The night guard came two nights later, in the morning. From the start, Freddy could see he was a character that wouldn't be anything like what his brother had hoped for. His eyes were constantly covered lightly with a dark shadow cast from the brim of a purple cap, and he walked with a slouch forward in his shoulders. His feet ticked unnaturally on the tile, as if his suspicious gait had been forced to make him stand out. His long, purple sleeves careened over his hands, and just the tips of his pale fingers showed.

The man walked along to the manager's office slowly. As he strode past, Freddy momentarily feel silent, and the two shared an uneasy glance. But the man kept walking. Freddy kept singing. The day kept going.

Children gawked at him all day, but a dark, dim overcast of unsteadiness now filled the room, those murky dark clouds that had filled his head now strolling past along the diner. His faintly ticking metal heart sank into his fuel tank when the lights dimmed and the sign flipped over on the door.

Closed.

Freddy might be overreacting. But why would he? He'd never felt so.. off-put by a stranger. Even the scummy, slimy parents that would sometimes come in with metal-teethed mohawked children were not as strange.

No, this man was something else, something scarier. Why was he? He'd walked past, that was all.

Freddy cast a sideways glance to Goldie. He wasn't alone in this. Brushing his hand against his big brother's he shut his eyes and deactivated for the next few hours until midnight.

Chunk. Chunk.

What the hell?

Freddy awoke rather startled. His sky-blue gaze cast a light around the room. Moving his feet from the floor, he found that a weight had been applied, and his knees had only shifted with a sharp pain. He yelped, though it was only a whirr. The strain ahd left him winded. "Goldie?" He chimed into the darkness.

There was no reply from the shadows at the edge of his vision. The silence ate at his very soul, and he glanced about furiously in search of whoever may remain in the restaurant. Attempting to walk again, he finally took the opportunity of silence to glance down.

Black, ring-shaped weights lay clamped around his ankles, as if eating at his feet and legs in a dreadful process. His sight rested on Goldie's usual spot.

He was missing.

His mind was racing fast. His heart ticked a mile a minute, and he grew frantic with the urge to move. The bolts had unclamped from his feet, he was sure- it was only these heavy black rings! He gripped the curtain, the nearest and only handhold he could reach, and attempted to slide out. His feet maneuvered as they could but were still pinned. "GOLDIE!" He wailed into the night.

The faintest clack, and a yelp muffled by the thick, thick walls. "GOLDIE, I'M HERE!" Freddy screamed. Oily tears began to run down his cheeks. What was happening? Then another noise, this time focused down a hall he'd never paid mind to.

The sounds of a child curiously wondering of things, and the thick, unmistakeable noise of pierced skin.

Someone had been stabbed! In his own pizzeria!

Freddy struggled against the black weights, as if they dragged him deeper into an unforgiving abyss. He needed to go!

His mind was growing frantic again.

Thoughts were rushing by.

God, someone, help!

Anyone!

"CANT YOU HEAR THE WAILING? NIGHT GUARD! HELP!" He screeched into the abyss. His night vision wasn't working, panic had overtaken his senses, everything was numb except for his aching feet, which were pinned painfully against the floorboards of the stage. He bent down and attempted a crawl, watching oily tears drip onto the wood that had been so friendly and illuminated.

There was a mechanical, metallic cry. Freddy scrabbled desperately at the sound of Goldie's scream. He knew what was happening, he was sure. These weights- how ahd the guard planned this? Why? Who would do this?

Questions screamed like unholy sirens in his unstable head. His mentality was breaking. He wanted out. He let out a wail he hoped was reassuring to Goldie. His arms were burning, screaming to just be saved.

Freddy finally slid away, and felt the weight lift from him. He'd managed to slide out as his tears had drizzled down. With a screech, he rushed down the hall. The overwhelming scent of terror, blood, and oil filled his senses, flooding his mind to the point of tears. "No, no, no!" He murmured under his breath. His footsteps fell in step with his heartbeat, and he wheeled around into the hallway, screaming for Goldie with a relieved undertone-

The window was swinging, a tear of purple flapping in the breeze where it had been torn off, caught on the metal hinge. Blood spattered the walls in a morbid shower of crimson.

Freddy could feel the oil roaring in his ears as he turned to his right, choking back a sob. The bear clapped a brown, musky paw over his mouth, eyes widening until the circuits strained beneath his synthetic fur.

The yellow lump of fabric sat empty and gouged. It's eyes were dark, hollow, soulless- not a scrap of sentience remained in the empty sockets of the furry exoskeleton. Instead, the dead, bleak and glazed eyes of a dead child glowered sightlessly at Freddy, bleakly watching him from a land far beyond. The sickening, mucus-infested scent of blood was harrowing and numbing. His nostrils were flooded with it. Something dead had been stuffed inside of his now-lifeless brother.

The metal skeleton that had seen and done so much, that had taught Freddy the world and that Freddy had grown to love as a brother, the essence of Goldie's being, was gone. And whoever had done this horrible crime had killed a child to replace what they'd stolen. The ruthless deed made oily droplets sizzle to his glassy eyes again, and the stinging mixture of pain and sorrow and rage and regret and grief, it was racking his head.

Freddy stumbled back, suddenly able to move. Awareness had come to him again, and the sight of his brother dead and a child he'd once entertained just that morning now also dead inside him made him gag.

The bear hurled up an oil-based mess of bile, screaming in such a negative mixture of emotions that the world had flooded to blackness around him. When at last his fuel tank was empty, he mournfully released another wail, scraping his claws along the wall in an effort to stay standing. But the blackening tint of the whole world now blinded him, and he fell weak and light as paper to the hard tile, the stinging pain of millions of fuses and circuits springing off his internal frame tingling with the loud clatter of bits and pieces falling off of him externally, his ears ringing loudly.

And then it was silent, dark, painless.

Freddy welcomed the abyss that swallowed him.