People often wondered what the Glamrock animatronics did once the shutters came down. Most assumed they were shut down for the night so they could be worked on and ready for the next day. Some thought that their security subroutines activated and they roamed the halls of the massive complex, looking for intruders to fold in half.

What none of them, absolutely no one, ever even considered was that they gathered together in one of their rooms to play a friendly game of UNO while discussing the events of the day. And they had quite a bit to discuss this time around.

"Alright, boy and girls," Monty started as he shuffled the deck with expert dexterity despite his large fingers. "I know we've been avoiding it for a while now, but the elephant in the room has been very polite, so I think it's about time we address it."

"Yeah, yeah, the new Caretaker's starting next week," Roxy huffed. "You'd think they'd get the hint after the last one. And the one before him. And the one before him."

"They give us a lot of freedom here, Roxanne," Freddy said, his tone and his posture showing that he didn't really want to talk about it, but had resigned himself to the conversation. "The tradeoff is that there has to be a human in the loop somewhere."

"Well I don't need someone hovering over me like they're waiting for me to do something wrong," Roxy replied.

"They also fix us when there's a problem we cannot handle on our own," Freddy pointed out.

"I don't need that, either."

"Oh, so you gonna go down to P&S every time you need a little work done?" Monty asked with a raised eyebrow as he finished passing out cards.

"..."

"That's what I thought," Monty smirked and kicked off the game with a green three.

"Come on, guys, that's not ALL they do," Chica said, laying down a green seven. "They don't just buff out scratches and report glitches; they give us someone to talk to besides ourselves!"

"Yeah, until we say something they don't think a machine should say," Roxy scoffed, tossing out a green one.

"We are…unique," Freddy all but mumbled as he put down a green five. "It's entirely understandable that they would be caught off-guard when we do things outside of what they would consider normal."

"I get that,' Monty said, adding a green eight to the pile, "but I think literally quittin' on the spot because you got into a debate about what it means to be a 'person', and LOST, is a bit much."

"I don't know why you're defending them, Freddy," Roxy said, putting down a red eight and smirking at the look Chica gave her. "Like your experiences were any better than ours with those assholes."

"I am not 'defending' them, Roxanne," Freddy replied, "I am just reminding us all of why they were here and why we are going to keep getting them. The company wants to make sure we aren't abusing our freedom."

"So I guess it doesn't matter when these so-called 'Caretakers' abuse their freedom, huh? When they abuse us?" Roxy snarled. Almost immediately she felt a kick to her shin and stifled a curse as she and the other animatronics tried not to look at Chica.

Said chicken made that task impossible when she let out a horrified gasp and turned to Roxy, dropping her cards on the table.

"Roxy! Were you...Did someone...Why didn't you say anything?!"

"..." for once in her life, Roxanne Wolf was speechless. No witty remarks, no masterful deflections; she had nothing to get her out of this jam.

"It was me," the three pairs of eyes snapped to the largest, strongest and toughest member of the band.

"Monty?! But...when? How? Why?!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Monty grunted. "You think I'm not sexy enough to be molested?" He flashed a cheesy grin and struck an even cheesier pose.

But Chica was having none of it.

"MOLESTED?!" Chica shrieked, which rattled the entire room and caused decibel warnings to flash across their eyes.

"Easy, Chica; remember your upgrade," Freddy said, ears wiggling as the microphones within recalibrated.

"Sor-Wait, no! Don't 'easy Chica' me!" she shot out of her chair and loomed over the bear with her hands on her hips. "Monty was MOLESTED and it looks like I'm the only one shocked by this revelation! You two knew!"

"They found out because I told them when it happened," Monty boomed, using the voice he normally reserved for guests who were on their way to getting tossed out.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Chica demanded, her voice wavering.

Monty leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before starting his story.

"It was Gary. I was in my room practicin' some bass lines and I felt like my fingers weren't workin' right. A tick too slow to respond, like my body was laggin' out. So I called him in to run a diagnostic. He brings in the laptop, hooks me up and everything's goin' fine until he says 'Uh-oh' and everything goes dark. I dunno how he did it, but the little prick shut me down. It must've been some kind of virus or backdoor program he uploaded, but my system was able to take it out." Monty growled as he remembered the next part and had to take a moment to calm down. "Next thing I know, I'm wakin' up and this monkey motherfucker is… touchin' me, and himself!"

"Ugh…" Roxy turned away, thankful that she wasn't capable of vomiting.

For his part Freddy just sat there with his eyes closed and head bowed in total silence, like he was trying to tune it all out.

Chica was absolutely horrified to her very core. It was utterly unthinkable, inconceivable that someone would be depraved enough to do something like that. Sure, every now and then she'd overhear a teenager or adult make a lewd comment about her or Roxy, and she'd once had a kid 'cop a feel' of her chest as she kneeled down to him, but this was something else entirely. This was a total violation of someone's very being and it made her sick.

Then she remembered who Monty said was responsible. Gary. Lonely Gary, who only seemed to smile when he was tinkering with something. Awkward Gary, who wasn't good with people. Sweet Gary, whom she had befriended and even shared pizza with. THAT Gary.

"Monty…where was I when this happened?"

"...It was the night of your upgrade," Monty sighed. "You were down in P&S, dead to the world."

"So when I woke up and everyone was talking about Gary being at the hospital, but wouldn't say why…"

"It was because of me," Monty nodded. "When I first woke up, the reboot hadn't completed, so I couldn't move. Just had to lay there and put up with it. The whole time I just got more and more pissed off, and when I finally had control again…"

"Did you…"

"I don't know," the robotic reptile shook his head. "He was still alive when I stopped sent out the call for emergency services. But after they took him, that was it. Haven't heard a word about him or the… incident since."

"...How are you still…" Chica trailed off as she gestured vaguely towards him.

"I'm still not sure about that one," Monty confessed. "I broke the First Law, and I don't think any of that 'crime of passion' stuff applies to animatronics. I was ready for the consequences. Said my goodbyes, made a couple recordings for you and Toby; even wrote a letter to the big wigs themselves, telling them that my actions were my own and not a reflection on any of you."

"Did…Did they ever respond?"

"Yes, actually," Monty let out a mirthless chuckle. "Said, 'While your willful violation of the First Law is highly disturbing, the circumstances surrounding that violation will be taken into account before a verdict is rendered'. That's all I ever heard on the matter and I'm still here, so I've just been assumin' I'm on probation," he finished with a shrug.

Had Chica been thinking clearly, she probably would've questioned that last bit, seeing as how Monty continued to destroy company property, tell off-color jokes to guests and generally behaved as though nothing had ever happened. But she wasn't thinking clearly, and thus took his story at face value.

"Monty…" she squeaked, voicebox warbling with involuntary distortion.

"Aw, come on, Chica, don't-" Monty started, but it was too late.

"I'M SO SORRY, MONTY!" the dam burst and Chica flung herself over the table and right into Monty, sending them both toppling over to the floor.

"Come on, girl, it's not THAT big a deal," Monty tried to reassure her. "Not anymore."

"Then why didn't you tell me?!"

"Because of this, for one," the gator snickered at Chica's pout. "But for real, I didn't tell you because…I was embarrassed. Everyone else finding out was unavoidable, and it was hard enough to get Freddy to keep quiet about it," he gave said bear a pointed look that Chica didn't see. "You probably wouldn't have left me alone for at least a month, Chica."

After another couple minutes of sobbing and hugging, Chica finally let the bigger robot go and looked deep into his eyes.

"Are you really okay?" she asked/demanded, her tone and gaze daring him to lie.

"...No," Monty looked away and laid his head back on the floor. "What he did to me is water under the bridge; it's whatever. But what I did to him? That…That stuck with me. I didn't know I was capable of doing that. Not to anything living , anyway; let alone a human. I know I get angry. I know I break shit. But that was on a whole different level, and knowing that I can do it, that ANY of us can do it…I dunno, it kinda put things in perspective for me, and not really in a good way. I always knew humans were squishy and fragile, and that we're so much stronger than them that it isn't even funny. A single glitch at the wrong time and we can break bones, snap spines or tear arms off. It gave me a new sense of…responsibility, I guess, but it also made me wonder why I was made like this. Why WE were made like this."

Not for the first time, Roxy and Freddy started at their claws and ran tongues over their teeth, wondering why they were so strong and sharp.

Chica, however, really had none of that to dwell on. The only thing she ever really questioned was why she had teeth when she was supposed to be a bird. But those teeth helped her eat pizza with better efficiency, so she counted it as a win and didn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

"If you're really fine…I guess it's okay. But don't you EVER keep me in the dark about something so serious again, understand?" Chica's tone left no room for argument, so the rest of the Band just nodded, even the two she wasn't looking at. She quickly got off of Monty and held out her hand to help him up, which she did with no issue at all even though he outweighed her by over two-hundred pounds. "You know what? I think this calls for a specialty pizza! Be right back, guys!" and with that she was out the door before anyone could say anything.

They waited in silence for about ten seconds before Monty turned to Roxy with a glare.

"Nice job, Rox," he grunted as he picked his chair back up and plopped down in it hard enough to make the sturdy metal groan.

"I'm sorry, okay?" Roxy mumbled, clearly embarrassed by her slip up. "I didn't mean to; I got worked up and it just came out!"

"Well I guess we know you're not the best at keeping secrets, huh?" Monty sneered. Yeah, it was a low blow, but he was pissed and had good reason to be.

"..." Roxy bared her teeth slightly, but in the end couldn't meet his eyes and looked away.

"Don't be so hard on her, Monty," Freddy said, finally getting some authority back in his voice. "It was an honest mistake. We're all a little…agitated right now."

"Fine," Monty huffed. "So how do we handle the new guy?"

"Just like all the others. We cannot just assume how they will behave and react one way or another."

"And if they turn out just as bad as the others? Or somehow worse?" Roxanne inquired.

"Then we report them," Freddy replied firmly. "We follow the protocols and trust the company to take care of it. They always do."

"Yeah, only to repeat the same mistakes all over again," Monty snorted.

"Be that as it may, taking matters into our own hands is far too big a risk." Freddy then turned to address Montry directly. "I believe the only reason you are still here is because the company values you and Chica far more than they did Gary. But you cannot rely on that always being the case."

He wasn't about to dwell on the implications of a company owned and run by humans valuing animatronics over their own species.

"No hurting the sex offenders," Roxy scoffed. "Got it."

"...Tampering with company property is grounds for immediate termination of employment. As such, they fall under the same category as trespassers and should be detained as soon as possible. If they should injure themselves attempting to resist said detainment, well…we can hardly be blamed for that." Freddy's face remained impassive as he said this, save for the corner of his mouth twitching upward for just a split second.

Roxy stared for a moment, jaw working up and down with no sound coming out until, "...Holy shit…"

"Toby's right; you do hang out with us too much," Monty quipped.

Freddy couldn't help but chuckle.