Chapter Text
The curtains rose to some cheers of the small (in more ways than one) audience, revealing a tall grinning Sun themed animatronic, rays spinning in delight at seeing both old and new friends. Scanning the sparsely populated audience brought a metaphorical frown to his face, though as a performer, this feeling never showed (his inability to actually express his disappointment notwithstanding). His show was never well populated. The yellow Theater Attendant let out a metallic sigh, but quickly pulled himself together, eager to begin. The backdrop on the screen changed from the waiting screen to a blue sky with picturesque fluffy white clouds. The mechanical actor skipped forward, striking a joyous and outstretched pose,the bells adorning his feet jingling as he moved.
“There once was a kingdom ruled by light…” Sun began to explain the pre programmed dialogue of his daily show. The company had a few set times a day where he would perform one of three acts. This one was always his favorite and the children seemed to have the most fun with it, too. He continued his speech to the children, some utterly bored and some enamored by the cheap stage design and rudimentary effects. As Sun exposited, he used his systems to change the digital screen and move the curtains. The only employee scheduled to run the show with him sat on her phone and pushed props within Sun’s reach when she had to. It was too typical for it to bother the attendant anymore and the cheers and laughter of the kids, despite how few of them there were (and he tried not to observe how the numbers only seemed to decline day after day), got him through every show with enthusiasm.
He finished his beginning tale of the Sunshine Kingdom and their noble ruler, King Sundrop, and remotely changed the red curtains out, reversing them to reveal dark blue curtains, speckled with golden stars. Sun warned the kids, “But, one day, the Sunshine Kingdom could no longer stay happy and fun! The Evil Moondrop wants our Kingdom for himself!” A gruff cackle escaped Sun’s voicebox as he displayed an evil grin on the screen above him. “Children! If he takes over the Kingdom, will you help me?” He prompted the children to nod, to which most agreed. “Wonderful!” He spun, arms in the air, before halting entirely, just as dramatically as he had spun moments ago. “The Evil Moondrop! He’s… He’s taking me over!” Sun dramatically yelled, hand over his faceplate as he dimmed the lights, dark enough to transform his appearance. Stripes melted into stars that matched the curtains and his faceplate sputtered and spun, retracting the rays in favor of a nightcap.
“It’s My Kingdom now children,” the Theatre Attendant chuckled menacingly in a graveled, yet underlyingly still cheerful, voice. The bot called down a cheap wire that lifted the Moon into the air, and that drew the attention of the kids formerly rolling their eyes. Off the ground by only a few feet, he swung closer to the crowd, landing by the edge of the stage. “You will never ever see your King Sundrop again, little ones.” Sun, now ‘Moon’, fakely threatened, releasing the wire to stand in his normal stance, leaning his upper body just over the edge of the stage. “There’s no way you can save your precious King!” He paused, then feigned fright and said in an overly-loud aside, “Unless one of you would happen to have a branded Sundrop candy with you…Oh how I just ~hate the light!”
“None of you have one of those, do you?” The animatronic prompted the audience skeptically, directing them along, knowing that every child received the candies upon entry. A staggered gasp of realization swept through the small crowd as they were handed a way to save their beloved and kind King Sundrop, and they raised their hands in response. Some called, “Mee Mee, I do!” while others simply held up the candy to acknowledge that they had one.
“Anyone who has eaten the candy has enough light power to destroy me! You better not!” He warned in a voice that exactly said that he wanted them to do the opposite of that as he pointed warningly at them.
At this point the human employee was supposed to encourage the kids to eat their candies, in case they hadn't understood the reverse psychology. She…technically did that, but the Theater Attendant internally bristled as she put no enthusiasm in it whatsoever, and instead delivered the lines as if she were trying to sound as flat as possible. Ironic that out of the two of them, she managed to be the more robotic sounding one!
Poor acting notwithstanding, the children were encouraged to eat their candies, so the Attendant quickly pushed his ire aside.
The children all unwrapped their pieces and began to suck on the mediocre hard candy (except for those who had eaten their candy as soon as they got it, who just stared sheepishly at their empty hands). “Oh no. Now any of you could defeat me!” The performer cowered, throwing more energy into his performance as if to make up for his co-host's lacking.
“Children, just by eating the candy you allow me to take control and speak again! Who wants to bring back the king?” Sun signaled, his King Sundrop voice emanating from his voicebox hidden within his moon-form. The kids raised their hands once again and he chose one kid to join him on stage. It was his favorite part, seeing the children get as into the play as he did and his volunteer today did just as great a job as every kid did! She followed along the script wonderfully and with a simple spin from the child while floating on his wire the Evil Moondrop was vanquished. As he spun in the air, the lights went up and the curtains reverted to normal. Sun appeared once again in his bright and vibrant form to the cheers of the kids, bouncing off the wire and striking a pose as if it was a magic trick.
Sun took his bows amongst a mixed spattering of applause, taking a quick glance at his audience as he did. He restrained the instinct to visibly wilt when he noticed barely half the kids that had started out in the theater were still in attendance. Instead he took one more bow as a curtain call, then cheerily thanked the audience for watching, and “hinted” at them to visit the gift shop as they exited the theater.
The employee backstage, despite her disinterest in assisting the Attendant all show, heckled as soon as the guests left, “Get to work cleaning this place up! The quicker it’s packed the quicker we can lock up the theater. Got it?”
Sun sighed in acknowledgment before beaming with a salute, “Roger that”. He immediately got to work, jumping off the stage to collect the seating blocks for disinfecting and storage while the employee lugged herself over to the door with a pair of keys, locking it to ensure no kid would run in and ruin the rest of her day. After that exertion of effort, she quickly found a spot backstage to relax.
With all the blocks in their proper storage place (sorted neatly by shape), the Theatre Attendant started on moving sets and organizing props. As he pushed a castle set piece backstage, he overheard a conversation between Fazbear employees filling the otherwise silent room, and peeked around a corner to see an unknown man in conversation with his usual "helper". He had never seen this person before, and tried to determine who it was through the list of employees on file at the plex, but surprisingly came up blank. His head rotated once in puzzlement as the lack of result sounded in his processor. That had to mean he didn’t work directly at the Pizzaplex, and was rather management or something of that sort. Sun’s head did a quarter turn counterclockwise, and his rays spun as he mulled over this information. It was strange for upper management to visit the abandoned corner of the Pizzaplex, and somehow even stranger for the usual employee of the day to stay any longer then they needed to. He wondered what they were doing here. Well, it was a bit rude and he didn’t want to get caught doing it, but he couldn’t help but listen in on what the two were saying.
So Sundrop eavesdropped, and spared a split second to giggle at the phrase before getting serious at the results of his listening in.
“Under a dozen kids, and this isn’t the first time,” commented the theater employee, and Sun carefully moved to get a better view, seeing his "co-worker" flipping through a large stack of papers and marking them with a pen before handing them to the taller mystery person.
The other -- from Sun’s improved vantage point he could see he was wearing a tie (definitely management, then) -- examined the page and looked around the empty room. “Management is aware. That’s why this new section is sure to make far more money once operational.”
“Yeah. The reality is kids don’t want this cheesy show,” the shorter employee shrugged, tipping her cap.
Flipping to a different page, management clicked a pen out of his suit pocket and addressed his employee, “Your position will surely change. We will need to distribute funds and move some resources around…”
Sun just couldn’t bear to listen to any more of this, and retreated backstage (only after making sure everything was in place, of course). His presence wasn’t needed there anymore, so he made his way to his room behind the theater.
His head was buzzing with panicked static at what he had overheard, and he just stood in his room clenching and unclenching his hands and trying (and mostly failing) to calm down.
New section?! Moving resources?! This all sounded like they were going to shut his theater down.
Sun giggled tensely and humorlessly at the idea, the sound coming out strangled and muffled, cut through with the persistent nervous static that still plagued him.
Sun wasn’t dumb, he knew that he was considered a resource, as far as management was concerned. Move? Move to where? What was the new section?!
And what if, his thoughts treacherously shooting off in another direction, what if he wasn’t one of the resources being moved at all? What would happen to him if they decided the theater wasn’t profitable enough to keep open? Sun could remember other animatronics who had underperformed or management simply didn’t want to deal with, it didn’t take long before they were… gone (he couldn’t bear to even think the actual phrase). Sun did not want to be gone no sir no thank you! He could swear the thought made him feel sick, despite his complete lack of organs. His fans whined in protest as they spun at full speed to cope with his rising temperature from so much mental activity straining his systems.
On a better night, the Theater Attendant would think of new ideas for shows (that he would never actually share with anyone else, but it was fun to make them), or even occasionally amble around the empty Pizzplex just for a change of scenery, but this night he was too full of anxious what-ifs to even move from where he stood in his room. His mind jumped from one worst-case scenario to a somehow even worst-er case scenario, until he eventually just decided he should shut down for the night before he crashed. At least then he wouldn’t have any more of these terrible thoughts.
The next morning, Sun turned back on out of standby with plenty of time to get ready for his first show and was met with an immediate wave of the worries he had shut down the night before to escape. Despite his fears and the lingering possibility of closure, though, the show must go on, and he got ready for his show like he normally would.
When he arrived in the backstage area, there was no employee helping out, but that wouldn’t be the first time so Sun decided to not let it worry him. The show was sci-fi, not fantasy today, so he dragged out the lunar landscapes and plywood planets, grumbling to himself about typecasting (as if he had been built for anything else).
Finally, everything was in place, and the show was set to begin, except there was no one in the theater. Not “no one” as in the single digit audience he’d been having, literally no one. The Theater Attendant stood alone on an empty stage in front of a non-existent audience, his fans picking up speed as his head once again threatened to fill with panicked static.
The door to the theater creaked open, and Sun could have melted in relief, except for the fact that instead of a hoard (or even a trickle! He’d take a trickle!) of kids entering, the only people to walk into the theater were a man in a suit and a couple of technicians. What was going to be relief instead only doubled down in anxiety, though he did his best not to let it show. Instead he offered the group as friendly a wave as he could muster.
“H-Hello, friends! What brings you to the theater?” Sun nervously greeted the group, trying to act like he didn’t overhear what management was saying the day before. (Realistically they probably wouldn’t have cared if he had been listening, but eavesdropping was rude and thus against the rules and Sun didn’t want to admit to doing it.)
“You’re being reassigned to the new daycare,” the man in the suit succinctly replied, clearly not bothering to sugar coat the declaration that Sun’s entire existence would just be changing.
“Oh-hh?” Sun reacted, and he didn’t have to fake how taken-aback he was by the idea. Sure, it wasn’t exactly a surprise based on what he had overheard the previous evening, but it was still shocking to hear it actually out loud! Actually being a thing! That was happening! To him! “What about the theater?!” he really tried to sound more concerned and curious than complain-y (he didn’t want to be seen as a bad sport), but he didn’t quite hit the mark -- his head turning clockwise in displeasure rather than counterclockwise in consideration, and rays twitching ever so slightly inward. (Not that any of the humans even picked up on his tells. One head tilt was all the same as another to them, guess that was to be expected by beings who actually had facial expressions.)
“We’ll find something to do with it, it wouldn't be economical to just totally get rid of it. But that’s not anything you need to know about,” Sun could almost swear the manager looked nearly sympathetic as he added, “You know kids weren’t coming to these shows anymore.”
Sun immediately wanted to argue and defend his craft, but quickly crumpled in defeated acceptance. He did know it. And maybe, maybe-- he got the first flickerings of optimism about his change in duties -- the daycare would be more popular. Posture brightening, his rays twirled thoughtfully around his head once, and he cheerily gave the three men a quick salute. “Alrighty, then. What do you need me to do?”
The manager’s expression barely changed, but the two technicians seemed relieved at his compliance.
“We’re gonna take you over to Parts and Services to get you all set up for the daycare,” the one on the right -- a quick run through of the employee database supplied that his name was Hank -- answered.
Sun couldn’t help but flinch slightly at that. Geez, that meant they were going to work on his code didn’t it? That was always weird, waking up with random new knowledge that he didn’t have before
“So,” further explained Hank with a cautious tone, eyeing the animatronic’s flinch, “If you could just walk with us, that’d be great. Otherwise we’ll have to shut you down and carry you there.” Even among the technicians, the arguably most important people in a building of advanced animatronics, Sun could hear the apparently Fazbear signature aversion to effort at the suggestion of having to wrestle with tall metal animatronic. Well, rest assured, Sun didn’t want to be tazed and carried any more than they wanted to taze and carry him!
So Sun followed into step behind the two humans as they exited the room. He so wanted to pause and wave the theater a heartfelt goodbye, but Hank was still looking at him warily and he didn’t want to test the employees’ impatience versus their laziness and risk getting tazed. Instead he just thought a sad goodbye thought to his (now former) role and walked out into the greater Pizzaplex area, flanked by both technicians.
Sun did not talk to either of the humans, and they didn’t talk to him as they walked in the direction of Parts and Services. Absently he admired seeing the Pizzaplex with the lights on -- normally he really only had time to walk around at night. He wondered if that would change if he was in the daycare instead. What would he be doing there? How would it be different? These thoughts and more occupied him, and he barely registered when he entered the room and was staring down the repair cylinder. He stared at it blankly for all of a moment before the other technician (he didn’t bother trying to get his name, he could just be not-Hank), raised an eyebrow and said condescendingly, “Pretty sure you know how this next part works. Get in the chair.”
They could have a little sympathy, Sun quickly thought irritably, before shoving it aside and doing as he was told. The quicker he was there the quicker it would be over, right? Before he was shut down for whatever changes would come, the passing thought crawled through his mind, how bad could this really be?