Alfred sunk into the suit. He didn't want to come out. Couldn't he just stay here, wallowing in despair forever? That sounded like a much better option than facing his brother. After what he'd done, he couldn't bear being in the same building as his brother, never mind the same room. He didn't mean to kill him, but...

The stares of the others bore into him; Alfred wanted to return to that dark place he had been sucked into when he had died. There he could drown in his sorrow in peace. The tall boy with the tear-stained face knelt down next to Alfred and talked to him soothingly.

"Hey… It's not your fault…it was an accident…come on, you need to come out now! Remember, just…" Alfred blanked him out. The word rang hollow in his heart- although Alfred believed that he had no heart anymore. How can someone with a heart do what he did?

Alfred slowly flipped his animatronic body over, pushing away the boy with the tear-stained face. Or he would have if the boy had a body. He hugged his knees, and cried. It might had been seconds; it might have been hours before he heard Sophia's voice.

"Alfred…" She soothed, gliding to his side, "You need to come out. Not just for you- but for all of us. We can't escape without you. We need you." Escape? Alfred thought, the main kind of escape that I want is to escape the things I did. But, the promise of getting out of here felt good. And the fact that it was Sophia who said this…it began to repair him, it would take some time, but he wasn't irreparable, he could be fixed. Maybe. Possibly. But possible was better than impossible, right? Fixed was better than broken? Happy was better than sad? He left this train of thought where it was: he was afraid of what he might answer.

He turned back around and Sophia grinned. It felt good to see her smile. He didn't know how he would face Arian, but he had to- for all of them, the other boy included. The boy who'd tried to comfort him earlier grumbled something like "Of course he'd listen if she said it…" but Alfred wasn't too sure on the details.

Just as he'd seen the others do, Alfred concentrated on being flung from the suit and he flew through the air. The feeling was amazing: the air rushing past him, the feeling of spinning though the air was unforgettable. As he expected, he passed straight though the wall and into the corridor. A confirmation that he was dead, if he needed one. He had believed by that by some miracle he wasn't but, he hadn't had his hopes high.

There was a black top had on the floor, which he guessed was his as it mirrored Arian's. Arian. He dreaded going back into that room but he wanted too at the same time; all of his friends where there. But how could he talk to them without feeling some guilt towards Arian? For a moment Alfred wondered if he could just run. Go far away. Escape this mess. But he was bound to go back. For his friends and… for Arian. He deserved that much. He couldn't just up and leave, like a coward.

He levitated back into the room.

"Al!" Both Caleb and Ray said at the same time.

"Jinx!"

"Touch w- Oh yeah…" Caleb when to say, but then realised he couldn't touch anything.

"Anyway…" Ray said, patting Alfred on the back with his right arm, "Welcome to Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria!" Ray's hooked arm dug into his back, surprisingly. Alfred bent back, like he was going into a bridge. Ray clasped his hand to his mouth and removed the hook from Alfred's back.

"Dude! I'm so sorry! I keep forgetting that I have the hook!" He apologized, clearly feeling bad for putting Alfred through even more pain.

"It's okay man! It was an accident" He grinned at Ray through the pain.

Even after death, there is pain. This was a discovery he'd made soon after he'd died and was grieving the loss of his friends and hating himself for killing his brother. Hatred. Despair. That's what that dark place had represented. That hate for himself still stayed with him.

Caleb, grinning stupidly, said:

"Nice top hat, Al!"

"Nice ears, K!" He threw straight back. Caleb when several shades of purple before settling on one. Ray laughed.

"He's lost his signature red- now he has his signature purple!"

"What!" Caleb shouted, horrified.

"You go purple when you get embarrassed now, K!" Alfred laughed.

"If I may," The boy with the tear-stained face interjected, "For those of you who don't know- I am the Marionette. And welcome to your new job at the new and improved Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria!"

He addressed Alfred and his friends like they here a massive crowd listening to a refined speech.

"Your job is… well I'm not too sure. As a spirit you will age until you realize your purpose, which I did 9 years ago in 1978. Incidentally, that was probably the year you were born, no?"

They all nodded, awed. How did he guess their age so accurately?

"Wait." Sophia stopped the Marionette from speaking with this single word. She had not spoken the entire time and her voice was weak and feeble. The Marionette leaned in close so that he could hear her.

"If you're the Marionette, who's the puppeteer? The Marionettist? And I don't believe that you don't know what our purpose is…"

The Marionette smiled.

"You could say my puppet body is the Marionette and my spirit is the Marionettist. Or that I'm just a Marionette of the purple guy, as he's the one who forced me and you into this situation- He controls us now. And as for your job, you must figure it out for yourself, or you will wander here forever, always ageing but unable to die. And so will I, if I tell you mine."

Sophia reeled, slightly overcome with this answer. The Marionette beckoned to them.

"Come, I will tell you more on the way." He ordered. It wasn't an order per se, but his tone of voice made it sound like one. Looking at one another, they followed. Although, Alfred neglected to look at Arian, but he could feel his stare digging into him, peeling back his layers like an onion.

"Just after you died, did you wake up in a void of black?" The Marionette asked, turning a corner. It must have been a rhetorical question, as he didn't wait for the reply.

"That place is called limbo. It's where murder victims- like us- end up, people that have died in accidents, etc. The whole point of this place to drive you insane and wonder what you did to deserve to be here. Which is usually nothing at all, it's just a horrible thing to do to traumatized victims- not perpetrators, victims! Well, at least one of us here has felt its touch…"

Alfred could tell he meant him. He held his head low in shame. The feelings had felt so real, they can't have just been made by this place, right? Maybe they were really there, but only very faint and this limbo enhanced it? To be honest, he should had felt some of those emotions, like guilt. The was interrupted from his thoughts by the Marionette, who was speaking again, and may of been for a while, by all Alfred knew.

"I assume limbo is meant to be a kind of 'waiting room' for spirits that need to avenge themselves, but have no way to do it. Luckily, via the suits I managed to pull you out of there. As you can use the suits as a medium to interact with the material world, you can act out your revenge."

"So if you had to put us in the suits so we could interact with the world…" Ray began to ask, thinking hard, "How did you manage to get back into the world without someone else? And how did the person before that, and that, and… you get what I mean."

Again, the Marionette smiled, slightly grimly.

"No, I was the first murdered child." Ray gawped at him. "Just let me explain: the Marionette rag-doll I use as a puppet was created honor of me, to pay tribute to me- I was connected to it. So on the day I realized what my job was to be exact, I looked up to where the sky would be in limbo and I saw this ghostly puppet reaching out to me. It wrenched me of the ground and suddenly I was inside the Marionette suit. It took me three months to get the hang of getting I and out of the suit after that!"

He might had said more than that, but Alfred wasn't listening. They had just passed the party room where he was in not-so-long ago. He stood shock still, watching his mom talk with an employee about her missing sons and party guests. His friends called for him ahead of him, but he was oblivious.

"Mom…" He whispered, tears forming at his eyes. This might be the last time he would ever see her. Silently, the Marionette had walked up to him and was softly patting him on the shoulder, whispering comforting words to him. He didn't notice. He didn't care. His mom was crying, wanting her boys back.

"Mom!" Alfred screamed, taking the Marionette by surprise. He ran towards her and tried to take her hand. It just passed straight through.

"Mom! MOM! I'm here! I'm right here!" Alfred wailed. His mother couldn't hear him and just kept on crying.

"Mom please… MOM! I'm here! I'm right here…" Alfred cried hysterically. He couldn't handle seeing his mother again. It was torture: being completely ignored by one you love, them crying for you even though you're right there but they just can't see. His friends and the Marionette (he wasn't Alfred's friend yet) had surrounded him- Arian had slunk off somewhere. Alfred raged, trying to get to his mother but he was held down by Ray.

"C'mon dude…" He murmured, just loud enough so that Alfred could hear it.

"Mom…" Alfred sobbed, weeping in a pool of his own tears. He wanted to stay there forever and just cry, drowning in his own sadness.

"Mom…"