Chapter Text
They were three teenagers. Bill, Cliff, and Brad. They felt all big and strong; tall, strapping young men in their late teens! But the truth was, they were fairly clueless youths that didn’t really know what they were doing with their lives. They had stolen a crate of beer from a local convenience store and had then wandered into the forest to be as loud and as obnoxious as they wanted to be, boasting and gloating over their underage drinking in a place where no one would catch them.
However, after perhaps one too many cans, they realized that secretly drinking alcohol was not fun. It was cowardly. It just proved how pathetic they were, desperate to drown out the meaninglessness of their lives with alcohol. And they knew it. There was no one around to witness their disregard for the law. No fellow teenagers to recognize their brazenness, to praise their irreverence.
Now they were in the middle of nowhere with too much overblown confidence and a growing anger they couldn’t use on anything, because they were in the middle of nowhere. Their moods were quickly souring. What would they have to brag about back at school? The beer was pretty cool, but Dirk and Andy had already done that several times before. They’d even once thrown a party with their stolen goods! What did this shameful trio have? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero.
As they angrily stumbled through the forest, they unexpectedly came across a campsite. It was pretty bare, but various items were strewn around, cooking utensils, sport equipment…
“Who camps in October?” Cliff asked, confused, wobbling on his feet. Bill giggled. Brad sneered.
“Losers is what. Probably gypsies or whatever,” Brad snarled, spitting in disgust. “Can’t stand hobos, filthy parasites…”
“Ooooh, guuuuys, d’you know what’d be fun?” Bill gleefully asked, slinging his arms around his friends’ necks. “Scarin’ em. You know, just a bitta jostling around, jokin’ around.” He grinned. “If we do it right, we could be heroes, right? Chasin’ off scum? Thinka the girls…”
“The girls,” Cliff echoed, sounding distant.
“It’ll teach ‘em for bein’ gypsies,” Brad eagerly agreed, suddenly itching for a fight.
With all the coordination of a drunken giraffe, the teens ambled over to the campsite, hands reaching for the tent, as Bill giggled in excitement, Cliff letting out an occasional snigger, and Brad grinned sadistically. Whoever was asleep in the tent did not stir, despite their heavy footsteps. Picking up some of the things lying around the campsite, a ladle, a bat, a lid, the three began hitting and kicking the tent, while hollering loudly.
Whoever was in the tent jolted awake and instinctively started screaming. A high-pitched scream.
“A girl?” Bill asked, smile becoming twisted.
“Drag her out!” Cliff encouraged.
“Come out you little bitch!” Brad yelled, spurred on by the screaming. He tore open the tent’s flaps, wanting to drag their victim out. He was imagining an exotic teen girl dressed in skimpy pyjamas and it made him excited.
What he came across was not a girl. It was a fist.
It landed squarely in his face and Brad yelped in pain, hands quickly reaching for his injured nose as blood burst forth.
“Oh, you are gonna pay for that, you little bitch,” Brad nasally hissed, grabbing their victim by the hair, and throwing him out into the clearing. He landed with a thud.
“A kid?” Bill asked surprised, staring at the little boy. Then he whined, “I wanted a girl.”
“Ugh, the gypsies are breeding?” Cliff asked, picking the boy up by his collar. Cliff smirked. “Aren’t you a bit old for Fazbear merch, kid?” he asked. The boy tried to kick him, but he couldn’t quite reach, legs too short. He dug his fingernails into Cliff’s arms, but Cliff didn’t feel anything through his thick winter layers.
“Hold him tight,” Brad instructed, as he held up his bat. “The brat needs a lesson.”
“Oh, come on, he’s just a kid,” Bill defended, grabbing the bat out of Brad’s hands, and chucking it to the side. It landed at the edge of the campsite. “What’s cool about beating up a little kid?” he continued, shoving Brad aside.
He looked at the child, who had become very still, only glaring at the trio of teenagers. Bill smiled widely; lips thin. “Aw, are you scared of us, little man?” he cooed at the boy, hand reaching for the boy’s face. The boy bit him. Bill screamed and Cliff accidentally dropped the boy in horror. The child landed nimbly on his feet and tried to run, but Brad was quick to lunge at him, wrapping his arms around the boy’s torso. He threw the child to the ground once more and the boy grunted in pain. Cliff and Bill circled the child like predators, blocking any potential escape.
“Told ya he needs a lesson,” Brad gloated. “Probably never been to a school. My pa says gypsies don’t believe in gettin’ a decent education. So boys. Let’s teach him,” he coldly suggested. Bill cracked his knuckles and Cliff started rolling his shoulders to warm up. The boy looked at them nervously, but held himself in a defensive stance, prepared to run at the first chance he got. However, the child’s expression showed the boy knew his chances of escape were slim. It almost was enough for Brad to be impressed by the child’s survival instincts.
But only almost.
Brad went to retrieve his bat, just as Cliff raised his metal ladle over his head for the first blow.
Cliff paused, noticing in the corner of his eye that Brad had stopped moving. Cliff looked back at Brad.
Brad stood frozen still, hand stretched out to the bat, looking in horror at the darkness.
“Brad…?” Bill asked uncertainly, lowering his own makeshift weapon.
The mood had shifted. What had started off as harmless fun was now feeling… dangerous.
Brad made no sound. He was mute with fear, only able to watch what was staring back at him. Two eyes, yellow, glowing.
Angry.
The eyes shifted ever so slightly, and Brad staggered back. Bill and Cliff dropped their weapons in shock. There was something incredibly hostile in the bushes. At first it seemed to be no taller than perhaps a dog. But then the creature stood up to its full height and suddenly, the monster was towering over them, still obscured by the forest’s shadows.
Cliff tried to swear, but only a weak whine came out.
The creature stepped out of the dark, into the moonlight.
“Freddy…?” Cliff asked, confused.
Freddy Fazbear was not scary. They had grown up with his cartoons and comics. They’d been fans of his when they were children. What was an animatronic Freddy Fazbear doing in a forest in the middle of nowhere?
Freddy let out a deep, angry growl and the teenagers became very aware of the claws and teeth on the animatronic, of how strong the metal beneath its casing was, that it was bigger and faster than them and currently very, very hostile.
The growling subsided. The campsite fell into silence. The boy, still lying on the ground, looked at Freddy and whispered so quietly, Bill almost missed it, “Help me.”
The whisper, to Bill’s horror, seemed to make the free-roaming animatronic switch to a hunting mode- no, a kill mode. Freddy launched himself at Brad and the teenagers screamed, Cliff and Bill quickly fleeing into the woods, not so much as pausing to look back. Brad, back against the ground, tried to fight off Freddy, but this was a machine made of unforgiving steel. Brad was helplessly pinned to the ground and there was no chance of struggling free.
Freddy gently dug his claws into Brad’s shoulders, lowering his teeth to the teenager’s head, jaws opening wide enough that the animatronic could bite his head clean off. Brad whimpered, eyes becoming wet, and he was just now realizing he couldn’t breathe. Whether it was from hyperventilating or Freddy steadily pressing down on his chest, slowly squeezing air out of him, he couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he wanted to scream, but he had lost his voice entirely. The claws deeply embedded in his shoulders, blood freely oozing out.
Suddenly the teeth withdrew. Brad choked, confused, scared, paralyzed.
In a horrifically deep voice, Freddy very quietly said, “Remember this feeling the next time you prey on children.”
Then the bear was off him. Still dazed, half delirious from blood loss and terrified out of his mind, Brad ran after Bill and Cliff, heart pounding wildly between his ears. He had no idea what had happened, how there was a freaking rogue Freddy Fazbear animatronic in the middle of nowhere Utah, but he was not going to hang around to find out.
Freddy had no idea what came over him.
He had sensed a black bear nearby and had temporarily left the campsite to [shoo] it away. But then he had heard Gregory [needing help]. Which caused perhaps the first error.
Freddy was equipped to sense room temperature, recognize if something was warm or cold… But this was the first time he had felt cold, as if ice had been stuffed into his core systems, temporarily rooting him in place.
It was an error he had never experienced before, and he did not think he liked it much.
But then there had been another error.
He had rushed back to the campsite, to find three boys hovering over Gregory. Gregory was lying on the ground. There were plenty of explanations for what could have happened, plenty of benign reasons. But Freddy had known. He had just known what was going on. His mind had instantly registered the three boys as threats. All the while, his primary function had flared up, to the point he could hear and see nothing but ‘Protect Gregory’.
He did not mind his primary function being protect Gregory. It was this very function that had allowed him to resist William Afton’s possession attempts, instead of going under like his friends. But he did mind relabeling children as threats. That was not right, and he was not sure why he had relabeled them. They had threatened Gregory, they were targets to be eliminated.
Finally the last error, perhaps the worst error of all. When he had his paws on the most [angry] of the three threats [boys]. He had wanted more than to just protect Gregory. How dare these [troublemakers] lay a hand on Gregory? How dare they hurt him? Scare him?!
He had dug his claws in. Until now, Freddy had never hurt a human. William Afton did not count. And yet, now he had. Somehow, clarity of mind had come back to him, just as his claws were preparing to twist and rip open flesh [further hurt the child]. He remembered suddenly that [decommissioning] the human would not help anyone, nor would it solve anything. It would instead just cause more trouble for him and Gregory.
So he had let the boy go.
Three errors in total. Not the first he had experienced since leaving the Pizzaplex, but certainly the most major. He would need to ponder these events later, see if he could patch the errors out somehow. He had been built with some self-maintenance capabilities, so it should be within his ability.
Freddy jolted, becoming alert again. After perhaps a second or two of watching the teenager run off into the night, he realized he had still not attended to his primary charge. He ran over to Gregory’s side.
“Gregory! Are you hurt? Are you ok?” he asked, as he helped Gregory sit up.
“’m fine,” Gregory mumbled. “Just got… surprised.” He groaned. “I don’t know how they got the drop on me; I usually wake up…!” the boy complained, then fell silent.
“This is… not the first time something like this has happened?” Freddy asked.
“I mean, it’s the first since meeting you?” Freddy frowned, looking ready to ask another question. Gregory quickly continued, “I have a few scrapes and bruises, but I’m ok. They just wanted to feel big, more bark than bite, you know how it is.”
Sensing that Gregory did not wish to talk about his past, Freddy decided it was best to drop the matter for now and examine Gregory’s injuries.
“I am sorry that this happened, Gregory,” Freddy said as he inspected his ward’s arms, satisfied that Gregory was not lying. “It will not happen again.”
“It’s ok,” Gregory insisted.
“It is not. You should be able to sleep without being disturbed…” Freddy paused. “You were not scared?” he asked. Considering what had just happened, Gregory did not seem terribly distressed about it.
“A little… But I’ve faced worse,” Gregory answered dismissively. Freddy did not really like that answer, but he supposed it was true enough. Vanny and that thing below the Pizzaplex had been far worse than those three [teenagers].
Still, Freddy had not been satisfied that Gregory was truly comfortable again. So he had started a new fire, and they roasted marshmallows until the sun had begun to rise again. Freddy all the while kept scanning the area for other humans who would [not be welcome] for the night. The fire had long since died and Gregory was still asleep against Freddy’s casing, several blankets wrapped around his small shoulders.
Freddy had spent the early morning hours thinking about the events of the night and had come to the conclusion that it was no longer safe for them to live like [tourists], travelling from place to place, never staying anywhere for longer than a few nights. Winter was coming quickly, and Gregory needed a proper home, a roof over his head, a bed to sleep in, a safe place.
As Gregory continued to sleep by his side, Freddy pondered how exactly he – a seven-foot-tall animatronic bear – would go about securing a safer, more normal life for Gregory. He realized there would be hurdles, problems he could not possibly foresee, but if there was one thing he had learnt the night he had met Gregory, it was that Freddy could adapt and for Gregory, he would.