And the first thing they were aware of was children.

Was it six?

…No. They heard children at six AM, but here there were actual, visible children and not just the noise.

And the children were staring right at them. What were they expecting? For them to dance and sing? They were in the middle of working! It was a quarter to six last time they checked-

"H-HELLO, KIDS!" someone spoke up on stage. It was an animatronic dog of an indeterminate breed, grey and like a German Shepherd. It had a blue hat and badge, like a police officer. For some reason, despite grinning, it looked horrified. "IT-IT-IT'S ME, MIKE SC- THE MUTT!"

From the right of the stage, a ferret in a uniform said in a familiar static-filled tone, "HELLO, HELLO! I'M PHONY FERR-FERRET."

A frog said, "I AM FRITZZZ THE FROG!"

"AND I AM JEREMY FI-FI-FIII-… THE JERBOA!" said an animatronic creature with huge ears and a long tail suspended in the air with cables.

"WELCOME TO MIKE MUTTSON'S PIZZA!" they chanted.

Oh no.

"Fredrick Derek Fredson?" a man read off of a card. "Francisca Chelsea Dickens? Boni-Bonifacius Ronald Bunker? Fawkes Lucas Foxworthy?"

One of the people in the room suddenly screeched almost like an animal and fell over on top of another.

The one that fell over had messy chestnut hair and wore a fancy tie.

The guy he fell on top of had nerdy glasses and buck teeth.

The nearby blond girl was a little wide compared to the stringy boys and with tan skin. She wore a yellow summer dress and white jacket despite the fact that there were obviously rainbows of leaves falling from trees in the window.

The last guy had freckles and red hair.

Each of the four had similar tee shirts; They were a bear, bunny, chicken and fox, respectively.

They didn't look very old, in their early thirties at most. They didn't look like they were supposed to be here, either.

"Are you Fredrick?" the man asked the one who fell. He didn't look like he had the time for this with his narrowed eyes and monotonous voice.

"F-Freddy," he corrected, getting up. "I'm Freddy."

"I'm Bonnie!" said another, helping him off of him.

The girl grinned, "I'm Chica!"

The last one spoke up with a notable accent, "I'm Foxy."

"Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy?" he repeated, pointing at each in order. "You could be preformers with nicknames like that."

"We are!" Freddy shouted. All of them spoke with a "rhythm", subtle but clear, like singers or robots.

The man sighed, "You're not here to preform, these are nightwatch interviews. Geez, it's like you just arrived from another dimension."

Heeeeeeey! something purple greeted deliriously as it swooped down from the ceiling. The thing was insanely thin and had an unsettling grin. Like the other animatronics, he had a badge, but his looked different.

Mike flopped right over and pointed at the puppet. "What-Who are you?!" he shouted.

It saluted and replied, 'Name's Larkspur! I haven't seen new animatronics 'round here since Freddy's reopened in ninety-three!

"…Sir, i-it's nineteen eighty-seven," Jeremy corrected.

"'Larkspur' is right. It's nineteen ninety-three," Mike corrected.

The creature narrowed its eyes and laughed, Suuure. Say, I've never met animatronics that have free will… Either you're stupid or really well made. I'm going with the former.

Larkspur reached behind him as if to grab something, but only clawed at the air. He turned his head to look, startled. He screamed, The crowbar! Where's the crowbar!?

"Yo, purple puppet guy, you okay?" Fritz asked.

Larkspur froze and swiveled his head around to face the anphibian animatronic. What did you call me?

"Purple Puppet Guy?"

He wentered silent and stared intently at Fritz. G-Get me a mirror, Larkspur croaked. Now.

Phony pulled back the curtains and pulled out a prop with a cheesy plastic mirror attached. Larkspur snatched it out of his hands angrily. He glanced at it, shrieked, then dropped the mirror. He ran off in a flurry of string.

"Hey, if we're animatronics, does that mean they're night guards?" Jeremy wondered.

Phony contemplated, "Are you implying this is their fault?"

"Maybe it is."

As they left the room Francisca finally gasped in a regular voice, "Hold on, what happened?"

Fawkes looked at her and asked, "What do you mean?"

She slapped him hard in the face. Freddy and Bonnie turned around, suddenly just as confused as Chica. Fawkes' eyes widened.

"Well?"

"Okay," he said without his previous accent. "We… We're not supposed to be out here. I'm a fox. A robot pirate fox. A-And… Something is wrong." He clutched his head and sat down on a bench. "Ugh, I can't think. I don't remember anything about being a person. I just remember preforming as… Foxy."

Freddy glared, "I'm not even sure what to do. I don't mean right now, I mean in general. Everything is fuzzy."

"That's because you had orders in your programming. Without them, you can do whatever you want, which you're not used to," Bonnie informed. "Hold on, what?"

Chica sighed, "You remember going to Freddy Fazbear's Pizza as a kid, right? Not Mike Mutterson's Pizza. That's wrong. We're supposed to be there, not a purple stick figure and dog."

"We're also supposed to be killing night guards," Foxy added.

"Which we are now," Bonnie realized.

"Oh nooo," Freddy complained. "Does that mean the night guards are animatronics out for blood instead of vice-versa?"

Chica slowly said, "Now we're going to die."