Location: Roxy Raceway

Time: 1:59am

Outside of the Roxy Raceway, the titular star cries to herself despite the lack of eyes on her face, sobbing morosely and loudly.

A gold rabbit with purple eyes appears on a rectangular digital board next to her.

"What the Hell was that?! You do know that the boy is useless to me if he's crippled or dead right? I said capture not kill him dammit!" He reprimanded her with great fulry. There was no way he was going to inhabit a vessel that was badly damaged. It needed to be pristine.

"He stole my eyes! That kid stole my eyes!" Roxy howled, "I'll make him pay."

William groans at the ruined, pathetic wolf, "You're useless to me now. Goodbye Roxy. I'm going to check on the others. They'll probably be more willing to cooperate with my instructions…."

William goes back into the cameras of the Pizzaplex and attempts to find Gregory or one of other animatronics. As he does so, he talks to himself internally.

"These Robots are stupid." he murmurs, "Back in my Day, my machines didn't need fancy charging stations and didn't break down this easily either. I guess this is another duty to add to the list of things I'll do when I get a human body: Reform this company from the inside out so that they'll make better quality animatronics…."

—

Location: Parts and Service Room

Time: 2:12am

Freddy, Mike and Henry are the first to arrive and wait for Gregory outside the Parts and Service area. The boy arrives after several mins with a triumphant grin on his face.

"Look what I got." The boy dangles Roxy's special eyes in front of them.

"Gregory, where did you get those?!" Freddy exclaims alarmed, "Those are Roxy's Eyes!"

"She…had an accident on her Raceway with one of the Go-Karts. She was badly crushed when I got to her and when I saw her lying there, she told me she was sorry and told me to give her eyes to you. I'm sorry Freddy".

"Bullshit! You're lying!" Mike accuses Gregory.

"Huh?"

"I know a lie from my Father when I see it. Your hands are twitching. Like his." Mike smiles darkly having caught the boy in the act.

Gregory looks down and sees that yes, his hands are twitching a little. It's an unconscious reflex he hasn't noticed before until now….

"I'm guessing you killed her on purpose to get those eyes didn't you!" Mike guesses as he raises an eyebrow. He couldn't figure out how he killed her though considering his short height and lack of upper body strength.

"I…I had to." Gregory stammers a little, "if I didn't, She would have killed me first and I was scared of that."

"Should have let her do it." Mike grumbles under his breath. "Anyway, how did she really die?"

"I challenged her to a Go-Kart race to get a Dance Pass because I couldn't get into Chica's room." Gregory explained, "but then she suddenly got aggressive and tried to kill me with her vehicle. What I did to her was in self-defence ok?"

Micheal didn't see his hands twitch this time

"Is she dead?" Freddy asks worriedly.

"She's alive but broken. Nothing seems to stop her. Even being badly damaged, she still chased after me without her eyes".

"I'm glad you're telling us the truth now," Henry stepped in, "But why lie to us in the first place?"

"I didn't want to hurt Freddy's feelings."

"And you thought leaving him in the dark was the better alternative?" Mike chimes in.

"Yes."

"Gregory," Henry sighs, "I can kind of understand where you are coming from but you can't lie all the time alright. The more excuses and lies like this you make, the more it piles up. I should know.

"But I lied for a good reason. Didn't I?"

Gregory sensed this conversation was going to turn sour.

"It's…hard to know when to tell a lie and when not to. I get that but please, don't lie about important things. Can you imagine what would happen if she came after us and we thought she was dead?!"

"Also Gregory, why did you take Roxy's eyes?"

"I saw the blueprints and I thought maybe Freddy could use them to find things that we can't. I made her bet that if I won the race, she would give me her eyes and the dance pass. So I won by crippling her and I took it while she was still unmoving. Shame I couldn't get the Dance Pass though…"

"You took Roxy's eyes out while she was unable to move?"

"She promised she'd give them to me if I won. I just took what was rightfully mine. I don't get why she was so angry at me after that."

"Don't you think she's angry because you took her eyes from her without her permission?"

"So what? I needed those eyes for Freddy and she pissed me off by trying to kill me. If you were in my position, you would have done what I did".

"Gregory, hurting others for petty things isn't right. Even if they did try to hurt or take out their anger on you".

"You're not my Dad Henry and that doesn't seem fair." Gregory frowns, "I think you should fight back against people that hurt you."

"Still, it creates an endless cycle. You hurt someone, they hurt you back, you hurt them again and you do it until you both die. It's not good William!"

Gregory winces, feeling enraged at Henry's unintentional slip of the tongue. "Why are you trying to teach me morals? This doesn't matter…It's not like I killed an actual person. Roxy will wake up tomorrow or in a few days perfectly fine because of the repairmen. She's just a machine, it doesn't have feelings and can't feel hurt!"

Freddy, hearing what the child said, looks at him with a disappointed expression. Gregory is frightened, knowing what he had just said had likely offended the giant bear and quickly fixed his sentence: "but not you Freddy, you're special of course"

"Is that what you think of the rest of them as well?" Freddy asks, becoming uneasy.

"Umm…."

Gregory was about to start lying again when a warning glare from Micheal prompted him to do the opposite.

"Yes." Gregory confessed, "You are all just machines to me."

"You know, there are more Eyes stored away in this place that you could have used to attach to me. If you just asked earlier, I could have shown you where they were."

"Well…It's not like I knew." the boy scratched his head in embarrassment, "and aren't her eyes like the only ones that are special?"

"No, there are a few others."

Gregory feels like an idiot for hurting Freddy like this. Wait, why was he even feeling bad? He was a machine, they weren't capable of real emotions. Everything Freddy has been saying were likely pre-programmed lines that were fed to him by a programmer who was probably a compassionate father. But thinking about how nice the bear had been to him for the entire night, never once referring to him as William Afton or associating him with the man, Gregory figured out why he was unhappy: If Freddy abandoned him now, he would not only not survive the night alone but he would also lose the trust of someone who never associated him with that murderer.

"Are you mad at me for hurting your friends?" Gregory asks, concerned.

"Not mad." Freddy shakes his head, "Just disappointed."

His eyes suddenly glow a lilac colour. Mike seems to have taken control again.

"My dad was always like this." Mike's voice emerges from the Bear rather menacingly, "A selfish and violent person by nature. You are no different from him."

Gregory hears this and immediately recalls's William's earlier words about how the both of them were violent and cruel by nature. Much to his horror, Gregory realises that William's statement currently holds some truth: He was indeed prone to violence and cruelty (intentionally and unintentionally).

'No, No! I won't let that be true.' Gregory shakes his head in denial, 'I'll prove William, Mike and Freddy wrong right now by doing what's right.'

"Let go of Freddy." Gregory commands the ghost sternly, "I want to apologise to him."

Mike charges at him and Gregory tries to step out of the way but Mike is too fast and grabs Gregory by the throat again with one hand.

"What's to stop me from killing you right here and right now? All it takes is a simple squeeze and your throat will be crumpled like an empty tin can".

"I don't think you'd want to make Freddy unhappy with the idea that you used him to kill me".

Mike laughs bitterly at him, "After what you did to his friend Roxy? I'm unsure about that"

Gregory tries to choose his next words carefully, "Even so, I don't think Freddy likes the idea of harming kids at all. If he learns that you killed me with his hands, that guilt is going to weigh on his mind forever. Are you alright with that? Giving him that kind of weight on his conscience?"

Mike emerges from Freddy Fazbear and Gregory sees a flicker of …something in Mike's eyes. Was it grief, irritation, remorse? He's not sure. Whatever Gregory said to him, it got to him to unpossess Freddy and the giant bear's stance returned to normal. Freddy looks around, disoriented, until he remembers what happened and he tries to turn away from the small boy in front of him.

"Wait, Freddy." Gregory ran to the giant bear and hugged his leg, preventing him from turning away, "I need you!"

"What do you need me for? To keep hurting my friends?" Freddy snapped at him uncharacteristically.

"No. Not at all." Gregory is taken aback. He thought Freddy would be scary if he became mad at him but now, seeing the Bear this disappointed in him felt equally scary,

"I need you to help me give Roxy her eyes back. I need you as she's likely very mad at me right now and if I try to give her her eyes by myself, she'll kill me for sure." Gregory pleads.

"It's what you deserve." Mike glowers at the child.

"At least if you're with me," Gregory keeps on speaking while ignoring Mike's insult, "she won't harm me if I offer her eyes back to her…I hope."

Freddy remains quiet. Gregory tries to drag up more genuine words from himself.

"I know what I said about you and your friends being machines but…maybe I'm wrong. I haven't known you or them for very long so maybe they could be more than that and I had no right to say what I did. Please, give me another chance to do what's right and see your friends from a better perspective. If you really want, I'll return all of them back to normal if they are corrupted like Mike said earlier."

Gregory looks up at Freddy who then stares downwards directly into his eyes. Freddy saw no malice, only a childlike, nearly innocent gleam in his eyes. Seeing this, Freddy decides to give the boy another chance as it seemed he really didn't know what he was doing wrong at first.

"I accept your apology Gregory."He pulls the boy in for a literal bear hug, "Please, help my friends and if you can, please try not to murder or hurt them anymore?"

"I'll try not to." Gregory promises.

"Aww but both of those things are what you do best Father." Michael snarks.

"Stop it Mike. He seems sorry and wants to make up for what he did." Henry quells him with a single stern look.

"Still, I'm not sure why, but it doesn't sound like Gregory genuinely wants to do it."

Gregory hated how Mike could read him a bit too well. He didn't care about the other animatronics…that was true but since Freddy treasured them and Gregory did admittedly enjoy Freddy as a companion and not just as a tool, he would repair Freddy's friends to earn his trust again.

Gregory groans exasperated, breaking away from the hug with Freddy, "How many sorries do I have to say before you forgive me?".

"Never enough but it would be interesting to see you attempt to try to do something good for once. It'll be good entertainment. Ah if only I had some popcorn…" Michael says dryly.

"Anyway, I have a plan," Gregory changes the topic, "we find Roxy and try to talk her down. If that doesn't work, we have to capture, restrain and shut her down for a while, just so that we can figure out what's wrong with her. You should be very capable of restraining her right Freddy?"

"Correct." The giant bear nods at him.

"I'm worried though…" Gregory admits, "If they are corrupted by something, I'm not sure how to remove it".

"I'm sure we can figure out something." Freddy pats him on the shoulder..

'He's gone back to being comforting. That's good.' Mentally,Gregory sighs in relief.

"So if we get the Dance Pass and I get the Fazer Blaster, will that work against her?" Gregory asks.

"It can stun us, yes, but she has no eyes for now so it won't work on her." Freddy informs him.

"I see…I guess we have to think of a Plan B then…"

END OF CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22 TITLE: The Bite of 83