Can't Leave

by Chironex27

Prequel to Don't Leave the Office. In the games, the player sees through the perspective of the night guards, but this focuses on the perspectives of the spirits in the animatronics throughout the years. Big thanks to Reading a Pulse for help in characterization (especially with the Mangle) and advice on story. Rated T for implied violence against children.

11. Kinks in the system

Fazbear's was hit hard by the five missing children, but not as hard as Fredbear's Diner was by the one death. Perhaps it was because Fazbear's was simply stronger financially, or parents were less bothered by the idea of missing children than they were by a dead child, but eventually, customers started to come back. However, during the first few days that the customers and their children started to arrive, the staff of Freddy Fazbear's started to get concerned for the first time about the animatronic's lack of movement during free-roam. The animatronics would perform just as usual, but after the shows, when the animatronics were supposed to go out into the store and interact with the customers, only the Freddy animatronic would go out. Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy would remain on their stages, largely immobile, only looking briefly at anything that was particularly loud. The Freddy animatronic itself wasn't working right either. While it would go out into the rest of the restaurant during free roaming time, it didn't interact with the customers in the same way as it used to. Kids would run up to it and talk to it excitedly, though when it talked back, its dialogue was short.

"Enjoy your cake!"

"Huhuhuhu! Welcome to Freddy's!"

Normally, the animatronics would remain with children for few moments, using the preprogrammed phrases in their memory banks to attempt something close to a conversation, responding to the actions and emotions of the children. These days though, Freddy would only say a brief hello, or nothing at all, and continue wandering around the store. However, it would stop occasionally when it saw an adult, usually women. It would walk up to them and stare at them for a few moments, and walk away. As a result, many of the customers were unsatisfied with their time at Freddy's for the first few days after it had reopened. The children were annoyed and let down that Freddy and his friends acted as if they didn't want to talk to them, and the parents were unnerved by the Freddy animatronic staring at them. Mr. Faz would have looked into the animatronics, but he believed that the past few days had caused a few kinks in their emotional detection systems, so he assumed that the animatronics would be back to normal after a few days of the store running normally.