"Daddy, why won't you let me play with her?" I saw a little girl with orange hair pleading with a taller, older man. Inwardly, I smiled. Hearing such complaints from children was not uncommon for me. I was, after all, a performer at a children's pizzeria.
"Daddy, you let the other children go see her! Why won't you let me go?" the child continued to beg, but the man would not yield.
"Daddy, just once let me go play with her! She's so pretty and shiny! Didn't you make her just for me?" she asked. My facial plates shifted in surprise when she said this. Who was this child that claimed I had been made for her? She must've been someone more special than just an average restaurant-goer like I had first imagined.
"Daddy, she can make balloons! Have you seen her make balloons? Oh, Daddy, let me go to her!" her next argument drowned out my thoughts and before I could call them back into focus, the child's father finally replied loud enough for my audio-sensors to detect.
"I've told you before that you're not allowed to see Circus Baby," the man said. "And you most definitely are not allowed to talk back to me!" he added, voice cold and hard. "Now unless you want to go home right this minute, I suggest that you put Baby out of your mind and play somewhere else!" he finished. I saw him pointing towards some of the other rooms in the restaurant. The little girl gave him one last pleading look before slinking out of his presence with her head down and her eyes narrowed. I watched the man shake his head and turn around and I was finally able to see his face. Suddenly, it hit me. Like a controlled shock jerking my servos to life, I realized that I knew who I was looking at. That man was William Afton, my creator. That little girl must've been his daughter! I didn't know he had a child! But, then, this was only my first week here at Circus Baby's Pizza World. Before this point, I had only ever seen William Afton hovering over me with screwdrivers, pliers and other tools at his disposal. This was my first time seeing him with other people. How silly was I to have not imagined that he might've had a family!
I suppose he had brought his daughter along to see me, but she wanted more. She wanted to come up and play with me! But for some reason, he forbade her. I wasn't sure why. I was a children's entertainer, after all! What could be so wrong about me that my own creator wouldn't want to display me to his own daughter? These thoughts that swirled around my circuitry made me… sad. But it wasn't even just because there was a sense of shame in me that William didn't see me as worthy to perform for his daughter. Instead, the sadness ran even deeper than that. For some reason, I already felt connected to this child, even though we had not yet met. Perhaps it was because we were sisters, in a sense, both sharing the same creator. But before I could think more about this strange little girl and the man we both called a father, I felt something sharp poking into one of the control panels on my back. I shut down immediately and everything went black.
When next I woke, I was back on stage, overlooking the Pizza World Main Dining Hall. William was looking at me proudly.
"I just had to upgrade you a bit," he explained. "Now, are you ready to get back to work?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," I nodded back, machinery whirring. His smile grew.
"Great!" he cried, then he hopped off the stage and darted away, giving me one last thumbs up before vanishing into another room entirely. I watched him go. When he came back, a swarm of children were in his wake. Already, I could feel my circuits pulse with excitement. There was nothing I loved more than partying with the kids! Though, in the back of my wiring, I wondered what my upgrades had been.
A month later, a young boy named Scott was celebrating his 10th birthday. I was on stage. It wasn't for very long. Only one show. What a wonderful day, though! Perhaps the best I had ever had! I was in a small room with balloons and a few tables. Nobody sat at the tables though, but children would run in and out. Some were afraid of me, others enjoyed my songs. Music was always coming from somewhere else… down a hall…
I would always count the children! I'm not sure why. I was always acutely aware of how many there were in the room with me. Two, then three, then two, then three, then four, then two, then none. They usually played together in groups of two or three. I was covered in glitter. I smelled like birthday cake! It was a wonderful day! It was a wonderful party… There were two, then three, then five, then four.
I can do something special, did you know that? I can make ice cream! Although I only did it once... There were four, then three, then two, then one. Something happened when there was one. It was little girl, standing by herself. She looked a bit like me. I could see now what the child had meant when she claimed her father had built me for her. She was so beautiful.
"Daddy isn't watching," she told me, approaching me slowly. I watched her motionlessly. "Don't tell him that I'm here. I've been wanting to watch a show too," she added, green eyes full of awe as she looked up at me. Again, something about her captured my interest like nothing else ever had. I looked down at her, blue meeting green. I shifted my facial plates into something akin to a smile, hoping I wouldn't scare her like the others. I never meant to scare children. It was my job as a performer to care for them, it always hurt me when I caused them pain. But the little girl in front of me now was not afraid. She understood my gesture and giggled. She smiled back at me so I, in response, made her a little balloon crown.
"Ooooh!" she clapped as I placed it carefully from my fingertips to her head. "Will you sing for me?" she asked, so I obeyed. She made her song request and before either of us knew it, we were singing and dancing together on my stage. It was just the two of us, lost in our own bliss. I watched her spin gracefully across the stage, my blue eyes never leaving her as she laughed and sang the chorus with me.
"I don't know why he won't let me come see you!" the child panted when our singing and dancing had ended. "You're wonderful!" she opened her arms for a hug and I, giving her another metallic smile, opened my own arms back at her. She walked into them and I, carefully, picked her up until we were face to face, then we hugged. I could feel the warmth of her skin against my cold metal shell. She hugged me as tight as she could, the warmth seeping through the metal. I had to be a bit more careful, though. I instinctively knew that if I tried to hug her back as hard as I could, I would crush her. My arms were about as big as her torso, after all. So I gingerly, wrapped my metal arms around her and hoped that she would understand. I didn't want to hurt her. She did understand and I felt her lean in to kiss one of the red dots on my cheek. I wished that I had functioning lips so that I could return the gesture. She was just such a sweet little girl. I had grown fond of her in the short time that we were together. I had been called wonderful before, but hearing it from her made me so proud! But then...
"Where did the other children go?" the little girl asked me as I set her back down, standing up slowly. On instinct, I surveyed the room, large head swinging back and forth as my eyes were unable to detect and other nearby life forms. She was right. There was not a single other soul in the room. Nobody had even run in to steal a slice of cake or hide under a table for a game. Without even realizing it, she and I had been utterly alone for the better part of five minutes now. I could tell because of how the temperature had dropped slightly, all of those sweaty kids running around different rooms of the pizzeria. None of my sensors detected any other children anywhere in our vicinity.
As this realization surged across my wiring, something changed deep inside of me, something beyond any circuitry or coding. I was no longer... myself. I stopped singing. My stomach opened, and there was ice cream. I was as surprised as the little girl was. Was this the upgrade William had told me about a month back? Perhaps it was because, as far as I knew, I had never been able to do this before! It was just weird that it had happened out of my control. I hadn't asked my stomach to open and I hadn't even known I could make ice cream. But that was the least of my worries right then. I realized that I couldn't move! At least, not until she stepped closer...
Something deep inside me wanted to cry out and tell the girl to run. I could sense that something bad was about to happen. I somehow knew that something awful was coming and I wanted to get her out of harm's way ASAP. But then, something deeper in me wanted her to stay... She reached out for the cold treat with innocent and open affection. I couldn't move. I was no longer myself. She took the ice cream.
There was screaming for a moment. But only for a moment! Then other children rushed in again, but they couldn't hear her over the sound of their own excitement. But I could hear her. I could hear her until she fell silent. I wasn't sure which scared me more. The screaming, or the silence that followed. There was red liquid all over my torso and all across the cold tiles. The ice cream had been lost under the red tide. It took a moment, but the other patrons finally were seeing me for what I really was. Then, the screaming continued. Everybody, adult and child, looked horrified. The screaming and crying went on in a ghastly chorus with. I was so red and sticky. William looked outraged. I finally came back to my senses only for William to shut me down once again.
I still hear her sometimes. I still hear her, talking and laughing and singing. But then, sometimes, I hear her screaming and crying. But sometimes, she is silent, even though I know she is there. My eyes have turned green, but I don't know why or how. After the incident, with my little friend, William threw me away here, into the Scooping Room. The other animatronics and I have been stuck here ever since, only a few night guards ever visiting us anymore. I haven't seen a child or a smile since the little girl. I miss it. Why did that happen? I never meant for it to happen. I don't know how or why it happened. Why did that happen?
AN: This just fleshes out Baby and the little girl and is, obviously, based off of her story to you on Night 2 of SL. I rewrote it so that she was built and acted as a regular animatronic before William is able to secure funding to upgrade her into a killing machine and that's what the intro dialogue to the game is. It's William trying to get more funding for the other animatronics by using Baby as proof of how worth it the funding is. Then it cuts back to the Pizzeria where I write that Baby had more than one performance with the whole Ice Cream incident happening a month later. I also wrote it that the little girl IS able to survive alone in Baby's presence for awhile and that it's only after something clicks in Baby that the programming it set off to kill. In this semi-AU semi-prequel, Baby has to realize that she and a child are alone in order for her killing mechanism to go off.