A/N: I'm going to try to keep posting these every other day, but a more likely scenario is once or twice a week, with this being the last one before there are longer breaks between chapters. Thank you, and enjoy!
Days passed, then weeks, then months, and no one showed up on Afton's doorstep to arrest him. Missing persons reports were filed, and, after some time, the children were presumed dead. Despite the fact that he still hadn't found the bodies, Afton was starting to feel rather smug. As he had predicted, the local pizzeria was receiving a tremendous amount of backlash, and was struggling to stay above water. Just a little while more, and they would be begging him to help them out.
Finally, the call came. The pizzeria had buckled under the increased pressure, and no one wanted to associate with them. They had nowhere left to turn, and they had offered to let him make a pitch. Of course, they would accept it. They had to. It wasn't as if they had any cards left up their sleeves.
The kids. Afton felt a thrill of terror as he opened the door, but nodded and smiled at the board members as he walked in. What if someone had found the bodies? Yes, he had been thorough, but he had left ends untied. No, this was a business meeting, a meeting before the board of a desperate chain of pizzerias. They wouldn't bring up something like that, even if they had the information at their fingertips.
"There's no doubting what you've achieved on a technical level," the man started. He seemed calm, as if there was something he knew, a card that Afton had left unaccounted for. Afton took a deep breath. They had nothing. If anything, they had a bluff, and he was prepared to call it. "These are clearly state-of-the-art. There are just certain design choices that were made for these robots that we don't fully understand. We were hoping that you could shed some light on those."
Afton breathed a little easier. No, they didn't have anything on him, they were just curious as to the functions of his creations. With a sense of pride, Afton recounted the things that Circus Baby could do.
"She can dance, she can sing. She's equipped with a built-in helium tank for inflating balloons, right at her fingertips. She can take song requests. She can even dispense ice cream." It was all rehearsed; a pitch he had repeated a thousand times before, usually after the kids had gone to bed. Half the time, he had been thinking of this moment, when he finally made his pitch. The other half of the time was spent worrying over what would happen should they discover his failsafe.
Afton wasn't an idiot. He knew that, once they had his animatronics in hand, they could reverse-engineer them, discover how they tick, and build their own. With that in mind, he designed each of them to not only be able to defend themselves, but attack others. If Fazbear Entertainment tried to steal his animatronics, they would have more missing children on their hands than they could handle. Eventually, they would either call him back or stop using them. Either way, they wouldn't get rid of him that easily.
"With all due respect," the man continued, handing the prints back to him. "Those aren't the design choices we were curious about, Mr. Afton."
For a moment, Afton felt panic. Someone, somehow, had altered his prints, just enough to show his failsafe, but not enough to alert his attention to it. Impossible; he had kept these under lock and key, and he never would have done something as incriminating as this. They had him. If he didn't say something, and fast, the police would be called. No, he couldn't let that happen. He wasn't the only person he had to worry about anymore.
"It's a safety feature," he smiled calmly. "Should the need arise, each of my animatronics are capable of defending the children. With your history, I assumed that that would be important to you."
The man grew red, opened his mouth to say something, then quickly closed it again. Afton could still feel his heart racing. Was it enough?
"Thank you, Mr. Afton. You're free to go."