The moon shines high over the city of Hurricane as the late night wind blows across the empty streets. Very few people are up at this time of night. A couple people in the park, a few outside cars here and there, but not much else. The place is calm. The place is quiet. However, on the lonely sidewalks of the suburbs, illuminated by overhanging street lamps, a man walks down, all alone. The man looks to be in his late forties or early fifties. He has brown hair which is graying in a few spots, dull grey eyes, and a rather lean, gaunt look to him. He is wearing a white shirt with black pants, grey shoes, and a purple robe on him. He is also dragging a wheelbarrow full of scrap metal. The man continues walking down the street, heading to his home.
The man walks onto his porch, pulling up his wheel barrow as it clangs on the steps. Afterwards, he opens up the door, and steps inside, staring at a living room that looks empty. It's sparsely furnished, with only a single couch, a couple shelves and a tv in the room, along with a few pictures on the walls. The white walls add to the place's desolate feel. He sighs, and goes up to one of the shelves, where a picture, which seems to g sits. He lifts it up and looks at it. In the picture is a family of five. The man, looking much younger and having a much more lively expression, stands at the top right of the picture, wearing a purple suit. At the top left stands a woman who looks to be a similar age to the man, however, her face can't be made out as it's crossed out with a X. At the bottom right is a young boy who is wearing a black shirt with grey stripes on it who stands front of the man's legs. His face is also crossed out. A girl with a red shirt and blond hair stands below the woman, but in the same vein, she has a X over her head.
In the center of the pic is a boy who still seems young, but is older than the other two. He is wearing a gray shirt with blue pants on, and he is holding a mask that resembles a red fox with an eye patch on it. Curiously, he is the only one in the pic besides the man himself whose face is left out in the open. It isn't covered by an X. The man then sets the image down and looks onto his house, sighing again before looking back towards the image.
"I've let all you down long enough... And I've disappointed myself for too long as well... I'm gonna make sure this place doesn't remain vacant for much longer... I promise." He says, wiping a few tears away from his eyes. He then turns and drags his wheel barrow into a hallway, before tugging it down the steps, to his basement. The man takes a deep breath for a couple seconds, before opening the door and turning on the lights.
The glow of yellow fluorescent lights illuminate the basement, turned into a makeshift lab. In comparison to the rest of his house, the lab is messy, mechanical mechanisms, pieces of robotic endoskeletons like hands, knees and heads lay scattered across the place like garbage on the street. These range from simple stick limbs to complex meshs of wires and springs. Bits of multi-colored plastic coverings can be seen strewn everything like cobwebs in an abandoned building. Blueprints are nailed to the wall like they are posters in a child's room, ranging from simple things, custom speakers and microphones, to larger things, disks that can generate Illusions and Advanced Machines that can sing, dance and blow up Balloons along with other wonders. The man walks through the lab like he has been through the mess a thousand times before coming to the back wall of the room. There, a metal table sits. Leaning up against it is a yellow animatronic, one slim in it's appearance, rather human-like in its physique. It had a purple bowtie on along with two buttons on it's chest and a set of two double digit rabbit ears on the top of it's head. On the table itself sits a black animatronic that is black and grey in color, with some bits of red on it. Its major color is black, although its muzzle and belly are grey. It also has a red hat on and it looks a bit like a bear. He moves it to the side of the table to look at the wall behind it.
On the wall behind it, two papers are nailed to the way. One is a list of five names. Three of them are crossed out, but two are legible. One is the man's name. William Afton. The other name is Michael Brooks Schmidt. The other paper is a newspaper clipping. He takes the newspaper clipping and he stares at it for a while.
"Soon, this debacle will all be over..." William thinks to himself.
"Soon, I'll be able to hold my baby boy in my arms again." He then adds, placing down and going to work on the machine. This gesture makes the paper's text much more visible.