A/N: Welcome back guys. I'm sorry for the long wait, but things have been quite hectic for me these last few days. I was going to upload this yesterday at night, but the power (that includes my Internet) went out in my place and didn't come back until now, so that's why I'm making and exception and I'm uploading on a week day.

But nonetheless, here we are. As always, a big thank you to those of you who reviewed. And if you spotted an error or you think there's something I can improve, please be kind enough to let me know. And now, happy reading!

Chapter 27: A delayed meeting

"You've been quiet today Brandon." started Sarah in a soft voice.

I was sunk so deep in my thoughts, lying on my back and staring at the ceiling of Parts and Service, that I barely heard her. "What do you mean?" I replied mechanically.

"Well, you always talk to us or play with Jack while we wait for the place the close." was her answer, "But today you haven't said a word."

"I was sleeping." I lied, still fixated on the nothingness of the ceiling.

And yet, I could almost feel my brother looking doubtfully at me. "Private, your red backlights only turn off when you're sleeping," he said flatly, "you've been awake since yesterday."

Not bothering to look at him, I mumbled "Funny that we need less sleep as the time goes on, right?" I shook my head. "It's like we're becoming less and less human every day."

Sean sighed. "Is that what you've been thinking about for the past ten hours?"

"…Yes." I lied again. In reality I was still dealing with the fact that Marionette was helping Walther, while the undeniable reality of Jeremy coming back tonight just so we could kill him lingered heavily in the back of my mind.

"That's not good for you Don." said my worried brother, "Don't forget what we said when we woke up in these bodies: we will never, ever let this change who we are and what we mean to each other."

The rage that I've been trying to hold down since the puppet's betrayal finally got the best of me. "Even if we've been trying to kill our own cousin for the past three nights?!" I blurted out, sitting up and glaring at an unimpressed Sean, "Even if we actually enjoy doing it?! Everything is different now!"

An awkward silence filled the room. Jack stopped doing his puzzle to look at me with the same surprise in his eyes as Fer and Sarah; but my brother was unfazed. "You only get moody like this when something bad happened." he whispered calmly, "Again, if there is something wrong you need to tell me."

I turned my eyes away from him and muttered "Just what I said before."

Sean was about to say something, but he was cut off by the announcement of the pizzeria closing for the day. Secretly pleased that I was saved by the bell, we waited for the last employees to leave before the five of us exited the service room. TB, Mini and Junior were already standing in front of the Show Stage by the time we got there. As soon as they saw us, our counterparts walked to us quickly and happily with suddenly brighter eyes.

"Everything alright Junior?" asked Sean after both he and Junior had tipped their hats at each other.

"I guess so Mr. Freddy." replied my brother's chubby counterpart, "But we saw the night guard today."

Sean, Ferny, Sarah and I exchanged confused and surprised glances, before I asked anxiously "How did you know it was him? What did he do?"

"Well…" hummed Mini thoughtfully as she turned her light blue gaze at me. "He had those same black rings around his eyes, and he looked very tired." Smiling like it was the most obvious thing in the world, she raised her shoulders. "And, well, he looked just like him!"

TB nodded in agreement. "He was walking very quickly, like he was in a hurry. He went into the Main Hall and came back here after a few minutes, putting something in his pocket. He was about to leave, but he saw something weird under one of the empty dining tables. It was small, squarish, black and grey with something like a black thread all around it. He picked it up, looked at like he didn't know what it was and put it in his pocket. After that, he just left."

"And everyone saw the same thing?" asked Ferny with his accent. The blue, yellow and brown Toys nodded at the same time.

"Speaking of everybody," called out Sean, "where are Mangle and Balloons?"

The three main Toys raised their shoulders right as the unmistakable sound of metal scraping across the tiled floor was heard.

"C'mon Mangle, a little help would be nice!" groaned Balloons as he dragged what remained of the white fox out of Kid's Cove. Mangle's state was always bad, but tonight it was hard to even recognize her; the metallic body had been twisted and torn apart mercilessly by kids throughout the day.

Ferny was the first to rush to the duo, followed closely by us. "Lass, ye alright?" he asked worriedly as he got beside his counterpart, "Come 'ere, I'll try t' get ya fixed."

"Umm, t-thanks a lot cap Foxy, but I'm fine." mumbled Mangle shyly.

"Fine?" huffed Balloons, "You can't even drag yourself along the floor, let alone swing!" It was somewhat admirable that she never complained about her condition, but seeing her in that particularly bad state was hard on everybody.

"He's right. It's not good for you to be like that." added Sarah.

The torn up animatronic looked at us with surprise. "W-would you really do that for me?" she asked, whispering, "Isn't it too much trouble?"

"Oh, please!" muttered an irritated Fer as he walked up to the twisted fox and grabbed one of her feet. "We're supposed t' help each other, aren't we lass?" Mangle nodded quickly. "Balloons, grab her other hand." commanded our mechanic energetically, "Fred, Bon, help me out 'ere; we only have a couple of hours."

Ferny wheezed, letting his body slump backwards against a wall. "Try it out lass." he said with a tired smile as he dropped his wrench on the floor.

Mangle, now looking like she did when we first met, started to push up her twisted yet working body. With the ease that always surprised me she clung an arm-like thing to the ceiling and started swinging herself around the service room, smiling and giggling excitedly. After about a minute she stopped, and stared down at our unofficial mechanic with joy and happiness. "Th…thank you so much cap Foxy." she whispered.

Fer raised his shoulders like it was nothing. "Ahh, not a problem lass." he dismissed calmly, "Glad I could help ye out." Sean patted his red shoulders proudly before helping him get up, and soon the four of us were leaving the small room. They were little moments of joy like these, I thought, that kept us going through it all.

Junior, TB, Mini and Balloons ran towards Mangle with smiles on their faces as soon as they saw the white fox. "Much better, right?" chuckled Junior.

The twisted figure nodded, and whispered "Much better."

Clearly excited, TB quickly hopped to me. "Thank you Mr. Bonnie." he beamed.

"I barely did anything." I replied, "You should thank Foxy, not me."

"Oh… alright." My counterpart turned around and shouted a loud "Thank you cap Foxy!" at our red friend, who waved back with his hook. TB then slowly turned back to me, and rubbing his elbow, asked "Could you tell me a bit more about the outside world Mr. Bonnie?"

I chuckled and ruffled his ears. "Anytime little me. Do you have one of those magazines?" Nodding with perked-up ears, he opened his chest and handled me over the National Geographic.

"And those are rose fields!" I pointed my worn-out finger at the bright red and green landscape on the page, and TB's eyes grew wide and bright with the sight. We were the only ones in the Game Area, since Ferny, my brother and Sarah were still fixing some little details with Mangle in Parts and Service with Jack, while the other Toys rested in a Party Room.

"It's just like the one I have!" he chirped, pulling his rose out of his chest. The plastic thing had already lost one of his petals, but my counterpart still treasured it like a precious gem. He stared at it and at the page with wonder. "They're beautiful aren't they?" I nodded silently. "I can't wait to go outside and see this place!"

"Me neither." I mumbled uneasily, scratching the back of my head. We were so focused on the magazine that none of us heard the quiet footsteps of the approaching black and slender figure.

"Hello TB, hello Bonnie." greeted Marionette with a sickeningly sweet voice, eyeing the magazine. "Nice little thing you have there!"

"Hi Mr. Mario, thank you very much!" chirped my counterpart as I threw a dirty glare at the puppet. "Cap Foxy found it with other old papers."

"I meant the flower actually ." chuckled Marionette, "Mind if I look at it for a second?"

"Yes, we do." I hissed angrily, "It's his rose, not yours."

"Relax Bonnie, I just want to see it, nothing else." he replied calmly, "But only if that's okay with TB."

My counterpart nodded and handled over the rose to the puppet, who grabbed it carefully with his needle-like fingers and held it in front of his white face. "It's funny." he whispered absent-mindedly, "How something so beautiful and so innocent is also so fragile." He looked down at TB for a moment, and instantly I felt my hand clench itself into a fist. Marionette then stared back at the flower. "I mean, all that's needed is a little careless mistake on your part…" He stared down at me with piercing pinpoint eyes, "And all that prettiness will wither and die."

"Then you just have to take good care of those roses." I replied coldly and flatly, "And protect them against anything, or anyone, that could hurt them."

The puppet chuckled. "You can only do so much. Maybe that something or someone is more powerful than you think."

"Well," I raised my head defiantly, "maybe that something or someone is being a bit arrogant."

A tense silence followed as Marionette and I glared at each other in the eyes, but there was no need for words; all our hatred was laid bare right there and then.

"Mr. Bonnie, Mr. Mario, is everything okay?" mumbled TB unsurely after a few seconds.

"Off course!" chirped the puppet as he handled the flower to my counterpart, "Everything's alright, isn't it Bonnie?"

"Yeah, perfect." I muttered bitterly, right as the unexpected sound of a rattling doorknob silenced the three of us. TB and Marionette scrambled to hide themselves in a hurry, way faster than my worn-out body would allow; by the time they were out of view I was only getting up. I started to rush to Kid's Cove, when I heard the main door open behind me.

"Brandon?" gasped Jeremy's voice. The sound of my name coming from his mouth paralyzed me. Slowly and fearfully, I turned around to see his darkened silhouette by the door, along with his tired and teary eyes. 'Is… is that really you?"

Still in shock, I forced my broken head to move up and down. My cousin covered his mouth as a river of tears began to flow down his face. I began to slowly walk up to him, almost unconsciously.

"I'm… I'm so s-sorry." Sobbing uncontrollably, Jeremy leaned against a wall when I was in front of him. "It's all m-my fault. If I h-hadn't given you the t-tickets, if I hadn't b-believed that so-called uncle of y-yours…" He balled his fists and grit his teeth. "N-none of this w-would've happened. I'm s-sorry… I'm sor-"

Crying of joy, I pulled my cousin into a tight hug with my only arm. Jeremy buried his tear-stained face in my dirty fur and wrapped his arms awkwardly around my huge frame. "Y-you've grown a b-bit!" he stuttered, laughing and crying at the same time. It was then that some heavy footsteps approached us.

"Bon, TB, are you here?" called out my brother in the distance. I let go of Jeremy and looked at the glowing blue eyes approaching from the Main Hall. "I heard a door open and… Jerry?!"

Our cousin wiped the tears off his eyes, and greeted the brown figure with a smile. "Hey Sean!"

With unbelieving eyes, Sean limped as quickly as he could with his missing kneecap to our relative and pulled him into a rib-breaking hug. "I can't believe you know!" he laughed, effortlessly raising the man in purple off the floor. "How are you?!"

When Jeremy didn't answer, we remembered that anyone who didn't have a blood seal couldn't hear us talk. Sean released our cousin, allowing him to regain his breath and footing. Jeremy then fished a couple of cassettes from his purple uniform's pockets.

"I guess you need these, right?" he smiled proudly and popped the tapes into our built-in players, that were miraculously still there and functional.

Sean pressed play and whispered "I'm so happy to see you Jerry, but we need to talk somewhere safe. Let's go to the kitchen, we'll explain some things there." My brother pressed stop, rewind and play, and after a couple of seconds his voice crackled out of the beaten-down voicebox. Holding back his tears of excitement at hearing Sean's voice, Jeremy eagerly followed us to the kitchen.

"I really don't know what made me pick up that broken cassette." explained our cousin dressed in purple, leaning against an oven "I forgot my wallet in the security office, came back for it and simply saw that tape under a table. I thought, why not? I had nothing better to do for the day and I've barely been able to sleep since… that happened to you. I took this job thinking that the management wasn't telling the whole story, so I decided to investigate. "

"How did you fix the tape?" I asked eagerly, before rewinding the cassette and pressing play. My voicebox then repeated the question.

"Who do you think your mother called when one of her cassettes got messed up?" he chuckled, "Sometimes they actually teach us a useful thing or two in electrical engineering."

My brother chuckled and rewound his tape. "And how is Mom doing Jerry?"

The happiness inside of me was instantly replaced by a feeling of dread. Jeremy's smile disappeared just as fast, and he looked around the dark kitchen uneasily, away from Sean. "Aunt Clara? Umm, she…" When his eyes fell on me, I shook my head slightly, praying that Jeremy would understand my gesture. He cleared his throat after seeing this and whispered with a forced smile "She's alright, but she misses you every day."

My brother and I sighed at the same time. He did it out of nostalgia, while I did it out of a guilty feeling of relieve. "Please, when you can, tell her that we're still here and bring us some new tapes." pleaded Sean.

Jeremy nodded, struggling to keep up his uneasy smile. "Next week I'll go visit her, so I can buy some cassettes over the weekend, bring them to you and we can send them to her. And, uh, Ferny and Sarah are like you now, right?"

Relieved that our cousin changed the subject of the conversation, I rewound my tape and replied "Yeah, but they're with the Toys, so we can't call them over right now." We had previously told Jeremy that the Toys were also dead children trapped inside animatronics, but much younger and unable to remember their human lives; however we didn't tell him about the blood seals, what they were for and what they could do.

"Guess we'll just have to wait a while." sighed Jeremy, "But I still don't know why you all kept playing that game with me, instead of just telling me the truth." Chuckling, he added "Seeing Freddy's animatronics walk on their own and get into your office can get pretty creepy."

We were so excited to talk with our cousin again that we forgot to tell him the most important thing. "Jerry, that was not a game." I said flatly, before quickly looking at the digital clock of the microwave.

11:56 PM.

"What do you mean?" asked Jeremy after my voicebox repeated my sentence.

"At midnight, and sometimes earlier, we… change." explained Sean with a quivering voice after seeing the microwave's clock. "Something makes us forget who we are, and all we can think about is killing the night guard. Someone already died a year ago because of us, and the person who worked before you barely got out alive. Jerry, if you don't leave now, we might hurt you."

Jeremy listened to the repetition with a blank expression. "That can't be true, right?" he asked hopefully. "I'm sure you wouldn't do something like that!"

11:57 PM

I rewound my tape. "We used to think the same, but when that clock turns to twelve... it's like being a completely different person. Please, please get out and don't come back at night."

Right after I said that, multiple footsteps ran towards us. Three withered red, yellow and gold blurs rushed into the kitchen. "Guys," panted Sarah, "we came here to hide Jack and… J-Jeremy?!" It was hard to say who was more confused, our cousin or the three figures who had just entered the room.

"So, I'm guessing that Sarah is Chica, Ferny is Foxy, and Bucky is…"

"Jack." I finished hastily whilst holding my player's rewind button, "His name is Jack Schmidt." I stood up and grabbed the hand of the boy in question, then dragged the stunned golden figure towards the shelf.

11:58 PM

"Jeremy, I'm telling you to run, now." begged Sean anxiously before he helped me push the shelf aside. After half a minute, the passage to the secret room was uncovered.

"He k-knows?" asked Jack as he entered the dark hidden space.

"Yeah." I grunted, closing the hole with his and my brother's help. "I think it's better to talk in the morning."

11:59 PM

"Why are you putting him in there?" asked a puzzled Jeremy.

"So we won't destroy him." I replied matter-of-factly, "If you go now you might make it to the door."

"I can't do that." Our four sets of eyes stared at the man in purple with confusion. "The contract says that if I miss a single night of work during the first week, I won't be able to work as a night guard here for at least a year. Plus I won't get paid."

"Then I guess this is goodbye Jerry." sighed my brother, "I'm sorry, but we'd rather not see you again than live with the guilt of having killed you."

"And I'm sorry guys," whispered Jeremy decidedly after the words came out of the voicebox, "but I'd rather die than live with the guilt of abandoning you after what I did."

"You didn't do anything!" I blurted out desperately, "In seconds at least one of us will try to kill you, plus you still have to worry about the Toys! Please, I really don't want to hurt y-"

A burning deep inside of me turned my words into a painful groan. Falling on my knees as the voicebox parroted my words, I glanced at the glowing numbers of the microwave.

12:00 AM

"Brandon?" asked a worried Jeremy, "Are you alright?"

"No…" I croaked out, "N-not him, please not h-him." I bent over as my chest started to glow with a blood-colored light, "I don't want to kill him! I don't want to…"

With a short cry, I finally lost control over my body that started to twist and twitch on the floor. A confusing storm of thoughts and memories roared in my mind, but then it went quiet, and was replaced by a dark and cold emptiness. A horrible… wonderful… emptiness.

"I don't want… to… let... him live." I whispered bloodthirstily as I saw the night guard in front of me. "Hello, meatbag. Nice to see you again!"

A/N: I really hope you like cliffhangers. This wasn't the way I originally intended this to end, but it's honestly better than what I had in mind. Don't worry, I won't make you wait so long again ;) Thanks for reading guys, and I'll see you soon. Take care and have a good week.