"Wha..." Christopher muttered dumbly, not yet coming to terms with the situation. He was almost overwhelmed by the things that he was beginning to notice, like the lines of party table in the darkness behind the grinning, pale face of the Puppet, or the lack of a few digits on his hands and feet. Or the realisation that he was no longer breathing.
Chris quickly opened his mouth, which was now split in half, and felt as his his mandible might come loose and fall off at any moment, and desperately gasped for air, but he never felt the relief of oxygen entering his lungs.
"What's happening? Where am I? What's going on?!" As he said these words, he felt no tongue rolling around in his mouth. He no longer needed to move his mouth to communicate at all, sending him into a further state of hysteria.
The thin black figure in front of him raised its arms and held both sides of Christopher's face, which felt different in every way. His cheeks were too curved, too artificial to be his. He felt no hair tickling his forehead. The Puppet pulled Christopher's face towards its own, silencing him. Chris saw in those pitch black, hollow eyes, two shining, white dots, staring into his own eyes.
"Calm down. You need to calm down, right now. I'll help you, you just need to be quiet," the Puppet ordered. It sounded authoritative and tense at first, but its voice then became more comforting as it continued talking.
Christopher obeyed, not in interest, but in fear or what the Puppet, who he'd never heard saying a single thing, could do to him. It had already turned him into some kind of monster, who knew the extent of its power?
"Good. That's good. Just relax," the Puppet said quietly, removing its thin, felt hands from his face, and Chris wondered whether it was talking to him, or itself.
"I'm sorry if I startled you. I was just...eager, to talk with someone again. Someone who could actually hear me..." the Puppet sounded more hospitable now.
I'm dreaming, Chris thought to himself, remembering the feeling of...falling asleep in the pizzeria previously. I just fell asleep and I'm dreaming...but I know I'm dreaming. Everything feels...real.
"I suppose I should wait until the others wake up as well. Your friends, that is," the Puppet continued speaking almost casually to him, though Chris barely registered his voice as he caught sight of his hand. His large, brown, hairy, four fingered hand. He tried moving his fingers, and the brown ones he was staring at passed the test, as they bent and unbent as he told them. In his other hand was a grey microphone, though he wasn't telling his hand to wrap its fuzzy fingers around it. Straightening them out manually, the mic dropped to the brown, wooden floor beneath him, and Christopher could now move the fingers on both hands, though they clearly weren't his.
"What did you do to me...?" Christopher squeaked, still peering at "his" hands. He felt as though he would begin to cry and never stop, but he felt nothing welling up inside of him.
"I..." the Puppet started, sounding almost apologetic, when the blue figure Chris had seen to his right, Bonnie's, eyes brightened, and he raised his head slightly. Christopher lowered his new hands to observe the awakening of Bonnie.
"Ah, finally. I was beginning to worry I'd done it wrong," the Puppet said, relieved. It walked-no, floated, over to the animatronic beside him, who was turning his head to the right and left slightly.
The Puppet silently gestured Chris to follow him with its long fingers, and hesitantly, he walked forward-and almost fell flat on his face. His center of gravity was all wrong. He was much too big, he realised. He tried lowering his head to see the rest of his body, but once again his neck's reach was short, and he could just barely see more brown hair, and what looked to be black spots. He decided it was better to stay put and view the scene from where he was.
"Ugh..." Bonnie groaned, in a voice that was not his own. He swivelled his head to meet Christopher, and his eyelids widened.
"Hello," the Puppet greeted cheerfully, deciding to introduce itself in a more mannerly way, it seemed to Chris.
"Huh...?! Where...?" Bonnie's glowing, red eyes frantically switched between the Puppet and Chris. He thought the voice Bonnie spoke in sounded familiar, but racking his mind, he couldn't put his finger on where he had heard it before.
"I know this might seem a bit strange, but I must assure you that everything is fine," the Puppet informed Bonnie, floating steadily closer to him.
Bonnie remained silent, his eyes fixed on that ever-smiling mask of the Puppet.
"I'm not going to hurt you. I'm here to help you," it continued, raising its hands in a gesture of peace.
Bonnie began moving his mouth slowly up and down, as if trying to say something, but no words came out. He proceeded to release his grip on the crimson guitar, which fell from his hands to the ground with an echoing clatter.
"No!" the Puppet hissed, its focus jumping to the fallen instrument, then to the darkness beyond the three on the wooden floor. Upon seeing nothing, it turned back to the rabbit.
"Don't do that again! You'll attract their attention!" the Puppet said sharply. The two stared at each other in silence for a moment, Bonnie raising his hands to his face, lowering his jaw and turning his head.
"I...what's going on here?" Bonnie finally. His voice was one of accusation and consternation, though his face remained the same bored expression Christopher had seen on him when he first activated.
Then it came to Christopher, in a rush of recollection. The voice, the familiar voice Bonnie spoke in. The lazy, uncaring voice of a young boy. Black hair. A sly grin.
"Jack?!" Christopher blurted out.
Bonnie twisted his head towards him in recognition. "Chris?!"
Jack was Bonnie. Bonnie was Jack. Jack was not Jack, he was Bonnie. Christopher tried desperately to wrap around this revelation, the gears turning in his head, but it left him stumped. There was no way this was possible. How does a boy become a rabbit? And yet, there stood Bonnie the Bunny, the blue guitar playing rabbit, speaking in in his friend's voice, and responding to his name.
"You're..." Jack trailed off, looking Chris up and down.
The two stared in awe at one another in silence for a minute or two. How much time passed, neither could say.
"Oh no..." the Puppet groaned, holding its hand to the side of its face, "This isn't what it was supposed to be like at all..."
Behind them, another voice alerted the trio to its presence. Turing, Christopher saw to the other side of him Chica the Chicken, slowly turning her head, just as Christopher and Jack had done when they'd awoken from their slumber. She surveyed her surroundings, and her eyes rested on three figures.
"Oh...what are you doing here, Freddy and Bonnie? And..." she stopped as she spotted the Puppet, floating in the middle of the two, it's eyes shining. She slowly raised a yellow hand to her beak, and then pulled it away immediately, as if it hand burned her.
"Hello, I'm-" the Puppet was interrupted by Chica emitting shrill cry, spastically shaking her head and torso to and fro. Christopher shuddered. If he had somehow become Freddy, which he'd figured was the truth from what he'd gathered of his new appearance, and Jack had become Bonnie, then it was most likely Lilly who had taken on the appearance of Chica.
"Shhh!" the Puppet hissed, suddenly diving towards "Chica". It pushed its face into hers, just as it had done to Christopher when he had acted out due to the shock of his new body.
"Please, I know you're stressed and worried and frightened, but you need to stop screaming like that," it whispered.
Lilly's scream lowered to a whimper, as she stiffly nodded her head in acknowledgement.
"Lilly," Chris said soothingly, though he was momentarily taken off guard once again by his mouth's lack of movement, "It's alright. It's me, Chris. And," Chris raised a robotic arm and pointed it to the animatronic to his right, "That's Jack. I don't know what's going on either, but we're here with you."
Lilly glanced at Christopher, then to Jack, then to the Puppet, who was still only inches away from her face. "How...how did this happen...?"
The Puppet loosened its grip on Chica's costume head, and slunk away from her.
"Don't you all remember what happened to you?" it inquired, tilting its head slightly in what appeared to be exasperation.
"I...I kind of remember. I remember Spring Bonnie and...and..." Jack trailed off, searching in his memory.
"It was Michael's birthday, I'm pretty sure," Lilly piped up. "Spring Bonnie came and he told us Fredbear was sick."
"Yeah, you're right!" Jack agreed, "He told us Fredbear was in a room where all the characters went after the show."
"No," Chris said suddenly.
"What? Chris, I remember it crystal clear now, that's exactly what happened!" Jack insisted indignantly.
"No, I mean, it wasn't Spring Bonnie," Chris explained, concentrating hard, "It was...it was..."
"William Afton," the Puppet sourly finished Christopher's sentence for him.
The three children-turned-animatronics froze at the mention of that name. It was only then that they recalled the man underneath the fur, the dagger, the blood. Each of them would have felt sick to their stomachs, if their insides hadn't been turned into cold metal and gears.
Somewhere in the dark abyss in front of them, there was a resounding sound of metal hitting metal, followed by a loud crash, a ripping noise, and two glowing lights shone brightly in the sea of blackness, illuminating their surroundings.
"Hello? Who's there?" a girl's voice called that rang bells in the children's troubled minds.
"S-Sam?" Lilly called back.
"Lilly? Is that you? I need help! I can't see anything, and I feel...weird!" the disembodied voice cried.
"I will guide her," the Puppet suggested, and made its way forward, off the raised stage. There was no sound of collision, indicating that it knew its way around the building.
They heard the noise of voices squabbling, belonging to the Puppet and Samantha. The two lights approached the stage slowly, guided by a tall, thin figure.
When Samantha had drawn near enough, the children finally got a look at her. As they'd all silently anticipated, she had the appearance of the red pirate fox, hook and all. Her snout hung open as she hobbled across the floor.
And as she was bathed in the glow of the three pairs of eyes on her, she could also see herself. Her reaction was as the others had expected. She examined her hand, her hook.
"What is this?! Why do I...look like Foxy? Where's Lilly?!" she demanded, pulling open her long, narrow snout to reveal two mouth fulls of sharpened teeth, investigating her new form.
"I'm here, Sam," Lilly responded gravely from the stage. She clumsily moved her feet forward to prove herself.
Sam narrowed her eyelids at Lilly in suspicion, then looked over at the other two animatronics. "This is a joke, right? There's no way-"
"Look, Sam, or whatever your name may be, I don't want to have to go through this again. I know it's hard to believe, but this is the truth. How else would you look like Foxy?" the Puppet interrupted irritably from just behind her.
Samantha glanced back down at her hook, then looked back at Lilly, conflicted.
"We're here too. I'm Jack, and Chris is Freddy," Jack alerted Samantha, nodding his head towards Christopher next to him, his long, blue ears waggling.
"Chris...?" Freddy nodded stiffly yet solemnly from on the stage. "So...this really isn't a trick? We actually all got turned into the characters...?" Sam asked, this time defeated.
"Sam, do you...remember anything? From before we became like this? Do you know what happened to Michael? Is he alright?" Lilly questioned, eager to get straight to the point.
"No, not really...I don't remember much at all. But, I do remember it was Michael's birthday. Why? What happened to us?"
"Sam, we...we died," Chris said reluctantly, "Don't you remember...? There was that man, William, in the Spring Bonnie suit. He told us Fredbear was sick, and he led us to a secret room. And he pulled out a knife..." Christopher stopped, seeing the distant look in Samantha's plastic, yellow eyes. She remembered, and it looked like she remembered every bit of it.
The fox trembled and shook in rage. "Yeah...he...he stabbed me. He sliced my chest open. He told us the characters were just robots...that's why I don't feel anything..." Sam suddenly turned and raised her hooked hand threateningly at the Puppet, standing just feet away from them, staying silent the entire time.
"Okay, you. I don't know who you are or what you have to do with anything, but you're going to tell us what's going on, right now!" she growled, stepping towards it.
"...Okay. I didn't want to tell you until you had all gotten over it a bit, but..." its glowing pupils met the eyes of everyone in the room, "That was wrong of me. I should have told you what happened to you when you first awoke. So, I'll tell you everything, from the beginning."
"Firstly, I was a child, just like all of you, once. My name is Sammy."