Merry Crisis

(December 24th, 2031)

"Alright, guys. Here we go," Freddy rumbled as he adjusted his grip on the silver-and-gold-plated microphone. "Three minutes. We got this."

"You got this," Bonnie snickered as he flicked a few sound switches on his bass, "I got ear-strain."

"Just lock the ends off if it gets any worse," the bear suggested. The robotic rabbit decided to do so right away; with a low fizz and a chlnk! from his ear joints, the extremities became fixed and stiff. The band huddled up—in so much as their overall size allowed—in the utilidor tunnel zone right outside the stage lift, double-checking instruments, and being double-checked as instruments. Leo was outsourced for this alongside the four standard operating robotics technicians, and sidled next to Foxy with a standard electrician's meter.

"Sorry, buddy—one more time." He gestured with the probe end of it, and Foxy gave a soft snort and rolled his eyes, but lifted his arm to revolve a bit forward anyhow. Leo tapped the probe against the plug ports on the vulpine performer's flank, squinting over the readout screen in his other hand.

"Hey, Jackie?"

"What?"

"Foxy's not topped off," he indicated with the probe. "You did top 'im off, right?"

"Yes, I did." The usual person in charge of the rebellious keytarist's maintenance drew herself up, crossing her arms. "We all verified with the diagnostics team ten minutes ago. You tryin' to start shit?"

"No—look here—that voltage rate if way off," Leo's shoulders twitched up, making him shrink back slightly even as he pushed the tool's screen forward. Jackie did not even engage this data, only smirked and caught another of the technicians' attention with a jostle at the ribs.

"Okay, Leo, you just stick to the arcade machines and your clown doll," she shrugged. "I highly doubt that little thing is more accurate than the computer's readout,"

"I—" Foxy had cocked his head towards the conversation, and for a moment met the scruffy man's eye. The robot saw in it only boiling embarrassment, "I guess so. I guess so—hey," he'd tapped against the fox's arm casing, and the keytarist leaned in, "You feeling up to this show?"

"Think I can pull it off," the robot grunted, nodding lightly. Jackie's gaze lingered for a moment over the mechanical being, lower eyelids tightening up, telling on something bitter and confused. Foxy's voice defaulted to raspy, but he almost never whispered or murmured—never warm in tone like this, missing the abrasion. Never around human handlers. "If I start t' lag, I'll drop back a little bit. Let them big boys take the weight."

"And girls!" Chica chirped, as her balance danced from toe to toe, a technique she'd discovered would quell her stage-fright.

"Right, and girls." Foxy chuckled. A show-runner threw the door open—urging the robots through and to the lift. The muffled drone of an excited crowd settled down through the pit, and Foxy strode forward to join his bandmates with a cocky swing in his step, "Go time! Let's rock this joint!"

The deep throb of the backing percussion track pulsed through the metal and concrete, the stage lights dimmed down to signal to teeming throngs of guests to hush. Functionally, this only encouraged their cheers to intensify. The lift slid upwards, its pillar-like pistons seeming silent now that the music was kicking up, and the four robotic bandmates gripped their respective instruments as they were lifted up into view. Spotlights in their four colors dazzled across the main stage—each taking over the instrumental parts as the prerecorded tracks faded out—volume rising and each metal beast's solo flairs added as the debut song passed to each of them. Finally, Freddy took the mic for the verses, joined by Chica. They were the primary singers—trading off the lead position by song, but each being most of the voice, Foxy and Bonnie jumping in to join group harmonies.

If the company could be commended for anything, it was that somehow through the cold machinations of the entertainment industry, they had created amid highly and tortuously tuned corporate image and advert art, artists. Not art, but artists, "synthetic" though they were in their physical respects, but the heart of them, and of their deft performances, perhaps the most genuine things Fazbear Entertainment L.L.C. had ever created.

But, as he bobbed his head to the rhythm of "Supernova" from the dank utility space below meters of steel and concrete, Leo did not want to give his employment overlords that credit. At the risk of the strongly discouraged practice of "anthropomorphizing the AI", that credit all went to them.

"Supernova". "Smashing Windshields". "No Time for Popcorn". "Alchemist's Fantasy". He knew the line-up by now—all iterations of it. Tonight, Freddy took the mic at one of the inter-song breaks and got the temperature of the room. And rolled into the first part of their Christmas edition to the show:

"It's a very special evening, everybody!" His rich voice boomed, waving up towards the huge skylights swollen with the early winter blackness—highlighted by the thousands of pinprick eyes of the cosmos in a reflection of the moshpit below, "I don't know if we could hear him over the rock, but we're gonna make sure he can certainly hear us! You know who I'm talkin' about?"

He held out the mic, and a concerted squeal of delight from the youngest in the audience rang out: "Santa Claus!"

"That's right!" Freddy guffawed, "Hey now—since the jolly ole dude himself might be flying over any minute, how about we sing one just for him?"

The crowd was on board. Bonnie made a half-running skip forward and began the drumming bassline—Foxy threw his head back and began playing out the melody, and soon the whole band was joined in a heavily-80s'ed-out, rock version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town".

More holiday-spirited work followed in the show lineup, including a mash-up of "Jingle Bell Rock" and "I'll Be Home For Christmas", which Chica and Bonnie had done much of the writing and fusing of parts for. Everything was going swimmingly. Everything until the more rigorous performance of Foxy and Chica's main musical duel—their own cover of a hard rock "Carol of the Bells".

Chica was engrossed in her element, hitting chords that warbled and harmonized with the ones Foxy's keytar was throwing out—back and forth, with Bonnie the deep-toned glue and Freddy showboating in between the crooning bridge.

She almost missed the first note he skipped over. During one of the easier sections of the melody she shot a quick glance over to the vulpine robot.

If a metal performer could have sweated beads like bullets, Foxy would have been doing so. His eyelids were articulating more sluggishly than normal, slanted unevenly for his expressions, not quite sliding back entirely into his head casing as he opened them more fully. And then he missed another note on an ascending string, jaw twitched visibly in frustration as he began to understand the limitations afflicting him. This song was rough. It required a high output of power—his claws snapped between hurried crescendos on the keys, his legs braced with each theatrical headbang on the climaxes when all the parts merged as one. Just another forty-five seconds. This was the penultimate song of the hour. Just a few more minutes. He could last.

He had to. He had to.

The final chord of the piece rang out, Chica's electric V-neck singing for her and drowning out the petering crackle of Foxy's keytar as his claw had difficulty staying on the right spot. The crowd's roar echoed over the noises on the stage; Foxy had stepped back as far as he could go while remaining on the lift's circular range, his head dropping as the weight of his slack keytar seemed to multiply and his neck servos began to chuff and groan. Chica sidestepped towards him; Bonnie turned his head, eyebrows flashing up in numb alarm at what was happening. For a while, Freddy's imposing bulk and celebratory gestures blocked view and distracted from what was taking place behind him. But not forever. The crowd's murmur transformed into a sharp, discordant gasp and series of confused mutters: Foxy had tried to straighten up, toughen up and "ride out" the final number. And with an interrupted grind of servos in his legs losing power, he buckled forward instead.

"Foxy—whoa!" Bonnie shuffled to further block the audience's view as he leaned down, unsure where to lay his hands. The robotic fox had partially caught himself on his hands and knees—the instrument slung over his chest slamming into the stage's floor and ricocheting up to bash against his jaw, which already hung much too loosely—the hinge joint lacking voltage to control it.

"Sit back, here—" Chica was alongside him in a second, and tried to tune out the rabble of the children and parents alike; she exerted her own remaining strength to shift the other robot into a sitting position before grabbing and slipping the loose, now-cracked, keytar from over his head. "Foxy, can you hear me? Stay still, don't use any energy, hold still..!"

From the control hub a flurry of radio activity sparked up. Summer was manning a central station, with a perfect view of the stage. And of the catastrophic failures befalling it. Hollering over to her subordinate at the next station, she jammed the settings to the outro music track and started up the lift. Over the communications she could hear Jackie snapping orders around in the Parts and Services bay, crossing channels with the security team reporting on crowd control. With Foxy still on the ground, head down and his cohorts surrounding him, the lift descended into the darkness.

The last call for pickup at Superstar Daycare was usually timed to coincide with the half hour just following the major evening show. Which, on ordinary schedule, was 9 p.m. This had the effect of reducing foot traffic strain from the show let-out, redirecting parents and older children of the daycare attendees' families out of the main atrium and the lobby, allowing the pressure of the main bulk of the guest mob to release over several minutes before the next wave of them decided to make their way exit-side. Tonight, the extended showtime set the pickup time back to 9:30, and predictably Sun/Moon's smaller afternoon compliment of kindergarteners was cranky and overtired. It being Christmas Eve did not help matters—if anything it only made most of the children more antsy to be returned home.

With the bassy pulse of the show starting up through several walls and several meters of piping and crawlspace, the Daycare Attendant nudged the assistant on task to dim the lights. It wrangled the fussy kids into a semicircle in the prominent hiding nook that looked like a piece of mock-castle, to the side of the play-zones and across from the extra cubbies. The switch to Moon mode was gentler this time as it faced them, cross-legged; since toddlers were not permitted in the loud, crowded blaze of the main show's (admittedly hazardous for the small and sensitive) glory, it set itself on giving them their own show for their final wait.

"I have a new story for you tonight, my little friends!~" Moon purred, steepling its blue-tipped fingers into the pleasant blue nightlights cast by its eyes, about as hyper as it could get in dark settings. Truly, they were excited! Improvised as this was, it finally gave the robotic clown an excuse to use some of the hand puppets it had newly finished, "Sit tight, grab a pillow~ Ah-Ah! Hands to yourself, James."

As the toddler grumbled and hunkered back, the Daycare Attendant slipped on one of its new puppets. Mostly a peach-hued felt, the form had been adorned with a yellow paisley fabric dress, a curled set of black yarn curls, and an embroidered-on smile below a pair of bright blue buttons for eyes.

"Very good, very good~ Now, it's time for a story about a new friend of mine..!" Moon said with a pat on the puppet's thick locks of acrylic hair, "This is Cassidy~ She's a little older than you all," it paused to contain a snort of laughter at the understatement of the century, "But still one of my young friends.~"

"A loo—oong time ago, Cassidy here missed her very happiest day—which, for her, was her birthday." The puppet's soft arms bent in, covering the eyes in a facsimile of sorrow, "She got taken away from her party—far, far away to a dark, frightening place, where she was scared she couldn't come back," the puppet appeared to whirl about, quivering, "But..!"

Beneath the toddlers' notice, the Daycare Attendant's other hand had geared up with the second of its new puppets:

"Cassidy went down, deep into the dark—but she had a new friend already waiting for her so it turned out that she wasn't alone—" The similar-looking hand puppet popped up, the curls shorter and brown, the clothes a fuzzy pink and green floral flannel, blunt little hands stretching out to pap against the other puppet's shoulders, "And this friend's name was Charlie.

"Charlie's a tough girl, you see—not hardly scared of anything..!" And the brown-haired puppet appeared to flex its stubby arms, posturing in between the black-haired one and the young audience. "Since Cassidy was so sad, she took it on herself to fix that big problem. So, in the dark places, Charlie started looking for things~"

The puppets had small squares of Velcro glued onto the hands, and with these gripping surfaces the Daycare Attendant began to make the Charlie puppet pluck up and present a series of small plush items: A classic-looking gift box, a googly-eyed cylinder of felt cake, some notably non-buoyant but bright cloth balloons. Finally, the Charlie puppet took up a tiny little party hat, and with an expert flick of the operating fingers, she appeared to quickly plop the hat in a perfect balance on top of the Cassidy puppet's head.

"Thanks to Charlie, Cassidy had her happiest day at last—a little late, but sometimes the day doesn't matter. This time, she celebrated with friends." Moon shifted its legs, which had been smushing flat a number of animal character plushies until the pressure released and they flopped out in a springy jumble—most of them appearing to have been to a very different sort of party but a few landing on their limbs on in sitting poses. "And now, because Charlie was brave and she had her friends with her, Cassidy became brave too~ And so she started off to try and find her way back from the dark—"

"Moony-man!" The call of one of the daycare staff brought the storytime to a jarring halt. The felt party hat tumbled from Cassidy-puppet's head.

"Uhu?" The robot clown perked its head up, tilting face the proper curious angle, "Yes, yes~ is that Ms. Susan? What do you need?"

"You got them kids in there? Parents are here—c'mon Moony, bring 'em out."

"Ah." The Daycare Attendant set the puppets and props and plushies aside and stretched its arms overhead, "Time for you to head home, little friends~ C'mon up, up, stretch out..! That's it. Follow along after me to the gate now~"

It ducked out of the castle nook, a messy line of human ducklings in pursuit, and came face-to-face with Susan. One of the older people working at the daycare, Susan was superficially polite and cheerful towards the celestial character, but had the annoyingly common habit of casual dismissal—and selective hearing—regarding what Sun/Moon had to say. Though not consciously malicious, it bothered the robot jester just the same.

"Hm, hm~ Awfully early, isn't it?" With a dull click of its neck joint, it turned its head to face her, all while carefully taking a firm grip on a four-year-old trying to express a sudden wanderlust back to the ballpit. "I'd thought tonight's show would mean we would not be saying goodbye to the kiddos until 9:30?"

"Oh, Moony—they can come early if they want," Susan scoffed, retrieving a few pairs of shoes for a huddle of tiny girls who were yawning every few moments, "We can't control that. Be a dear and see those two off, would you?" She waved haphazardly, in the general direction of a pair of adults lingering patiently near the gate—craning their necks to try and spot their child amongst the twinkling starlit play-zone.

"Of course," Moon nodded, training sensors onto the parental units' faces. Recognition—these were the mother and stepfather of the… creatively-named Birdie. Four-years-old, not reported allergic to anything, but through observations from both itself and its human co-workers, very obviously allergic or at least with intolerances to a number of common foodstuffs. It scampered over to the pale, thin child and crooked a few fingers for the sleepy toddler to follow.

"Good evening, Mr. Ballard..! Mrs. Ballard..!" The caretaker robot purred, "tipping" its floppy hat as Birdie charged past it and hugged against the woman's legs. Its lenses flexed wider, then narrowing in—noting right away the redness of her flustered skin, a slight smearing of one side of her eyeshadow. Gaze flicking to the paternal form, it noted a differing set of symptoms of discomfort—but discomfort nonetheless. Curious. Exercise caution; it didn't care to consider these two being potential risks to their own precious offspring (well, directly), but the shrewder protocols managing such suspicions made a few notes in the background.

"H-hey, uh—" Mrs. Ballard stooped down, clinging tightly in an embrace over her child's back before a reluctant release. "Thanks for having our daughter over, er… I don't know how to ask this…"

"Hmm?~" Moon paused, having just slid Birdie's tennis shoes towards her and passed the child's puffy pink parka into the father's hands. "I can answer most any question you might have regarding my daycare, or your little one's attendance."

"Are… are things going okay down here?" she became hushed, pulled the parka sleeves over Birdie's pencil arms in haste. Almost as if hurrying to leave, it noticed.

"Uhu, humm, forgive me, could you be more specific?"

"Like there's been no technical difficulties," Mr. Ballard clarified, teeth halfway to gritted. Moon smoothly tilted its head, fingers steepling in a thoughtful pose.

"I haven't been made aware of any… why do you ask?"

"N-never mind. Come on, Birdie, let's go home," she ripped away eye contact with the blue bulbous lamps, grabbing the toddler up into her arms as she stood. "Sorry again about last week. I hope it didn't, ah, happen again today…"

"Oho, no~ Little bluebird did very well today," Moon nodded, warmth flooding its motors. "I hope she continues to feel better… though I'm once again obligated to recommend she see a pediatrician, just in case..!"

"We… we'll keep it in mind," Mrs. Ballard drew away, as if from a wasp's nest just spotted and almost stumbled into, and turned on heel to follow her husband. Birdie peered back over their mother's shoulder—waving with a few weak flaps of her fingers.

"Bye-bye, bluebird!~ Merry Christmas~" Moon said, returning the gesture. It was just readying to turn about and continue matching its charges up to the correct guardians filing through the intake when it caught sight and sound of Leo: From the utility entrance in the wall that linked up the play-zone level to the theater's various wireworks, restrooms, and the employee lockers the tall man barreled out, dotted with sweat.

"You—"

"Me?" Moon skipped back a pace, their extended arms catching around the man's gasping chest as he lost the power to skid-stop in time. If the Ballards were exhibiting a measure of stress, then what Sun/Moon was picking up from their handler's body language (and body odor) was measuring straight into panic. Its head descended lower, inches from Leo's forehead and sensors pinging at the near-feverish heat from him. "Goodness—Leo—is something the matter?"

"Buddy…" he huffed and leaned heavily against the polymer-coated titanium of the robot's offered shoulder, "Not me—the show. We got issues, and I'm gonna need your help."

"Oh dear…" Its processor whirred. This may explain the parents' strain much better than its anti-abuse protocol. One gangling hand reached around and palmed the entirety of the tech's back, "Of course I can help out, just as soon as all of these little gremlins are off home, and I have a chance to do the last sanitation run—"

"No," Leo shook his head emphatically, swallowing against a dry throat. "I'm gonna need you now. This is urgent."

With a dull plink, Moon ruminated what could possibly inspire such roughness, such impatience. Leo chilled as he peered up and saw the lighting of the metal jester's friendlier blue eyes dip out and flutter for a second, revealing for just enough time to register the crimson beads of its light sensors alone. And then the blue night-lights were back, and it whispered a reply: "Something very, very bad happened, did it?"

"Foxy's down," Though still quite shaken from his run and from the robotic clown's unexpected serious tone, Leo appreciated the effortless lift support it now provided as it guided him over to the utility door—outside of earshot of any guests who did not need to be privy to these mechanical details: "Son of a bitch. I tried, buddy, I really did, but Jackie's not ever gonna be the type to admit she's miscalculated."

"Leo, my friend," the Daycare Attendant arrived at the locker room portion of a widened hall, leaning over by a rather thin-cushioned but flashy red couch and sloughing the human off into a sitting position, before it squatted on the next space over, "When you say 'down', what is it you mean?"

Leo almost laughed, which transformed into a short cough, at the folly of this exchange. At the electronic-tinged hitches and flinching aura it lent to the mechanical being's voice—and especially of his own vagueness that was drawing out this sentimentality.

"Okay… okay… sorry buddy, I've got you all wired up." He patted the jester on the topside of one wrist, shifting one of the bells with a musical jangle, "Diagnostics isn't done at all yet, but Foxy had some kind of voltage flow error on stage. He's just been hooked into Parts and Service—the main guys will have worked out what's actually bust within the next few days.

"Odds are, he's just gonna need a battery switch. Undercharged habitually."

"No, no—no—" Moon's fingers flexed down and the metal wiring and servos made a low whine against each other, "I made sure every night, twice a night, on my rounds. I insisted if I had to—the others were seldom undercharged, and when I arrived they did not stay that way."

"It's what I thought," Leo sighed, "You're too good for this to be something so… normal. I figure poor Foxy was over-depleted, not undercharged. They don't have what you have, Sunny, in good ways but also in bad ways. Lithium-ion batteries are really good at putting it out. Lithium-ions are the stuff you put in electric racers. They've got oomph, but they spill their charge fast, and then they're just an empty cup. Not enough drops left to get the charge generated again, and they're done—just toxic scrap.

"You've got sugar batteries in you. They're about the exact opposite—you need a bank of them wedged and coiled in there to match voltage with the band's one big lithium hunk. But sugar batteries hold that charge tight, and you're got… uh," he counted on his fingers, "Eight of them. If you ever drop below half power, I'd be surprised."

"So, does this mean you think Foxy will be alright?" Moon's head twitched back and forth, rocking in place a few times, "…a battery replacement isn't dangerous… is it?"

"It is for the human being doing the procedure." Leo's brows twisted up a degree, "Well, for this grade of lithiums. Not dangerous for Foxy at all.

"I'm hoping he'll just be inactive for a few days while all the repairs and testing are done. But this leaves a problem of having a band minus Foxy for those days. Ops wants a few things done in short order to fix that. They want Roxy to fill in, since she's got the same base and core CPU type. They're gonna implant a copy of Foxy's keytar protocols into her sometime tonight. But they… they want something else, just in case. That's where you come in."

"M…me?" The Daycare Attendant looked down, its eyeline grazing over the scuffed, bony knobs of their handler's knuckles before it shot back up to stare him in the face, "Ohuh, friend, I… I have some amount of self-maintenance programs, but in terms of technical skill I don't think I quite qualify for the sort of engineering tasks that…"

"No, no, no, nothing like that." Leo stretched and rolled his wrists and let go of a deep breath. "This is something you'd be, uh, much better designed for."

Moon's eyelids narrowed in from both ends, dimming its blue glow; head ticked in swift but still fluid motions side to side, it seemed to buffer for a second. When its gaze snapped back to hover over its handler, its voice curled up in a quizzical lilt: "There is… a need for the sort of skills used in a daycare? In this situation..?" Its face rotated to be fully upside down to express its sheer puzzlement and interest: "How? Why? Where? …Who?"

"I'll show you. It's going to be set up in Parts and Services—for after-hours." Leo patted against the rigid plate enclosing the clown's back and shoulder joints, making a hard metal thunk, "In case it becomes necessary, HQ wants to have you train and condition another endo. A new performer—like the band."