"Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday from Freddy Fazbear's Pizza!"

As Baby finished singing the totally-not-copyright version of the birthday song, she gave a slight bow and her blue eyes flickered. The kids sitting at a long table in front of the stage all looked amazed at the singing robot clown, and actually clapped and cheered at her show. It was kind of nice to see people not be afraid of her for once. Tricia walked out of the kitchen, holding the totally-not-premade birthday cake that Anondos had hastily scribbled the birthday kid's name on with a frosting tube.

"Here's the birthday cake!" Tricia happily greeted the children, placing the cake on the center of the table between two large pepperoni pizzas. "Are you having a good time, everybody?"

"Yeah!" The children all replied, either with mouthfuls of pizza or already reaching for the cake. I had been watching all of this through the office's monitors, hoping that my skeleton crew of a team could handle this without me trying to keep an eagle-eye on Baby the entire time. Anondos had warned me that doing so may make a few parents uncomfortable, and he was probably right. I wouldn't want to see someone staring at a singing, moving, sexy robot clown that-damn it! Enough of that, me! Focus on the kid-friendly part of the job!

I popped in the next disk of Baby's birthday show into the console, and watched the monitors in anticipation. Seeing her perform for a real audience felt kind of magical; it reminded me of my childhood days watching the animatronics' shows. Circus Baby started to move left and right in some kind of weird robot 'dance,' lifting her microphone near her mouth as her rosy red cheeks started to light up.

"Now, let's play a birthday game!" Baby called to the kids, her pigtails bobbing up at down. At the word 'game,' all of the kids' attention went from the food to Baby. Baby let out a static-sounding laugh of "Ha! Ha!" that probably sounded more creepy than cute to anyone other than me. "If you can guess the ice cream flavor that I'm thinking of, you win!"

"What do we win?" One of the kids asked. Of course, Baby in 'entertaining' mode didn't comprehend the question.

"That's right, you will win!" Baby replied in this pre-recorded conversation. "I will make you the flavor of ice cream that you guess!" I hesitated when she said this; I never actually ordered any of the ice cream flavors for her maker, nor did I get anyone to get it up and running. If this was just something from an older restaurant that had a fuctional ice cream maker, this might not be good. I don't want to lie to kids about free ice cream.

I thought that explaining this to parents would be simple: tell them it was an old show, apologize for not having an ice cream maker, and just go get some ice cream for the kids. Unfortunately, Baby didn't make that easy. Whatever the last show had her programmed to do, she tried doing it: her stomach opened up like a double-door, and a long, thin metal pole shot out. A thin, grabbing piece was at the end, which looked to be meant for holding out an ice cream cone.

The kids' looks of curiosity turned to looks of terror. Since Baby's ice cream maker wasn't prepared, nothing sounded right: the loud, ear-piercing sound of gears grinding and the grabber clamping down was scaring all of them. I couldn't blame them; seeing a robot's stomach open with a bunch of sharp-looking metal and spinning pieces inside would scare me too. Baby's squeezing piece frantically clamped open and closed, trying to hand out ice cream cones that she didn't actually have.

"Shit! Shit!" I muttered, my eyes scanning the console for the emergency stop button. The only other one I knew of was on Baby's leg, and I didn't have time to run out there. "Come on, damn it! Where are-a ha!" I finally found a red 'emergency stop' button and pressed it-and it just made a weak, broken-sounding click and popped right back up. Fuck me. I glanced up at the monitors, my heart feeling like it could beat out of my chest. Baby was moving left and right, still making screeching sounds and looking at the kids. The parents didn't look thrilled.

I didn't have a choice-I started running from the office and turned the second I stepped into the show room, jumping on stage so quick that I tripped over the edge and landed on my stomach. I tried to stand as fast as I could and ran towards Baby, reaching for her leg and finding the hidden button-pushing it actually worked, and Baby started to calm down. The pole snapped back into her body and her stomach's doors closed, now only showing the fan as some kind of weird belly button. I looked over at the kids, feeling sweat run down my face.

One kid was holding on to his mother, crying uncontrollably. Another few were holding each other, all looking horrified in Baby's direction. The other mothers were glaring at me.

"I ... uh ..." I couldn't think of a way to explain this. This was the number one thing I worried about when I agreed to this whole thing. If any kid had approached her, I had no idea what she would have actually done. "I'll just go get everyone some ice cream, would that be good?"

The kids slowly nodded, slowly returning to their seats and staring at a deactivated Baby, who had lost her shining colors and was leaned over in a slump, holding her microphone towards the ground. She looked as if she was sulking over doing something wrong. The parents, meanwhile, weren't so easy to convince. One of the mothers, an aunt of mine, walked up to the stage.

"What if my kid got up there? What then?" She snapped at me.

"Kids aren't supposed to be on stages, watch him yourself." I replied. "We're a business, not a babysitting service."

"Ya know, your uncle spoke so highly of you when you took this place from him. He was so excited, and now all he does is complain that you run out of money." She said, as if this would 'win' the argument she thought we were having. I shrugged, which seemed to piss her off further.

"That's funny, because at the start of all this he said he would handle all of the money, and now I'm up shit creek without a paddle." I replied. "I turned her off, she's fine, it was an old show from an old robot. I don't have her doing ice cream, and I'm gonna get the kids some damn ice cream. I'll keep her turned off and just give the kids some game tokens. Will that make you and your little PTA gang happy?"

"You're lucky I don't report you." She said, turning away and marching back towards the table. I groaned, looking up at the lifeless, dull-eyed Baby. If she had actually hurt a kid, what the hell would I have done? After I made such a fuss about not having Freddy and his murder band, now this happens? That just makes me a huge hypocrite that only keeps this particular murder-bot around because I have a boner for it.

An hour later, the kids all had their ice cream (which Anondos bought from the nearby gas station, but it was soft serve so it looked good enough,) and most of them had ran into the game room with their tokens. Fortunately, when Tricia gave the birthday kid's mother the bill, she didn't complain. It wasn't anyone I was related to, so she didn't have a pre-existing bias to dislike me. Anondos, however, was hoping it would get him in with her.

It didn't, and she promptly told him that if he spoke to her again, she would file a restaining order. I wanted to laugh. Normally, I would laugh. I was too worried about Baby. Do other shows have this ice cream part? When if she accidentally grabs a kid and pulls something off? What if some stupid kid reaches into her stomach while their parent just sits their on their phone?

"Hey, things are starting to wind down, Boss."

I jumped a little at the sound of Mike's voice. I turned, seeing him standing behind me. He smiled, but clearly noticed I looked uncomfortable.

"Uh, yeah." I said with a nod. "Why aren't you in the Bonnie suit?"

"Show's pretty much over." He replied. "The kids are more focused on the games, no one really cared about me so I didn't see a point. What do you think of your first party? Ya know, except for your robot almost killing everyone-"

"Don't!" I said, putting up a hand to silence him. "This party went without a hitch. Everything went perfectly. We made the money to pay off the dude threatening to close us."

"Without a hitch? The hell you talkin' about?" Mike asked. "Even I was worried that thing of yours was gonna off a kid. Did you not see all that?"

"She didn't, did she?" I asked, looking at him. "Baby didn't get hurt, no kids are dead, the mom paid, everything's fine."

"You know, Baby being okay shouldn't really be your first priority." Mike said, scratching his head. "It should probably be, ya know, the kids. The people we work for here. I'm sure your robot can take more than a few punches from children."

"It's fine. I'll talk to Baby tonight and get it all straightened out-I mean, I'll look it up in her books and figure out what happened. I promise." I corrected myself. Mike raised an eyebrow at me-couldn't blame the guy.

"Uh, okay. You, uh, 'talk' to her, whatever that means." He replied. "I'm gonna head home, if that's okay. You don't need me for just the kids playin' games, do ya?"

"No, you're good. See you tomorrow." I said, waving as he walked off. I turned back to look at Baby. The party was ending, the money was made, and at least the kids were leaving satisfied. My problem was that I didn't care about any of that. I just wanted my robot to be okay. There are hundreds of kids in this town, but there's only one Circus Baby, and she's mine.

Kids be damned.