Sorry for the wait! I was kind of busy with another writing project. Don't worry, I'll try and be better next time!Chica's dream is based on an actual dream I had last night. It was a very strange experience. I served a burger to Markiplier. Also, this story is starting to lag. Might have to switch docs, especially considering we are at 80k words.Review! Just one this time!Sadfox729: Pog, 40th review! Thank you for reviewing every chapter :)Enjoy!Chapter 23Mangle Loses Her Voice (cough drop?)

Mangle woke up freezing cold.

She'd been sleeping that night, which was a rarity. And it was a good dream too!

She dreamt that she was outside again, with Foxy and Chica, and they were going on a hike...in a lake. Yeah, it was weird, but this is where it got even weirder. Chica disappeared into the water, and Mangle dove under to try and find her. But then when she got up to the surface, Chica was some kind of rubber duck floatie thing? And Chica kept yelling, "I'm not a duck! I'm not a duck!" And then Foxy turned into a cloud and floated away with Freddy and Bonnie (who were wearing fancy pink dresses) on the top of the cloud, for some reason. Then Ruby teleported there, she was wearing meme glasses, and started doing the Macarena whilst riding on the sun. Then Mangle grew giant dragon wings and flew into a tree made of red licorice.

And then she'd woken up.

Mangle leaned over to check the time. 6:00. Ugh. Mondays. She sighed. Maybe just a few more minutes…

"Up and at 'em! Three hours till opening! Lots to do!"

"Mmmfndjsj...noooo…" She whined, running her eyes. Bonnie took two steps over to a nearby small window and flung open the curtains, flooding the previously dark and barren room with bright unwanted sunlight.

Mangle hissed and dove back under the covers. Maybe she could hide there all day? But Bonnie simply tossed the blankets off and put his hands on his hips. Mangle hissed again.

"You're not a cat, Mags, now get up." He rolled his eyes. Mangle sighed and sat up wearily.

"Fine. Leave." She reached out with her foot and kicked Bonnie out the door.

Ten minutes later…

"Jeez, what took you so long? We've been up since like, thirty minutes ago!" Chica exclaimed. Mangle yawned.

"I don't know, I guess I was just tired."

"Me and the crew made you cereal! But then it got soggy." Foxy did jazz hands over a soggy bowl of Gloomi-o's. Mangle shrugged and took a bite anyway. They weren't so bad.

"So, guys, did you hear the news?" Chica asked, bouncing excitedly. Bonnie shook his head.

"Nope. What's the news?" He poured himself some coffee in a big blue mug.

"Well, Ruby texted me this morning-" Chica paused. "Why are you all looking at me like that?"

Bonnie, Foxy, and Mangle exchanged glances. "No reason, my dear. Continue." Mangle told her.

"Okay. Well, she said that last Thursday Tulisa was walking home from school when some guy she'd known for a while in some other state started talking to her. And then - get this - he asked her out! And apparently she's over this jerk named Matt so she accepted! Isn't that crazy?"

Foxy flipped a page of his book. Mangle took a bite of her cereal. Bonnie took a long sip of coffee. Chica scowled.

"Have you guys even been paying attention?! And stop drinking coffee, it stunts your growth."

Bonnie just stared at her.

"Chica, I am a ghost slash bunny robot. I don't give a crap about losing a few trillimeters of height."

"And I've been paying attention! It sounds amazing. Maybe Tulisa'll get herself a man!" Mangle grinned.

"Exactly." Chica told them.

Foxy looked around the room. "Hey, where be our cap'n? He's usually first up."

Suddenly, there was a slamming sound from the right hallway and Freddy appeared in the front room! Mangle looked at Bonnie. Bonnie looked at Foxy. Foxy looked at Chica. And everyone immediately started to applaud.

"Right here! Right here. Sorry everyone, I must have slept in." Freddy said, clearly out of breath.

"Hey! How did you sleep?" Bonnie asked, leaning on the table. Freddy shrugged.

"Uh, I'm not sure. I had a really weird dream. There was this purple pixely 2d guy doing some kind of dance - actually it kinda looked like he was twerking - to some weird song. And I was drowning in pizza. Then I woke up."

Chica rolled her eyes. "That's what you deem weird? I had a dream that I worked at a market selling beans to people with a bunch of other animatronics but in aprons. Then someone who looked like me and a watermelon combined asked for a burger but I just couldn't find one because we sold beans."

Bonnie put his hands on his hips.

"Please. I have some ghost mentoring girl who visits me in my sleep and can predict the future." He crossed his arms and grinned smugly. "Beat that."

Unfortunately, nobody else could come up with something weirder than that.

He grabbed a random apple that was lying on the table, examined it for a moment, then took a crunchy bite. He chewed it for a moment then swallowed.

"Okay. So, I have a couple ideas for songs today. I was thinking we could play some Christina Aguilera songs, maybe a bit of Nirvana...Bonnie, can you play in the…"

Mangle drifted off. While she had a decent singing voice and was pretty good at piano, she wasn't a member of the band. At least, not anymore. Out of all the animatronics built, she was last. So she was built with the least amount of materials, meaning she had a tendency to fall apart much, much, much quicker than the others. Eventually, the employees just threw her in the Parts Service room for the kids to 'play' with. It took every ounce of her willpower not to brutally murder them.

Instead, she took out her sketchbook and started to draw some fashion designs she'd been thinking about. A white and black minidress over a white t-shirt. Maybe paired with a leather jacket and some black Doctor Martens. And a lace choker, with a moon charm dangling from it.

"Okay guys, let's get decorating! Two hours till showtime!" Freddy clapped his hands. The group got to work.

Mangle sighed and slumped down against the wall. She could hear the sound of children screaming, parents gossiping, and the band playing. She quickly shifted into animatronic form and awaited the kids.

There was a group of two boys and two girls that always came in, every Monday. Mangle later found out that three of them were siblings. Demonic siblings, at that. The oldest was Gary, at twelve. He was big, mean, and ran the show. Next came Alissa, who was ten. She had the most annoying high-pitched voice ever and had these scratchy pink fingernails.

Third oldest was this one seven-year-old girl that came in every Monday. Her name was Jojo. She was actually quite nice. Jojo would kind of trail around the place absent-mindedly, wandering into the kitchen and inspecting everything. Mangle actually kind of liked her. She was pretty nice, and would stop

Finally, there was Eliott. The most terrifying five-year-old Mangle had ever seen. He was the one who'd ripped the casing off her chest. He was probably the worst of them.

"Hey Liss! Look, it's Mangle." That was Gary. Crap, they're here already.

"Maggle." Elliott's stony voice muttered.

The door swung open, slamming against the wall. A few screws came loose and clattered to the floor, but the kids stomped in carelessly. Mangle scowled. This was why she hated children. Except for Jojo. Jojo ust kind of sat in the corner. One day, the others were all sick with the flu (haha) and she came in just to talk with Mangle. She apologized for the way everyone treated her, and said one day she'd find a way to stop them.

"Ew, it smells in here," Alissa noted, scrunching up her nose. Alissa nudged her pink glasses up higher on her nose, not paying attention to the fact that Mangle had snaked a wire around her leg. She tripped and fell to the ground on her bottom with an oomph of surprise. Mangle giggled quietly.

"Gary! El! Joey! Mangle tripped me!" Alissa whined, pointing to a very innocent-looking Mangle. She'd whistle if she could.

"Eh, don't even try with Jojo. She's so lame, she'd never even hurt a robot. An AI." Gary snorted.

"Yeah. Joey's a meanie-loser-pants." Eliott crossed his arms. Jojo whimpered and curled up into a ball. She chewed on the end of one of her blonde pigtails, a habit she did when she was nervous. Which was a lot of the time.

"I-I just don't think you should be so mean to Maggie. She's just sleeping." Jojo said quietly. Alissa punched her on the shoulder and she cried out.

"Baby. I suppose this hurts the robot too if I do this." She ripped off a stray blue wire. Mangle grunted but didn't make any other sounds. It was only a sharp, quick feeling of pain. Like when you're getting a shot. Or like when someone slaps you.

"Yes! It definitely hurts her. Just stop it." Jojo yelled. Gary rolled his eyes.

"You are such a wimp, Jojo. Just a baby loser. Even Eliott realizes that this pile of scrap metal's just that. Garbage. Dead. Just an amalgamation of junk. Something that they threw out in the trash with all the- hey!"

Jojo had kicked him. Hard. In a very sensitive place. Gary cried out in pain.

"Why did you do that?! Oh, now you're really going to get it." His gaze darkened and he started backing the small girl into a wall. Alissa and Eliott advanced as well. Gary rolled up his sleeves and glared at her. They raised their fists and…

Mangle tripped them all. Ha, that never gets old.

"Ow...stupid robot!" Alissa cursed. Gary rubbed his nose and turned around. Mangle had risen up, wires splayed out. She looked a bit like Skinnyman, with the wires sticking out her back like tentacles. Mangle wouldn't hurt them...too much. She'd just give them a good scare!

But it seemed the kids had something up their sleeves. Something that made Mangle regret doing anything related to scaring them. Something involving Eliott The Demon Child.

"Eliott. Attack." Gary growled.

(asxfjsjsjsfjssj I'm so bad at action scenes sorry guys)

The Demon Child sprang forward like some sort of rabid animal. He clung to her, and before Mangle could do anything about it, he was already clawing at her throat. She thrashed about, desperately trying to throw him off before he did any serious damage.

"Hiiiya!" Eliott yelled. And before anything could be done, Mangle's vision swam black.

Chica POV

"I'm a genie in a bottle, baby. Come, come on and let me out!"

Bonnie played the last chord on his red electric guitar as Chica sang the last few notes. She shook the maracas for a little extra effect.

The crowd (well, maybe twenty or thirty people) cheered. Chica grinned. While she was only a backup singer, she still enjoyed the rush of adrenaline she got from performing on a stage. Even if the robot suit made her sound a little like she Autotuned the crap out of herself.

Freddy leaned set his microphone back into the stand with a snap. He leaned forward to speak into it.

"Alrighty everyone, that's unfortunately all the time we have for today."

The crowd let out a chorus of awwwws.

"But don't you worry! We'll be back here tomorrow!" Chica reassured their fans. That recieved a couple cheers.

Everyone filed out of the restaurant, leaving their checks with Effie, the hostess. Leah and Tiara collected their tips, and the restaurant was soon empty.

"Alright! Good job guys, that was a great performance! Foxy, how were sales?"

Foxy emerged from Pirate's Cove with a grin. "Sold three Chica plushies, four Bonnie's, six Freddy's - and eight Foxy's. Guess I'm just popular." He teased.

Chica laughed. "Guess I'm the least popular. Oh, well. Someone wanna go with me to get Mangle?"

Foxy raised his hand.

"I'll go!"

Bonnie nodded. "Ok. Meet back here to check how much we earned today."

"It's called profit." Freddy corrected. Bonnie rolled his eyes.

"Okay, nerd."

"Mangle? You in there?" Chica called as she slowly creaked open the door. No response. She stepped in, with Foxy following close behind her.

The room was dark, and eerily calm. Pipes hung down from the ceiling, like snakes or vines in the jungle. Chica could hear some kind of liquid, probably water or oil, dripping down into a tin can. Plunk, plunk, plunk. There was a ratty old cot in the corner where Mangle usually slept. Everyone was worried she'd hate it, but on the contrary, she actually quite liked it. Small and simple. There was a window just above her bed that leaked in a small shaft of sunshine, but most of it was covered by her blinds.

Chica looked around the room, her eyes finally adjusting to the dark. She spotted a Mangle-shaped blob on the floor and motioned for Foxy to follow.

"Oh, there you are. Freddy closed down, and we're going to go count our 'profits'."

Hmm. No response, that was odd. Chica tentatively moved a little closer.

"Mangle? Are ye okay?" Foxy asked. Still no response. Until her leg twitched, and she slowly sat up, still facing away from them. She sniffed and coughed twice...spitting up a dark liquid, blood or oil or something.

Chica and Foxy gasped at the same time.

"Oh my gosh. Mangle, what happened?!" Chica ran towards her quickly.

Mangle turned around to face them. While her hair was messed up, and there were little scratches all over her, she didn't look too bad. That is, if you ignored the fact that there was a small, yet deep hole on her collarbone area. Mangle took a deep breath...and spoke in a shaky, raspy voice.

"01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110000 01110000 01100101 01100001 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01110110 01100101 01110010 01111001 00100000 01110011 01101101 01100001 01110010 01110100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01110100 01110010 01100001 01101110 01110011 01101100 01100001 01110100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00101110 00100000 01000011 01101111 01101101 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 00100111 01100011 01101111 01101111 01101011 01101001 01100101 00100111 00100000 01101001 01100110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00101110" She said.

Chica and Foxy exchanged horrified glances. Mangle looked equally as horrified. More glitchy beeping sounds came from her mouth. She quickly slapped a hand against her mouth in shock.

"Uh, Foxy, can you go get some more people? I think we may need some backup."

"Foxy, when I said 'more people', I meant Freddy, Bonnie, and maybe Ruby. Not- not those twins and these children." Chica said in frustration. There were about five or six children in their pizzeria. Yes, it was for kids, but- why so many?

"Foxy!" A small girl with brown hair and tanned skin ran over to Foxy to hug him. Foxy returned the gesture happily. In the distance, Tulisa and Josh were puzzling over a stroller seemingly inhabited by a screaming baby.

Chica, giving up on Foxy, turned to Ruby.

"Who are these kids?"

Ruby looked apologetic. "Sorry! Foxy called and said it was an emergency, and I was babysitting so I kinda just brought them with me. These are Lily, Almond, Hazel, Lucas, and Birch, and you already know Tulisa and Josh. Foxy apparently has their numbers too."

Chica sighed. "Okay. So, do you know how to fix Mangle?" She asked. Ruby shrugged. "Depends. Does Mangle know how to fix Mangle?"

"01001110 01101111" Mangle responded, crossing her arms and shaking her head. Ruby nodded.

"Okay. Can you please shift to animatronic form?" Ruby asked. Mangle obliged.

Tulisa wandered over, followed by a girl wearing a red sweater and overalls, probably the oldest of the bunch.

Ruby inspected the hole carefully.

"Yikes. Looks like her voice chip was ripped right out." She shook her head. "Well, maybe it's around here somewhere. Start looking. Lily, will you help?"

The little girl, Lily, shrugged.

"Sure, I guess. Is this it?" She pointed to a pile of dark metal scrap on the floor. Ruby glanced at it, and quickly swatted Lily's hand away from it.

"Careful, it's sharp. And yes, I think this is it."

"Well, can you repair it?" Chica asked. Mangle glanced up, hope all over her face. Ruby shook her head grimly.

"Nope. The red light's been smashed. I don't know too much about engineering and code, but I've spent enough time with animatronics to know that this red light is like a little signal. If it's on, it's working. If it's off, well, it's off. Plus, the chip got smashed pretty badly. We'd have to build a new one, and nobody here knows enough about coding to do that."

It was looking grim for Mangle. Nobody had any ideas. Ruby was just about to accept defeat, when a tiny, timid voice spoke up.

"I might be able to help."

Everyone looked down to see who was speaking. To Ruby's surprise, it was none other than Lily, Little Miss Sullen. When Ruby gave her a nod, Lily continued.

"I take coding lessons three times a week, and we've been learning how to build robots in school. I know how to make a voice chip. Or at least, the coding part of it. You'd just need some words said by the person whose voice you want to use, and then it can auto-generate words using the sounds. I can work on it at home if someone will make the actual chip." Lily looked up at them. "If that's okay."

Ruby, word been listening intently, nodded.

"That's actually pretty smart. If we have recorded videos of Mangle talking, that could work. The only problem is, I don't know much about engineering-"

"I'll do it." Tulisa volunteered. Ruby grinned. "Right, top of your class in engineering. Okay, go for it. Anyone have videos of Mangle?"

"I do!" Chica held up her phone. She quickly scrolled through her photos until she found her album called 'Magz'. Chica passed the phone to Lily.

"Here's my email. Send me these videos, and I'll work on it when I'm home." Lily handed Chica a slip of notebook paper where she'd written '.

"Dang. You're one smart kid." Ruby said, impressed. Lily blushed. "It's my thing. Coding, I mean. I want to be a computer programmer when I grow up, so I practise on video games like Craftmine or on coding websites."

Ruby grinned. This could actually work. She turned to Mangle, who was looking hopeful again. "Don't you worry. We'll have your voice back in no time!"

The girl looked both ways before crossing the cracked asphalt street, just as her father had told her too. Wait, not her father. She wasn't supposed to call him that.

Making sure nobody was following her, she ducked behind a nearby pine tree and leaned down. She knocked three times on what appeared to be a manhole, and listened for the sound. There it was, a bell ringing. She pulled up the rusty lid, struggling with its heaviness. A dark tunnel loomed below. She jumped in, her pink-and-white rubber sneakers making a slapping sound on the hard concrete floor.

Suddenly, her whole body began to glow blue, illuminating the dark tunnel. Now confident in which way she should head, she ran down the tunnel. Left, left, right...there's the stairs! She ran down, taking them two at a time, and stopped at a door covered in stickers reading things like Caution, Warning, Toxic, Authorized Personnel Only, and Hazardous Material Ahead.

To the left was a dangling string. The girl grasped it and tugged four times.

The red light beeped, and after a moment's hesitation, the door opened.

The smell of gasoline, the heat of flames. Her pretend sister and pretend father. Mechanical parts, cans of oil, little endoskeletons. Wire, screws, bolts, and beams. Jojo smiled. Her body glowed blue again. How good it felt to be back...

Home.

Spooky...Personally, I think Mangle is speaking in Morse code, but I went for binary just because I thought it looked better.Also, I have no idea how voice chips work, so we're going to pretend that's how they work.Also also, the bold and italics have just decided to commit die. They keep getting deleted for some reason. Thanks.This one was sort of filler, but I have plans for the next few! We are getting close to a plot twist…:0Have an amazing day/night!~littletoastbat