When someone wakes up, they usually take stock of themselves, either consciously or unconsciously. They check to make sure that they're alive, to make sure they have two arms and two legs, and most importantly if they're ready to wake up.

For Terry, the waking up checklist was very much deliberate.

Arms? Two.

Legs? Two.

Head? Intact.

Ready to wake up? Probably not, considering the headache.

Position? Sitting upright. Not the most uncomfortable position he had fallen asleep in. He was a college student, after all.

Alive?

Wait…

The last thing to happen before unconsciousness was a creepy as hell robot walking through a wall, grabbing his wrist, growing another arm made out of bone, and then covering his mind in shadows.

All things considered, it was probably just a bad dream brought on by stress.

Terry opened his eyes and immediately closed them again. Nope. Nope nope nope. That wasn't real. There was not a dragon with a glowing green glass eye looming over him right now. It wasn't possible. That sort of thing only happened in horror movies and the really weird kind of campfire story. You know, the kind you get told when your friends get themselves knock-down drunk despite the fact you told them that they're underage.

"If it helps, most of the people I've rescued react that way too."

And now it was talking to him. Either someone had drugged him in his sleep, he was developing schizophrenia, or…

Or there actually was a black dragon with a glowing green glass eye trying to put him at ease.

He honestly hoped it was schizophrenia.

"You're not losing it. You actually were attacked by a monster that can walk through walls, manipulate shadows, and likes to eat people." The voice paused. "Although I'll be honest, I don't know what it is either. Come to that, I don't even know what I am, if that helps."

All things considered, for a hallucination, it was awfully polite and friendly. Terry had expected a hallucination to be more… strange. But then, many schizophrenia victims reported hallucinations that were basically living people. This, though, was right in the middle. Talked like a person, looked like a creepy animatronic.

"It really would help if you opened your eyes."

Resigned to his hallucination, Terry opened his eyes. The dragon's face was right in front of him, but it backed away when his eyes opened. Despite the decrepit animatronic head, the eyes somehow conveyed emotion quite well. Right now they were friendly, although the right eye was somewhat offputting. The way it just stared, without ever blinking. True, the thing was a robot, and it didn't need to blink, but it did so anyways. With its left eye, anyways. The right eyelid looked broken.

"See! Was that so hard?" The dragon sat back into a squat, sitting in an oddly feline manner. Its tail wrapped around its feet, proving that there were motors inside, and the wings fanned half-heartedly. The broken joints probably proved to be the limiting factor there. "Maybe we should start from the beginning. Hi! My name's Draco, and I'm a dragon animatronic. I live in this arcade and do my best to save people before Wraith gets ahold of them. What's your name?"

"Um, Terry," Terry answered, "What do you mean you save people?"

"Well, Wraith and Arthur really don't like the security guards, for different reasons." Draco shifted a little bit, such an alive motion that it was almost hard to believe that it was a robot. "Wraith eats people and absorbs their souls, while Arthur just doesn't like trespassers in his 'kingdom'. Both of them have killed people for those reasons before."

"Killed people?!" Terry almost screamed.

Draco's expression fell. "I've tried so hard to save people, but when Wraith and Arthur get ahold of them, they're gone. Forever. No soul, unlike some of the ones that linger around the museum. It's a horrible way to die."

The dragon suddenly glanced up from Terry to the other side of the room. There was a quick clatter of movement, and the phoenix entered the room. She – and as before Terry had a hard time calling the phoenix an it with the design - was clawing at the suit torso as she stumbled in, moving with astonishing speed despite her supposed lack of coordination. With a triumphant shout, she ripped the torso section of her suit off and dumped it on the ground. "Good riddance!"

"Finally got that stupid thing off?" Draco asked, amusement clear in his voice.

"And now they won't just put it back on." The phoenix's torso was nothing more than a mechanical endoskeleton now, but somehow that was actually less disturbing than the exaggerated proportions of the suit. Sighing in relief despite her lack of breath, the phoenix went and sat in the corner, silent for a few moments before her intelligent golden eyes found Terry. "Uh, hello. How're you feeling?"

"How'm I feeling? Well, considering that I was nearly eaten by an empty robe, I'm feeling pretty good," Terry answered sarcastically, "And now apparently there are – what'd you say?" He turned to Draco, his voice growing higher pitched. "Souls? Souls are real? And mine could've been eaten or lost or destroyed or whatever. Nah, I'm fine. Perfectly fine." By the end of his little rant, Terry's voice had cracked and he was nearing hysterics.

Draco gave him a sympathetic look. "I wish I could honestly say that I've gone through the same things as you, but I really can't. I do know, though, that it can't be easy to have your whole world rocked in a second like that. I'm sorry."

"So what, then? What are you? Why are you alive? The only known true artificial intelligence are the creations of Fritz Smith, who wouldn't sell his designs to this crappy place!" Terry paused for breath. "Then there's the – what'd you call it? – Wraith. What the hell is that thing?! It walks through walls, has literal, actual human bones inside of its robes, and it eats people!"

Draco hesitated, glancing at Pharra. When she gave him a tiny, almost imperceptible nod, he spoke. "I'll be honest, I don't know what I am. I just… woke up one day. I already knew about souls, and magic, and a whole lot of things that you don't want to hear about because it'll destroy what reality you have left. After a while, I gave Pharra life as well; I was lonely." He looked over at the phoenix, his gaze lingering on her for a second before he looked back at Terry. "As for Wraith, well, it's a creature I've started calling Dark Ones. It eats fear, and isn't really… alive. It can't die, it can't live, and it barely experiences emotion. It's a cruel, cruel monster. Even though it doesn't need to consume, well, anything to survive, it likes to tear people apart and consume them for energy. It likes to torture them."

Throughout all this, Terry could only stare in stunned silence. He had understood maybe a third of that, and what he had understood made zero sense. Souls? Magic? Dark Ones? It sounded like gibberish. Apparently this showed on his face, too, as Pharra spoke up. "It won't make much sense right now. All you need to keep in mind is that there's a lot going on that humans don't know about, and Wraith is one of those things. So are me, Draco, and even Arthur."

"What's the deal with Arthur, then? Wraith is a ghost- sorry, 'Dark One', you're a… whatever you are, and Pharra was created by you. What does that make the knights?" Terry asked.

"Arthur's an ancient king, and the knights are golems he has made." Draco's answer was stated simply, as though it was something anyone could figure out. When Terry gave him an exhausted look, the dragon elaborated. "Arthur's a real ghost, a dead man who has clung to the world. He used his power to make the knights into mindless slaves, although it's far from cruelty since they had no intellect to begin with."

"So the robots are robots," Terry deadpanned.

"More or less." Pharra spoke this time, cutting Draco off. "But Arthur controls them with his magic."

Terry looked between the two robots. Of the two Pharra seemed to be the more… human. Well, human acting. Draco was alive in a way that was natural but inhuman, acting like one would expect an anthropomorphic dragon to behave, but Pharra acted like a human being. One who was accustomed to an odd body, but human nonetheless.

It was calming, actually. The way that she acted human while everything else here was… familiar. It was normality in a world of oddities.

Without warning, Draco looked up, staring into space. After a second, his gaze refocused. "It's half a minute away from six A.M. We need to get back to the stage before the humans get here." He looked back down at Terry. "Good luck. I really hope you don't ever have to worry about the supernatural ever again, Terry."

With that, the two animatronics stood and left the room. A couple of seconds later, the alarm chimed, marking the end of Terry's shift. A barely perceptible ripple crossed the room, disturbing the dust and shifting the air, and Terry knew instinctively that he was safe.

Climbing to his feet, Terry started out of the room. A quick glance around told him that it was the storage room that Wraith called home. He shuddered at the sight of the bones, but he reminded himself that he wasn't ever coming back here, so he never had to worry about Wraith again. Sighing with relief, Terry made his way to the front entrance.

When Terry entered the main show area, he glanced up at the animatronics onstage. They had already resumed their positions, although Pharra was still missing the torso section of her costume and Draco's wings were just a bit more ragged than the day before. Terry could only wonder what had done such damage to Draco. As far as he had seen, the dragon hadn't gotten into anything that could damage him. Well, not while Terry was conscious.

Shaking his head, Terry turned towards the main doors. The manager was already there to check on the building, his keys fumbling in the lock. The worried-looking little man clearly didn't expect Terry to be there when he arrived, as when Terry pushed the door open from the inside the man jumped.

"T-Terry! Y-you're al-here!" The man stuttered nervously. "I-I didn't e-expect you t-to mee-meet me at th-the door!"

"No, I think you expected me to die. You expected there to be one more skeleton in the storage room." Terry immediately knew he was right when the man stuttered to protest, but he held up his hand. "I don't want an apology, I just want my pay."

The manager frantically dug out his wallet and pulled out all of the cash inside. "P-please, d-don't tell anyone."

"Not like it matters." Terry took the cash and counted it, finding to his surprise that it was easily five hundred dollars in twenties. He made a show of counting it, then handed back three hundred. He wasn't cruel. "Count yourself lucky. If I was anyone else I'd have taken it all."

With that, Terry walked off, fuming inside. How dare he? How dare he? Sending people to die so that the flesh-eating monster inside didn't leave.

But Terry really wasn't the kind of person to hold a grudge. It honestly wasn't worthwhile. He got angry with surprising ease, but also cooled down easily. Apparently that was something he got from his father, his ability to calm down in a second. That along with his pale blue eyes. Yet people often gave him things. He unnerved people. It wasn't anything he did, either. It was just… him.

Which was odd. Terry was tall, but he was lanky to the point of emaciated. His eye sockets casted shadows, his cheeks were sunken, and his ribs were visible even through his shirt. His skin was pretty pale due to his sedentary lifestyle, but he had a residual tan on his arms and legs from his years in Boy Scouts.

Terry's rumination was disturbed when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Remembering that he had left Darius wondering what he was up to, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened the text log.

T: Call you in the morning

D: You never told me what you were doing tho

-Today-

D: Hey, you going to tell me what u were up to last night? Were you with a girl?

Terry smirked. Darius Martinez was his best friend, even if he was a bit of a doofus. Darius was an incorrigible flirter, and had gone through five girlfriends in the past year. To be fair, it wasn't even Darius's fault that they had each left him. His family was fairly rich, and the girls that tended to flock towards Darius were the kind to date for a few months, take a couple hundred dollars, and leave. Darius did a horrible of job to discourage them, which was why Terry had to step in. One look at young Terry, and most of them backed off. That didn't stop some, though.

Shaking his head at Darius, Terry typed out a response.

T: Stayed up all night watching robots run around. Learned that magic, ghosts, and demons are real. Nearly died from flesh-eating robot.

Within a second of Terry pressing send, the phone's ringtone rang out. Terry immediately answered and raised the phone to his ear to be met with a voice with a faint Mexican accent. "You're joking, right?"

"Really wish I was, man," Terry replied, "But last night I took the night watch job for Armory Arcade – you remember that old place, right? With the dragon and the phoenix?"

"Yeah, I remember. Spent a ton of time on those arcade games," Darius answered. "So you're saying that there's a flesh-eating robot there? And that you saw magic and ghosts?"

"Saw the flesh-eating robot, yeah. It's some kind of demon in a robot, apparently." Terry paused and bit his lip. "I'm serious, here. I wasn't sleep-deprived, or drugged, or hallucinating. It walked through a wall and tried to kill me."

"…" Darius was silent for a moment. "You're… messing with me, right?"

Terry had an internal debate. To be honest, he had never expected Darius to believe him. The story even sounded preposterous to him! But he couldn't lie to Darius! On the other hand, though, if Darius didn't believe him there was nobody that would. Sighing, Terry answered. "Yeah, I'm messing with you. Although those robots are creepy as hell. They nailed the old king robot to its chair because it glitched out so frequently, and the dragon's right eye is broken or something."

"Sounds like the place is falling apart. Maybe you were hallucinating from, like, black mold or something," Darius suggested.

"Yeah, probably." Terry knew what he had seen, though. "Anyways, I've got my pay and I'll be looking for another job soon."

"Hey, I heard Fazbear's was always open for new hires. Maybe you can just get a job there," Darius said.

Terry hesitated. He had heard a lot about Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. It was a wonderful place. It was a terrible place. Children had been murdered there. The animatronics were haunted. The head of security was a murderer. The head of security was a vampire. The head of security was a demon. The head of security was a police officer. There were a lot of stories about the head of security, actually. "I don't know."

"Well, your choice," Darius said, the shrug evident in his voice. "In any event, I'll see you when I'm free in a month."

"Can't wait for our game tournament. See ya." With that, Terry ended the call. Slipping the phone back into his pocket, Terry sighed. He wasn't eager to take another night watch job, but maybe he would have to.

Continuing his walk back home, Terry took in the sights of the city. He was cautious to avoid the dark alleys, knowing from his father's warnings that all sorts of people hid in the alleyways for unsuspecting passers-by.

Of course, there were other people he'd rather avoid. Ones that didn't hide in dark alleys. A couple of creeps with dark cloaks and wide-brimmed hats shot him the evil eye as he walked past. He thought he could see their veins beneath their impossibly pale skin. Further on he almost bumped into a guy with a serious shaving issue, not an inch of his face was clear of hair.

Terry was an accepting person. He often made split-second decisions about someone based on their appearance, but he always gave them a chance. But these strange people pushed that to the limit. There were just more odd people around, these days, and that wasn't even counting the increased furry population now that Fazbear's was raking in customers from all over the country. The furries were at least normal people. Normal people wearing animal suits, yes, but normal people regardless.

Which brought Terry back to Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. The place was everywhere, nowadays. Freddy Fazbear's had brought fortune to the city. Freddy Fazbear's had drawn in population. Freddy Fazbear's had become a major tourist attraction, not only because of the amazingly advanced animatronics, but also because of their fantastic foods and great prices.

Fazbear's was behind everything! They'd only even been open for a year, but they'd already risen to national popularity!

Shaking his head, Terry continued on. He quickly made his way back to the residential area of the city, where his mother lived. Terry reached home in minutes, pulling his keys out of his pocket and unlocking the door. He was greeted by the smell of cooking eggs and bacon, which immediately put a smile on his face.

Closing the door behind him, he slowly crept through the house. Knowing his mother, she would be so engrossed in cooking that she wouldn't even notice as he stealthily approached.

Clearly he was right. His mother was standing over the stove, happily humming away as she prepared scrambled eggs.

Terry stepped up until he was directly behind her, practically looming over his much shorter mother. Only once he was behind her did he shift his weight, allowing the loose floorboards to creak and alert his mother to his presence.

Much to her credit, Terry's mother didn't even jump when the floor directly behind her creaked. Instead she just turned her head, smiling as she saw Terry. "Hello, Terry! How'd your night go?"

In a fraction of a second, Terry decided not to tell his mother about the robots. It would only worry her, either because she would think he was crazy or because she'd take him seriously. "It was uneventful, but I got paid two hundred dollars for it."

"Two hundred for one night? They must really have cared about keeping the place in good condition before they sold it." Terry's mother turned her attention back to her cooking, not noticing Terry's wince. "So what're you going to do now?"

"Look for a new job, I guess," Terry answered.

"You could always look for a job at Freddy Fazbear's. Their rate of promotion is incredibly fast. Plus, your sister loves that place." His mom continued, again not noticing the wince on Terry's face.

"I'll think about it," Terry said. It was in that tone of voice that said 'I'll think about it, but I won't do anything about it'.

"Look at the place later today." It wasn't a suggestion. "Who knows, you might be surprised. For now, though, have some breakfast and take a nap. I imagine you're exhausted."

So Draco and Pharra are friendly, while the others aren't. Readers of A Second Chance will recognize some things that were introduced there, but not to worry! Newcomers will still have (almost) everything explained. There are a few things that you'll need to read A Second Chance to understand.

Moving on, we have Terry's interaction with Darius. Those who've read Sometimes Things Happen might recognize these two names from the Halloween chapter.

Terry also seems to have some beef with Freddy Fazbears. Wonder what that could be...

Now read on!