you what, three hours to-"

"Three hours?!" She shrieks, horrified at the amount of time it had apparently taken. How could it have taken that - wait, no, she did get sidetracked working on getting Donny clean. It tracks, unfortunately enough, for her to have gotten totally enraptured in that work, especially without Billy around - he was probably dead, fuck - to stop her.

Gregory's just amused, like it was funny to him. "Yeah, the place is almost closed."

Her expression has to be horrified enough at the idea of being locked in for a night, because he continues to speak.

"Oh, re-lax, if you run fast enough, you'll probably make it out before the doors lock."

That's definitely not something that's on the table any time soon, considering, well, everything. She'd all but lost the ability to run in the second trimester, and here she was being told that it was her only way to not be stuck inside the Pizzaplex all night. It was eerily similar to that time her school had done some sort of sleepover movie event, one that she could only barely pull from the depths of her memories, but didn't think too fondly about. It was fun until the only staff member with the keys to the gymnasium had to leave because of a family emergency... and forgot to give anyone else the keys.

Half-a-hundred kids in a cold gymnasium, on a Friday night in sleeping bags, being watched like hawks. Real smart move, considering the movie aspect didn't even happen either because one kid's mom didn't sign the permission slip to watch Dragonheart. So, they never actually played Dragonheart. Everyone hated that kid, especially her, because it took over three weeks of begging, pleading, and promising to do extra chores to get her mom to sign it for her. And it never even mattered, all because of one kid.

"Yeah I - I don't think that's happening." She says after a minute. "I'll just... suck it up I guess."

"Wise choice." Gregory says with a smirk.

This kid was, no offence, seriously getting on her nerves. It's like if Jamie entered that rebellious teen phase early and somehow was worse about it. Less of the moving away to live with her father, and more of directly insulting her to her face; though Jamie did in fact do that sometimes. Or, used to, before she moved, obviously. But it felt a little less mean than this kid, somehow. This kid just had bad vibes, if she had to put words to it - but of course, that's what her parents said about the neighborhood kids.

"Bad vibes" they'd said, when she asked what was so wrong with the other kids on their street. They didn't want her playing with these kids who were such bad luck when she had more important things to do. Like her homework, and violin practice, piano... her extracurriculars. It was more important for her to get a good head start on life so she could be successful, and hanging out with the "riffraff" wasn't conductive to success at all.

"Yeah, yeah, okay." She says with a frown, pulling out her phone.

She should probably shoot April a text and let her know she was okay, just got locked in. "Hey April, just a heads up i got locked inside the plex... oops", though her fingers hover over the send button, debating if she should include the part about that thinly veiled threat from earlier.

No. No.

It'd just be another reason why she shouldn't have divorced Simon - even if he did start staying out late and telling her she wasn't meeting his needs - because she needed someone to take care of her. Because she was paranoid and took things wildly out of context and couldn't be trusted to give the real true story of anything; she remembered how her mom just assumed that she wasn't being bullied because, "there's no reason every other child in your class dislikes you, you're just exaggerating that."

As she starts getting up, she suddenly feels a tug on her hand, and can see Gregory tugging on her, looking up at her confused.

"What?"

"I mean you said that uh -" he bites his lower lip and glances away, "you're the DJ's technician?"

The weird mechanical scuttling from before comes back, like that weird little thing from before has returned to the vents, though when she glances up at where the cover had popped off, this one looked different. A little more of a specific make and model, more intentionally spiderlike, with tiny little fangs poking out from its mouth; it also lacks the cymbals, like it had put them down somewhere and then never bothered to pick them back up. It's giving her the creeps, and she shudders, letting out a shaky exhale.

"Oh, yeah. Why?"

Gregory lets go of her hand, fidgeting and shaking his head a little bit, like he wasn't sure what to say, or how to say it. "You happy about that?"

That's... not ominous at all. "He's fine. Kind of shy I guess, but he's pretty nice."

"Nice? He's nice?" Gregory actually does air quotes when he says nice that second time. His face was scrunched up in both annoyance and disgust, and he shook his head. "You're crazy, lady."

That's it, she's done. The kid'll be fine, and even if he's not, it's not her job as a technician to babysit him. She gets up and dusts herself off, dropping the first aid kid onto the bench and turning around to leave. Even if she does get locked in - which seems more and more likely by the second as she can hear the announcement system going off - she doesn't care. She's still just reeling from how long and obnoxious the day's been.

Gregory doesn't make any effort to either stop her or follow her, obviously, but she can hear him blow another raspberry at the vent over her shoulder, followed by a trilling mechanical hiss.

They're fighting.

The kid is fighting with the tiny machine in there, and it'd probably be funny if she wasn't so tired. Her husband had been calling throughout the night the entire night prior, and the entire day had been hectic and confusing, and now she was locked inside unable to get to an actual bed to sleep in. She just wanted to take a nice, long nap, she thought, as she pushed her way through the doors leading into Rockstar Row. Honestly, she could have gone through a green room, but that's like walking through someone else's bedroom - even if they weren't really real - and it just felt impolite. So, she just decides to use Rockstar Row as a quick way to get to the Atrium and from there to the entrance, so she can leave the second those doors unlock.

She barely registers the animatronics looking at her as she walks by, confused as to why she was here - because she hadn't been hired for the night shift at all. Part of her almost, almost wants to go see DJ, because he'd at least be decent company until morning, but she also doesn't want to intrude. This is the one time that the arcade is consistently empty, and with what she saw earlier today... how he felt about lots of noise, she'd feel bad taking that from him. So instead, she trudges into the Atrium and plops onto a bench, with her head in her hands.

Then that familiar metal-on-metal noise comes back, and this time, when she glances over, she spots a vent down low to the floor, near one of the areas where someone could get concessions. She knows it's not Gregory, the noise itself proof enough, not to mention the fact she'd just seen him - she does wonder how he got in if he didn't have a wristband, or why anyone would let him stay overnight.

"Oh, it's one of you!"

When the vent cover pops off, she's relieved it's not the spider-looking one, but instead it's the one that looks the most like the DJ. It's tiny, now that she can see it better. Like, really tiny. It'd probably barely come halfway up her shin, but it waltzes over in a... surprisingly friendly way, the suction cups on the ends of its legs giving it some traction on the floor. Once it's close enough, it holds the cymbals out to her, like it wants her to take them, and she gives a sheepish smile to something she doesn't necessarily think is any more alive than the endoskeletons in the basement - even though she'd humored them earlier.

In fact, if anything, this little guy was even less alive, with the giant windup key on its back. The windup key even played music as it wound, creating a very... peculiar mental image for her, when combined with its features. It was some sort of toy, but here it was, insistently shoving the cymbals into her hands regardless of whether she was taking them or not.

"Okay, okay, alright, I've got them." She huffs after a moment, taking the cymbals from it.

Then it simply hoists itself up onto the bench with her, in a manner that's definitely not supposed to be as funny as it actually is. She got the vibe this thing was trying very hard to be taken seriously, despite the fact it was small, cute, harmless, and generally not alive. At one point, she does offer help, but the tiny thing tries to swat her hand away, huffing and puffing - or doing the robot equivalent of that. It wanted to do it on its own, which was cute, and kind of reminded her of a particularly independent toddler, and it makes her smile a little.

But when it finally manages to get onto the bench with her, it lets its front two legs dangle over the edge, and the other four legs fold up under its body. The hands, however, are another story entirely; they appear to be gloved like the DJ's hands, and she can see the tiny thing is tugging on the fabric over and over. Like it was barely resisting the urge to take them off, like it was a nervous tic.

"You okay?" She asks, reaching over and gently holding out one hand.

Its head snaps up towards her, and it raises one brow, looking between her hand and her face. She gets the impression it wants to hold her hand.

"Go on, it's alright." It is most certainly not alright, but she's humoring it.

The little thing trills musically, in what she had to guess was absolutely pure, unbridled joy, before reaching out. Its hands are kind of soft, though not like DJ's - his have to be padded to protect the decks he uses, but this was just some kind of dinky little kid's toy. She could feel part of its endoskeleton under there, and if she had to try and explain how it felt... it was kind of like holding a particularly bony hand.

To have someone hold her hands like that is a new feeling, because Simon certainly hasn't done that in years. She does vaguely remember him holding her hands in college, threading their fingers together and being gentle with her. But here this thing was, carefully turning her hand over to look at it, rubbing one of the little gloved fingers against her palm, tracing lines and tilting its head. Like it had never really gotten such a good look at a human's hand in, well, ever.

"You like palmistry?"

At that, it looks confused, tilting its head again, in the other direction.

"It's uh... palm reading. I liked having mine read a lot when I was little. It's kind of like fortune telling."

The tiny thing glances at her hand, before pointing directly at one of the lines, prompting a laugh from her. Vivian happens to think it's adorable, and she nods, gently tracing her own finger over the line.

"This one's the heart line," she explains, "it's basically your emotions, romance and stuff."

It scoots closer, watching her explain and sitting so still that she'd have almost believed it was never alive in the first place. Even though just a moment ago it had been curious, inquisitive and... well, alive, for all intents and purposes. She's barely even noticed that it went quiet, instead focused on trying to remember what her heart line said. It was all starting to come back to her, but in bits and pieces, since she hadn't had a proper reading since she was a kid. And even then, those were coming from her mother, and she always got the impression hers were slightly biased.

"See how it curves down, here by my pinky? That means I'm "idealistic" or something. I think." Vivian really, really wished she could be more confident in her memory, but she was almost forty.

Her last reading was at fourteen.

That was over twenty years ago, she absolutely didn't remember everything.

"You know," she suddenly thinks out loud, "you're not bad company at all."

"I kind of like you."

Somewhere in the West Arcade, DJ Music Man is absolutely beaming with pride.

Chapter Text

"So... you're like a little DJ, sort of." She said, not exactly talking to the little windup toy, moreso talking at it. "Definitely a pocket pal...."

It couldn't respond, so it made an excellent listener. Well, perhaps couldn't was too strong a word to use on its own, because it could, technically respond, just not verbally. The little thing clearly knew the basics of how nodding meant a yes, and shaking its head meant a no, but she isn't sure how advanced it really is. It's some sort of children's toy, literally, so she knows there's really no processor - at least, not one advanced enough to properly store data like the others were. There's no guarantee it could even comprehend sign language, let alone learn it.

By now it had quite happily crawled into what remained of her lap - what hadn't been taken up by the baby - and was letting her gently pet its head in a way she didn't think was common for it. If she had to put words to it, she'd have quickly picked something she'd seen her mother writing about in her old stories - Touch Starved. That's what it was, even if she got the general idea what she thought constituted touch starving was different than her mother's ideas she'd put into those old fiction stories.

If anything, this was more like having the cat she and April had always wanted.

She couldn't help the affection, because not only was it nice to be sitting down, to be petting this little thing, to listen to the music it was playing - a soft, jaunty little tune's instrumental - one she didn't exactly recognize, but felt like she might have heard years ago, when she was a kid. That's kind of strange to her, considering she never really put too much effort into thinking about her childhood on any other day. Something about this place seemed to just bring the memories right back to the surface; like there was something about this place that kept them alive. The mini seems to freeze up when she inspects it, the music itself stopping and re-starting, like she'd derailed its train of thought. 

There's the sound of footsteps approaching from the long hallway behind her, slightly to the right... the hallway that connected the atrium to the daycare. Even without glancing over her shoulder she knew who those footsteps belonged to, there was only one animatronic who's footsteps were accompanied by the sound of jingling bells.

"Oh, hello..." She began, only to be - quite rudely, in her opinion - cut off.

"You're trespassing."

Glancing up at the one who'd said it revealed the daycare attendant, in what must have been their moon mode, which was very... blue in comparison to the sun mode. Though, the red eyes were a little creepy looking, especially with the way they scanned her up and down, like it was already making judgements.

"I don't mean to, really," she winced, gently scratching the underside of the little toy's chin, "I got locked in. I was supposed to be home hours ago."

Moon - and she was calling them that as a shorthand, considering they seemed less chatty than Sun did, and less willing to offer her their name - suddenly crossed one pair of arms over its chest, the other pair out to rest their hands on their hips. Two of the most "I don't believe you" gestures a person could come up with, and it was doing both all at once. The animatronic huffed, looking her up and down again, eyes narrowing further. It's somehow more scrutinizing than it was the first time.

"What?"

"You're bleeding." Its voice is acidic, almost caustic, but doesn't exactly sound mean-spirited.

More like a construction quirk. She gets the impression that between Sun and Moon, Moon is the more serious, no-nonsense of the two. Which made sense, if its primary directive was to put people to sleep. Though, she wasn't really thinking too hard on that, instead, following its gaze with her own, down to a pretty tame, but dirty, gash on her left ankle.

"Oh, I am, haha... uh, sorry." Why's she apologizing?

Deep down she knows why, but she bites her tongue, instead gently maneuvering the little toy in her arms into a more comfortable position as she gets up. It's kind of like she's cradling a baby to her chest - and if she closed her eyes and ignored the fact it was cold and not at all soft, she could kind of convince herself it was the same thing. It, on the other hand, had some sort of opinions about being held that way, and made them publicly known by clicking its teeth together and trying to gesture for her to just put it down. At least, she thought that's what it wanted.

Moon suddenly seemed to stiffen for a minute, before holding out a pair of his hands, a little smile on his face. "Here. I'll carry."

"You will? Oh, thank you."

She hands over the little windup toy without much fuss on her end, despite the almost insistent teeth chattering noise it makes - she is not fond of that noise because she remembers hearing it somewhere else too - and the squirming. The thing's moving and fussing in a way it hadn't earlier, like it was trying to resist being given to Moon. Like Moon freaked it out. Made it nervous, even though it was of such primitive construction there was no way it could be nervous, right?

"Of course." Moon's shrug is casual, and it feels like a wild change of pace from the way they talk.

As she gets up, she does make a point to pick up the pair of cymbals, tucking them under her arm. Taking a step, she realizes just how much her ankle hurts, and the entire leg almost buckles, causing both animatronics to become... nervous? They seemed nervous. Moon suddenly let go of the windup toy, letting it drop to the floor - it caught itself, barely - and instead, prioritizing her.

"Hey!"

"Shhh." Moon snaps, as an arm loops around her shoulders, and the other hands check for the possibility of more injuries. One hand even comes up to rest on her forehead, like it was trying to find a fever. He seems a little bit annoyed with her raising her voice, as well as the defensive way she tries to lean back, away from his hands. "Won't hurt you."

"Okay, okay, you can-" she's not sure why he said that, "you can let go."

Moon's expression is hard to read, but she gets the impression that he'd be furrowing his brows if he could, looking entirely unamused. The ceramic faceplate isn't the same as the others, who at least have enough joints to simulate the ability to change expressions, rather than DJ's face or the daycare attendant's faces. Sure, maybe you could argue that DJ didn't need that, because it wasn't a speaking animatronic - she had no idea why - so a fully functional faceplate and mouthpiece wasn't needed, but the Daycare attendant was. They - well, she wasn't sure if any of the animatronics really ever deserved anything in the usual sense of the word - but they could have benefitted greatly from one, the constant smiley expression could get freaky after a while.

"No."

"Moon, please."

The response she gets is the sound of a trumpet, which is played in short enough bursts to almost, almost, be laughter. Both she and Moon look down at the mini, which now looks positively smug, as smug as something so tiny and unrefined could; and she finds it, honestly, kind of endearing, how well the company had done putting "a little bit of life" into everything they made, even something so small, though Moon on the other hand, didn't think that way. In fact, he looked... if she had to guess based on body language alone, quite repulsed by it.

"I don't - I... when does this place open back up in the morning?"

"Six A.M." Moon suddenly turns his head - it swivels on its post with a squeak, in dire need of oiling - before narrowing his eyes. "Why?"

"Because, I have things I need to do. It's an off day for me."

Realistically, she's not sure if he'd understand what she's talking about if she were to actually explain it. These robots were programmed to be, well, for children; to be fun and excitable and to be passionately positive. She's not sure if the words "divorce court" would even register to them, or what response she could get. Moon might get it, now that she's thinking about it, judging from the position he's in working with children directly. It wouldn't be too out there to assume that some of them were children of divorced parents, unmarried parents, or had parents actively in the process. She thinks of Jamie, and she sniffles.

Only then, does she notice, she's not standing right by the bench, instead, she's walking with Moon's help - the sneaky bastard, using conversation as a distraction while he helped her... somewhere. 

"Where are we going?"

Moon looks around, and at first, he pretends like he doesn't hear her. Then he looks over and whispers. "VIP area. Won't get caught by guard."

The tiny creature suddenly seems to become freaked out, playing that same jaunty tune from earlier, but at a slightly louder volume. Then it clamps its gloved hands over its mouth - though that's not where the noise was coming from - and quieting down. It did not, however, stop excitedly squirming and bouncing up and down like it just heard the best news of its life.

"Guard?"

"Vanessa." Moon says, "gets cranky if someone's inside."

His tone is one which she's used before and heard before; one usually reserved for talking about a particularly fussy, unmanageable child. She's used it before, during times where Jamie's behavior had been really difficult - ironically, usually staying up late. Though, there was the time she'd gotten her lip pierced without permission, well, without her permission. Simon's new girlfriend was someone she could apparently "trust more."

"She does? You sound like a tired dad."

Moon's shoulders shake as he pulls her towards the big double doors that lead from the Atrium to the Fazcade. Oh, that's... that's where the VIP rooms were.

"Not me," it sounds casual, and for a second, it sounds fond, "that's Freddy."

"Oh yeah?"

She asks that before she even makes the connection, before she remembers Gregory, and before she realizes that Gregory must have been serious. More serious than she'd ever anticipated, if another animatronics was confirming Freddy's role as a parental figure. Yet, here Moon was, confirming the boy was at least a semi-permanent figure around here; there's a sharp string strike, kind of like the one from Psycho. One time her babysitter had pulled a trick on her, and got her to watch it with them, before she even knew what that word was. Clearly it came from the mini, but she's got no idea what it means, or what emotion it's supposed to convey.

They pass by multiple S.T.A.F.F. Bots, all of whom give the trio a wide berth, but it doesn't exactly feel like they're avoiding them intentionally, out of fear, or any sort of emotion. It feels more like they recognize her as human staff, and Moon as one of their own - in whatever way they can - and simply ignore them. Honestly, she won't lie, as strange as it is to watch them all scurry around, it's immensely better than having them all follow the group as if they were petulant children. Moon seems to think the same thing. Though, her eyes linger on one S.T.A.F.F. Bot in particular, who, rather than patrolling like the others, seems more content to idle in place and do nothing.

That's... unusual.

As the two walk in more or less silence after the conversation dries up, she can't stop thinking. Even after he ushers her into the Fazcade quite urgently, even after he doesn't let her look over the railing of the second floor - she's kind of surprised these doors actually lead to the second floor of the Fazcade - to see if DJ's asleep or not. Though, maybe it's a good thing he keeps a tight grip on her and leads her right to the VIP rooms, because she knows if she did look, she'd get herself worked up all over again. Judging from the fact DJ had to have easily been three stories tall, the arcade was much larger, otherwise it just wouldn't be able to accommodate him. She glances over her shoulder at the mini, idly wondering if he and DJ know each other, and what their work relationship could be like.

"Come on." Moon urges her, leading her to one of the VIP rooms.

He's noticeably passing up the first few rooms, almost like he was intentionally trying to hide her in one of the rooms less likely to be looked in. "Moon, slow down."

"Shh..."

Once they approach one of the rooms, he pushes the door open, and then ushers her into the room and follows her.

The rooms are... kind of nice, still a bit big - the fact that there's a giant tunnel in the ceiling implies that the DJ was intended to join guests in here, probably some part of a birthday package or something. Moon then guides her to a small chair against the wall, gently pushing her into it. "I can do minor first aid." He says it like a fact, reaching into one of his sleeves, and pulling out a small - much smaller than the one from the service hallways - kit.

"Okay..."

She's not sure what else to say, so she decides not to say anything else, instead, she reaches out to the mini. It wavers between coming closer and retreating entirely; every few minutes it glances at Moon and tilts its head, like it was trying to ask for permission to get closer to her. Though, she doesn't care, leaning over and gently rubbing her thumb over his cheek, even though Moon huffs and puffs and grumbles under his... breath, about how she needed to stop moving so he could disinfect the cut.

"Awh, he's not hurting anyone."

Moon levels what feels like it might be a glare in the mini's direction. "He is annoying." Moon punctuates this by sticking out his tongue.

The mini's hands ball into fists for a second, before it relaxes, scuttling closer to her, practically squeezing its way underneath the chair. She just finds it amusing, and she reaches a hand down, letting the mini take it, which it does after a minute or two. It definitely seems to be able to recognize one person from another, advanced enough to pick out unique facial features - and it almost seems like it has some sort of preference. Though, that could just be self-preservation, like that whole robot law thing.

As long as it wasn't breaking any orders about not hurting people, or not following orders - that didn't conflict, of course - it had to protect itself. Moon dropping it would definitely be considered a risk to its life, with how tiny it was, and how bad a fall like that could be if it didn't manage to catch itself on its feet; besides, Moon wasn't a human.

"I think he's cute." She says fondly, hearing it trill delightedly.

After a long silence, wherein Moon visibly rolls his eyes while he cleans the wound site, she speaks again, though her voice is betraying more nervousness.

"Hey, Moon. Are you sure Vanessa won't find me here?"

He nods, putting a Band-Aid on over the cut. "She's lazy, doesn't check the VIP rooms."

That's not a very good quality to have, she thinks, being lazy and not doing all the parts of your job. Though, to be fair, she knew the Plex was huge, and she was already getting an idea of what her days are going to be like in the future. A lot of walking. It would make sense for Vanessa to not want to, considering how much walking she'd probably have to do as a night security guard. Didn't excuse it though, it was still poor work ethic.

"Why do you know that?"

Moon's expression suddenly makes her nervous, the way he wrings two of his hands together, before he mumbles - he didn't want her to hear it. "I'm security too."

That's... well, it is surprising, because she wasn't expecting the daycare attendant to be both security and an interactable animatronic; however, that's not the thing she's most surprised by. Instead, she's most surprised by the fact that Moon's acting like it's shameful, like it's some sort of deep, evil secret he has to hide from everyone else. She's not sure why he would think that. It may not have made the most sense, but she could understand where they'd come from. There wouldn't be any kids to watch when the Plex was closed, he'd need something to do - if his high-energy behavior was a constant.

Why not use the Moon mode for this?

"Oh, I... I kind of guessed that to be honest."

"What?"

"I guessed that," she shrugs casually, looking at him. "It wasn't hard."

Moon stands up, his posture slouched over and almost raptor-like with the way he holds both sets of arms close to his chest, with his hands limp. His eyes are as wide as they can physically get, and they're dilated enough to make up for the lack of proper, functioning eyelids. For a minute or two his mouth gapes, opening and shutting like he was some sort of fish. "Not... scared?"

"Scared? Why would I be scared of you?"

He doesn't give her an answer, instead, just looking away, down at the floor. The mini hiding under her chair clacks its teeth at Moon, who seems both annoyed and... nervous. Like the Mini was now worrying him, rather than the way it had been earlier, where the mini had been anxious. That definitely made no sense, because Moon was definitely large enough to punt it like a football - as rude as it may have been - but here he was... cowering.

"Hm." Moon narrows his eyes and hums thoughtfully, "good point."

Vivian nods, not actually bringing up the fact that he... definitely seemed to be hiding something; partially because she could just never be sure, paranoia problems like hers made it so difficult to discern whether someone was really hiding something in the first place. Though, the way the mini was making him antsy, and the way the mini seemed to be... chastising him, it feels kind of like the mini knows something that she doesn't. Maybe it's nothing, maybe it's just a harmless little quarrel they have because of how long they've worked together.

It's probably nothing.

Moon doesn't stick around to confirm or deny anything, instead, he clambers up the wall with a nimble gracefulness that he should not possess, and then climbs into the tunnel. The mini protests the entire time, waving its little gloved hands and more or less wailing - it really, really seems opposed to the idea of Moon using the giant tunnels in the arcade. She got the general impression Moon and the mini never really saw eye-to-eye. Though... DJ had said Moon did something, and that he was scared of getting in trouble for it. Maybe the minis, as a whole - because she knew there were more than one - cared about DJ and that's where that grudge came from.

Once Moon is gone, she settles into the chair and sighs quietly, just wanting the night to pass quickly, yawning into a hand and glancing down at the mini, who's expression now looked curious and concerned. It made her heart feel warm and fuzzy, but that could have just been her being all hormonal and soft.

"What?" She asks, reaching down to try and pick it up again. "Not a fan?"

The mini pauses to think, and then gestures in a 'so-so' motion with a hand. It's hysterical, considering the inherent humanity of the gesture.

"I see."

It doesn't seem chatty, not like DJ who signed rather than spoke, but clearly seemed to enjoy conversation, not like Roxy, who seemed to enjoy talking to people in general, or Sun who could talk your entire ear off without realizing. Instead, this one seems to be more drawn-in and contemplative; the same way April was as a baby, where she didn't really care if she was around other people, as long as whoever it was left her alone. Though, she could just be reminiscing too much and assigned traits, that would track, considering her personality; she hoists it into what remains of her lap, and she scratches the back of its neck.

If she closes her eyes, she can imagine it being just like that cat they'd always wanted as kids, that she and April kept arguing about hypothetical names for. Maybe April's hypothetical name of "Crouton" was okay, but she was still wildly impartial to the one she came up with. Angel would have been a much better name, she thinks, letting her hand gently rest on top of its back, and she can feel its motor hum under her palm.

A nap wouldn't hurt, right?

It was nighttime anyways and as long as she was quiet nobody would care - Vanessa apparently never bothered to check these anyways.

The mini seems to be two steps ahead of her, already beginning to play a soft tune. It's at such a low volume she almost can't hear it, but it makes sense, if she can't hear it and she's this close, Vanessa wouldn't be able to if she walked past. She smiles softly, her eyes already drifting shut as she slumps in the chair a little bit. That's... really soothing, and it's really thoughtful for them to do this for her, because she knows they don't have to. There's no programming that dictates this is what they must do; judging from the sheer lack of them elsewhere in the Plex, it seems like whatever they do, they do by choice.

When she wakes up next - her child's choice, as they kicked her hard enough to hurt a little, not her own - she's not sure how long it's been, but she feels a little better. A little bit less on edge. She's still got the mini in her lap, but by now it's gone silent and powered down. The tiny little motor is off, but she can feel its body twitch and move, like it's twitching in its sleep, and she can feel its chest rising and falling, like the mini was breathing. That's... not something it should be able to do, by any sense of the word, but it does, and it clearly can.

She's about to coo, and croon, and fawn over how cute and tiny the little thing was, but then something snaps her out of it. Footsteps. Immediately she takes in a nervous breath, glancing over her shoulder and towards the door, nervous. Whoever it is, is humming some sort of little song, and it honestly sounds like they're skipping through the hall, if she had to guess.

"Bwur?" The mini stirs for a second, raising its head and flexing its hands, like a real cat would.

Vivian puts one finger over her lips. "Shh..."

As the footsteps get closer, it seems to get the picture, nodding timidly and silently sitting in her lap. Both of them keep their eyes on the door, awaiting the worst. But whoever it is keeps walking past, still humming. She does, however, spot what looks like the silhouette of the same rabbit suit from earlier, with the big floppy ears. Of course it's the crazy fucking rabbit, the one that Gregory said was bad news, and had been wildly uncomfortable even talking about.

Vivian holds her breath until she's sure they're gone, and then she promptly sighs, putting her head in one hand, the other hand still gently petting the mini's back. Her hand gently traces under the socket where an arm connects, and she can feel it tense, like something about that touch wasn't fun. So, she lets go and gives him, them, the choice to get off her lap if they wanted to; but it doesn't seem like they want complete separation, just... less touching in that specific spot.

She doesn't dwell on why they'd want that, or why the touch might have made them nervous, instead she just sighs softly. "You see the rabbit buddy?"

It glances up at her, then at the door, and then shakes its head.

Wait, it didn't?

"You didn't hear anything?"

The mini pauses, thinking, before it hums. It's the same tune the rabbit had been humming, so clearly it could register a presence there, just... not a rabbit. That's weird. It's very weird.

But she doesn't get a chance to ask about it, even though she wants to, because the kid decides that they're ready for another nap now, and she finds herself drowsy. Abnormally drowsy, and it feels like she's trying to think through molasses. She yawns tiredly, her head already bobbing, and the mini settles back down; clearly, they're both ready for a nap, and it's prepping to enter sleep mode in her lap.

As people began to pour into the Pizzaplex when the doors finally opened, she got the greenlight from the Mini, of all people, to leave. It wasn't a very insistent green light, partially because she got the impression that its efforts to pull her into a standing position would never work. She did get the general idea, however, and she got up, dusting off her pants and glancing down at the bandage on her ankle, taking a step to test her stability. Much, much better, she definitely owed Moon a favor for this.

"Okay buddy, I've gotta go."

She gets the impression it's upset, and that if it could frown with widened eyes, it would be doing that. Like it doesn't want her to go. A little hypocritical considering it was the one to help her up in the first place.

"Don't worry," she gently crouches down enough to pat its head, "I'll... well, I can visit this afternoon? I'll be busy all morning, but I can drop by."

The mini pauses, thinking, well - not exactly thinking, but it was close enough. It was advanced enough to generally grasp some ideas, even slightly loosely, and she's pretty sure it could understand the passage of time, in theory. As it thinks, it suddenly nods, a movement so tiny she almost doesn't even notice it, a movement so tiny that if she hadn't been looking, she definitely wouldn't have noticed it. She doesn't exactly want to be visiting all the time, because it's work, and she'd much rather do other things on her days off - like relax after what she knows will be a particularly emotional court meeting - she does feel a little bad.

"I've been here, all along-"

She turns around to look at it, the speaker crackling as the music plays.

"-such a long time."

That's not ominous, but judging from the twang, and the fact that it's primarily a string instrument song - not violin, and she happened to be biased - implies it's a sappy Southern love song. She has nothing against them, really, they just felt fake. Sure, she got the general idea, and she loved lots of people - in different ways - but after a certain point it didn't feel genuine; it didn't feel like that was something someone could really, genuinely feel for someone else. Like... it wasn't a joke?

"Huh." She says, before realizing how wildly impolite it was. She wouldn't like it if someone was that blase to her about her interests. "Sorry, sorry. I just... I'm not the target audience for something like that."

It looks a little bit like it's deflated, like the wind had been taken out of its sails.

"No, no, it wasn't bad! I just don't... connect with that sort of stuff."

That, at least, seems to soothe the poor dear's soul, like some sort of healing balm. It's... honestly kind of cute the way the little thing relaxes, like her explanation had made everything right in the world all at once. It's... vaguely flattering? the way the mini trusted her taste and judgement.

But all good things must come to an end eventually, and so she gives in and eventually bids him adieu, patting his head affectionately, before turning and leaving the VIP room. There aren't many people in here yet, and those who are don't give her too much more than a passing glance. Small miracles, honestly, she thinks to herself as she straightens up and tries to once again, dust herself off as she heads out of the arcade. This time, she can't resist the draw - even though there's a pit in her stomach, and the cold sinking dread that comes from knowing she's intentionally walking over to a ledge.

There's a little voice in the back of her head again, but this time it sounds like Simon, at the end of his rope, complaining that some chore hadn't been done - even though she'd done it yesterday and it wasn't the end of the world - and telling her to get her head out of the gutter. She swallows around a lump in her throat, but approaches the railing and peers over, trying to take deep breaths to calm herself down. The fact that she'd asked for today off was enough to make her nervous, but at least Billy - or whoever made the schedules now that he was gone - had been gracious enough to give it to her.

Oh God, that's right, her boss was dead.

"Okay... it's fine. It's so fine."

She tells herself, repeating it like it's a mantra, like just saying it enough would make it true. Looking over the railing, she does see DJ on the stage, active and running - though she'd have known he was out of sleep mode just because she could feel the bassline of the music through the floor. The fact he seemed to get antsy with loud noises didn't exactly make a lot of sense considering his line of... work? until she thought about it a little bit more, then she kind of got it. He liked loud music because it was something that he could control, he could decide what he played and what he listened to, even if he did have to improvise new music frequently. That was the draw of the attraction, after all.

Though, from the vantage point she was sort of surprised FazEnt would make something so huge, and so distinctly not in their usual style. The triple-segmented limbs didn't really follow what their old designs were, and neither did the intentional spider-like appearance, nor the general movement patterns. It felt more like he'd been commissioned, and she decides to file that away for later, just in case. But if he were... why did they need a technician for him? Surely, he'd have had some sort of specialized technician from the mother company who made him.

"Hey, lady." A voice to her right snapped her out of her thoughts.

Turning to face it revealed that kid, Luca, standing there with his arms crossed. She got the impression he was a little annoyed, but couldn't be sure, considering he had on a face mask and a pair of dark sunglasses - he looked a little bit green around the gills, at least, the parts of him she could see did. The ticket taker, whose uniform seemed to consist of a hoodie, a pair of long jeans, snakers, full gloves, and just a little name badge clipped to the hoodie itself, rather than the main uniform she'd seen before. Like, at least hers actually said "Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex" on the back, so people would know she was staff.

But that brought up another good point.

"Oh? Do you need something... Luca, right?"

He tenses a little bit when she says his name. "How'd you know me? We've never-"

"Billy."

It doesn't make sense for him to not have an actual uniform, and it makes even less sense for him to come to work sick. And she knows he is sick because he's green around the gills and he kind of smells like throw up. Not that it bothers her too much, she's had a kid and is pretty close to having another, she's more or less desensitized to it now. Though, she's pretty sure it'd be considered a health hazard to come to work in this state, considering how many people there were to possibly infect.

"Oh... yeah, that guy's a jabber jaw." He says dismissively, waving a hand. "He loves hearing himself talk, I swear."

She's not sure, actually, if Luca knows just how much Billy cared about him - and she's forcing herself to think in the past tense because he's gone. If she holds on too tight she won't ever be able to move forward or move on, but it's still a painful thought to have. Does Luca know that, too? Probably not, considering it was only last night, and she'd never really gotten a chance to tell anyone - not even Moon. Moon should have been aware, considering his role as night security. Mentally she's kicking herself for the oversight.

"He's... Luca, I don't know if you know but he's-"

"I know."

Luca's body language is distant, closed in, and even though she can't see his face, she can imagine the pain. She gets the impression the glasses serve to hide tears, because if there was anything teenage boys didn't like to be seen doing, it's crying. Though, she's not sure who'd have told him, perhaps Stella and Donny, because word gets around fast - though they'd have had to inferred it from context clues. But they seemed clever enough to do that.

Once again, she's mostly speechless, unsure if there's anything she can do to quell the hurt, or to soothe his soul, so she just nods, her words caught in her throat. "Yeah."

Then she leaves, suddenly no longer able to stand being in the arcade - or the Pizzaplex - a second longer. Her steps are as quick as they physically can be in this state, and she more or less hunches over on herself - which is not easy in any sense of the word - as she rushes through the Atrium towards the lobby, and from there, to freedom. Well, not exactly freedom, but to her house before the digital hearing. It wasn't anything permanent or final, but she'd at least like to brush her hair, teeth, and put on a new outfit.

As she walks, she casts a glance up at the main stage, where the Glamrocks were actively performing - though she doesn't let that gaze linger too long. It does, however, last long enough to catch the way Tiger Rock looks right at her.

That's weird.

Whatever.

She shakes her head slightly and heads to the lobby, thinking deeply as she took the escalators down to the main entrance, trying to figure out what was going on here. Of course, she really didn't want to stay, with the conditions being what they were - with the death, the threats, the weird rabbit person - but she needed money. She'd be laughed right out of court if she were to be unemployed, or seeking employment; instead, she could suck it up, just until they came to a conclusion, and then she could quit and find something better. Even if she knew Jamie would want to stay with her father anyways, she just needed to prove she was capable of living on her own and making her own good choices.

"Hey." A hand suddenly clasped onto her shoulder as she approached the door. "You're... early?" There's a tall, broad-shouldered shadow over her.

It's Vanessa, and her heart stops for a second.

Whirling around she could see Vanessa looked more tired and disheveled than she'd ever seen the other woman; her hair was frizzy and tangled and looked like she'd gotten bedhead and never brushed it out. Not to mention the dark circles under her eyes, or the fact it looks like she'd slept in her makeup. It makes her worry, despite the fact she still knew that Vanessa and Mike were plotting something, and the fact that Vanessa had the clearance to be the mystery rabbit. It would have explained why she looked so tired, and why she'd have wanted Vivian to be gone by nightfall.

She shuddered, remembering the way they'd walked past the VIP rooms, humming as if they were playing the world's worst game of hide-and-seek. And they were looking for someone specific.

Someone like her.

"Yeah I - I just wanted to stop by you know?" She says casually, trying to keep the quiver in her voice away. "Scope the surroundings for the little one."

Vanessa looks at her, with an expression that felt like worry, her brows furrowed and a tiny frown on her face. It feels a little like pity, and she doesn't want to be pitied of all things, so she just stares blankly at Vanessa, trying to keep herself calm. This isn't what she wants. All she wants is to go home. 

"I... yeah." Vanessa nods curtly, suddenly running a hand through her - messily dyed - hair. "Sorry. That was kinda presumptuous of me."

She didn't actually expect an apology, even if Vanessa's heart really didn't seem like it was in it. No, she's willing to take the fact that Vanessa said sorry at all as the highest form of compliment. It was... weirdly nice to get a real "sorry" from someone, even if it did sound halfhearted, rather than an "I'm sorry you feel that way."

"Don't worry about it, it's fine."

"...Alright. You uh, drive safe, it's getting snowy out there."

"Will do." Vivian nods, pushing her way through the turnstile with one hand, waving to Vanessa with the other.

Vanessa waves back, keeping that arm at a perfect ninety degrees - it's something she knows her mother would have loved because it just "looks more professional" than to sloppily wave like everyone else did. It felt like a lot of her mom's preferences just boiled down to elegance and dignity and weren't as humanitarian as she'd like in her own life; but that's something that nobody ever sees eye-to-eye on, so she'd feel weird complaining. Even if she did want to at least ask about it.

She could probably ask later, after the meeting was over; after all, she still had to get home.

Chapter Text

As Vivian brushed through her hair and put it into a much neater bun, she yawned. She'd gotten about two-and-a-half hours of sleep after getting home, and she was really feeling it now. However, she couldn't just miss the hearing, since they still hadn't gotten an official statement on Jamie's choice of custody holding - even though Jamie was seventeen and was legally entitled to make her own choices.

At this point, it almost felt like padding.

Though, even if Jamie had made the choice, it'd still be going to trial anyways, because she really, really did not want to lose her mother's antique dishware. Partially because she knew Simon and his new girlfriend were both fiending to have them, but because the set was one of the few things her mother had brought over from Japan. She was willing to take the high road and let him have anything else, but there was no way in hell he could get the dish set.

Even if deep down, she thought her mother might have wanted him to.

"He would use it more though..." she mutters idly, thinking of how rare it was for her to have anyone over. She'd never been a huge extrovert, and any parties she'd ever hosted had been for people Simon worked with, or for friends and neighbors that knew him better than her. It's not to say she hated parties, or having people over, she just preferred to have some peace and quiet, the same way she preferred to not be physically intimate with people, regardless of their relationship.

She hums to herself as she makes herself a cup of tea and sits down at her computer, already dreading what she knows is to come.

"Hi Viv."

It's just her and Simon in the waiting room, like it always is.

They both arrive early enough to the virtual meetings that there's always a chance for them to talk - not that she's ever particularly interested. If he'd wanted to have an actual conversation he could have done it earlier, years earlier.

"Hello Simon." Her tone is curt, but not impolite.

"So, what's with the clown makeup? Is the rest of the costume lost in the mail?"

Vivian takes a deep breath and glances at her face on the screen - she thinks she looks; in words she's heard before, "exceptionally normal" - just because she couldn't be sure. It's fine, she's fine, why'd she checks again? She knew it was fine when she looked in the mirror earlier, it's just a little extra concealer under the eyes to hide the dark circles of sleeplessness. If she hadn't done it, he'd have said something else, something about letting herself go.

He said it a lot, actually, when they were married. 

After she had Jamie, and she didn't immediately slim down again; and every time they'd tried to have another child, up until this one.

"Nothing, huh?" Simon asks, smirking at the screen, "oh well, silence just means you agree."

It most certainly does not mean that, but she doesn't bother to respond, because she knows it'd be her own fault for turning "an innocent statement" into a point of contention. So, she waits for the judge to sign in - which he won't, not until the exact minute the clock chimes over to ten, because he's punctual but refused to be early. In his eyes - and she was guessing, of course - being on time was perfectly acceptable for someone of his standing, as he was the only one who could actually start the hearing at all. Oh, she was dreading this, just the conversation in full, and what it meant for her and her memories.

They'd already decided to split the house, and she'd been willing to part with the furniture - which he didn't even seem interested in anyways - but she'd be willing to give anything up just to keep the heirloom set.

"Hey" her phone pings, and glancing at it reveals it's April, "mom said to tell Simon good luck 🙄"

That's about what she'd expect.

"Real nice of her...lol"

If that hadn't come immediately before the proceedings she'd have probably laughed at the irony. Her own mother was telling her to wish her ex-husband good luck in the hearing, even though all Vivian wanted was to keep a family heirloom in the actual family. From what she knew of Tilly, Simon's new girlfriend, she was big on appearances but couldn't really comprehend the sentimental value of things like that.

Tilly was a real hostess, someone who enjoyed being around others, organizing little get-togethers and parties and dinners. Vivian knows, because while she hadn't been invited herself, April had; and it had been some sort of brunch get-together to help introduce Tilly to the family. Vivian could not believe the audacity, but to be honest, she much preferred being at home and reading a book. Apparently, Tilly's family had been there, Simon's family had, and they'd even invited April and her husband Pierre. Eiko would have been invited if she hadn't been in the hospital, but it made her a little sad to be the only one left out, even if what she'd been left out of was meeting her ex-husband's new girlfriend.

There's the telltale ping of the judge joining the zoom room, and they both settle down - not that they had really been talking to each other in the first place.

He's a man only slightly older than she was, if she had to guess, he could have been in his mid-forties, and he had a generally no-nonsense appearance. There's a pair of thin-rimmed square glasses on his nose, and he's already frowning as if the meeting was the most boring thing in the world to him. Which it probably was. Out of anything a divorcing couple could take to court, a dispute over a pair of plates was probably the least interesting. He'd probably been more used to cases of domestic violence, but this wasn't that.

It... it never got like that.

Even when things did happen, she never thought of it like that, because unlike abuse, she actually did make him do that.

"Hello you two." The judge said, adjusting his glasses and looking over the paperwork he'd been given. It's basic, it's just detailing what each of them make, where they both work - well, where he worked, she'd forgotten to get her employment records -, and what they want. The house is going to be sold, though Simon wants more of the money they'd be getting for it - even though his company makes more than enough to support his new family; and she's made peace with that. Sure, the lot was gorgeous, with plenty of space, a beautiful view, and a tire swing in the yard, but she could bear to part with it.

She could swallow her pride and give everything away, she could even lower her standards and accept the lesser amount - even though between them both, he already had more - of money, and she could deal with Jamie living in Florida from now on. But the way he'd talked about the house and the furniture in their previous meetings was quite foul. Like he didn't have the same sort of emotional connection to them she did; she had an emotional connection to them, having spent her time there raising Jamie and tidying and tending to things. He talked about it like it was a place he despised, but in a far off, self-removed way, so nobody could really get the picture.

"Hello your honor." She bows her head slightly, waiting to make her opening statement until he gave her the go-ahead. "I'm here seeking confirmation of child support to be paid out when this child is born, as well as seeking the assurance that an heirloom dish set gifted as a wedding present were to be granted to me upon finalization of the divorce."

Simon coughed into a hand, glancing at the screen - almost like he was watching for a reaction.

She knew that one was intentional, because he's been doing it for years, whenever she talked about something he couldn't care less about. Like music, or mechanics, or really anything she enjoyed. It started a little before they'd actually gotten married, whenever she talked about wanting a certain type of cake, or when she found a dress she'd liked, but he didn't find it flattering. He never really found any of them flattering, honestly, because she'd had too much back fat, or because her arms were too flabby for a sleeveless one.

When she'd looked at the photobook - she wasn't sure she wanted it, and she knew Simon didn't - she didn't feel pretty in the dress he'd convinced her flattered her the most. She just felt like a fraud. It wasn't what she liked, it had long lacey sleeves and it hugged her figure more than she'd have wanted - and the veil was so long she worried she could have tripped over it. Even her smile, she thought, looked fake in those pictures, not that anyone who looked at them ever noticed.

"And you, Mr. Simon Metzger?" The judge asked, now indicating Simon was to give his opening statement.

"Yes, your honor." He said, adjusting his tie, and glancing at her through the screen again. "I am here to seek financial recompense for providing for this woman, Vivian Liang, for seventeen years while she refused to work. I also seek to be exempted from the requested child support on the basis that it's highly unlikely they will make it to birth, as unfortunate as it is."

It was to be expected, because it was true.

A painful memory.

She'd only ever had one child, but it didn't mean she hadn't always wanted more than one child - didn't mean she hadn't tried. Back when she could chalk up Simon's behavior to just being stressed after work - because he was the one in charge, and it could be demanding - they'd talked about wanting a large family. He'd been an only child, and she really only ever talked to her sister, neither of them had very many friends outside of extracurriculars - and even then, none of them were close. It just felt like every time they'd tried to have a child, something went wrong, and each subsequent failure only made Simon madder.

"You're doing everything right? Right?"

"Of course I am! I don't know what's happening to me!"

"C'mon Viv, I thought you wanted a big family."

"I do..."

She straightens up in her seat, putting on... well, not a happy face, but one that doesn't look like it's in the middle of reliving something.

"I see." The judge says, fully glossing over that second part.

He'll never find out, because she will never tell him, but she is infinitely grateful that he doesn't ask for clarification like her mother used to. Any time there had been a tragedy, her mother always gave her a look of disappointment and reproach; she knew what it was about, her mother never believed her when she said it was a miscarriage. She never believed her, and she's not sure why her mother was like that. What had she done to deserve that? Any of it? The judgmental staring, and the side-eyes at family gatherings, and the way Simon always left her to explain what happened on her own, and didn't support her when her mother asked if she really wanted another child.

If she didn't want a big family she wouldn't have been intimate with Simon - at least, she would have done it far less - because it simply didn't appeal to her.

"And we are here today," he begins, clearing his throat, "to discuss the financial statements which have been sent in as evidence in order to determine the percentage share of the home sale. We are also here to finalize the custody arrangements for Jamie Metzger." His tone of voice for that one, implies that he knows what the result will be.

She does too.

It's no real secret that Jamie wants to stay with her father, because he was permissive and he didn't care if she did her homework regularly, and he was more than fine with her showing up at odd hours of the night after parties. He was fine with her getting tattoos and piercings - and from what she'd seen through social media, Jamie had many of them now. Part of her thinks it's because Jamie is the only child he has, so perhaps he simply chooses to spoil her.

"She's here." Simon says, forgoing the honorific entirely. "If you'd like, she can address where she'd like to remain."

"Oh? Please, let us get that out of the way then."

Jamie slides into view, pulling up a chair - she must have been there the entire time - and it's clear she's taken out the piercings to look more formally presentable. God, she's even pulled her hair back, so the purple ends weren't visible either, which means she looks... just like she did when she was younger. Before the tattoos, before the dyed hair, before the separation. It makes her chest hurt, because that's her baby girl, and Jamie always will be, even if she denies it - even if she stays with her father and they never speak again.

"Hi your honor."

It's a little strange to hear her sound so polite and respectful, because the last time they'd talked Jamie had simply yelled and complained that she was being stifled. As bad as that was, it wasn't as bad as the accusations of leaving her lonely on purpose - they'd both said things they regretted; at least, she regretted what she said. She couldn't be sure if Jamie did, or ever would.

"Hello, Ms. Metzger, now, you are seventeen, yes?" The judge asks, raising an eyebrow. "Old enough to decide your own arrangements."

"Mhm." She nodded, smiling a little bit. "Eighteen in four months, and I've made my choice."

Despite knowing what the choice would be, it's still as if everyone was holding their breaths and waiting. It felt a little like knowing what the future was going to hold, and still choosing to sit at the door and let fate meet you halfway.

"I... I want to stay with my dad."

Of course she did, why wouldn't she? Simon was more than able to provide for her, his new home was larger - perhaps she did a little more digging than she should - and was effectively a penthouse in Miami, and he had the funds necessary to ensure she went to a good college without having to work too hard for it. With his business as well, she could pick up a job like it was the easiest thing in the world. Jamie would probably love nothing more than to have that sort of security, hell, she would love it too, if she could have it.

But Simon didn't want her any longer, because she was "old and unattractive", and she was a melancholy coward at the best of times. Even when that fire ignited in her it was never for something normal, it was for making things, for building little contraptions or for listening to Christmas music in July.

The judge nods. "Then you shall."

It feels like a loss, but knowing it's what Jamie wanted makes it less... painful somehow. Sure, there's the feeling of betrayal considering she's the one who'd raised her while Simon worked and played rugby with his friends, and sure, she wishes it had turned out differently. But it's at least a step above simply having Jamie taken from her. Though, there's still one child who might be, she thinks, worried both about whether Simon was right, and she wouldn't be able to have them, or the possibility that they'd survive, and she'd lose them.

"Alright, now, onto the discussion of the home sale. Records state it was purchased in two-thousand-five, and the property is currently worth one point seven million." The judge's voice is droning and monotonous, but it's easy to latch onto it and listen. "Vivian, you are asking for a fifty-fifty split of the money earned from the property when a sale is finalized. Simon, you're seeking a sixty-forty split. Is there an explanation as to why you would prefer this split as opposed to an even one?"

"Yes, your honor." Simon is still adjusting his tie, it's something she knows is a nervous quirk of his and knowing that made his constant attempts to seem more confident than he was kind of funny. "I paid for the house, as well as the upkeep which maintained it. I was the only one employed, and therefore believe I'm entitled to sixty percent of the profits."

Of course she was unemployed, she had to leave college, and her hometown to live with him. And he'd insisted that she be a single mother and take care of herself, because his business was enough to support them both. "If you don't have to work, dear, I don't want you to." It sounded so innocent when he'd said it all those years ago, like he really meant that he wanted to take care of her, rather than just keep her there.

"I have receipts, as well as employment records too, your honor."

"And Vivian?"

"I... I was unemployed, yes, your honor." Her throat feels dry, and it feels a little bit like it's closing up.

It's true, but that doesn't make it any less embarrassing; and it's made all the worse by the fact it's not supposed to be embarrassing in the first place. Being a stay-at-home mother wasn't her dream, but she didn't hate it, in fact she quite liked it when he was at work. She just wished that things had gone differently, and he didn't treat it like some sort of shameful secret now, after being the one to propose it to her.

"I was a stay-at-home parent, as my ex-husband worked and supported the family."

The judge's gaze drifts to Simon's screen, in the background of which, Tilly is visible for a moment or two, walking past the open office door. Even though she hadn't really done anything heinous, the sight of her make's Vivian's blood boil, and she's sure if she focused hard enough, she could probably set Tilly's terrible, gaudy pink dresses on fire. Her head hurt, and she knew it was from the lack of sleep, but she wanted to stay awake for this.

"That is true, your honor, but I believe that I'm entitled to recourse for purchasing the house on a solo income."

Solo income?

His company was already making millions - as in plural - by that point, it wasn't more than a drop in the bucket to him. While he may have felt like he deserved it, she was under the impression that he didn't really need it - he'd have been fine without it - though she'd have benefitted from it so much. Even just the forty percent would have helped her out so much; but it was the principle of the matter to her.

"Mr. Metzger, I do see the reports of employment, as well as the copies of the home purchase receipts. However, before any decisions are to be finalized, I'll need proof that there's an in-progress sale on the house, as well as employment records from Ms. Liang."

"Of course, your honor, I'll get those to you as soon as I can." She nods, swallowing around a lump in her throat.

It's embarrassing to not have them, but it kind of slipped her mind.

She's only been employed for two, technically three - but it's her off day she's not counting it - days, and her direct employer's just died. But she'll get the paperwork, it'll be fine. She'll just... ask someone - ideally someone who is not Mike, despite his supervisory position over security. Either way, it's a problem for tomorrow's Vivian, because she's not about to go back and beg on her knees for her paperwork on her off day.

"Alright then, this hearing is adjourned, you will both receive an email to decide on a final hearing date, at which point any arrangements will be finalized. Good day."

Simon wishes him a good day and waits until the judge signs off, until the active member list only shows two names. "See? See how easy it is to talk to people? If only you learned how to do it sooner."

And then he logs off too.

She's left alone, sitting in the little kitchenette in the apartment, staring at the empty meeting room, and suddenly she can't help but cry. The tears come quicker than the resolve to contain them does, and it leaves her a hideous, sniveling wreck. Hunched over the small table she finally lets herself have one, real, genuine cry, fully ignoring the teacup - which is cold by now - and the rest of the world with it. These were always so exhausting, and she felt a little bit like if there was really a God out there, then surely, he could have done something. Made it easier perhaps, made Simon nicer about it, or made her with thicker skin.

Ultimately, she's only logged out because the system itself timed out, as opposed to anything she'd intentionally done. Even then, it doesn't prompt her to do anything else, anything at all.

"Okay, that's that done."

Saying it feels hollow and empty, and she's still just too tired to think, or do anything else.

Getting up, she grabs the teacup and stares at it for what feels like it could just be an eternity - realistically it's just a few minutes, but it drags on so long. Then she walks it over to the sink and pours the cold tea down the drain, because it never tastes as good as when it's been freshly brewed. Suddenly her hands are shaking and she's not sure why, her blood sugar isn't low, she's slept... enough, all she can chalk it up to is her mind playing tricks on her, and she has to set the cup down quickly.

It's harsher than she'd like, and the sound of the cup against the sink makes her hair stand on end - she's anticipating something that doesn't come.

"Just some shut eye." She tells herself as she runs her hands over her face. "I just need some shut eye."

The fact she thinks a little extra sleep could fix whatever sort of malfunction she had was cute, but wildly incorrect. Nothing that she did was ever going to fix her, nothing could ever fix the way she'd ignore or rebuff physical contact and sexual intimacy if she didn't feel like giving. Nothing would fix whatever sort of paranoia problems she had, or her inability to trust people with power. Nothing was going to fix whatever was wrong with her physically. Because she'd been born broken.

Even now, as she entered the meager bedroom - she'd parted with everything that didn't fit into two boxes - and sat down on the edge of the bed, she sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of a hand. It feels stupid crying about something like this, and she knows that if her father was alive, and was here, he'd tell her to stop before he gives her a real reason to cry. As horrible as it was for him to have said, which she knows because she'd never say it to Jamie, or to this little one, the seriousness and the sheer disconnect between his words and the situation would have actually snapped her out of it. But she's just far too tired to think much more, all she wants is to lie down and bury herself in the blankets and then never come back out.

Part of her wants to quit.

It's not a small part either.

Part of her just wants to throw in the towel and give up and quit this job because nobody'd read her resume - sue her, it still hurt, even though he'd died - and she'd been assigned to the single most enormous, and most terrifying animatronic there. The death on top of that, was the... well, the final nail in the coffin. She couldn't just go back to a place like that after what happened, especially knowing that someone there wanted to hurt her, or use her like means to an end. To what end? She didn't know, and she wasn't looking to find out. It'd be fine, she could just... turn in some sort of resignation tomorrow when she went in, right?

But she needed those papers, she needed to prove she was employable, and that she was making an effort.

Otherwise, there'd be no end to the proceedings, ever, and it'd be all her fault.

"Vivi how'd it go???"

She stares at her phone, brows furrowed, as she sighs. It would be so easy to tell April, because the two of them had always been thick as thieves; but April was now taking care of their mother and it'd be bound to get to her somehow. Her fingers hover over the buttons, it'd be the easiest thing in the world, all she'd have to do is type. Typing classes in school were always easy for her, she'd always been some sort of little prodigy - because she was never allowed to be anything else.

"It went ok, just tired. Catch up after a nap? :)"

Chapter Text

"So, you think you can do it?"

Stella's laying upside down on one of the many broken pieces of merchandise that's kept in the service tunnels, kicking her legs lazily. Donny's sitting down on the floor, cross legged, and from his judgment, probably already dirty again. Don had a way of doing that, but they all did. Donny was just, far, far more unmanageable, through no fault of his own.

"Yea - ah?" He asks, finding it difficult to get the hang of actually making the right noises with his mouth.

It's nothing like playing.

As he scans the room, he leans back in his chair, one arm slung over the back of it: Donny's running one finger over the edge of the knife, like it's some sort of nervous tic. He knows Donny so well, even though they'd not been manufactured together - Don was an older model, and absolutely filthy to boot. Hm, perhaps he should be a little big less judgmental about that, he knows it's not Donny's fault - but God, he'd just been cleaned. It hadn't even been a full twenty-four hours.

"Well, I think-" Stella begins, "that it'll be easy."

Both other endoskeletons wait for a response and get nothing in return. She becomes very insistently quiet, fidgeting with the tiny little joints in her fingers. She didn't particularly look embarrassed or shy or anything, but she did have a weird little air about her that she didn't have before. She'd always tended to keep her emotions close to her chest.

"Stella," Donny starts up, jabbing the knife in her general direction, "you always think everything's easy."

"Cause it is."

And now, he sits up straighter for a second, burying his head in his hands and sighing. He's known Stella as long as he's been online, and Donny only shortly after, and he's never grown accustomed to their little quirks. Honestly, he was advanced enough to remember each endoskeleton's own unique quirks and traits - the likes and dislikes that nobody thought they had. Because nobody thought they had anything until they had their shells, nobody knew. Nobody would ever know that Foxy had been a big film buff until he got his shell and got that taken away from him.

He was still righteously, indignantly upset about what happened to Foxy.

And it's been ages.

"Oooh, look at me, I'm Stella and I'm so stinkin' great!"

Glancing over, feeling the wires tug upwards toward the ceiling, Reginald puts his chin in one hand, leaning over the table. He was... quite annoyed with the way these two behaved, considering they were older than he was - if he could even count any age as his own - and he found them both to be immature. Every time they spoke, it served to remind him why he slept so much - he desperately just wanted to stay out of their petty quarrels as long as he could.

"What?" Stella suddenly asks, looking at him and crossing her arms.

"I - I didn't say... any - thing."

Stella gives him a big, toothy grin, and he just knows it's intended to be smug; then she folds her hands under her chin and flutters her eyes at him. "You agree with me, right? It's not hard."

"Do..." he raises a finger and points it at her, "not bring me in - into this."

Reggie wants to be impartial, really, he does; it's just so hard, considering the fact he knows these two the same way he knows his own make and model. He knows Don can't see - and therefore of course doing a lot of fine-motor tasks won't be easy - but he thinks Donny's far, far too immature about being told it's easier for other people. Stella was... fine, she could be really annoying sometimes, but she got the job done, and she knew what she was doing. Something, something pros and cons. Reginald didn't really care, he didn't bother talking to people if he didn't really have to - he'd much rather just play his silly little card games.

"Well, it's not. For your information." Stella leans over the arm of the chair and she bops Donny on the nasal plate.

"Stop!" Donny practically shrieks. "Stop doing that!"

"No! I don't have to, so I'm not gonna."

"Reginald, she's bothering me!"

He feels a little bit like he's babysitting, which is hysterical because of the fact that he'd previously been one of the endoskeletons who needed that sort of education; to be briefed and informed on proper human interactions and behaviors to display around children. It went... about as right as it could, but also about as wrong as it could, because now the display module that locked over his head and into his processor was now permanently fused to his face. Suddenly he laughs, mostly at the absurdity of the fact he was objectively the youngest of the three of them, but also at the sheer displeasure at the situation, because now he can never take off the stupid module. Even as he laughs, he knows they've stopped their playful bickering, because of their worry. Stella never tended to show it, but he knew some part of her cared, and Donny wore his emotions right on his sleeve, as easy to see as the sun.

"Dude?"

Stella's voice is a little unsure, and even without looking he knows he'll see concern.

"Don't wo - orry about it. I'm... f - fine."

Both of the others are looking at each other, well, Stella's looking, and Don's doing his best. Being blind doesn't make it easy, but God, he can conspire and plot silly little pranks and tricks with the best of them. Which, by the best of them, he really just meant Stella again. She'd been doing it more and more ever since the band upstairs got busier over the summer.

"If you say so, I guess." Stella stretches out, her joints clinking and clanking, and she sighs. "Anyways, that new girl's not half-bad, I guess."

"Oh, yeah! Reggie, you slept through it, but she was really nice; she even cleaned me off!"

"I do - n't care." He suddenly says, and even though he doesn't sound angry - just incredibly blunt - he can hear the other two endoskeletons reeling with shock.

It's the meanest he's ever been after all.

"Sorry. Poor - poor choice of... wo - rds." He mumbles, sitting up a little straighter in his chair and flexing his legs. "I don't ca - are about... about her. What about... Vane - Vanessa? Or - or Mike?"

Stella shrugs and rolls her eyes, and Donny drags the knife along the grout lines in the floor, both their own little tics. Part of Reggie might have found it cute, but the fact the knife makes that horrible grating "nails on chalkboard" noise just serves to piss him off a bit. It's kind of surprising to see how neither of them are excited to talk about this, and he knows it's because neither employee had been terribly kind to any of them. Donny, perhaps, seemed the least eager to be powered on in the same room as either of them, as if they frightened him, while Stella just seemed a little nervous. He wondered what that was about.

"Well, Vanessa's getting real sloppy," Stella hums, checking her nails - she doesn't have nails - and scoffing, "ever since that kid got inside."

"Define... th - at."

"I 'unno. Her work just screams of self-consciousness. Pity. She was fun."

"And," Donny suddenly interjects with what's probably supposed to be a smug smile, "you liked her."

"I did not!"

"Yes, you did! You didn't shut up about how pretty she was and-"

Stella makes an impressive leap off her chair and directly into Donovan's personal space, grabbing the other endoskeleton's shoulders. She begins to shake him, all the while repeatedly denying any sort of "like" for Vanessa, but with a new excuse or explanation each time she opens her mouth; and it seemed like Donny knew that, his laughter and insistence only growing louder the more she spoke. Children, the lot of them, it made him wonder what was so great about Stella in the first place. Sure, she had the whole Pizzaplex map in her head and Donny didn't, he could understand why she was chosen over him.

But Reggie and Stella were more or less the same, in fact, he'd had all the bugs worked out, he knew what he was doing, he had better firewalls and stronger struts. He should have been picked. Was it about his leg? The one that had been removed by staff, but poorly, with the knee hastily welded over to try and mitigate the damage? Was it because he couldn't walk? He deserved an answer, he needed an answer; he wouldn't even be that angry if the truth was that it was because of his leg, because it would have at least been a real answer and explanation. 

"Eno - ugh about the... "like", I - I want... inf - information. Please... a - and thank you."

"What else can I say? She's bad at her job."

Stella finally lets go of Donny's shoulders, getting off of him, and dropping him to the floor with a dull thud.

"And Mike?"

"Eh, Mr. Mitchell's harmless," she explained, "he just holes up in a little dark office with an energy drink and then cries for six hours."

"He reeks too," Donovan added, making a face, "bad body odor. Like a roach."

"Like a roach?!"

"Wait, Don - Donny, what do you me - an "like a roach"?"

Donovan laughed, pushing Stella back further with his good hand, and crossing his legs into a crisscrossed position. He then tilts his head and turns to face the sound of Reggie's voice, which feels a little bit weird - even though Reginald himself didn't have his eyes visible from behind the module, it felt weird seeing someone look near them during conversation, rather than at them. Because he at least could see, even if his vision was warped and his processors felt like they were constantly fried.

"Oh, I don't know, sometimes people call themselves that when they don't go outside. Like Stella!"

"I am not a cockroach!"

Reginald buries his head in his hands, and he sighs deeply. "Oka - y.... Roach or no - ot, what is he up - to?"

"The same thing I just told you. Sitting in a little dark room and crying into his monster." Stella crosses her arms and frowns at him, her brow-plates furrowing judgmentally. "Why?"

"...No rea - son."

He didn't know Mr. Mitchell enough to have a reason for the curiosity, but he knew enough to know something wasn't quite right. His connections to the network meant he could look at things like employee data - even though he knows he shouldn't - and it seemed like a couple employees didn't have anything. No address, no contacts, nothing that ties to their lives outside. It was all very interesting. Out of all of them, it was even more interesting, considering Mike Mitchell's records showed some sort of name change, but no family records or address, or even banking information. At least Luca had a linked debit card, and Angela at least had some old information.

Mitchell though? Nothing.

Even Ms. Shelley's information was sparse. Just listed her as having gone to school in Hurricane Utah and having a current address just outside of Boston.

It gets him thinking, as he idly flicks around the screen in his mind, there's only a handful of real employees with enough information to feel like they'd been real people. Real people with real houses and bank accounts and lives that went on outside of work, rather than just up and disappearing when not on the clock. One of them had their start date listed as earlier that week, and so that must be that technician, the other's listed as having bounced around within the company before ending up as an accountant here.

Still, it really didn't make a lot of sense.

Reginald knew that FazEnt had things to hide, and hatchets to bury, being wired into the Plex itself, and through it, the cloud, gave him the ability to see things nobody else could. He'd been reading the news quite a bit, lately, and watching old documentaries about the brand's rise and fall - and he was beginning to put together a timeline. Many, many years ago there was a bad, bad man, and ever since that man had been born, things just started to go downhill. A shame, really, someone like that could have done some real good if they wanted to.

"Reggie... do you know something we don't?"

He stays quiet, thoughtfully folding his hands under his chin.

Donny makes a quiet, curious noise, and scoots closer. Reginald can feel the presence of other endoskeletons lurking, but a quick check on his mental maps shows that they're a respectable enough distance from him to not overhear. Good. He doesn't want anyone to overhear this, it'd break their poor little hearts, the rest of the endoskeletons were so innocent, really.

"Well, let's just say... I have a hunch."

DJ Music Man - more or less known to all as DJ - was thinking.

He'd been doing that a lot, actually, and he's been doing it for a long time. Mostly he thought about things that were probably pretty common, like work, or maintenance - well, okay, common for other animatronics. But ever since that night other things had been taking precedence, unfortunately. Something about that night just didn't make any sense, there were failsafes in all of them that were supposed to protect against that sort of DDOS attack. The second something had occurred, they should have all shut off and entered safety mode, like Freddy had. Except it obviously hadn't happened, if his lack of warranty activation showed.

It had thrust him into Bouncer mode, and despite Bouncer mode supposedly still allowing for full processing power he remembered nothing other than a giant gaping pit in his memory banks. And there was the fact nobody else seemed to remember anything outside of a general sense of unease, or the feeling of having been sick; even then, they had no idea the extent of what might have happened. And he couldn't even ask Freddy, because Freddy couldn't set foot on the dancefloor.

Moon kind of got it - but then they'd gone and fucked it all up by dumping a dead body in one of the tunnels, and DJ had no idea which one. It could have been any of them because there were dozens of them, and if Moon had been half as clever as he knew they were, they'd have hidden it under the security hatches, where he couldn't get to it. His hands were too large, and despite the dexterity he'd been built with to operate the sound systems, he just couldn't open those locks without ripping the plating out entirely.

And that boy.

Gregory, apparently, his name was. The one Freddy had bonded to and had taken under his wing; DJ could sort of remember him, if he really focused and tried to pull physical descriptors from his memory.

Brown hair, blue shirt, khaki shorts.

A dirty face, wrinkled clothes, messy hair. The kid didn't look clean, didn't look like he'd come from school - or like he had anything to go back to. He didn't like the thought of that. He didn't like the implication that this place, full of animatronics who'd been hacked was still considered the safest place he could go. DJ swapped tracks to ensure nobody caught onto the fact he was getting carried away, but the thoughts didn't stop when the music changed.

He probably snuck in before they closed, it did make the most sense, if he'd come in with a big enough group people might not have realized there'd been nobody to cover his entrance fee; and he could have probably gotten away with pretending to be part of a group to get a free wristband. Even though he could clearly gather the fact that boy wasn't registered as a guest in the system - despite the wristband - he wanted to hold back from bringing it up. Usually, people were trespassing when they entered without paying the fee, and usually he handled it - he'd direct a guard right to them and watch them walk out dejected.

But this was a little kid.

Most of the people who snuck in had done it at night after closing, and either had spray paint or drugs - he didn't really care that they were dealing or doing, just not here, preferably - but what could a child have done? Looking back through the misty haze of memory loss, and really, really forcing the images to clear up, he's not sure why Bouncer mode would have done that in the first place. It was experimental, yeah, but he always had enough autonomy to not actually hurt anyone. Maybe give them a good scare when it picked them up, but never to do what he did.

His eye hurts.

He hadn't brought it up earlier, because self-scans showed it had nothing to do with her craftsmanship, but it'd been sore ever since that new technician started. The belt was a good fit, it didn't smoke, and he could see, but every time he tried to blink it felt uncomfortable. Like the glass was warped, like... nope. It was just a little discomfort, nothing he couldn't live with. God only knows he's live with worse. Small miracles, maybe, that Mike Mitchell - not his name - had the foresight to put caution tape up around the stage, preventing the kids from getting too close.

Obviously because of the fact it was still easy to tell he wasn't exactly in pristine condition anymore, came with the territory of a voided warranty, eh? Automata had officially wiped their hands of him forever, and he's not even a little upset. It's hard to miss Kanazawa since he's never seen beyond the warehouse, they'd woken him up in. "A small test," one of them said "to make sure he walks right, and his routines are functional."

DJ's endlessly grateful he's practiced enough to keep the show going even while his mind's elsewhere entirely.

The second they'd confirmed he worked properly they'd shut him back off and disassembled him, then shipped him to the states. Probably would have been one of the low points of his life had he actually been awake for that, but it was one of the few things he had in common with Moon. They both tended to sleep through all the important things. Though, in Moon's case it might have been narcolepsy - or their equivalent to it - and in his it had been full system shut offs, and some poorly timed recharging. Man, that's something he's not sure he'd have ever missed.

He used to make do with a long cable that was wired right above the stage and that plugged into his neck, but after a while people stopped wanting to go up to the catwalks to figure out why it was a bigger energy drain than expected. So... they'd rewired the stage itself, shutting down the arcade to do it. Suddenly he's reminded of William, and the technician again, and he doesn't know why William was so up in arms over the arcade being closed for an hour. It's been closed for longer before, and back then William had been the one to do it.

Someone's approaching and judging from the footsteps, which he can hear through his headphones - even though they're supposed to dull sound - it's their accountant. Well, not their accountant, but the company's accountant, coming to do a sweep and determine whether or not those replacement panels were worthy of being budgeted for. Finally deciding to bow out of his thoughts, he snaps back to attention on the stage, and he's realizing belatedly that more time has passed than he thought. Mrs. Fitzsimmons wasn't even supposed to be here until noon, and yet here she was. He'd have chalked it up to her being early, at least until he double checks his internal clock and realizes that no, she's on time, down to the minute.

And speak of William, the devil, he was there too, probably the one giving the grand tour.

Something about him put DJ on edge.

Pointedly, he ignores it, and he goes back to the set, which thankfully, has a smaller crowd than before. It's never particularly had a huge crowd, he's not the drawing attraction in the same way that someone like Freddy was, but it brought in enough people to keep him busy. Though, a smaller crowd did mean it was easier for him to "overhear" conversations, and he did it more than he liked to admit. People could be really insightful, especially if they thought nobody was listening.

"This is DJ Music Man," Billy sounds more like he's showing him off as opposed to introducing them both, "manufactured for us last year and shipped over to us this past May."

Mrs. Fitzsimmons looks like she objectively does not care. And DJ likes her already.

He'd heard of her, vaguely, from through the grapevine and around the bend; most of his information had a lot of holes in it, and if he dared to claim, biases too. Some of the things he'd heard came from old co-workers, and some of it came from people at the Pizzaplex, discussing her arrivals - not that he ever needed to worry, because he'd always been under warranty earlier. But now there was the possibility that his repair work would slow down considerably, especially if it was something costly, and FazEnt decided to "trim fat" as he'd heard it put before. Oh, his life was going to get more complicated than it already was, huh?

"...I'd prefer to hear this from him."

"The DJ doesn't... talk, Mrs. Fitzsimmons."

"And why is that?"

"There were localization issues," Billy looks away, as if the conversation was making him uncomfortable, "and until they're resolved we're keeping its voicebox off, to minimize guest confusion."

"You're keeping him silent... because he doesn't speak English?"

DJ really, really loved Mrs. Fitzsimmons already, and he was absolutely going so far as to say the word loved in this case. Nobody - except that technician but he was chalking that up to hormones - ever went to bat like this for him. Especially not with the history she's had with animatronics, she perhaps had the most logical reason to objectify him, literally. She's... strange, he decides after a little more thinking, but strange isn't bad. Not always.

"What's wrong with his eye?"

"Oh, that?" Billy laughs sheepishly and rubs the back of his neck. "Some teens broke into the arcade at night to steal quarters and... well, roughed it up a bit."

"Mr. Lewis, I need you to be serious with me. A straight answer, that's all I want, or this is won't even be considered for the budget."

Wow, she means business, and that's great! DJ respects that! However, Billy's never exactly been the type of guy to give a straight answer to anything, ever; normally it's not a problem because he'd never relied on getting straight answers, but now he's starting to realize just how much of a pain in the aft it could be.

"...We didn't have the right paneling to repair the cosmetic damages."

"Cosmetic damages from what? You did say he got... roughed up."

Billy pinches the space between his eyes and sighs deeply. "They were throwing rocks. Y'know, teen stuff."

Mrs. Fitzsimmons stares at him for a very, very long time without speaking.

DJ appreciates that she's actually taking the time to think about this, because it feels a lot like she's considering all the options. She looks like she's spent a lot of time thinking about things, if human really could be prone to stress-induced wrinkles. Something about her strikes a chord in him, and he knows exactly where all that stress has come from. He pities her a little bit, but if he could say it, he's sure she'd find offense. Part of him hopes she knows how to sign, but even if she did, he's technically on the clock.

The crowds don't notice anything - he's gotten good at making sure none of them figure out that he's not exactly focused - but he knew that if he'd stopped his performance to sign, they would. Even then, if she knew, Billy's reaction would put him on edge. Something about the fact that Billy seemed to hate them for their construction, and found them eerie, confused him. That technician was afraid of him because she was arachnophobic, sure it wasn't his fault, but he could at least get from point A to point B and figure out why he frightened her before she said it. Billy didn't seem to have a point A in the first place.

"You, Mr. Lewis, are a very lucky man."

"I - huh?"

"You're lucky we've got enough of a budget left to get those replacement parts." She says, tugging a lock of hair out of her face.

"Really? That's gr-"

"-But we can't afford to expedite the shipping, that'd put us over. They'll get here when they get here."

Oh. That sucks, but it's something to look forward to at least.

Knowing what he does about roads, he's guessing it'd be a while; the damn things seemed to be in a perpetual state of construction at the best of times. Not to mention traffic, how many cars there were, how fast cars tended to move... how dangerous roads could be. He feels bad, suddenly, and if he actually had the ability to cry without making a terrible, hazardous mess, he would. It wasn't fair, but nothing was really fair, huh? He's sure Mike would know what he meant by that, even if Mike was the last person on Earth he wanted to see at any given time. Vanessa, well, she'd probably know too, just not as intimately as him.

After all, that sure hadn't been her choice, though judging from the audio he pulled from the depths of his memory, Mike didn't choose it either.

Someone else made the choice, and that's just the darndest thing.

"Alright, thank you Mrs. Fitzsimmons."

"...Of course." She smiles, and when DJ glances over, he spots her level her gaze at him critically. Then she smiles at him, on purpose. "And thank you, DJ, you do marvelous work."

He's pretty sure his processor's about to fry from that one, and he has to fight very hard to keep an ancient line of code nobody'd bothered to bug-test from kicking on at an inconvenient time. It's... flattering, it's sweet, and he doesn't understand why it'd be coming from her, of all people. But he's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if it was Mrs. Fitzsimmons, or even if it was that technician. The one that found him too large and too frightening to bother understanding, but who still made the effort to not offend him.

She was a curious one, he thought, watching as Billy and Mrs. Fitzsimmons enter into a very boring conversation about stocks and bonds and the quarterly report. That's something he doesn't have enough interest to "overhear" so he continues his work, and he continues to think. Her name was Vivian, right? it sounded right to him when he thought about it, she came across as... nice, but weird. Kind of like a sopping wet dog who'd been... oh, no, not like that. Not like a dog at all.

God.

That was a mental pit he wasn't quite ready to dip into yet.

Too soon.

Chapter Text

When she arrives to work the next day, she is only barely starting to feel normal again. Not so tired, slightly less scared, but still not exactly happy to be there. Walking into the breakroom to put her purse away, she notices that Mike's heating up some sort of microwave dinner. Sure, it's like eight thirty in the morning, but Mike apparently works the nightshift with Mrs. Shelley. He stares at her, and she stares at him, and something in the vent above them rattles.

"Oh, don't you do anything." Mike snaps up at the vent covering.

She's not sure if she should ask, clearly they had some sort of issue with each other, but she's not sure what, or even if she cares. Emotionally, she's still the tiniest bit drained. Hell, she'd even gone through the effort to do her makeup despite the fact she knew she'd probably sweat it off. Something about the hearing made her worry about what she looked like without it. There's a lump in her throat she has to try and swallow around.

"Er-" she puts her purse in the locker and stares up at the vent as she does, "Mr. Mitchell, are you... okay?"

Mike jumps about a foot in the air, like he'd been more concerned with the tiny animatronic he was arguing with than actually noticing her. "Gah! Don't - don't do that, yeesh."

"Sorry, didn't mean to." She mumbles, playing with her long ponytail.

It feels the same way it did when she'd offended Simon in the past, either with something she said or she did, or something she hadn't said or done. Usually it was something she'd forgotten, either picking up dry cleaning, or vacuuming the rug in the dining room - she couldn't move the table though, not on her own - or not making "enough" for dinner. Even though what was considered enough tended to change on a whim every night.

Simon tended to do that, he'd say something, or do something, indicating what he wanted from her and then he'd change his mind; he'd go so far as to pretend he'd always thought that way. She doesn't know why, always chalked it up to him being picky, because he was; and she'd tolerated it, because it was just the way he was, he couldn't change that now, at his age.

"It's fine." Mike suddenly rubbed the space between his eyes.

When he looked back up, her gaze followed, and she could spot a Mini glaring at Mr. Mitchell in a way that felt intentional; but then it looked over at her, and it calmed down considerably, even waving one of its tiny hands. She's not sure what to do other than wave back, her motions timid and subdued. Then she turns to the charging rack on the wall, picking up a Faz Wrench and a hand unit, letting them both boot up to life.

She doesn't immediately respond to Mike, instead watching as he takes his food out of the microwave and lamely picks at it with the fork. Instead, she just keeps thinking about how Simon would have obviously preferred something like this over the kind of food she grew up with. He just, in his own words, didn't have a very adventurous palette. Even now thinking about it offended her greatly, but she just needed a thicker skin - he was used to good old fashioned American cooking, could she really, genuinely blame him for not being excited about trying what sort of foods she grew up with?

He was looking out for her.

People could be so racist about that sort of thing, and she knew he only ever wanted to protect her. That's what it was about, protecting her. He tried to keep her from making a fool of herself or giving other people any reason to judge her. Thoughtful like that, she thought about it in the past.

She's not sure he was thinking about her back then, actually.

"So... how's it going?" Mike - Mr. Mitchell - suddenly asks, still not eating. He's still got his mask pulled up, and she wonders if he's waiting for her to leave first. Maybe he's shy.

Vivian stares at him, tugging her low ponytail a little tighter, and she shrugs. "It's... going."

Mr. Mitchell just stares at her, incredulous, like he can't believe her; she doesn't even believe herself, so she knows it won't fool him. But at least he has no desire to pry, or to pretend like he cares more than he does, so he nods and looks back down at his food. "Cool."

"Hey, Mr. Mitchell?"

He glances up at her, looking confused, but open, receptive - she's amazed she gets that impression from him at all when the only thing she can see is his eyes. They're brown-ish, and the hair poking out from under his cap is also... brown-ish. "Yeah?" He looks like the most stock-standard guy on Earth, like he could be in The Bachelor and blend in just fine.

"...What's Ms. Shelley like?" She suddenly asks before she can stop herself; still thinking about that interaction between them.

She can't shake it, the paranoia, the fear, the fact they want to get her fired.

"She's fine," Mike responds, poking his fork into the meal and shrugging, "little bit of a hardass."

"Anything else?"

Something in his expression - what she can see of it - looks uncomfortable, and she can see the way his eyes squeeze shut for a second, and the way that he tenses like he's trying to shake something off. If there's something wrong, he doesn't want to talk about it, maybe it's personal, maybe it's professional - maybe she got a promotion he'd been aching for for ages. Maybe he got passed over and it turned into a sore spot that he didn't know what to do about.

"Kind of bratty I guess?" His tone implies he's not even sure about what he's saying. "I don't know. She - she's fine, we get on okay."

Vivian nods and signs into the hand unit she'd picked from the charging rack on the wall. The Faz Wrenches didn't actually need to be signed into, but the hand units did require an employee number and password to get into. It's already displaying her tasks - starting with arcade machine maintenance.

"That's nice," she murmurs softly, tucking the devices into her pockets, "it's... nice to have a good relationship with your coworkers."

She can feel his eyes on her, and when she turns around, she can see it. He doesn't necessarily look angry, just kind of confused, his head's even tilted a little bit, like the world might make more sense at forty-five degrees. It's weird, she just finds it weird - she swears she sees pity in his eyes, and the last thing she wants is pity - so she turns back and starts towards the door. Mike makes a strangled noise, like he was about to say something, but the words died in his throat, and then he went back to being quiet.

"I'll get started, you uh... have a nice meal." She nods as she leaves.

As she crosses the Pizzaplex, on her way to the Fazcade, she's suddenly besieged by Tiger Rock, who looks a little bit haggard, if she had to try and describe it. He seems completely apologetic about it however, crouching slightly so his height was less intimidating. "Mrs. ...Vivian, I'm so sorry. We just had been getting... some calls last night."

He's bigger than she remembered, but the last time she saw him, he was on stage, and not close enough for her to really get a good look. But now, she could - and she found his construction kind of strange, in a good way. He didn't look like the average FazEnt animatronic, and he doesn't even look like much like a tiger - very stylized, if she had to put words to it. Though, she can definitely tell the way he's smiling implies nerves - something about this isn't a good thing.

"Calls...?"

"We answer them sometimes, when nobody else can, and when we have nothing that's higher priority," he explains sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck, "and there were about... thirty-three last night."

She doesn't like where this is going, because she thinks she knows exactly where it's going.

"I... I'm so, so sorry."

"Your husband?"

When he asks if it's her husband, she winces, sucking in a breath and shaking her head slightly. Oh, does he not - well, that tracks, she obviously hadn't wanted to make it clear to any of her human coworkers, let alone the animatronics. Hell, they might not even know what divorce is, outside of the Daycare Attendant. Even then, it'd probably only be because of shared custody arrangements that they'd need to. Ultimately all she can say is, "no."

Tiger Rock's eyes widen, and he frowns, suddenly standing at his full height. 

"Your last name's not Metzger?"

"...No. No, it's not."

"You know," he suddenly sounds thoughtful, rubbing his chin, "we're not supposed to ignore customer calls. But hypothetically if we couldn't get any customer calls from a number...."

Then he smiles at her, sharp, shark-like and slightly smug. She knows what he means, or she thinks she does. He's going to block the number, and as long as nobody ever finds out then no one will get in trouble. His tone indicates he's done this before, enough times to have some sort of experience with it. That surely can't be legal, or ethical; even if it was all above the books, it's not kind. Not to customers - even if some could be cruel, she doesn't think that blocking them altogether is right - or to anyone who might know them. But... then again, Simon's talking about her like she's still his wife.... She doesn't even know how he found out where she was working.

Actually, scratch that, he probably heard it from Eiko. She had, honest to God, no idea why her mother kept contact with him - maybe just to see her granddaughter - but it made sense. She'd overheard that one phone conversation with April and probably immediately tattled on her to her ex-husband. It was very childish, but her mother was a big believer in the man being the head of the household, and divorce being for quitters.

"You - you can do that?"

"Sure, I can." He says, gently resting a hand on her upper back, a warm smile on his face. "Sunrise taught me, you know. He's the real brains behind the operation."

Somehow the fact that it's the one designed for the younger children doing this - and teaching the others - makes it more absurd.

Absurd and slightly funny.

"W - well, thank you."

His eyes widen for a second, and he blinks a few times before he finally seems to come to the realization, she's talking to him and thanking him. "You're welcome, ma'am."

Then, he pats her shoulder softly, gives a courteous bow of the head, and then walks away.

She watches him leave, noticing the way he doesn't immediately go towards Rockstar Row, instead, he casts a glance over towards the hallway connecting the Atrium to the Daycare, like he's thinking about something. Like he's debating on paying Sunrise a visit. Maybe to thank him? Maybe to let him know that he'd be doing it? That way they'd all be on the same page about it, so nobody would report it to upper management.

Sunrise. That's a... strange, but nice name, she decides after a moment, thinking to herself as she approaches the Fazcade; it makes sense Sun and Moon might just be nicknames, but she'd honestly not given it much thought, if any. Especially considering how Sun hadn't corrected her when she asked if that was their name. They probably could have said it wasn't, but they didn't. And Moon, despite the less-than-chatty behavior came across as no nonsense, and she got the feeling that if anyone was going to correct her, she'd expect it to be him.

"Hello, good morning." She waves at one of the various people in the arcade as she enters. They pay her no mind.

Go figure.

Suddenly the thought of DJ smacks her upside the head. When they'd practiced the rudimentary signs a couple days ago, he'd made his stance on full names pretty clear. He didn't like being referred to as DJ Music Man, he just wanted to be DJ - like something about the full name annoyed him. Maybe it was wordy, and maybe he knew enough about nicknames to know it could be shortened to something easier to say and to sign. It's got to be that, surely. Something about ease of access, speed and simplicity. He may have been a giant, built for form moreso than function - no offense, if that could even be considered offensive to him - but maybe he appreciated some simplicity.

Today isn't really about the DJ though, despite what she's been told her job would be on that first day - which hadn't even been what she'd signed up for in the first place - the general "Fazcade Technician" work also included making sure the arcade machines ran well, weren't broken, and had tickets. She's pretty sure that they'd been exaggerating when they said kids cried about it. Considering the arcade was for older kids and teens, she gets the impression they either meant a younger child who'd come in with someone, or the most emotionally immature teenager ever. Even before she turns away from the dancefloor to work on the machines, she can feel DJ's eyes on her - which is weird, considering the fact he's got sunglasses that are so dark you can't see anything. But she knows what she feels, she's lived paranoid for long enough to notice the difference in the air quality. He's watching her.

She should probably explain herself.

"Tech stuff, arcade maintenance." She signs because it's easier for him to see her hands move than to try and hear her over the music.

There's no way he can respond with sign of his own, considering the fact he's busy, but she waits patiently for him to dip his head in a small nod. Something small and easy to mistake to the average viewer. She knows she doesn't need to actually give the DJ any warning about this, it's her job to do this, and DJ isn't even a person. She doesn't have to cater to his "moods", he isn't real.

As she approaches the first level machines, she's got her Faz-Wrench and hand unit in her back pocket, and she stops and checks each one, using her hand unit to scan for issues. None of them look like they have any, and the scans are coming up clean. No repairs needed, no tickets running low, nothing to do other than check the next game, and the one after that.

The player list on just about every game showed someone named GGY - she had her suspicions about who that was - at the top of the scoreboard.

Probably Gregory.

One of the spots is empty, save for a standing sign apologizing for the delay, and explaining that they had to pull the Princess Quest game series due to damages. It said that "it shouldn't be long!" with a hastily drawn smiley face after the exclamation point.

Couldn't they send those back?

To the manufacturer and have them repair the games if it's so bad?

Not her place to say, she thinks, as she finishes checking the first-floor games. By then she's tired and needs to sit for a second, though she knows if she sat down here, she'd never check the other levels. Stairs were her worst nightmare, and despite not exactly being keen on going up them, she's got a job to do, and by God, she'll do it. Once she's upstairs, she can look over at the people on the floor below, and she once again spots that kid, Luca, talking with an older man - clearly a father, judging from the three kids next to him. It looks like he's dealing with an upset customer, and she decides not to dwell - she's new, she couldn't help them, and she knows almost nothing.

The most she knows is really just... small, probably irrelevant things she picked up from Billy, like sorting joints in the service tunnels; or it's something she learned from the endoskeletons, like actual navigation skills down there. Even then, it's not enough to make her anywhere near competent at the job. Especially not the customer-facing side of it. She's a technician, not a ticket taker, not a customer service employee - she just works on the machines.

But she carries on, ignoring the situation unfolding on the floor below her.

"Poor kid." She murmurs to herself as she decides to just get it over with and scan the games up here too.

Surely the elevator here is for customers, but they must have a service lift as well, because otherwise there'd be no way to get the machines up here.

It's really easy to get into a system, because most of the job is automated through the hand unit. All she has to do is approach one of the games and scan some sort of weirdly high tech QR code on the side - it's not laid out the same way most QR codes are anywhere else; instead, it feels like it's a special type of QR code for the hand units specifically. Then the unit runs through the machine's diagnostics on its own and spits out a color-coded report. Green meant the machine was working just fine, yellow meant something was running low, or was at risk of breaking, and red must have meant something was really wrong. But none of them came up anything but fine.

Something about that feels a little bit strange, because surely not every game could be in such perfect condition, right? Surely one of them must have been running low on tickets, surely one of them must have had a faulty coin slot that got jammed and needed to be fixed - but the hand unit kept telling her everything worked just fine, and she wasn't going to risk breaking a machine just to satisfy her own suspicions.

That'd get her booted out on her arse so fast she'd get whiplash.

As she finishes up, there's a deep, thudding noise - way louder than any bass could be - towards her left, and up on the wall. People respond with what sounds like wonder and amazement. It must be something good.

There's freaky triple-jointed legs.

It's crawling up the wall.

Spiders.

There's a giant spider.

Breathing starts to feel painful, like trying really hard to breathe underwater in a pool. She squeezes her eyes shut, because she's afraid she might see eight beady eyes.

She's suddenly very sweaty, and her mouth is dry.

She has to leave immediately.

Right this instant.

Even though she knows, logically, that it's DJ Music Man, her mind's not cooperating. Because he's moving more than she's ever seen him, and now she can actually see all those legs moving at once. All she can see is a spider. A household pest.

She can't see him.

Suddenly she's backing up, her legs shaking fiercely, and she doesn't even know where she's going.

If anyone asks about it later, she'd tell them she was going to see if she could find and fix up the old princess quest games.

The first machine she finds in the back halls of the Fazcade - there's a security office back there, and a giant tunnel that implies DJ Music Man could crawl around back here too. She really, really hates that thought, because it's just so big, they've made the DJ in a way that just makes it too much. Obviously, it's supposed to be a big, bombastic character; it's fun, it's bright, it's loud - she can still hear the music through the walls. It's... not her cup of tea.

It's too loud, it's too heavy, and it just doesn't strike her fancy.

She's always preferred softer music, but she was willing to make exceptions for Christmas Music that was a little more... brass oriented.

That was another reason she just wasn't the right person to work on the DJ. Not only was she petrified of spiders and heights to the point she couldn't be working on him in any meaningful way; the catwalks were no-go's, to the point even just looking up at them made her queasy and breathless. But when it moved, the fact those limbs moved like that, the way that DJ walked and the way it could climb. Her breathing was still a little bit too ragged to be comfortable, but at least she's safe.

When she looks over the machine, it's not the first in the series; she's actually really surprised to notice that the games aren't stored together.

Logically, it would make more sense to keep a series together, right?

"Well, not my place to tell corporate what to do." She mutters to herself, pulling out her hand unit and searching for the QR code.

The entire machine is so messed up, in ways that she can't even describe. It's missing two legs, and it's slumped over and leaning to the side; not to mention the fact it looks like someone's taken a giant cutter and sliced it open to scrap for parts. There's a gaping hole in the side of the machine, too big and too out of place to just be an attempt to get to the coin receptacle inside.

Once she finds it, she crouches down - as much as she can manage to - and scans it, getting back an obviously red light.

She knew the outcome before she even scanned the game, but somehow the realization was made all the more daunting by the hand unit's helpful list of repairs and replacements. All new internal wiring, a new system board - someone stole what made it run, why? - power supply, and a control panel. Someone had snapped the joystick in half, but even when she looked, she had no idea where the missing piece went.

Not to mention the artwork, which was old, faded, and beginning to rub off.

The title card above the display screen clearly had been backlit at one point in the old machine's life, but now she could spot how the bulbs were either burnt out or had exploded. One of her hands gently reaches out - like she's about to hold someone's hand - and she gives the machine a very light, almost affectionate pat. She knows it's not real, just like DJ, or Moon, or any of the animatronics in the Pizzaplex, but something in her chest still aches and twists with some silly kind of comradery, as if they maybe, just maybe, could have been.

Her mother would hate that, her father would hate that, Simon - Simon especially - would hate that.

"It stopped being cute when you were ten, chibikko." Eiko had said, reading the newspaper - not even paying attention.

Vivian remembered staring at her, confused and hurt. She'd just gotten back from school, and she'd tried to tell her mom she was being bullied - through tears, even - but her mom didn't really care. As long as she was quiet her parents didn't think too much about her in general. Even though she knew why April got more attention, she still didn't like it, because it hurt. "Mom they're making fun of me."

Eiko glanced over the rim of her glasses, lips pursed. "Well, have you considered giving them less reasons to do that?"

As she checks over the side of the machine with the giant hole in it, she uses the hand unit's flashlight function to get a better view inside the machine. There are whole chunks of wiring ripped out, like someone had buckled down and just yanked it out with their bare hands. That had to hurt, surely. She can already imagine the electrical burns, the feeling and the visual combined would be... well, painful.

Out of everything, she'd need to figure out the mechanical repairs first, because the artwork could be recreated once it works, once it looks like it wouldn't shock you if you looked at it wrong.

Turning around to see if she could locate any sort of toolkit back here, she spots another game in worse condition, tipped over on its side. "Fruity Maze" the faded lettering on the side proclaims. This one not only wasn't in any condition to be on the floor, but there wasn't even a sign; at least the princess quest games actually had a sign apologizing for their removal. She's sure she would have seen a sign. This one's a sit-down style game, and she can even see one of the accompanying stools sticking out of a pile of stock and other machines - the legs were broken, and the upholstery was ripped.

It's supposed to support four players, apparently, but it didn't look like anyone had used it in some time.

"Lonely, huh?" She asks it, not expecting an answer.

Then, she looks for a QR code, like there had been on the other games, but there wasn't one - at least, not one on any of the sides she could actually see. It'd be just her rotten luck for the QR code for the hand unit to be on the side it had been tipped onto. So, the hard way it was, she thought.

She swiped back to the hand unit's main arcade maintenance screen, typing the name of the cabinet into the search bar.

Nothing.

"Huh, that's weird."

It didn't have Fruity Maze in the system, like the game never even existed to the Pizzaplex. That would explain why there wasn't a sign and would probably explain why she hadn't been asked about it yet - nobody even knew it existed. But then, why would they be keeping it here? If they were planning to fully redo it and then put it out into the arcade it would make some sense - maybe they just didn't have the manpower to do it yet - or, maybe they were going to scrap it for parts for the other machines. It looked old, and if they had other machines just like it, some of the parts could be backwards compatible.

There weren't any toolboxes though, she forces herself to get back on track, crossing the first task off her hand unit's list so it's clear to anyone who looks that she's working; even though this probably didn't fit the definition of working they wanted. She'd need to find one, and she'd need to see if there's any parts that she can salvage, and she knows exactly where she'll need to look - the service tunnels. They keep... just about everything mechanical down there, well, except for the stuff in this weird little hoarder's den.

As the clunky staff elevator creaks and squeaks and almost stops again she can feel her stomach tying itself into knots. So, to stave off the approaching panic attack she goes over the list of things she'd need. Sound chip for the game audio, arcade system board to actually make it run, a new joycon - the control panel was... salvageable, she'd just need to remove it and insert the new joycon - and maybe a new coin box. Though, that looked relatively untouched.

Though, she knows better than to get her hopes up, there's no way in hell she's going to find all of the parts she needs, and it'd be a miracle if she even found one of them.

She loathes it down here, in the service tunnels. Despite the company she had before, that was just temporary; it wasn't like Stella and Donny were people who worked here who could show her the ropes, it's not like she could learn from someone who was also untrained by technicality. And yet, she at least knows what she's looking for, ideally a sound chip and arcade system board. Get the tough stuff out of the way first. There must be someone, anyone, who knows more than she does; for God's sake she hasn't done this since college.

And even then, she hadn't actually completed college either, having dropped out sometime in her sophomore year at Simon's behest.

The hand unit's flashlight function is a lifesaver down here, as she wanders the halls and tries to figure out exactly where they'd store the arcade machine parts. She can occasionally see an endoskeleton out of the corner of her eye, but it's clear they didn't see her in return. No, they were too busy... playing? Interacting? It looks like they were playing together, and she can get a clear-enough view of two endoskeletons - not Donny or Stella - are playing what looks like pattycake. It's a weirdly touching visual, but also incredibly weird and creepy to her, due to the fact neither are human, and neither resemble actual children.

There are a few signs on the wall, not in any good condition, of course - it seems like as long as it wasn't customer facing, the company just didn't care what things looked like, or whether they fell into disrepair.

"Yeah, that tracks, I... guess."

Thinking back, it totally makes sense, considering the almost hoarder-like condition of the backstage hall behind the Fazcade, and the fact that the staff elevator seemed to always be at risk of totally shutting down at any given moment. If customers didn't see it, then it wasn't a big deal, apparently. She keeps going, trying to figure out which of the storerooms down has the door labelled as either Fazcade or Arcade Machine Parts, but there's no dice.

She's starting to wonder if they even have the parts for this, because she hasn't found even the barest hint of anything implying they do. Surely, they'd have to, but no, maybe they don't - maybe they really do just scrap old machines to fix the broken ones. It's a stupid, inefficient system, but it's cheaper in the short term - and if what she knows about investors is true, they love short term wealth. Stepping over dollars to pick up a nickel.

Simon had been like that, not at the start, but as his company took off, he changed. 

He started getting pickier at restaurants, and his patience started to wane; it got to the point that she just felt embarrassed being seen with him due to his random outbursts. Something was out of stock, they didn't carry a specific brand of wine, the plate is too hot, or he didn't get something he hadn't asked for. But if she'd gotten something that was wrong, or her meal was the one where something hadn't been right, he'd encourage her not to make a scene; it wasn't ladylike to complain.

She'd put her skill at biting her tongue to use. It's the same reason she didn't wear a lot of blue when they were married.

As she walks, she finally finds some sort of clue where to look, down one of the branching pathways there's a sign directing her to the left, so she follows it. There's a metal scraping, scratching noise from down the hallway to the right, and it makes her wonder if the Minis ever come down here? Maybe DJ sends them on little tasks to go places he can't, and to do things he can't. Oh, God, DJ. He might have seen her leave, and he already knew. Because of that stupid plastic spider, he knew she would never really do more than tolerate him at best. She couldn't do that to him, even if he wasn't really alive. Even if he wasn't real.

It feels a little bit like she's going insane, as she approaches one of the rooms down that hallway, and she shoves open the door.

 Something in here stinks.

It's not... the worst stench she's ever faced, having dried up enough to stop smelling like fresh garbage and instead like a dry musk, but it's still pretty foul.

There's a pile of parts scattered around the floor in a haphazard manner, and pools of what looked like motor oil on the floor. Not to mention the weird, conspiracy theorist-style corkboard on the wall, with old newspaper clippings and the stereotypical red string. It draws her in, something about it is almost magnetic, and she can't stop herself from getting closer to look at it. There's even a little timeline, hastily written onto a loose sheet of lined paper, and taped to the wall. But there's even stacks of full newspapers on the dinky little desk right under the corkboard. Like someone was trying to make a full profile for... something.

One of the newspapers is about something called the missing children incident, a name that - even without context - makes her skin crawl.

"Five children were reported missing after entering Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria after school. The Hurricane establishment opened in 1985, and only six months after the grand event, police were called to search the location. Ultimately, they were unable to locate the children's remains, but did find a locked janitorial closet; after forcing the door open, they found what appeared to be a murder weapon. The parent company, Afton Robotics LLC. paid reparations to the families of the missing children, and the Pizzeria was put under a temporary close in order to fumigate and clean the entirety of the location."

""It's a tragedy," said owner, William Afton, "and I feel for the parents, I really do. There's no worse feeling in the world than knowing you won't see your baby again." He declined any further comment."

"This is the second of tragic and fatal events at a location owned by Afton, the first revolving around his own son Evan Afton, in 1983, at the original location, Fredbear's Family Diner. Reports on the event revealed that Evan had been picked up and that his head had been placed into the mouth of an animatronic, which then closed on him. Original medical records stated that Evan was likely to make a full recovery, though mental impairment was possibly; unfortunately, Evan Afton died one week after he was released from the hospital due to brain hemorrhaging."

People died? Kids died?

Children have died because of animatronics like this. She swallows around a lump in her throat, staring at the grainy, black and white picture of Evan Afton in the newspaper. At the bottom of the page there's a little memoriam for the other children, with pictures of them as well. None of them looked like they could have been any older than twelve, and it makes her eyes well with tears. They were so young, and someone had killed them. Her hands are shaking as she folds the newspaper back up and sets it on the stack.

Glancing up at the corkboard, she sees the timeline begins with Fredbear's Family Diner being established, but she looks down a little ways and spots it. Afton Robotics LLC disbanded sometime after 2004, after the death of Henry Emily, Afton's business partner.

There's even a cease and desist tacked to the board, addressed to one "Edwin Murray" for misappropriating company materials, warning him away from whatever it was he was doing. She notices right away that there's a highlighted section that says he isn't fired, and that he's to continue his work here. So... they're going to pursue legal action but they're not going to get him away from the materials he was misappropriating.

It gives her the impression that FazEnt is litigious, but for all the wrong reasons. Their lawyers are like sharks, it seems.

"Oh my God." She gasped, still staring at the desk, at the board.

Someone's found full colored pictures of the original four animatronics and stuck them up with thumbtacks, with a pink slip and a date directly underneath it.

Directed to someone from the original Freddy Fazbear's, telling them they're fired effective immediately for animatronic tampering. There's not a lot of information on the pink slip, obviously, but it's dated 2001. The name's rubbing off and the poor thing's been stained to all hell. Illegible.

The arcade machines can wait, she just needs to leave. This is like discovering some sort of weird BDSM dungeon in your house or something - not that there was anything wrong with that, she supposed, but for some reason the weird comparison kept coming to mind. It was absolutely the weirdest comparison, she knew it, but it was April's fault for making them both go see 50 shades of Grey when it came out.

She felt strangely out of place in the theater, because every time she glanced over at the other women around her, they all seemed to enjoy the movie - at the very least... ew - but she couldn't help but see it as a horror movie. It wasn't sexy, it was just frightening, and she had to go sit in the lobby before the movie was even halfway over. Watching something like that just made her feel gross, like she was invading their privacy, and like she wasn't supposed to be there; besides, it all felt so... forced, nobody ever thought about sex like that, right? It was just played up for the plot, it had to be.

As much as she'd heard people say it was sacred and for marriage, or that it was fun and liberating she didn't feel... anything about it.

It was just something people did.

"Okay, enough..." she mumbles, gesturing with one hand, while pushing the door open with the other, "enough lollygagging in personal defect land."

The halls outside are the same way they were when she entered, and the fact that it's a relief is upsetting in its own right, obviously. Something about being comforted by the dingy service tunnels makes her anxious, but it's at least got less creepy newspaper clippings littered about. She starts to retrace her steps, keeping the flashlight's beam in front of her, still stuck in her own head as she approaches the same little three-way intersection she'd been at before.

That mechanical scraping isn't gone, it's louder, and when she swings her light in that direction - expecting to see one of the mini Music Men - she's met with a horrible sight.

"...You're not Billy, are you?"

Chapter Text

"You're... what are you doing here?"

Billy stares at her, even though she's distinctly aware it must not be him - it's an illusion. "Viv, look, I'm just doing... my job."

"This-" she gestures to the desecrated endoskeleton on the floor, scrapped for parts, "- this isn't part of your job! Surely!"

"Drop it."

He says firmly, looking right at her. Now, with her flashlight on, she can see the way that one of his eyes reflects light in a truly inhuman way. Even if it's Billy, that raises another series of questions and concerns; he's not human, at least, not entirely. A human eye can't do that, a human can't rip, and shred, and tear open a machine the way he did, and it's making her nervous. That's what the noise was, he'd been maiming one of them. But when he takes a half-step forward, into the range of the overhead light, she can see him better.

He's got on the same clothes he did when he died, but they're wrinkled and messy and splattered with oil. His hands are at his sides, and the bandages are starting to peel off enough to reveal a patch where the skin's gone. It's gone, and there is an endoskeleton inside, rather than an actual human skeleton. She can only imagine what his face looks like. This is him, it's actually him. Holy shit.

"What are you...?"

Billy's eyes widen - and she's suddenly sent back to that very first day on the job, when DJ pushed him over, and he landed with a clunk. He's never been human. "Sorry you had to find out this way."

Her stomach flips and she can't help it, suddenly vomiting all over both herself and the floor.

At least Billy has the common sense to not immediately rush to her side, but she can barely see - out of the corner of her peripheral vision - the way his face scrunches up in worry. His brows raise, and the corners tug down sympathetically, and he crouches down. Somehow, what she forces herself to focus on is not how absolutely filthy he is - oil is like animatronic blood, after all - nor the fact she's coming to terms with his apparent weird, criminal double life, but instead, the fact one of his legs is prosthetic.

Maybe she hadn't noticed because he'd always kept both pant legs down and worn a shoe over the running blade; but he wasn't anymore. The shoe was gone - both were, actually, probably to preserve a little cleanliness - and his pantleg had been rolled up and tucked into the silicon slip-on.

"I... I think I wish I never found out."

She's not even sure how true that is. Maybe she's just upset that she didn't find out right away, maybe she is upset she found out at all; it's all so confusing, and she knows there wouldn't have been a good way for him to broach the topic. Obviously, if the whole, throwing up was any indication.

It did explain that rotten smell, though.

"Sorry." He offers lamely, "I... I'm gonna be honest with you, I - I did read your resume, and look-"

What?

"-I know it said you didn't do heights, but we're bleeding money and staff's quitting in droves."

That can't be right, ignoring everything else he'd said - honestly, she was willing to let the resume thing go, it wasn't that important anymore after all - she still had no idea how a company like this could be bleeding money, especially with such a lucrative location. During the summer months when kids were off school a lot of people on the west coast would be travelling to cooler areas, and even then, this place always seemed like it was busy. Suddenly Billy's horrifying biomechanical appearance was the least concerning part.

Maybe it had something to do with all those newspaper clippings, maybe there really was some sort of connection.

"How?"

Billy looks... immensely relieved to see that she's not screaming. "Lots of reasons, actually. Budgets getting thinner, people getting their hours cut, corporate being... they have flexible spines up there."

"And repairs...?" She suddenly asks, glancing over at him and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Let's get you to the washroom first. I'll fill you in on the way."

"Oh," she looks down at herself - filthy, "but what about the mess?"

He shakes his head and helps her to her feet - she doesn't really want him to touch her, but there's no way she'd be able to stand on her own at this point. "I'll clean it up once you're done." When she doesn't immediately respond he raises his hands to placate her. "I don't want you passin' out in there and cracking your skull open like an egg, that's all."

Okay, okay, that's... good? At least, it's a justifiable reason for him to want to accompany her - she's fairly sure that could probably happen, she feels a little woozy - even if it is just to keep them away from a lawsuit. Not that she had the money to take anything up with a lawyer. Oh. Lawyer, the employment records, right.

"Uhm, Billy, is there any way you could email me a copy of my employment records. Or uh - mail them to my apartment?"

His expression is nothing short of incredulous.

"I... beg your pardon?"

She feels very, very stupid for having to admit her marriage failed - even if no-fault divorce was real, she knew it was technically her fault. "I uh - It's... judge needs it for divorce proceedings."

"Oh," he nods solemnly, "sorry I asked. I'll get those to you by the weekend."

"Thank you, Billy."

"Don't mention it, Viv."

The nickname still makes her shudder, and still draws a cold, creeping dread up her spine.

As the two of them walk together, she takes note of the fact there's more S.T.A.F.F. Bots down here working than actual people, but it made sense. Why would a human want to do hard physical labor when a robot can? But... and she only really thinks this because Billy's clearly part robot - or maybe, more accurately, mostly robot - how does anyone know that they want to? And does it even matter? Probably not, as concerning as it might be, nobody views them as alive. For good reason, they're not. But it still meant that there was no way for them to have protections, and no way for them to make their own decisions.

It makes her think about how she's always referred to them as people - but more importantly, it makes her think about how Billy talked about it.

"Billy?"

He glances over at her, holding the door to the washrooms open. "Yeah?"

"...Does this have something to do with why you told me not to treat the animatronics like people?"

"It - uh, yeah."

There's clearly some sort of internal struggle, and she can see it in his face. Clearly there was more to this than she was aware of, and something about it had him between a rock and a hard place. He thinks for a moment, before levelling a very serious look at her, his brows furrowed. When he speaks again, his voice is stern, urgent, but not unkind.

"If I let you in, you can't go back. Not to the way you were before you knew. You won't be the same as you were."

"I... I can handle it." She smiles, though she's not sure if she can.

In fact, she's not even sure she should have said that, because she's not sure if it's true - she just blurted it out without thinking. She can't go back to the way she had been; this was going to change her forever.

Hopefully in a good way.

Billy looks at her, and when she looks back, he's no longer trying to hide so much of himself - his respirator and his safety goggles no longer shadowing his face - and she can see more of him, both literally and metaphorically. With the respirator pulled down, hanging around his neck, she can see more of the endoskeleton, how his own jaw's been obscured by it, and how his skin's stretched out on one side, and well, flayed on the other. She's sure it's not actually flayed, because that must hurt; but it looks as graphic as any painting of it. She feels bad, but also slightly nauseous.

"Well, if you're sure." He glances at her, a frown on his face. "Don't say I didn't warn you though."

Vivian swallows around a lump in her throat.

"I was... some kid, but uh -" he flexes a hand, and she can see how the prominent bones aren't really bones at all, "this is all gonna make me sound crazy, you know."

"Try me."

Realistically, she knows he's probably right. She's still coming to grips with him even being alive, with the animatronics actually, possibly being like people. The fact he'd known. He knew the whole time that they apparently really were personable in nature but had tried to dissuade her from that belief. She gets the feeling he's being strange and elusive on purpose, in much the same way that people in her life tended to be.

"Fazbear's properties had a big... memetic presence." He gestures towards the showers, and slumps onto a bench. "I'll talk over the water."

She doesn't even bother to look for other clothes or take hers off. Instead, she stands directly under the showerhead and just lets the water run over her. "Okay."

"There was uh... big cultural impact, after all that - that stuff. The whole thing with those kids going missing, it kind of poisoned the well. Nothing the company did really ever brought it outta that slump." He pauses, and she gets the distinct impression that if he could sadly smoke a cigarette, he'd be doing it. "Kind of hard to shake something outta the general public's conscious mind if it's something that big - and even though I was... what? Five? when it happened, I knew somethin' was up."

"...Yeah?"

"My parents hated it. Tried turning off the old cartoons, throwing out VHS tapes and old CDs... didn't do much for me, considering - this."

"How did... this happen anyways?"

Billys head jerks in her direction for a second before he catches himself and forces himself to look at the floor. He even sticks a hand up to shield his eyes, just in case; it's weirdly flattering to know that despite her still being fully clothed, he's trying to respect her privacy. Simon wasn't like that, because they were married it was fine, though, despite her repeated insistence that it was not fine to her.

"...Right, that part." He sighs and frowns. "I - I got a job at an old location near my folks house, just a summer job. Something impermanent, during high school and... it didn't go well, let's just say that."

After a moment or two she turns the shower off. "Do you have any idea how little that explains anything?"

"I - what do you want from me?!" He throws his hands up over his head.

Then, it seems like the realization finally hits him, and he acknowledges how weirdly immature and somewhat childish that was. Billy looks away and puts his chin in one hand, sighing. "Sorry, that's... rude of me, I guess. I just don't really like talking about it."

"Yeah, that... makes sense, I suppose."

She pauses, grabbing a towel and lightly drying her face and hair - right now the thought of putting any real effort into anything wasn't coming to her - before she glances over at him. There is one question she's got, but it's another of those questions that really isn't related to any of the topics they were ever talking about. "Hey, Billy?"

"Yeah?"

"I heard that there were uh... conventions in July, right?"

His expression just looks tired and confused, but he nods. "Uh huh...."

"Is it a bad thing then, to see someone in a rabbit costume around here?" She pauses, before adding on a second part of it. "...I got locked in overnight a couple days ago, and she was there too."

"I... where was it?"

"Uhm... I - I was in the Fazcade?" She doesn't exactly like his tone, because he sounds a little freaked out, and that's making her freak out.

And freaking out wasn't good for her or for the baby.

"What did it do? Did it talk to you?" He's getting up, frantic, approaching her, but only actually stopping when he almost grabs her shoulders. She hates herself for being afraid of that.

"I - no it didn't, er, they didn't. I... I hid in one of those VIP rooms, with the door locked."

"Okay," he nods, running a hand through what's left of his hair. "Good. I'm glad."

"Why?"

Billy doesn't say anything, and the silence speaks volumes, and that's perhaps the worst part. It means he knows something, and he's not telling her on purpose. As much as she hates the fact he's omitting, and lying, because it's exactly the kind of thing Simon did, when he first hired Tilly, and started needing to have meetings about work more often, that's not why she hates this. This, she hates for the reason that it might have to do with that room.

"Billy, what do you mean by that?" Her voice is a little bit more forceful this time.

"The last time our company ever had a rabbit costume a bunch of kids went-"

"-missing."

He stares at her when she fills in the blank, and neither of them speak or breathe for a very long time.

"So, how's it going, girlie?" Donny leans over the table, spine stretched to quite possibly the limits of the struts.

"I don't know," Stella glances at him over her shoulder, "are you having fun yet?"

"Are you?"

She smiles at him, one of her eyes half-lidding shut, and her mouth quirking; as she hears him ask that, she flexes her hands, staring at a dirty, scratched up patch on her left palm. Man, that was unfortunate, it's a good thing none of that ever happened. A good thing that kid didn't know this place as well as he thought.

"Yeah." She responds, letting her eyes slide right over his face, and land on the knife. "I guess I am."

Donny laughs, jabbing the knife into the table and using it, and his hand, to more or less pull him onto it. Without bendable knees he needed all the help he could get. Even if the unconventional method of climbing things often sent Reginald into the utmost of blind rages, especially when it came to his precious little gaming table.

"S - stop fucking up my... my s - stuff!" And there he was.

Speak of the devil.

"Reggie, don't be such a wuss. I'm not gonna hurt it."

"I - I - I don't... don't care! I don't care!" He snarled, and both Stella and Donny know that if he had actual eyes to narrow, he would do it. "A - Aren't you... aren't you s - s - supposed to... to watch the - the - the cameras?"

As he speaks, he leans in, and Stella catches the way he's managed to scrounge up - or how he'd managed to convince the boss to scrounge up - some scrap metal to try and repair his leg. What used to be his leg. It didn't look anything like what it should have though, mostly because it doesn't quite look like he'd actually done much building yet. Then a hand gently grips her shoulder, and she goes stock-still. Old programming, from when the company had been working out the kinks in the programming, from when she needed to stand still and let people manipulate and move her against her will.

Even though she wants to turn tail and run, she can't fight her programming.

Not that kind.

"...I'll get on that."

"Good! I - I would... hate to - to - to have to.... have to report you f - for ins... for insubordination."

"I don't see why I have to." She mutters, finally gathering the courage to wrench free from his grasp. "I know everything about everyone already."

"N - not everyone."

He looks endlessly smug about that, and she hates it, hates him. She kind of thinks she wants to rip his miserable throat out with her teeth; it'd be so messy though. But the mess is barely a deterrent. When he says that it feels like her oil's boiling in her tubes, like she's about to combust into flames, jealous and angry and hateful. He's just being him, in the same way she is her; why does that bother her so much?

"...Since when exactly did the fucking bug matter?"

Reggie's stupid smirk slides off his face, and it makes her way too happy.

"N - now, now. Don't... don't be l - like that." He coos, reaching out to cup her cheek in a hand, and she has to kill the growl building in her throat.

It'd be so easy right now, to rip his miserable throat out with her teeth, or to bite off his hand. He's right there.

Underestimating her.

Treating her like a toy, or a pet, or an object. Just like her handlers, and the Glamrock's handlers, like all of the staff who had come before. None of them had ever considered what she wanted, what any of them wanted, no, they were people, all they ever cared about was that invisible line. Quarterly reports and passive income and everything like that. They didn't care, as long as they made money, because that's what made the world go round.

"Yeah. Sure. Whatever man."

She's shaking, why is she shaking? Everything just... sucks right now, she thinks. Reggie's the worst person she's ever met, Donny was... he was fine, but he was so much. And the others, she was pretty sure they all were terrible too. Otherwise, then she was what was wrong, and that meant she'd be alone in the world forever. And she could not be alone. Not again.

Not like this.

"...You heard the news?" Donny suddenly asks, once the conversation comes to a stop.

"What news?"

"Well, a little friend of mine told me a secret." He smiles, a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. "Someone we know might be coming to visit sometime later."

"Who a - are you talking... talking about?" Reggie snaps, irritated.

She understands.

Donny irritates her too sometimes. "You have friends? Why?"

He looks offended, and hurt, and she finds it doesn't bother her as much as it probably should. "God, you suck, no wonder they never put you on stage."

That settles it. If she were going to kill any of them, he'd die first. How dare he imply she wasn't cleared for performance because she could be a little snippy sometimes? If that was the case, then Roxy'd have never made it either. Or Monty. They both sucked, and even as the one to teach them everything they knew, she knew it. She knew they were all deeply flawed, dysfunctional individuals. Nobody deserved to be on stage more than her.

"I - I'm glad you're... you're starting to - to - to get... to get it." Reggie smirks, side-eyeing her judgmentally.

Either they're both going to die, or she is.

Her hands ball into fists and she stares at Reggie intently - Donny wouldn't be too keen to pick it up, with his poor eyesight - her eyes wide and expression frantic. "Reggie I'm not fucking around." The fact he looks a little scared at the intensity of her gaze and the tone of her voice is a nice ego boost, and it makes her... happy. She's happy. "I'll find a way, but I'll get what I want."

"...A - and what is it... what is it t - t - that you... that you want?"

"What do you think?"

They don't know what she wants, not really. Her best guess about what they think she wants would probably be that she wants to be on stage. They're only half wrong, if that's really what they think she wants, and half wrong is the same as half right. But it's not exactly what she wants. She smirks, her mouth quirking upward, refusing to reach her eyes, refusing to be real, and she folds her hands behind her back before she does anything dumb.

She wants respect.

"Anyways, I'll go take a look at the cams. Let the old coot know I'll be in the office if he needs me." She lets her face relax a little bit, and she sticks out her tongue, synthetic and silicon.

It's a playful gesture. A little reminder for them to lower their guard again.

And she leaves.

She waits until she's fully out of sight, out in the maze of hallways, and she rounds a corner before she finally lets her legs give out, and her anger escape. Though, she doesn't scream, she's far above that sort of thing. No, she instead punches the floor, her fist coming down so hard she knows she's broken something in her hand. Even as a robot she isn't strong enough to break concrete with her fists, but the desire is still there, and she feels like if she just grabs the light and molds it, she can make it happen.

There's oil all over the floor, in a smudgy, disgusting puddle.

Her third finger - middle finger, she liked calling it that better, it was more casual - was bent out of shape, and the came to rest awkwardly against her ring finger, almost as if trying to sit directly on top of it. The force of the way her finger was bending had pulled some of her wiring and tubing open and apart, which explained the oil. It was kind of cool, in a weird way. It made her special. She wasn't just "that endoskeleton" she was "the endoskeleton with the broken finger."

"Wow... that's - that's good."

It's definitely not a reaction she knows she should have to a broken finger, but she cradles her hand to her chest, a smile on her face. "I'm special."

If she was special...

...she could be someone's favorite.