The day passed without much incident. The closest thing to noteworthiness that happened was Alessandro confronting a customer who sent his food back because there was some plastic.

Otis increasingly got more and more skittish throughout the day, rarely ever leaving his office. The administrator of Fazbear Entertainment was coming to our little establishment on Saturday. I wasn't too bothered. If the board had a predicament with our restaurant, I don't think I would be held responsible.

Hopefully.

True to my word, the moment I got off the clock and Otis closed up shop, I went to Fillmore for his disgustingly syrupy fruit punch. "How is it?" he asked.

I wiped the bit amounts of liquid off my upper lip and gave him a faint smile. "Like a unicorn threw up in my mouth."

Fillmore nodded earnestly, "That is exactly the answer I wanted to hear." I chuckled for a few seconds before I realized he wasn't kidding.

I had never thought much of the animatronic's sentence. It has always been a reality for me. It wasn't worth questioning. I had a distinct memory of YouTube personality JackSepticEye fooling around with CleverBot back in 2014. This sort of technology wasn't innovative anymore. Having it walk around and casually interact with humans and especially each other was initially jarring, but you got used to it after a few hours.

Coral came out of her realm covered in even more grease stains than usual. Her face was blotched with sweat and also a sharp, jagged cut down her left cheek. Despite this, her face was nearly split down the middle with a huge grin. "It's done!"

Happy Frog sprang up and down erratically, like the little kid she was. "New friend?"

"Does this one have legs?" asked Arthur caustically, shooting Coral a very sharp look.

"He has six as a matter of fact," said Coral, setting her hands on her hips and shoot Arthur an identically deadly look.

Arthur rolled his glowing emerald eyes "Are you kidding me?! This guy has eight legs, and I have this projection rooted in the ground."

"If you hop around, the prizes inside you break!" countered Coral.

"What prizes?" asked Arthur, "The little plastic trinkets for that Wonder Woman movie that's coming out God knows when?"

Coral looked at Otis for something to say, but he shrugged and kept his mouth shut. I looked between Coral, Otis, and Arthur, trying to identify some connection between them. I couldn't find anything, but I wasn't a master sleuth.

Coral sneered at Arthur and turned towards the rest of us. "Everyone, meet Project Music Man. Also known as Buca."

"His name is Buca? Why did you feel the need to curse him with such a stupid name." jeered Arthur.

Nedd shook his head disappointedly at the fixed monarch, his smooth, deep Southern voice reverberating across the pizzeria, "Be nice, now, Arthur."

Arthur pouted. I had a hunch that if he had arms, he would be folding them defiantly. Arthur has some sort of Napoleon complex, but instead of being insecure about being short, he was anxious about not having any working limbs.

"Hey, guys!" declared Buca cheerfully, crashing his cymbals together needlessly. "Just so you know, I chose my name!" he continued, not breaking his energetic tone.

Arthur rolled his eyes for the third time in a minute and mumbled some obscenities that I'm glad I didn't hear.

Buca was a strange-looking animatronic. Most of Otis's crew were modeled after the original properties of Fazbear Entertainment. Loosely based on Bonnie, was Mr. Hippo. Happy Frog bore similarities to Chica. Nedd Bear was pretty transparently a rehashing of Freddy Fazbear. Pigpatch and Orville weren't based directly on any of the originals, but the same archetypal blueprint gave rise to their designs.

Buca was something else.

First of all, Coral didn't seem to have anything in mind when she was constructing Buca. He was not an animal. He was not a human being. It was a monstrosity. Six cylindrical legs pitter-pattered on the ground like a sort of demonic dog. Buca's head was disproportionately large, and his eyes were disproportionately even more sizable than that.

Otis's face was unreadable. I got the feeling that Buca's unorthodox design was intentional for some reason, but it had nothing to do with attracting patrons.

"Well, Buca will be situated near the front of the restaurant." decided Otis. "Do you know your mission statement?"

"To teach kids about basic music theory and defend the pizzeria in case of a devastating fire."

"Uhh, correct me if I'm wrong, sir, but don't you have three more animatronics coming this week?" asked Mr. Hippo cautiously.

"Yes, Security Puppet, Candy Cadet, and Lefty," responded Otis.

That was a lot of work for Coral. She could barely keep up with the needs of the Melodies and the Clowns. I know there was a saying about throwing all your eggs in one basket, but there had to be one about buying too many baskets for your eggs, right? I mean, we weren't going spectacularly when it came to financing.

"Yay! More friends!" whooped Happy Frog.

For the first time that day, the head band hopped off the stage and started wandering around the restaurant. Happy Frog and Nedd began talking about what song they should introduce tomorrow. Pigpatch ran backstage to pick up the electric guitar Coral retained for him. Mr. Hippo went over to Lincoln and Fillmore and started telling them stories about what their lives would be like once they got to move out to the countryside.

Nobody dared to tell Mr. Hippo that he would never get to retire.

I started to spray down the tables down with Windex and wipe them. The janitor had flaked on Otis again, and Lord knows that Alessandro wouldn't do any servile labor unless his life depended on it.

Orville never broke character, even after hours, which made me think that his strange, eccentric magician act wasn't much of a performance.

Coral placed her hands on a table that I just finished cleaning. "You get the feeling Otis is preparing for something we don't know about?"

I pursued my lips and resprayed the table. "Mr. Emily is coming Friday, of course, Otis wants to be ready."

Coral started to walk away before suddenly turning around, "What about hiring a night guard? And buying those three animatronics? The last time Otis greenlit a new animatronic was Arthur, and that was in 2013."

I mumbled something Nedd wouldn't be pleased hearing and moved on to the next table. "I cannot stress this enough; Otis acting out of character is not my problem."

"You're one of the highest-ranking people here." objected Coral. "Other than me, Alessandro and Otis."

"I don't like Alessandro," I said quietly.

"I don't think anyone does, including Alessandro."

"Now, I feel bad."

Coral raised her eyebrows, "That was the point. But anyway, what happens under this roof is partially your responsibility."

I walked back to the cleaning closet, forcing Coral to follow me there. "Counterpoint, most of it isn't."

Coral slapped me in the tail of my head "You're unbelievable, you know that?"

"I'm just here for a semester. Come December, and I'm out of here."

Coral scoffed. I could see her in the corner of my eyes, trying to form an argument against what I said, but she couldn't. I'm not going to front, some of the characters here, especially Fillmore and Otis, had grown on me, but the Robot Grill was always a means to an end. It didn't quite hit me that the end was coming so soon. The doom of August was coming. Gaffney was already starting to see the Halloween pop-up stores renew themselves.

"Look," I informed her, "I'm gonna head out. I'm sorry this is bothering you so much, but you're probably just overthinking." Coral didn't say anything, which was the eeriest response she could give.

On my way out, I rubbed the top of Arthur's crown for good luck, like I always did. Did I believe deep down this was something that changed my fate? Not really. But it was something I've been doing since I was 15, I wasn't going to stop now.

I walked out of the squeaky clean twin glass doors and glanced down the alleyway next to our restaurant. Sometimes you could see Alessandro or Louise feeding some alley cats with leftovers. No such luck tonight. Instead of a chef feeding adorable animals, it was a giant lump of crossbeams and wires with a Molten Freddy mask staring directly at with an insatiable hunger I've never felt before.