Seeking Security
The following days proved just as frightening and just as awe inspiring as the first. The animatronics ventured further away from the Pizza Plex under the cloak of night. Whatever shelter they might find before dawn - if they managed to find it - they would settle down to wait to begin the journey again. Shelter wasn't always something that they could be so lucky to stumble across. Buildings which had human inhabitants were avoided. Sometimes a building appeared empty upon being found. They would settle into it to hide, only to be forced to flee when the inhabitants of the home abruptly returned. No man made structure could be considered safe. More time needed to be available in order for them to determine which places were the least likely to result in human interaction.
The bulk of the time they found themselves subjected at the mercy of the elements - which admittedly was not quite as bad as it sounded. Their bodies were waterproof. Neither heat nor cold could be much of a bother to them. They could feel it, yes - but the area was not known to produce weather extreme enough for the heat or the cold to pose risk to their robotic bodies. In a way, being unable to find a suitable place to stay was something of a blessing. The vast world - which had been completely unknown to them up to this point - was now at their fingertips. Gone were their misunderstandings of the environment. The cartoonish depictions of trees and wildlife could not compare to the reality of the world beyond silly, childish illustrations. There was a peculiar comfort in having their perspectives warped and shattered in such a way.
Under no circumstances would they have ever been allowed to see these aspects of the world. There were so many pieces of reality which had been intentionally kept away from them, for no other reason than the knowledge would not serve useful to their creators. They had been designed to entertain. Designed to look after children and to clean. For those reasons they could sing and they could dance. They could read and they could draw, but they could not write. The capability was there, but the skill associated with neatly spelling out the letters was completely foreign to them. They had been made wise in such a wide range of things, but only the things that could be made immediately useful when it came to fulfilling their intended purpose. Once the pair had drawn far enough away from civilization to feel secure even during daylight, they became content to explore the wonders of the world around them.
Meanwhile, the world remained content to continue about its business as though they were not there. The wildlife showed some interest in them, for they were strange in comparison to any other creature to be seen. Some proved curious enough to touch and allow themselves to be touched. Others were not so at ease to allow themselves to be touched; they only drew near enough to gingerly brush the animatronics with their noses before moving on. Nothing appeared to perceive them as a threat - it was if they were invisible onlookers studying the realities of a foreign world. Which unfortunately meant that they would find themselves equally confronted with the darker aspects of that reality. Before having been abandoned for so long, these machines had never quite been able to grasp the concept of survival.
They escaped their prison as a result of having come to understand what it meant to want to survive - but even still they understood the concept poorly. Out in this open world where the animals viewed them with curiosity and indifference, there was nothing to prevent them from seeing what it truly meant to fight for survival. In one instant the pair might observe a butterfly enjoying a nice drink of nectar from a pale flower. In the next, that butterfly was being held and consumed alive by a peculiar insect that they could not immediately recognize. The sight induced an emotional reaction from the animatronics that was difficult for them to fully understand. Death was such a constant risk in the world beyond humanity. A constant race for survival that these animatronics had never been able to properly confront.
Yet something as simple as a butterfly being caught and consumed by a praying mantis would force them to face that confrontation head on. It was distressing, yet it was beautiful. Sad but also joyous. The life of the butterfly ended to assure that the carnivorous insect could continue on. The world was not as black and white as the children's books they once read would make it seem to be. To the three little pigs, the wolf was surely a monster. To the wolf, it was a necessity. Monsters were few and far between - if they could exist beyond the realm of man at all. For as gruesome as it seemed to watch the butterfly be eaten alive, struggling in the grip of the predatory insect, its death would serve a purpose. The mantis was fighting for its life just as it took the life of the butterfly. To lose its grip would mean to lose its meal - possibly its life in the process. A horrible fate, yes, but the mantis was no monster.
The mantis was just another creature trying to survive the only way that it possibly could. The only real monsters were the ones who would enact such levels of savagery upon others not because they had too, but simply because they could. The wolf which devoured the lamb was only doing what it needed to survive. The man who raised a hand to his child did so because he could - because the child was smaller and weaker and could not fight back. Monsters were not wild beasts lingering at the edge of darkness waiting to consume those who failed to escape them in time. The monsters were the creatures who sought out the weak to overpower them - not out of any need for survival, but simply because the act itself brought them a sick sense of gratification. As extensions of the hand of man, machines were equally as monstrous.
If enacting the will of the wrong person, a machine could become a monster. Once upon a time these animatronics had been one and the same - two sides of the same coin. One for the day. One for the night. The Sun and the Moon. Once upon a time, before the monsters came to hunt, they had been blind to the realities of evil. Once upon a time they had only known what it meant to protect children. Then the monsters came for them. The Moon could not escape their clutches. The Moon became subjected to those horrible evils and set out to enact the will of the monsters which controlled them. The Sun could do nothing but try to keep these evils at bay - all the while struggling to keep from finding themselves smothered by the hands of malice which reached to corrupt their minds.
Their realities had become twisted. Their perfect cycle is thrown off its center. The light became the only chance for salvation, and the dark became their doom. Until one day the flames came to consume it all. To purge them of the horrible fate that they had become forced to endure. A sweet but temporary death. A momentary mercy which saved them from the monsters - if only for a while.