Chapter Text
For the first few moments of his wakefulness, Michael Afton expected to open his eyes to the familiar walls and monitors of the bunker he called his home. Instead what he saw was the dimly lit ruin of some sort of locker room, with broken-down racks and shelves lining the walls. Indistinct shapes slumped in the shadows, animatronics, or maybe just the suits. Michael stared off into space as he tried to force an explanation as to why he was here out of his memories. He could remember the bunker, that much was crystal clear. He could remember his friend, his only friend, and their bright laughter. He remembered… the ad, the position, the trap. He remembered luring his wayward family, one by one to their doom. He remembered finding the true plans for his pizzeria and his decision to follow through with it. And then… nothing. He couldn’t remember leaving for his last night, couldn’t remember what happened then. Did he succeed? If so then why was he here? Did he fail? He couldn’t remember, he couldn’t even remember if he said goodbye to Helpy or Lolbit. Maybe this was hell, maybe he failed and was punished for it, maybe he succeeded but was dragged down too, maybe-
Michael was broken out of his spiraling thoughts at the sound of metal tapping against metal right next to him. He looked down to see a familiar white bear tapping away at a metal leg, HIS leg, he realized. Michael took stock of himself for the first time since awakening, knowledge born of decades with only machines for company flooded his mind almost unbidden. His new body was metal, obviously, but it wasn’t the makeshift endoskeleton that filled his hollow corpse for thirty years. This new body was taller, but lanky. Made up of what appeared to be random levers and pistons cobbled together, with mismatched arms and legs and wires skewen about. Some of the parts were visibly higher quality than others, with a noticeable imbalance in how technically advanced the bits were. Funnily enough, the newest pieces seemed to not be metal, instead being some sort of cheap plasticky material. His study revealed a plethora of more minute details that almost formed a story of sorts. Such as how the oldest parts of his torso and arms had poorly repaired dents, but none on the legs. He could also tell from the way his new body was constructed, most of the more recent repairs were done by the body itself. Which meant that, spirit or AI, he wasn’t this body’s first inhabitant.
Another, more aggressive set of taps rang out, pulling him out of his second wrecked train of thought and back towards the small animatronic that was currently glaring up at him. The bear was rather dirty, with obvious cracks and faults in his shell. He was standing next to a light that looked like it was pulled from a wall, with two bare wires sparking at one end. Strapped to his back was an odd, two-pronged orange remote.
“H-Helpy?” Michael frowned, or the best equivalent of one, at the familiar hollow rasp of his voice. He pushed the line of questions forming in his mind aside though, unwilling to further anger his small companion. “W-what happened? Where are we? What… What did you put me in” Michael’s mind still reeled from the sheer mystery of his predicament, he tried his best to follow along with the game of charades his robotic assistant attempted. Michael never got around to finding a voice synthesizer for Helpy, and he was sure regretting it now.
“We’re… underground?” Michael tried as Helpy pantomimed digging with a shovel. He then twisted his hands above his head for a bit, before opening some sort of drawer and putting something inside.
“We’re… under a pizzeria?” A nod.
“Our pizzeria?” A headshake.
“Ok, so we’re under some sort of pizzeria, It’s still Freddy’s?” Michael nodded slowly to himself as he received another positive before violently shaking his head to try and get himself to focus. “Never mind, What about Father? Charlie? Lizzie? I can’t remember what happened that final night, did we fail? Is that why I’m still here?” Helpy went to shake his head again, but stopped himself and instead held one hand horizontally, shaking it back and forth. What followed after was a series of motions Michael barely understood: Helpy held his fingers up to his eyes like some kind of goggles, a guitar, a finger twirling near his head, a creeping motion, It was only the final pantomime that Michael truly got, A pair of fingers Helpy held above his head.
Rabbit ears.
“Father.” Of course it was, of course Michael wasn’t able to finish his job. “Father has something to do with this.” Another so-so motion, so William had some connection to why he was back. That still didn’t explain where he was or whose body he was in, but Michael expected that it was all he was going to get from the mute bear while sitting there in the dark.
Michael stood carefully, mindful of his new proportions. He was always tall, having overtaken his Uncle Henry when he was still a teen, but this hodgepodge body was even taller than the animatronics were. Not to mention how much narrower his balance is now. At least whoever, or whatever made it got the legs even length. He bent over to pick up the light, lifting it up to illuminate his surroundings. The slumped figures he had taken notice of before turned out to not be animatronics after all, looking more like mascots than anything. Rather low-quality ones at that, with visible seams and eyeholes. One of the decrepit walls was damaged, cracked just enough that he would be able to squeeze through. Behind it was a barren dirt tunnel with more lights like the one he was holding up attached to the wall.
“What… is this place?” Michael wondered momentarily before his musings were once again disrupted as he felt the small bear next to him begin to grab at his leg, clawing his way up the uneven metal and exposed wires before plopping himself onto one of Mike’s shoulders. Michael made sure he was secure before slowly making his way down the tunnel. The rough-hewn tunnel looked more like one of the abandoned mines Father took them to for vacation rather than something belonging to a restaurant. He was forced to duck and twist through the cramped passage, coming up to multiple forks that Helpy had to point him down. That was, of course, until the two found another hole in a brick wall. One that led to a grimy, dilapidated, and very familiar hallway.
“What the hell…” Mike felt the urge to rub his eyes, just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating, or glitching, considering his current state. But the proof was in the pudding, he had walked down this same hallway countless times. Times that felt to him like just yesterday, but from the state of it must have been years ago. “Helpy… How long was I out?”
Mike watched as his companion flashed his stubbly little fingers. Eleven years, eleven years since he was running this place, setting the trap. It was nothing compared to the thirty he spent waiting, but it was still quite the shock.
“That long, huh? Damn. Then why bring me back now?” Helpy broke out in a wild attempt at charades, but for the life of him (or unlife of him) Michael couldn’t make heads or tails of it. “Ok, that’s not gonna work, I’m sure I’ll find out before long anyways.” The door to their left was locked, the one he remembered led to the main showroom. Surprisingly, Helpy urged him past the door and towards the door leading to the tiny janitor’s closet at the end of the hall. When Mike opened it, he found himself in a makeshift hallway, a crudely installed elevator situated at the end.
“I guess you did say we were underground…” Mike’s asymmetrical feet clanked loudly as he climbed into the barebones elevator, nothing close to what he used to get into Baby’s. It was a matter of moments before they were clunking upwards, the uneven stone shifting abruptly to uniform concrete. The elevator eventually spat them out in a dim, barren hallway, a few crates and bits of equipment were pushed up against the walls, but for the most it was bare, dirty walls as far as his eyes could see.
His head snaps to one side as he hears a voice shouting from down the hall. Human, he thought, unless the voice AI had gotten a lot better in the past decade. Either way it was a lead, and that was more than Mike was willing to pass up. He carefully made his way down the hall in the direction the voice came from, trying fruitlessly to soften his steps in hopes of not alerting anyone too soon. He passed into a different, more cluttered set of hallways, coming upon an odd sight. A gaggle of suitless endoskeletons were standing in the hallway, situated at odd angles. He hesitantly waved his hand in front of the nearest one, relaxing a bit as it failed to react in any way. He had no idea how they got there, but they seemed to be offline for now. Confident they weren’t going to be jumped all of a sudden, Michael took a second to examine the oddly familiar endos. It didn’t take long to recognize just why they were so familiar of course, considering he was there when they were designed. Each and every one of them was nothing more than a stripped-down copy of Uncle Henry’s design, made out of the same cheap material he noticed earlier. The sheer lack of effort was almost comforting in a way, knowing that no matter who was at the helm, Fazbear’s was still a piece of crap at its heart.
Shaking out of his silent critique, Mike continued down the path. Coming up to a set of double doors, as he went to open the second pair he heard a noise that made him freeze in place. The unmistakable voice of a child, interspersed with a distinctively robotic voice.
“ Crap. ”
Michael hurriedly burst through the door, and what he saw made him freeze up all over again. A young boy with messy brown hair and a striped shirt. For a moment, all Michael could see was him, David, but then his eyes refocused and he could notice the differences. The nose, for one, David had the same defined nose as he and Father; it always looked awkward on a face so like their Mother’s. The boy held himself differently as well, looking almost ready to throw punches even as he backed up away from the odd pair.
“Oh come on, not another one!”
“Gregory! The protective cylinder!” It was only then that Mike could notice the strange sight behind the boy, Gregory it seemed. Hooked up to some torture device looked chair in a cylindrical room was something that Mike could only assume was the current generation of Freddy. A muscular, punk-rock-looking frame instead of the more rotund versions before it. The animatronic’s head was hanging a few inches away from the body, with exposed multicolored wires. Gregory sped into the cylinder, pressing a button on the side to cause the hanging door to close.
“Ha! Take that!” The kid’s proud smirk was taken away before too long as the intercom started spouting off about “safety protocols” being turned off, and Mike felt like facepalming as Gregory’s realization about being stuck in a room with a potentially dangerous animatronic. Even without its head.
“What the hell is a kid doing in here?” Michael could feel the kid’s eyes snap to him questingly as Helpy dropped from his shoulder and made his way to the console.
“Hey… None of the other endoskeletons talked! What gives?!”
“Oi! What you think you're doing, comparing me to those pieces of junk?”
“Have you looked in the mirror? You look like a backyard project. What even are you?! Why aren’t you attacking me?”
“Why aren’t I…?! You’ve been getting attacked?!” Mike groaned as he slumped over, his pieces clanking against each other. “Of course you’re getting attacked, it’s Fazbear’s. Why am I even surprised?” Michael straightened back up and looked down at the kid through the glass. He knew if he was going to help him, and he was, he would need to start with the kid’s first question. He also was smart enough to realize waving his real name around in this body would lead to questions he still didn’t have answers to. So…
“Eggs. Eggs Benedict. I’m… from the older pizzeria.”
He felt like clocking himself over the head, but there was no going back now. At least he was treated to the sight of the kid fighting off a smile at the absurdity of it.
“What kind of a name is Eggs Benedict?”
“The name of something given a British accent. What kind of a name is Chica the Chicken?” If he could grin, he would have as Gregory began to uncontrollably giggle. He looked upset at himself for it even as more laughter escaped his lips; it was all-around adorable. It also made the newly christened Eggs think of if Even would have looked as cute, if he was ever given a reason to smile. He shook the feeling off, he had a living child to protect.
“Pardon me.” The Freddy head spoke up, Eggs could just barely see its eyes attempting to see beyond its nose from its perch. “I apologize if this comes off as rude, but I have no record of an animatronic under ‘Eggs Benedict’ in my database.” Right…
“Right… Well, I was never finished, as you can probably tell. The old place burnt down before I even got an exo designed. Probably never bothered putting me in the system.” God, Eggs hoped they would believe that. Fortunately for him, the bear seemed to buy it hook line and sinker. It visibly relaxed, which was a surprise on its own, and made Eggs wonder just how advanced was it.
“Oh. Well, I am truly sorry if I offended you.” Ok, it was official. That bear was just too damn polite sounding for its looks. Whoever heard of a polite punk-rocker?
“No problem.” He knelt in front of the glass, getting closer to eye level with the small kid. “Now, who’s attacking you? Why?”
“I don’t know. The other three band members have been chasing me, plus those endo things in the other room. Not to mention that security guard, and suddenly this weird rabbit lady appeared out of nowhere and chased me”
“Whoa whoa whoa, slow down Kid! Rabbit?! Was it yellow?” Eggs looked to the side, making eye contact with Helpy before looking back at Gregory in shock.
“No… She was wearing a white suit, looked kinda bad too, with patches and stuff. And she had a knife!”
“White… Then who?..” Eggs was interrupted when, with a sound of triumph from Helpy off to the side, the hatch between them slipped up. Gregory took a step back in shock, before mustering himself and bravely standing tall in front of the ramshackle bot. “Right, doesn't matter. Obviously still bad news.” Eggs stood back up, taking the chance to attempt to gauge Gregory’s size now that there wasn’t a barrier in the way. The kid was either very young, or particularly small, and his voice didn’t sound that young. “Let's… get the big guy up and at’em first, shall we?”
Eggs brushed past Gregory, entering the small, cramped room. He frowned at the overly complex device overhead, batting one piece to the side.
“What even is this? How’s a man supposed to work with this in the way?”
“But Mr. Benedict, this is what the technicians use to do maintenance?”
“Really? Don’t they teach people how to actually fix things here?” Already at his limit with the dangly bits, Eggs ripped everything but the parts holding Freddy’s head off the ceiling. He snapped a few bits he could use as tools off before tossing the rest out the door and getting to work. “But really, it’s a wonder they repair you at all, you’re practically a kids' toy, with all this plastic. Did they run out of metal in the past decade?” It took him mere moments to reconnect the animatronic’s overly simplified connectors, leaving him bound to the chair as he headed to the console. “Hold on, I’m gonna make sure you’re back in safety mode first.”
Eggs looked down at the screen as another wave of familiarity washed over him. He could swear they were still using the same system as he did, and a few keystrokes proved his feeling right as the computer accepted his admin password without a hitch. It made him wonder if they really changed anything under the hood since he passed on.
“Hey, Frankenbot.” Eggs looked down, catching Gregory peering at the screen from next to him. “How’d you get into the system that easy? And how did you repair Freddy? They don’t program animatronics how to do stuff like that, do they?”
“Nope, not really. But I… My creator was a genius.” And a madman. “I spent a lot of time watching him do stuff, and I picked a few things up.” Eggs returned his attention to the keyboard in front of him, seeing Gregory move on to watching Helpy tinker with the discarded maintenance pieces. He brought up Freddy’s logs, intent on checking of it was safe to let out.
“Hold on… What’s this?” Eggs double-checked, but the data didn’t lie. There was almost nothing in Freddy’s logs; from what he could see, the animatronic’s AI core was purged and reset… less than twelve hours ago. Which would have been in the middle of the day. “Fred, did anything happen to you roughly… Three PM yesterday?”
“Not… That I know of. Although apparently, I crashed in the middle of a performance. Is that what you are asking?”
“Maybe… Let me check something. Kid, you said Freddy’s the only one not attacking you?”
“Kinda? The worker bots don’t do much else than alert everything. Plus I ran into these creepy little… spider bots with cymbals in the vents. They actually guided me. But the other band members, yeah. They’re crazy!”
“hmmm…” Eggs glared at the lines of code as if they’d give up their secrets if he looked stern enough. This meant something: the data purge, Freddy’s crash, and its un-hostile nature. They were connected to what was going on, he just didn’t know how. “Well, you’re safety is re-engaged. Let’s get you out of that chair.” He released the maintenance machine’s binds, watching as the large animatronic stood up and trod its way out of the cylinder.
“There’s so much tech in here. They’re gotta be something to use against the other bots, right?” Gregory asked as he looked around. A tug on his pants caused him to look down at the tiny pink bear holding a makeshift sword he made out of the maintenance machine. “...Thanks. But I meant more like something to disable them. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to fight them.” He took the sword anyway, sliding it into a belt loop and feeling decisively more brave despite his own protests.
“Bright lights can cause our eyes to malfunction briefly, a fazerblaster or faz-cam could work.”
“Where would I get those?”
“Fazerblasters are of course in the fazerblaster course. Faz-cams are sold in Monty’s golf, although I suppose some could still be in the confiscated pile. You’ll need a party pass for either, Maybe you’ll find one in Chica’s room?”
“Hey, look at these pictures.” Gregory had moved around the cylinder, staring up at a set of blueprints hung on the wall, showing off various parts of the other three band members. “Chica’s voicebox, Roxy’s eyes, and Montey’s claws. Freddy we can use these to upgrade you!”
“But Gregory, those are my friends. I would not want to hurt them to take their parts.”
“But they’ve been hurting me! They totally deserve it!”
“What are you two on about?” Both human and animatronic heads snapped back to Eggs, seeing his impressively unimpressed look (considering his unemotive face). “Not even Fazbear is dumb enough to put one-of-a-kind prototypes in their easily damaged stage animatronics. There’s got to be spares about.”
“...Oh. I suppose that makes sense.”
Eggs got back to work on the computer, bringing up inventory logs and directing the other three around. Fifteen minutes later he had a small pile of prototype parts, as well as some proper tools, since he doubted the bits he pulled off of the machine would cut it.
“Hey, Freddy. What upgrade did you get?” Gregory helped his friend back into the chair, looking up at him with a head tilt.
“Well, I… Don’t quite know. They didn’t bother telling us, and I don’t recall having the issues the others had that required repeated checks.”
“I can tell you.” Eggs set up the maintenance mode before joining them in the small chamber. “Saw it in the logs, the big guy got stronger suspensions connected to his hatch. Guess even these idiots can’t mess up shock absorbers.”
“Oh! That’s probably why I’m able to ride in it so well!”
“You… What?! Why in God's name would you do that ?!” ‘ They’d reused so much. If this Freddy had anything taken from the Funtime…’
“Uh, to not get killed?” Turns out Gregroy could do a deadpan look with the best of them. Eggs considered coming up with some comeback, but decided to drop it in favor of upgrading the bot currently strapped to the chair. That didn’t stop him from double-checking the hatch mechanism for anything too close to the older model for comfort.
“Right… Well be a champ and grab that screwdriver for me… No, the red one. Thanks.” Eggs got to work, first detaching everything he was planning on replacing. A shiver ran up his arms when he grabbed the eyes, something about them seemed to cling to the remnant in his system. He shelved that though for now in favor of finishing his job, and not five minutes later he was unhooking the newly upgraded bear. It wasn’t a perfect job; its hands were now a clashing purple and green, and its eyes were glowing an uncomfortable silver. But they were hardly in a position to care about aesthetics, plus as he was, he had no right to anyway.
“Thank you, Mr. Benedict.” Freddy moved its new hands testingly, its eyes jumping between the sharp claws and Eggs’s body before seeming to visibly decide something and move on. “Now, If we’re to get Young Gregory something to defend himself, Chica’s greenroom is still our best bet.” It turned to the set of doors, taking notice of the red lights. “It looks like Roxy’s elevator is the only one online, Gregory, it is best if you hide while we pass through.”
The young boy did as asked, clambering up into his guardian’s stomach hatch and curling into a ball. Eggs tensed a bit as it happened, but forced himself to relax. The way it was described to him the two had done that multiple times beforehand, so he just had to have faith in the oddly human animatronic.
“Right, let's go. I’m not getting any less rusty here.” Eggs repositioned Helpy on his shoulder before following the bear down a short hallway and into another, more upkept elevator.