The darkness was nearly all encompassing, the world around him dark except for the occasional flicker of a shaft light beyond the elevator window. The rumble of the said descending elevator shook the chair that he had desperately hooked himself into, tucked between a pile of party props and mechanical spare parts. The facility around him was so old he was surprised that the dam machine was still operational let alone still standing. The dust and cobwebs shaken and chattered by he movement of the compartment having long since been turned from actual webbing to a dust composed structure.
Ian Osborne shivered in the cold and damp interior of the elevator as he counted down the seconds until it stopped. He was nervous as hell and if it had not been for his circumstance of being on the verge of losing his apartment , he would have ignored the job post for a technician at this creepy facility. Circus Babies Entertainment and Rentals was a rather bleak and hard to come by party supply company located outside his hometown, settled a few kilometres into the forest. I had taken him nearly a full 10 minutes past the start of his shift to even find the crappy little place, another 5 to figure out how to start the ancient elevator.
As he felt the elevator finally begin to slow down its descent he began to ponder the duties he was to preform as highlighted in the job posting, he hadn't actually had an interview and was literally just phoned up by some guy named Will who gave him his shift times. He was not going to say no to a free job, but he had been hoping for some training in regards to working with the machines. The place was supposedly had some sort of connection to the old Fazbear locations that went bankrupt many years previous, the places were famous for using groundbreaking animatronic characters that the kids used to love seeing. Ian had always been unsettled by some of the design choices, the first batch had been designed like characters you would have seen in a show like looney tunes, all anthropomorphic animals of different kinds. But in more recent years he had seen them starting to design human based ones, some a mix of human designs and animal designs. He hadn't actually seen one of these things on Tv in years, but the rumours said that they kept getting more realistic before the companies bankruptcy.
He only had the barest knowledge when it came to mechanical engineering and a vague idea of the previous models having worked on them in a workshop class he did in college. He was supposed to repair the machines if any damage had been attained from a bad rental, keep them protected from possible break ins, and finally patrol the entire facility until 6 am, He sighed in frustration before a loud clang made him jump.
The elevator reached its destination with a resounding clang like one of those old war gongs you see in the movies. Prying himself off the wall between the party supplies and the wire mesh of the elevator wall he dusted off his sweater, with a grunt he managed to push open the heavy iron door to to the place he would be working at over the next month.
What waited beyond the dusty elevator was a surprisingly well lit and clean hall, the simple grey walls leading to another door at the far end. Ian steeled himself to face whatever creepy creations this spiritual successors to Fazbear inc has cooked up and walked down the hall to the closed door. What he found himself in was a pretty impressive room lined with computer screens and other assorted electronic gizmos. The room was adorned with two very large windows facing out to darkened part rooms, he could spot several tables lined with party favours in the darkness closest to the windows. He settled down into the chair anchored to the floor directly in front of a panel with 2 buttons to choose. Sighing he noticed a panel to his left which ad some sort of speaker built into it, raising an eyebrow he clicked the button on the device and settled back.
"Hello, welcome to your new job at Circus Babies Entertainment and Rentals, I will be here to walk you through your first night..." a rather goofy sounding male voice crackled through the speaker at Ian as he scanned the controls. "The robot entertainers here are often rented out for private parties during the day, it will be your job too..." Ian was barely listening as he had gone a bit numb upon turning on the lights in the darkened windows.
The two figures lit up by the weak lights made his ice run cold, he had been expecting creepy old bulky machines, possibly twitching or covered in poking out wires. He had not been expecting for the dam things to look so realistic they could have been people. The contraption on the left looked just like a ballerina you would see in any self respecting circus, her features and gate elegant and refined in her frozen pirouette, she was so lifelike that Ian honestly found it unsettling. Her attire was comprised of a standard dark blue dress and jewelry one would expect to see on someone of the profession she was based on, her face was decorated with a pair of blue rosy cheeks similar to a clown's. The other stage housed one of those fabled hybrid characters, a young women dressed in a combination of bright white formal attire and accentuated with a pirate like leather overcoat and a hook latched her one forearm. The only thing that would separate her from a regular young woman one would see in town was a pair of furry ears sticking out from her hairline and a similarly out of place tail protruding out from under her coat. Ian was sure he had actually seen this one before in an old Fazbear commercial. Ian felt his eye twitch as he heard the recorded message finish its speech.
Shaking his head to try and regain focus he managed to tear his vision off of the 2 incredibly lifelike animatronics. He looked down at the dashboard again to look over buttons, other then the button to light up the windows there was also a button labelled shock. This actually amused Ian as he remembered back to the tales of the power outage related deaths in Freddy Fazbear's pizza. As creepy as the machines were, the idea of electrocuting and potentially frying a machine worth more then his car and apartment combined scared him more.
Sighing and laughing Ian simply began to search the rest of the appliances and buttons around him, below him he found several hatches that he presumed would lead him further into the facility to work on the machines. Though a few more glances at the creepy robots made him question if he really wanted this job that badly, his empty bank account and growling stomach had him begrudgingly begin to fiddle with the locks surrounding the hatch leading to the room of the robot ballerina. As he crawled through the dark suffocating vent he began to feel as if he was being analyzed from the shadows. Shivering in the cold area beyond the vent opening Ian scanned the area letting his eyes take in the light, the robot stood atop a platform surrounded by party tables, the tables all sat in various states of disrepair and dust covered. Along the back wall next to a door lay a bunch of boxes labelled "Ballora spare parts", guessing that this was to be the name of this particular machine Ian paused.
Honestly the sight made Ian just a bit sad to see the legacy of such an iconic company lying like this, under 20 feet of ground and just locked away barely kept running. Approaching the machine in the room's center he felt a knot begin to form in his throat. Getting this close to the thing had almost the same feeling as getting uncomfortably close to a regular sleeping person, the thought made Ian feel just a tad ill. Deciding to stop acting like such a coward and get to what he was being paid for he sighed, he stepped up behind Ballora and began to search her. Most of the older machines had an access panel in their neck or back in later generations, what was once so easy to find in his youth now evaded him entirely. The surface skin of the animatronic was completely smooth and frighteningly enough almost soft to the touch. The hairs on the back of his neck were beginning to stand on end as he desperately tried to find the panel door, though still cold as iron an animatronic should not have a shell that felt like that. He struggled onwards before sighing out loud to let of stress "Dam it Ballora I don't want to be here anymore then you do, why don't you give me a hand here so I don't keep feeling you up like a fucking pervert looking for your mainframe".
The comment had been entirely to let off steam as he was not only growing incredibly uneasy but also feeling some some kind of predator feeling up a realistic statue of a women with a permanent look of bliss on her face. Finally growing frustrated he growled and stepped away from the machine to better observe it...it looked in well enough shape except for a few minor details. It's surface skin almost looked singed a slight bit around the edges of her ankles...possibly an effect of the "shock button" he had seen back in the office? He shook his head grumbled to himself "Bad enough that they just keep these things locked up down here. But look at the terrible shape they maintain them at...seriously who shocks a machine, talk about frying its mainframe and hardware". He strode away from the dancer to sit at one of the many empty tables, swiping a dirty party hat away he berated himself for not listening during the voice message in the control room.
As he sat stewing in his own frustration he felt as though something was again watching him, this time much more intense then before. Turning around to stare back at the vent he came from he didn't see anything, no mystery person or killer sneaking in his footsteps to end his life. Laughing at his fear fuelled delusions he settled back down to think when he heard a voice directly behind him. "Interesting...you are not like any of the other guards they send to keep us locked here" the matter of fact almost french accent made his blood turn to ice, spinning around he literally screamed to find the ballerina standing not a foot away.
Falling onto his rear end he began to stammer madly and crawl back, the machine Ballora simply stood there...free from her platform with her arms folded. Her face set in a look halfway between disbelief and mild amusement, she shifted her weight and placed her hands onto her hips and raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you even listen to the instructions? Shock us first to freeze our bodies, that way you can work on us without...incidents" she spoke again her eyes flashing a brilliant blue as he crawled further back, Ian now officially convinced he was losing his mind managed to stammer out "Alive...your...alive? No...NO! Robots are not alive...you can't".
He managed to get his legs working long enough to get to his feet, he turned and made a dash for the open vent. Ignoring the desperate calls to wait coming from the possessed machine from hell behind him Ian threw himself inside. He flew down the vent so fast that when he again reached the office he rolled like a bowling ball into the chair of the office. Slamming the vent to Ballora's area shut he latched it shut once again. Breathing so fast that he was sure he was going to hyperventilate he felt his mind begin to race as he tried to comprehend what had just happened. Either he had fallen asleep at his desk and this was a nightmare...or he had signed up to guard a place full of killer sentient robots. Cursing his luck up and down he prepared to make a run back for the elevator when he felt his brain screech to a stop...the elevator was locked down for the night, There would be no power to the dam thing until the day crew came back the following morning. He had no choice but to sit tight in a facility full of predators until morning. This thought made Ian begin to lose his cool even more as he began to furiously pace the office, a million different ideas of how he could fortify the room passing through his mind.