Author's Note: This is NOT a FNAF version of Pinocchio, though the core theme of a non-living entity wanting to be a real person is present, which is why I called this fic Metallic Pinocchio. But that is the full extent, other than a few nods with names (a total of 3, two of which are hidden/disguised), of the association.

EDIT: 4 December 2014, I added a small segment at the beginning of the chapter.

Chapter 1: Creation

Why was it that something that had been created with only good intentions had turned out so horribly wrong? Why was it that family restaurant had become the place of murder after murder?

Yes, that was right: murder. Pamela didn't doubt that for a moment.

Sure, management claimed that their night guards had all just gone missing - had failed to turn up to work, or simply vanished - but there was only so many times this claim could be said before it began to become ludicrously unbelievable.

There were rumors the place was haunted or cursed, and for all intents and purposes the company encouraged this train of thought. Pamela could only imagine that they wanted to diverge the public's attention from the sick and dreadful truth.

That someone, or something, was making the night guards disappear one after the other.

There were all sorts of rumors surrounding the place, in fact so many that many people had begun to forget fact from fiction. One was that the guards did simply vanish, that at some point in the night, they would simply be eaten up by the floor and never seen again. Another more grisly version was that the company used them as cheap meat for the pizza toppings. But the most commonly spouted rumor of all was that someone was deliberately making the guards disappear, and that the management had to know, but they were not saying anything.

It was stupid, foolish and downright dangerous, but Pamela had decided there was only one way to discover the definite truth.

And when - surprise, surprise - the restaurant sought out another night guard, she was the first to put her name down.

Pamela was a cautious person, she did her research first. The power at the restaurant was limited, she decided to bring a torch. She also brought with her notepad and pen. This was an investigation as far as she was concerned, and she planned to carry it out thoroughly.

And she had to see for herself if it was true.

That the restaurant's mascots, of all things, were the ones making the night guards vanish.

"You're hired, welcome aboard."

21 years before...

Blue eyes opened for the first time, and the creation beheld the world. A smiling face looked back at him, and he knew this was good. He reached forward, not knowing what else to do, and then the whole world tilted forward and he hit the ground.

Pain was a new feeling, but he immediately knew he didn't like it.

"Easy now," said a gentle voice, two hands grasping his shoulders and exerting enough force to right him back up again. It was the smiling face again.

"What are you going to call him?" called a demanding high pitched voice, blue eyes turned in their sockets to find the source – there was something lanky and black hanging over the top of a bookcase nearby. "You can't call him Jiminy, that's my name."

"Oh, no, no. Don't worry about that," Smiling face called back. "He already has a name."

"Name?" his own voice startled him, so much in fact that he forgot how to balance and fell forward again. Smiling face was back at his side immediately, pushing him back up and dusting his face with handkerchief.

"Your name is Freddy," Smiling face told him. "You are my creation, and you are perfect."

"Freddy," he repeated to himself. "Freddy, Freddy, Freddy."

"Very good," Smiling face congratulated him, and Freddy felt giddy with happiness at the simple comment. "Now, if you are ready, we will try standing."

"Standing?" Freddy asked, he looked down and found that while Smiling face stood straight on two legs, Freddy himself was sprawled against the wall, his own legs lying uselessly. Smiling face had liked it when he had copied him last time.

So he stood.

*CRASH!*

Joseph had been a father once, but his children were all gone.

But still remembered when his first child had learnt to walk, all shuffling and stumbling, with little grabby hands and large eyes wide with incredulity. And Joseph was filled with sad nostalgia, as he was reminded of that now as the animatronic immediately tried to stand...only to stumble headfirst into the bookcase on the opposite side of the room, falling to the floor with a metallic crash.

From his high perch, Jiminy the marionette squalled in irritation as the bookcase was rocked, and then swung down from a ceiling, landing upon the back of the tatty sofa, far away from Freddy. Joseph smiled at the marionette apologetically, then crouched beside his second creation to help him up again.

It reminded him so much of years gone by that it hurt, Joseph thought. There was one major difference though, between then and now, this creation of his was no small-fry, easily weighing in at over three times his weight and towering over him by nearly three feet; this was a machine, not a child. But in Joseph's mind there really was no better description for this being than a child. His child.

"Easy now," he told the animatronic again – it couldn't quite figure out how to stand again, and was thrashing (rather dangerous for something so large) about on the floor. "Let me help you."

And once more he guided his creation to its feet, slowly and steadily.

"Freddy," his creation repeated to itself again, wobbling a little dangerously on its feet – Joseph knew that if it fell again he would not have the strength to stop him, so he could only hope that Freddy kept his balance this time.

"Yes, you are Freddy," he told it, all the while beaming with joy. "And I am Joseph, your creator."

"And I'm Jiminy," the marionette, having finished sulking, had swung over for a closer inspection of the new animatronic.

Without warning, Jiminy dropped down from the ceiling and latched onto one of Freddy's shoulders, clambering up so that he could look the other animatronic straight in the eye. Joseph panicked for a moment, fearing that Freddy might panic and damage Jiminy in the process, but his fears were ill-founded. The bear regarded the marionette with innocent and curious eyes, he made no attempt to dislodge Jiminy or even show that he felt any discomfort at the sudden invasion of his personal space. Jiminy meanwhile was not quite as trusting, and was regarding the bear with obvious scrutiny.

"He's stupid," Jiminy concluded after a few moments inspecting Freddy, then he lept, deciding he wanted to swap seating arrangements. Joseph was nearly knocked over by the unexpected weight, Jiminy was thin as pin but he was still metal and Joseph was not the youngest or strongest of men.

"He's not stupid, his programming is still booting up," Joseph told Jiminy, but reassuredly patted Freddy on the arm at the same time. "By tomorrow morning I would be surprised if he wasn't walking and talking just as well as us."

"Not as good as me, I've been here longer," Jiminy replied, then he lept to the ceiling and scuttled out of the room.

Joseph was not blind to his oldest creation's jealously, he remembered going through the same thing when his own second daughter had been born many years ago. It would fade away with time, he knew, it had before. Jiminy had shown such interest when Joseph had been building Freddy and the others, the marionette had spent long hours hanging overhead so that he could watch Joseph work. But now that animatronics were finally finished, Jiminy was obviously out of his comfort zone.

Despite his earlier aggression, Jiminy predictably returned within an hour. By now Freddy was walking around quite happily without assistance, but Joseph was still hesitant to leave him on his own. Freddy was the biggest of the animatronics, which was one of the reasons Joseph had activated him first in case something had gone wrong. There was no way he'd have been able to handle four giant stumbling metal robots at once on his own. So now that Freddy was reasonably steady on his feet, it came time to activate the next one.

Both Jiminy and Freddy watched curiously as he wheeled out the second largest of the animatronics and began the complex process of activating the machine for the first time. Purple was an odd color scheme for a rabbit, but Joseph had had to go along with it as it was what the company had wanted.

"Your name is Bonnie," he told the newest addition, smiling. "Welcome to the world."

Bonnie was not as bright as Freddy, though in some ways he was not as dim either. The rabbit made no attempt to stand up before he was ready, but when Joseph tried to help him get to his feet, the animatronic (perhaps miscalculating its own weight) ended up pulling him down instead.

"Let me help," Freddy said, and Joseph was surprised to find that his other creation had walked over.

"I asked you to wait," he told his creation, trying to calm down Bonnie whose ears were now rapidly folding and flapping in apparent excitement at seeing another animatronic for the first time.

"I want to help," Freddy repeated, he hunched his shoulders apologetically.

Joseph smiled and let Freddy replace him at Bonnie's side, content that his own back wouldn't have to suffer the weight of another stumbling animatronic again. Freddy had no difficulty when it came to keeping Bonnie steady, being much stronger than Joseph, and was soon happily leading his pseudo-sibling around the room – though perhaps half-dragging was a better term for the first few minutes, as Bonnie could not walk at first and kept stumbling, Freddy would continue walking on obliviously while still holding him upright.

"I'm Freddy," Freddy told Bonnie.

"I'm Bonnie," Bonnie told Freddy.

"I'm Freddy."

And then they repeated this for several minutes, laughing every so often as if it was a great game.

"They are both stupid," Jiminy grumbled. "Joey, why are they so stupid?!"

Joseph just laughed and patted the marionette on the head.

"Be nice now, Jiminy," he admonished the marionette, but not unkindly. "Think of them as young children, except they should grow out of it in a few hours."

"They are not children," the marionette replied bitterly. "They are not small, they cannot be carried, or fed, or looked after."

"They can be looked after," Joseph replied. "And I expect you to look out for them if I'm not around. I'm not making you, but I would appreciate it. They are very new to this world still."

"They are not children," Jiminy replied huffily, but he no longer sounded quite as irritable.

"You'll get to look after real children soon enough," Joseph reassured him. "When the week is up, we will go to the diner and they will take the four, and you can work there too. Won't that be nice?"

Jiminy didn't reply, but he was doing such a poor attempt to hide his happy smile that Joseph didn't need him to say anything.

Jiminy the marionette had been built with the original intention of him looking after Joseph's own children back when he'd still had a family. Without a purpose now, the marionette had ironically grown childish and – if Joseph dared say such a thing about a machine – depressed. It was high time that Jiminy should have a purpose again, a function, a reason for his existence, and Joseph was glad to see that such an opportunity was just around the corner now.

The next morning, when Joseph went to collect Jiminy (as he normally accompanied him to the workshop each morning) he found that the marionette had built himself a nest out of blankets and cardboard boxes, and refusing to come out, Joseph had to leave him. Meanwhile Freddy was waiting impatiently at the bottom of the stairs and was very happy to see him again. Bonnie wasn't in sight, but the cheerful warbling singing, they could hear, indicated that he was somewhere nearby.

Bonnie had so far proved to be both independent and obedient, both very good qualities for his upcoming job at the family diner.

Freddy however was proving a little bit more...well, clingy.

It wasn't that part of Joseph secretly rejoiced at the fact that one of his creations was acting like a real child, following him everywhere and not wanting to be alone, even hiding behind him if he felt uncomfortable or frightened - despite the fact that Freddy, at just a few inches over 8 feet, couldn't possibly hide behind him properly. But the problem was that Joseph knew deep down that this was not a child he was dealing with – no matter how much he wished he could fill the empty space in his heart where his own children had once resided – and that Freddy would be expected to work on his own by the end of the week, and not have Joseph holding his hand on stage.

"I'm going to activate another creation, their name is Foxy," he told Freddy.

Freddy smiled. "I can help them learn to walk like I did with Bonnie."

Joseph shrugged, and got to work. Freddy watching over his shoulder eagerly.

All four of his creations had been built on blueprints he had made long ago in his contract years when he had still been employed by an engineering research company, before he had been fired and none of his projects had ever seen the light of day. That was until recently. He had been told by the diner what they had wanted, and not having much money from the commission, he had decided to recycle his old prototypes.

The original blueprints were not designed to look like animals, he had had to alter them, change them. The joy of creation was not something he had felt in a long time, and he found that it took away all his worries, all his fears, all his memories, so as long as he was in the moment of working, creating something new. It hadn't merely been cosmetic changes he had had to make though, he had had to reconfigure their programming, upgrade them, make them better, alter them. The four were prototypes for four designs he had once dreamed of selling. He had to change their programming, immensely, he hadn't even been certain that they would function, another reason why he had chosen to activate them one at a time.

Yellow glass eyes opened, and his newly activated creation looked up at him for the first time, curiosity and confusion written all over its face.

"Your name is Foxy, welcome little one," well, maybe not so little. Joseph reached out to help his creation to its feet. And Foxy reached out too, a smile flickering on his young face.

Then Freddy was suddenly between them and pushing Foxy forcefully away.

"Freddy, what are you doing? You'll hurt him!" Joseph exclaimed in alarm.

"He could've hurt you," Freddy exclaimed, shrinking back at his creator's voice, his sudden outburst of aggression fizzling out instantly, he returned to his prior state, nervous and uncertain like a small child in a new school. But the animatronic fox was now curled up in a corner in fear.

"Foxy is terrified, you've scared him," Joseph pointed out. "That wasn't a very nice thing to do."

"He's got a hook," Freddy pointed. "It looks sharp."

"It's made out of rubber, he's harmless," Joseph gently pushed his way past Freddy and went over to where Foxy was, crouching down so that they were eye-level.

"Sorry about that, don't worry about Freddy, he's just a big silly," Joseph reached out and gently patted Foxy on the arm. "The world is a big place, and it can be frightening at first, but it's also really quite wonderful. And I will be there to guide you every step of the way. I am your creator, and I'm here now."

Foxy's eyes darted nervously to Freddy and back again. Then he rested his head gently against Joseph's arm. Part of the family.

It took some time to just encourage Foxy to stand. Joseph got Freddy to apologize, but even then the fox did not fully trust him. In the end, Joseph had to ask Freddy to go looking for Bonnie to help out.

Foxy learnt to walk much faster than the other two had done, and pretty soon he was running, fast.

Thankfully he wasn't running from anything - as Joseph feared that the animatronic might have bolted out of a window and into the public if he had taken fright - but merely for the joy running gave him. However it was also admittedly alarming having a 6 and half foot tall robot running around the small cramped house that he was currently renting, and Joseph quickly had to ban him from running in the workshop or anywhere near the television.

And for the most part Foxy listened, though there were several times when he seemed to forget.

Freddy proved to be quite a useful obstacle in this regard. Being such a large animatronic, all he had to do to stop Foxy running through a room was to sit in the doorway - essentially blocking the door.

Joseph decided to activate Chica while the others were not around this time, fearing a repeat of Foxy's activation. He left Freddy and the others watching a cartoon so as to have them distracted. Despite first impressions, Foxy was now getting along well with Freddy, as well as Bonnie and – to his surprise – Jiminy. He had left them in a disorderly pile in front of the TV, none unhappy to be near the other.

Chica was the smallest of the four animatronics he had been making, but he also soon learnt she was the loudest.

"I'm Chica the chicken!" were her first proud words. "Are you a chicken too?"

"No, I'm a human," Joseph had replied. "Your creator."

Chica had turned her head to one side as if to consider this, then she smiled.

"Silly me, then I must be a human too!" she crowed, then got daintily to her feet, tripped and "flew gracefully" into the side of the bookcase with a loud crash. Joseph didn't have the heart to correct her as he helped her stand up again.

Chica showed confidence in her new surroundings where the others had only shown uncertainty, and as soon as she learnt her name she wouldn't stop saying it. He brought Bonnie down to meet her first, as he was the most docile of the lot. The match proved a good choice, Chica was ridiculously happy to meet him(and apparently had no concept of personal space, but Bonnie was so docile that he didn't seem to mind – whereas Foxy or Freddy probably would have been backing up or trying to escape; and Jiminy wasn't even worth mentioning in this regard).

By the evening all the animatronics knew each other and were getting along. Joseph couldn't have possibly asked for better results. Just a few days longer, then they would be moved to the pizzeria. It almost made him sad that he was going to lose them so soon, but then again they had never been his children to begin with. At least technically, and he repeated this to himself many times.

These were machines he was going to sell to a tacky diner for a small fortune, they were not replacements for his lost children.

Then all the walls he had tried to build between himself and his creations came crashing down when Freddy came to him later that evening and explained that he and the others wanted to be told a story, and in this mosaic of sentences Joseph heard one word above all others:

"Dad."

And it damn near broke his heart.

A/N: This story tries to follow cannon, but there may be some AU elements.

This story is all sweetness at the moment, but a warning that it will get a lot darker later on.