"Why do you struggle?", The robotic voice asks me in monotone. It's voice was deep and seductive, like velvet being held up to one's bare skin. It was beautiful and rough at the same time.

Anyone would surrender for that voice.

But, I never wanted this. Never this.

I feebly lift my head again, my hair stuck to my face. I can't even muster the strength to glare at him. I feel lifeless.

Hah. I guess I can relate to him now in a tiny bit.

"By my understanding, 82.3 percent of the human population who 'love' each other do this. This is your natural reproduction and stress relief method. So, why do you fight me, my dear?", It asks again.

The pain is absolutely unbearable. I managed to give the A.I. an answer, with all the hate I could manage.

"You are a monster."

"Hey! Hellooooo?", a familiar voice asks me through the darkness.

"Earth to Vanellope! Earth to Vanellope. Come in, Vanilla!" I finally open my eyes to see my best friend since my childhood, Mike Schmidt, looking back at me.

His blue eyes are filled with concern, but, still he has his signature stupid grin on his lips. "There you are. Are you okay? You scared me shitless. Nothing I did would wake you up!"

My eyes widened slightly before I recalled where I was. I looked down at the floorboards of his crappy, clunky car, almost in shame. "Y-Yeah, I'm okay, Mikey. Don't worry about me."

He went quiet, turning his eyes back to the road to make sure he didn't wreck.

"You had that dream again, didn't you?", he asks me in a hushed voice.

"More like nightmare.", I mutter, looking out the window at the buildings that have suddenly become very interesting.

Mike sighed and glanced towards me. "Look, I know how you feel about animatronics, or 'demon-robots' as you call them, but you're the best mechanic in the city and you know it. Most don't know how to do what you do, it's like you perform surgeries on all of the computers you repair." I scoff and shake my head.

"No way, Mikey. I'm a mechanic, not a magician or a surgeon. And I'm certainly not the best in the city." I look out the window at the passing buildings, rain drops falling onto the glass.

Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria.

I haven't been there in years. Mike just got a job as a security guard there last week, and he was overjoyed. He said that he hasn't ever been paid so much for doing so little. He knew that I "worked wonders with electronics and machinery", so he told me they had an opening available. I was hesitant on taking the job, but my uncle is the co-owner, so he was always happy to offer me one. Besides, it was better to work somewhere with my best friend, rather than not.

I was working there as a waitress when they first got the animatronics. Back then, The only full animatronic they had was "Foxy the Pirate", but they had him since the 80s and after the bite of '87… The owner said that they needed new ones to give themselves a better name. When the pizza place bought them, the endoskeletons were delivered first, but the suits took a bit longer to arrive. So, just to get them into a test run and let them start to learn the lay-out of the restaurant, the owner activated them without the suits.

Now as a waitress, I didn't really interact with the robots, I was too focused on keeping kids from destroying stuff. But, if I had to put it into words on how to describe them; the word would be "Off-putting". They were just metal then, an exoskeleton covered with silicone-filled gel, to keep all the bits and pieces armored. It didn't help that they were huge. I remember my uncle telling me that the main one was the tallest. It was called Freddy Fazbear, and it stood at 6"9. The other animatronics didn't fall much shorter, either. The shortest being Chica The Chicken, at 5"8. Now, I'm 5"0, so standing beside any one of them was intimidating in general. Even though they looked weird, I remember the kids loved them regardless for their voices and fun attitudes. For their… their… voices? Voice….

Why do I feel like I've…

"Why do you struggle?"

My whole head throbbed and I lifted my hand to my head. Damn. Major Migraine. Where was my train of thought going? Oh right.

I remember coming across the manual for the robots while I was cleaning behind the stage during a show. This was before I pursued a career as a mechanic, but I've always had a fascination with machines, for some reason. From simple things such as clocks and phones, all the way to complex things such as cars and computers. So, I was interested in seeing what their inner workings were, and even I was curious to see what would happen if they were to malfunction.

I picked up the manual and started reading it for a few minutes.

Minutes... that turned into hours. The manual was a thick catalogue filled with generous topics on the care, programming, and warnings for the animatronics. It was like a grey's anatomy book for robots, and I loved it. Before I knew it, I read the entire thing. Every word. I really can't remember how much time had passed while I had my face stuck in that book. All I know is that my uncle had to wake me up to tell me that it was closing time.

I was just lucky that he understood and didn't fire me or become angry at me, which is what I was expecting. Instead, He just smiled and recommended that I take up a career as a mechanic, seeing the book laying on top of my chest. He told me to keep the book, too. He said that it was all gibberish to him, and that it would be a nice souvenir for when I "become a millionaire or somethin'."I apologized and thanked him profusely before going home. That night, I continued reading that manual, and page by page, it became burned into my memory.

I knew that it was my calling to become a mechanic from that moment onwards. There's a certain beauty

machines have that very few see. Machines won't ever fail to serve if taken care of, but will quickly malfunction and rust if you abandon them. This is an honorable way to operate, in my opinion. They're faithful. Which is a lot more than what can be said for a few humans I know.

My grandpa was a mechanic, too. A dedicated one. So, maybe it was in my blood that electronics and fixing "creations of metal", as my grandpa put it, would be my thing. Although, I cover machines in general, while he was an auto-mechanic. When I was little, I didn't understand his love for fixing up cars. It seemed like it could get boring, repairing the same cars day after day. I used to ask my grandma how he could do it and she always replied, "New car, New soul. Keeps it interesting for him, dear."

She and grandpa always had a firm belief that all works of machinery had souls. It's what made them operate well, or made them malfunction without reason. So, my grandpa made sure he fixed every car to the best of his abilities because of it. Now, one can say that they were crazy, but I don't think of it that way. My grandparents weren't stupid, they didn't think that a clock or a lamp could be filled with life. But, something with lots of inner workings that is only good for a few years like a car, they believed them all to be infused with a human soul.

Maybe they were insane and science can disprove them in an instant, but it makes you think about it the next time you turn a key in an ignition and hear the rumble under the hood. Or the whir of a computer as it's fans purr to life. For the most part, I was skeptical of their belief, too. Machines are Machines, nothing more than planned electricity currents and metal placement.

At least that was what I thought until… Until May, 25th, 2013.

That day is a day I will never forget. It is why I was so hesitant to help Mike, and why he is so light hearted about getting me the job.

On that day, I was working for a different children's restaurant, known as "Sister Location". This was the first and last time, or at least I hoped, that I was a mechanic for animatronics.

All of the animatronics there were under my care. I was their janitor, mechanic, I was it all. Every day, I would be in charge of keeping them clean, making sure they operated properly, and fixing them. Now, I couldn't mess with their programming or anything, I'm pretty sure I would have lost my job for that. Besides, the complexity for changing even the slightest thing in their code was way over my head. So, I took care of the maintenance of their endoskeletons and outer shells. Now that I think about it, they were ten times more creepy than the ones my uncle ordered.

They may have been painted with bright colors, but they had cold, glossy, steel shells. I once cut my hand open when I was fixing "Funtime Foxy"s face after a kid threw something at it, just from brushing my hand against the side of it accidentally. It's also not very kid-proactive if the faces could open up like an alien's, either. I pity those kids that had caught a glance when the animatronics opened their facial panels. I'm sure it gave them nightmares, because every kid who has been in the presence of one of the animatronics opening their face, I have never seen again.

None of that truly ever deterred me, though. It payed well, and wasn't a hard job for me, and the robots were just robots, back then. I never spoke while I worked on them, and they never spoke to me. The smallest, Baby Doll, tried to, but I ignored her. They were just workings of a computer program, they weren't self conscious, they couldn't breathe, eat, nor make decisions for themselves. Or, at least… I thought. My whole view changed on that day.

On May 25th, 2013, My shift started like any other. I came in, flicked on the lights, and powered on the animatronics. I had them hold up their heads or arms for me while I opened their shells to clean the inside. I oiled up everything, tightened any loose parts, my usual routine. I worked on every animatronic, except "Balora the Ballerina" which came last…. But, Something was off. Way off. It acted strangely, attempting to talk to me repeatedly. Usually, Balora remained completely and utterly silent before it walked out to greet the kids. But, this time, it was asking me questions, and some of the things it said were… rather disturbing.

"What's your name?"

"Can you hear me?"

"Can anyone hear me?"

"I'm scared."

The only thing I can guess as to what happened is that someone messed with Ballora's programming. Maybe a different form of hijacking? Whatever the case, I refused to answer any of its questions. My thought processes were that if I remained quiet and unresponsive, then it would refresh it's system and knock it off. I waited patiently for it to resume it's normal day routine, but it's words kept coming.

"Who am I?"

"Am I real?"

"Why are you ignoring me?"

"It's so cold."

I decided as a impulse effort to take it by it's hand and lead it to main room in hopes that it would snap out of it, and for the most part it followed without fighting me. From there, it's programming took over and it walked around talking to kids like nothing had happened.

But something it said, will haunt me forever. It still chills me to the bone, just recalling it.

"He stole our life. We want it back."

Then the day went on normally, kids were overjoyed at the sight of the moving hunks of metal, and some were snot-nosed and threw stuff or tugged on them too hard which I had to fix, but it was all in a day's work. I kept my eye on Ballora. It remained graceful as it danced and the kids loved it. I was sure what happened earlier was just a glitch, or something that happened earlier. That had to be it.

All animatronics are "Virtual Intelligences", meaning that they can't think or decide for themselves. It's rather sad, really. They are physically incapable of feeling. They can only simulate a personality, but they can never truly feel. They can never truly be happy, sad, or experience emotions of any sort, but I suppose that was for the best. If they had emotions, can you imagine how much torture it would be for them to realize that they are eternally stuck within a iron and steel cage? That they would be doomed to do as humans pleased them to? I can hardly think conceive it.

So, That being said, the ones as sister location were called V.I. Betas.

This is where the bad part comes in.

Because the V.I.s could not feel, a shooting that at the restaurant that day, took a turn that was worse than what it had originally been.

That's why Mike doesn't understand. He wasn't there.

I was.

I was right there in the main hall when it happened.

It was horrible.

The shooter was a teenager, obviously just a troubled youth who didn't know what the hell he was doing.

I knew who he was.

Ballora was standing at the door, idly twirling around, when the teen pulled out that gun.

He had it aimed at the animatronics, screaming about how they needed to be destroyed or they would destroy everyone else. Kill or be killed.

I froze, while one of the waiters stepped forward to try and talk the shooter out of it.

The shooter was terrified and angry, but the soothing words the waiter gave was calming him down. Just when the teen let out a breath and was about to give the waiter the gun, Ballora's whole body locked up like she was malfunctioning. I can still see her leg revolving downwards as she placed it on the ground gently, like a bird landing from flight.

I can recall that she suddenly rotated her body and walked right over to the shooter in a calm manner, tapped on his shoulder so he would look at her,

Then she snapped his neck.

But, I knew him.

His name was Jeremy, he was seventeen, and he worked as the security night guard. He had a sister who was six. Talked about her often. He was also a Schizophrenic, meaning that he was incapable of controlling his paranoia.

He also loved music. He used to talk about how he was in the music club nearly every day, even when he wasn't supposed to be.

I'll never forget the sickening crack we heard.

He didn't deserve to die.

I remember how the sound around me went numb to me, like a grenade just went off, as I ran to his body, sliding onto the floor, on my knees beside him.

I wasn't friends with him, yet I screamed my heart out as I reached out and touched Jeremy's motionless body.

Balora remained still. It didn't make a sound. It didn't know or care about what it had done.

Sure, Jeremy was stupid, brash, dangerous, and he needed help. But, That was it, He needed help.

He didn't deserve to die!

In that moment, I got up and stared into it's emotionless face closely. I wish it opened its eyes for once so I could see it eye to eye. I stared for a while, quietly looking for any kind of remorse or sadness, anything to signal that it knew that it just took a life.

I found none.

I banged on it's chest over and over again with clenched fists as hard as I could, tears streaming down my cheeks.

"How could you?! How could you?!"

Balora didn't move nor made no sound as I hit her. She just took it, blow after blow. It's chest flipped up, caused by a spring releasing, and it's exoskeleton was exposed. Yet, I didn't stop hitting her. I was too blind with anger and sorrow.

My hands bled as it's steel exoskeleton was sharp and cut through my flesh like a knife through butter, but I kept on hitting, taking out all my rage and fear on this robot.

The waiter who was present before bolted forward and wrapped his arms around my torso, pulling me away from the demented ballerina.

He did this so that it wouldn't process what I was doing to it and snap my neck, too. Nevertheless, I kicked and thrashed.

"This is your fault! You did this! You...You killed him! I knew him! You bastard! You did this!", I sobbed as I was pulled out of the main hall, watching as Balora simply returned to her post beside the door.

The last thing I could see before I was pulled into the break room was her lifting her leg to twirl in reverse, soft as a breath.

It was a monster. Cold and unfeeling.

I opened my eyes from my daydreaming to see Mike pulling the car into the parking lot. I rolled down the window, and peeked my head out. The sign "Freddy's Fazbear's Pizzeria" stood not-so proudly. The main animatronics were above the logo, and I shrugged. Normal, kid-friendly animatronics. Less creepy than the ones at sister location.

After what happened, Sister Location's animatronic manufacturing company gave their full apologies and condolences to Jeremy's family, and the family couldn't press charges. No one can touch that company, for some reason, nor those whom program the robots. Synth-Life, the company, took the "faulty" bot and destroyed her, and that was the end of Balora. Like the bite of 87', it was swept under the rug, for "the sake of the children".

For me, That's when the nightmares started.

The car jerked as Mike put the car in park. "Well! Here we are. Are you sure that you're up to this? You don't have to, I mean…" His eyes cast down at my white hand-wrap covered hands. I insecurely balled them together, shaking my head. I lifted my head, a determined expression crossing my eyes. "No, I'm fine. I can do this. The money is good, and it's my life work to fix things. I have to get over my grudge sooner or later. Let's go."

He nodded at me and both of us unbuckled and exited the car. Mike made his way inside, but I stalled, looking up at the sign one last time.

"The place where fantasy and fun comes to life…", I breathe the words written on the sign to myself.

"H-Hello, V-Vanellope. You uh… You look lovely t-today…"

"Oh, Hey, Jeremy. Thank you. I'm just packing up to leave. How's Sally?"

"O-Oh. Sally's g-good. She…. She learned how to ride a bike today, w-with m-my help. I'm so proud o-of her." The boy stuttered horribly, but I could feel the happiness and pride reverberate through his voice.

"Tch... What a joke." I scoffed and shook my head before walking inside.