A/N: Oh, boy, here I go updating at 2:30 in the morning like the dysfunctional excuse for a human being that I am! Well, better late than never, right?

On the surface, I had no good reason for returning to Circus Baby's. It wasn't like there was something in the contract saying that I couldn't up and quit, and despite what I'd told Funtime Freddy the night before, I wasn't really that suicidal anymore. (Besides, being torn to pieces by robots isn't exactly how I'd prefer to go out.) Yet here I was, dragging myself out of my car and into the restaurant, ready to begin my second night.

Either I had ulterior motives, or I'm just an idiot. Take your pick.

Strolling through the front doors, hands in the pockets of my battered purple hoodie, I glanced over at the stage briefly. After a moment of consideration, I decided to leave the robots be. I'd taunted Freddy enough the night before, after all. Instead, I merely hurried down the hallway to the office as fast as I could. It wouldn't be midnight for several minutes now, but there was no harm in getting everything set up and preparing myself ahead of time.

Plopping down into the swivel chair with a subdued sigh, I booted up the laptop and proceeded to stare down the stage. All the robots were stiff and still, staring straight ahead, but then again, Freddy hadn't moved until later in the night last time, so I'd probably have a bit to prepare myself mentally before he came charging down the hall again. It's not like he'd start moving faster each night or something, that'd just be stupid.

I wished that I could've brought a weapon with me, if for no other reason than to make myself feel a little less powerless, but the metal detector at the entrance would've tripped if I'd brought my gun. Besides, I'd probably get fired if I shot the animatronics, and that was the last thing I needed right now.

The phone rang, and I reached over to grab it, guessing already that the woman from last night would be on the phone again. "Hello?"

"You didn't leave. Curious." the voice mused.

I guessed correctly, then. Leaning back in my chair, I said, "Let's just say I've got my own reasons for being here. I take it you're here to warn me about some new, annoying thing the robots came up with to try to commit a violence?"

To her credit, the voice didn't react to my purposely poor grammar. Instead, all she said was, "Just as intuitive as always. Fortunately, you only need worry about one new threat tonight, for now."

I managed a weak laugh. "That's reassuring."

"As it should be." the voice replied neutrally. "The only new animatronic that will be activating tonight is Ballora."

I glanced down at the laptop, clicking over to the camera at the main stage. "The ballerina robot?" I guessed.

"Correct." the voice said. "Her movements are easy to predict, as long as you are quiet and listen carefully. You see, wherever she goes, the music box inside her is always running, quietly playing its little tune over and over. You won't need to watch for her on the cameras as long as you listen. If you hear the sound of her music box near one of your doors, all you must do is shut the door and wait for the music to recede. She keeps her eyes closed, so she relies heavily on her other senses- namely, hearing. The noise from the door slamming shut will disorient her, and she will retreat. How long for, I cannot say."

I was suddenly very grateful that I'd acclimated myself to the sound of the doors shutting already. "Does she ever open her eyes?"

"Sometimes." said the woman, a hint of mirth in her voice. "But I would not worry about it. If you ever see her open her eyes, you are already dead. So it shouldn't be a problem as long as you are vigilant."

"G-got it. Anything else?"

"Not that I can think of." the woman said. "They're about to start moving. I would suggest you get ready." With that, the line went dead.

"And I would suggest that you ask management to just delete whatever part of their programming is making them attack me." I muttered, setting the phone down.

With that, I returned my focus to the laptop. "Alrighty. Let's just get this over, then, shall we?" I would have cracked my knuckles for dramatic effect, but I would have been the only person around to see it and I've never actually tried it before because I was always scared I would break my fingers.

Unsurprisingly, Funtime Freddy was the first to activate. His eyes opened with a compressed flash of blue light, he took a glance up at the camera before lurching off the stage, and I got ready to start what would be no doubt be a very long and unfulfilling game of hide-and-seek.

"Open up in there!" the animatronic bear giggled demonically, pounding his plastic fist against the door.

With a brief sigh, I glanced down at the bottom corner of the laptop. It was 2:56 and already I was having trouble keeping my power at decent levels. Before coming to work, I'd done some quick mental math (that's a lie, I had to pull out a calculator. Having dyscalculia is fun.) and figured out that I should be using about 16% of my power per hour in order to keep from running out, but it wasn't even 3 AM yet and already I was down to 48%.

Things were not looking so good for me.

"Don't be afraid! I just wanna say hi!" cackled Funtime Freddy, his leering face peering through the glass window. I briefly wondered why he didn't just smash the glass to get in, but dismissed the thought almost immediately. I didn't need him reading my expression and getting any clever ideas.

"If you'd like to greet me, please do so through the window." I called back in a dry professional tone, never looking up from the laptop, finger hovering over the door button to open it the instant he left. "You don't need to be inside the office to do that, and I'm pretty sure you're not allowed in here, anyway."

"Party pooper." grunted the robot, giving the door a final smack before departing. I pressed the door button with a shaking finger before returning my attention to the cameras, watching him stalk off back to the dining area-

Huh. What was that noise? I could just barely hear the sound of a music box tinkling away from down the right hallway, but it wasn't any tune I was familiar with. And it sounded like it was... getting closer?

It was getting closer at a pretty fast rate, actually. Was this something I should be worried about?

Wait, the voice on the phone had said something about this! The music box was my cue that the ballerina robot was coming or something, right?

No time to try to remember exactly what she had said. I slammed the right door shut purely on panicked instinct and heard a hard, plastic-on-metal thunk. The music box continued from just outside the door.

I switched the camera over to the right hallway and could just barely see Ballora's outline, standing there right outside the door. I had a feeling that, if her eyes hadn't been closed, she would have been giving me a death glare through the door.

"Damn." I smacked my forehead. "You need to remember things like this, idiot! One slip-up and you're out of commission for good, and you don't want that anymore, remember?" Glancing over at the door in apprehension, I recalled just how tedious it had been to keep up with Funtime Freddy throughout the night, as well as how I'd almost run out of power. How was I supposed to keep track of two of them?

"I was hoping that would have worked the first time." a deep feminine voice said from directly outside the right door. "Then again, I don't know what I really expected. Your performance last night proved that you wouldn't be so easy to kill as we'd hoped."

I froze, hoping that I hadn't heard what I just had. While everything Funtime Freddy had said so far could have easily been bits and pieces of his show dialogue regurgitated by malfunctioning machinery, there was no way that anything about death would have worked its way into the script for what was supposed to be a sickeningly sweet, child-friendly pizzeria. And if... if the robots had the capability to improvise dialogue, then did that mean...?

"Oh, G-God." I said aloud.

"You seem quite terrified." Ballora mused. "Don't try to pretend otherwise, I can hear how fast your breathing is. In fact... I think this might even be what one calls 'hyperventilation,' am I right?"

I would have shut my eyes, but to do so would have been to essentially give Freddy a free path through the left door. "P-please, j-just go." I managed, desperately trying to control my breathing. I can't afford to have a panic attack, not now.

"...well, I suppose there is no point in prematurely taunting you." the robot ventured after several agonizingly long seconds. "Though, if you ever feel like giving up, just open the door and let me know. I can assure you I won't stretch out your death any longer than necessary if you choose to take that path."

Somehow, I managed an insane-sounding chuckle. "Th-thanks for the offer!" I could feel my lips stretching back from my teeth. "I'll take it into consideration if things ever get to that point!"

"For your own sake, I hope you do." With that, the sound of the music box faded off into the distance as the murderous ballerina animatronic left.

With her departure, I collapsed forward, bracing myself against the desk with my arms, just barely keeping myself from falling onto the floor. "F-fuck's sake." I managed shakily, stretching out a shaking hand to the mouse. Ballora absolutely terrified me, and it wasn't just the casual death threat. No, it was the implications behind it- if she could threaten to kill me, which had absolutely no purpose being programmed into an entertainment robot at a kid's restaurant, then that implied that she could evolve beyond her programming, break through it, add things to it, and if that were the case, then did that mean that she had achieved some kind of higher intelligence? And if that were the case, who was to say that the other three hadn't managed to get there as well?

God, this is shaping up to be exactly like some terrible sci-fi movie about robots gaining intelligence and rising up against their creators, I thought, and managed to laugh at that in spite of myself.

"Hello again!" Funtime Freddy shrieked manically from the hallway, and with a shaky groan, I stretched out my hand and pressed the door button seconds before he would have stepped into the office. Time to get back to business.

"You can stop just repeating your lines from your daytime shows, you know." I tried, wondering if my hypothesis that Ballora wasn't the only intelligent one was correct. "I know you're capable of more than that, so there's no point in continuing the masquerade."

To my surprise, it was, as Freddy almost immediately adopted a crestfallen expression. "What, really? You saw through me that quickly? And here I thought I was being clever and tricking you into thinking I was just a mindless robot."

I attempted to conceal my surprise, instead trying to play the role of the cunning, all-knowing protagonist that I was all too aware I was not. "Well, Ballora made it quite clear that she was capable of independent thought, so the logical assumption was that the rest of you were as well."

"Oh, you're a clever one, aren't you?" Nice, looked like he'd bought the act. "Well, you're quite right! We're all very aware of our role in all this, just as much as you likely are of yours!" The animatronic surreptitiously brought a hand up to the side of his mouth. "That's to be the guy who gets killed by us, in case you were wondering." he whispered loudly.

"I figured." I nodded, returning my full focus to the cameras. "Don't try anything funny while I'm looking at the cameras, by the way." I added, glancing back over at him. "If you think you'll be able to catch me off guard, you are sorely mistaken." Like I said last chapter, I'm going to get as much use out of that pun as possible.

"Ha! You'd be surpri-" Funtime Freddy stopped dead in his tracks, blinking slowly for a moment as he processed what I'd just said. "Wait. Was that a pun?"

"Indeed it was!" I offered him a triumphant grin.

Funtime Freddy glared daggers at me for several seconds before letting out an ear-splitting screech of anger. "I despise you and everything about you!" he spat. He stood there for several seconds, quivering with rage, before abruptly turning and storming off down the hallway.

"Don't worry, I hate myself too!" I called after him, opening the door in his wake. Managing a nervous chuckle, I returned my focus to the cameras, watching him stomp into the dining hall and glare at nothing in particular. He didn't seem to notice that I was watching him through the camera.

"Geez." I muttered. "Note to self: Freddy does NOT like puns." Of course, that just meant that I'd have to memorize as many as I could and throw them at him whenever he came up to the door. It was kind of hilarious to see this giant robot bear pouting like a two-year-old over a bad pun, after all. On a more pragmatic note, if puns were useful at getting rid of him, that could save me some much-needed power in the future.

"That was a good one." said a voice from behind me.

"Thanks." I said without really thinking about it, and it wasn't until several seconds had passed that I had fully processed that there was another person behind me.

With a terrified yelp, I spun around, flattening my back against the desk behind me. How had one of the animatronics gotten into the office while I wasn't looking? Had they sent Freddy in just to distract me while whoever this was crept in behind me and patiently waited for the right moment?

There was, in fact, another animatronic standing behind me, cloaked in the shadows in the back of the dingy office, tiny white pinpricks glinting in its two hollow eyesockets. As the color drained from my face, it lifted its head slightly and let out a quiet, ominous laugh.

Yet, even in the depths of my panic, I noticed that this animatronic didn't appear to resemble any of the other four. It did look somewhat like the fox animatronic, but the last time I'd seen it, it was still out on its separate stage, and the woman on the phone had said that only Ballora would activate tonight. Besides, there was something off about this robot, something that just didn't feel right.

All this ran through my brain in the span of about a second before I turned and flung myself out the right door, darting down the right hallway, hoping that neither Freddy nor Ballora were in the hallway at that precise time. I nearly toppled over in my panic, clawing desperately for purchase on the slick tiled floor and finally shoving myself upright. Behind me, I could hear plastic robotic feet slapping against the tiles behind me, pursuing at a calm and precise pace. Whichever animatronic this was, it clearly wasn't in any rush.

As I finally looked up, all my hopes of escape were utterly dashed as the gentle tinkling of Ballora's music box reached my ears and the animatronic twirled into sight, blocking off the hallway. "And where, precisely, do you think you're going?" she questioned.

I was trapped. In front of me, a ballerina animatronic who had unambiguously stated that she wanted me dead blocked my only exit. On either side of me, unforgiving walls. Behind me, an unknown foe was calmly stalking me, its intentions unknown. And the night wouldn't be over yet for several hours.

This is a hopeless reality. A hopeless future. There is nothing left for you to do but surrender to the inevitable. You've always been so amazing at giving up, after all! You're practically a master by this point! So do just that and GIVE UP!

I fell to my knees, head slumped. All my old desire to end my pathetic existence came flooding back as if someone had pulled out the plug in the bottom of a bath and sent it surging back into the pipes of my mind.

When I opened my mouth, it wasn't to beg for my life, but rather to make a broken statement. "Just get it over with."

Ballora tilted her head, as though she was about to say something, and then suddenly... stopped. Her head fell limp and her faceplates popped open with a pneumatic-sounding hiss, revealing the twisted metal skeleton beneath.

Strangely, the first feeling that surfaced was disappointment. It was over just like that? So simple? This felt like deus ex machina or something.

And then I was reminded all too soon of the entity behind me as its plastic footsteps finally came to a halt behind me. "That should put her out of commission for the time being." it said in a brisk androgynous voice. "Now, let's deal with you, shall we?"