Baby woke up feeling refreshed, but as soon as she set up she could feel something was wrong. There was something in the air that made her uneasy, like something bad was going to happen. And knowing this place, it was a reasonable worry to have.

She shook her head and stretched, not wanting that to bog her down from being able to tackle everything head on. Lefty finally apologised, so she was going to ride the positivity and hope associated with it for as long as she could. She turned after stretching so her skates were on the ground, and finally took notice that she was all on her own.

She pulled out her phone and glanced at the time, seeing it was 3AM. So it was night shift time. She shrugged, assumed her friends were called to take part in the night shift, and tucked her phone away again. Sighing, she felt hungry all the sudden, so decided getting something to eat was the best course of action.

So with somewhat slow movements, Baby left the tent and started to make her way towards the main dining room. But before she could even think about opening the door out of the storage room, she spotted Candy Cadet watching her from the corner closest to the door. Tilting her head, she skated over and looked the mysterious robot over.

"You're back, huh?" She said, whether she was talking to Candy or just to herself being a complete mystery. "What, have you come to bestow on me another one of your fantastic stories? Or are you just here to mess with me?"

The cadet was silent, none of his lights activated to signify even an ounce of life in it. Baby squinted at it, got close to its head, and even banged on the top with her claw. But still, the robot was unresponsive. So the clown simply shrugged and turned to leave, only to freeze when she noticed Candy had his head locked onto her. It's gaze was locked onto her, even when Baby moved back and forth quickly the robot's head would follow.

"Okay, that's kinda creepy…" She whispered to herself, looking around as if expecting someone else to be there. She looked back at the cadet with a hesitant look, fearful the robot was going to jump her at any second.

Which, of course, when Candy Cadet decided to fully activate.

"Now I will tell you a story", the bot said, all its lights flickering on instantly. Baby let out a startled scream and jumped a good foot in the air, fumbling on her skates when she landed.

Which meant she promptly face-planted on the floor.

Baby huffed and struggled to get herself back onto her feet, but froze when she saw Candy Cadet was staring down at her with its colourful but lifeless lights. The clawed animatronic felt very on the spot, and looked either way. "What?"

"There once was a girl", the robot began, completely unmoving as its monotone voice rang out. "Who could travel between two worlds at will. She had everything in one old, but nothing in the other. Then, something happened that had her choose one world over the other, with her only reminder being the friends she made along the way. Let's hope she made the right choice…"

Candy Cadet turned off right then and there, although it stayed in the exact position as before. Baby was so startled she pushed herself onto her back and scrambled away, her eyes not leaving the expensive candy dispenser. Once she was backed against a shelf, she used it as assistance to get back onto her feet, her eyes never leaving the cadet.

The air was still as Baby never stopped staring at the robot, which was still locked to the pose of when Baby was on the ground. It was eerie, creepy, if not outright horrifying. During their walk back, Lefty had said that no one had any control over the cadet, and that even Cassidy didn't remember bringing it down here. It was nothing but an enigma, and no one wanted to dig deeper to learn how.

Shaking her head and closing her eyes, Baby looked back at where Cadet was… and found it completely gone. A chill ran up her artificial spine, and she looked around like it was still around her. She then took a deep breath and steeled her nerves, relaxing as she thought about happier things. The cadet was creepy, but he was just saying random stuff.

But… was it actually random? Baby blinked and looked down at her claw, thinking over what the cadet had said. It… It was obviously directed at her, because it mentioned going between two worlds. And the cadet said something happened, so she had to choose.

Was something going to happen today? Or soon? Something that was going to make her forever choose the Capital over her home world?

Baby shook her head, leaning against the nearest wall, trying to steady her sudden rapid breathing. What was happening? Why did it feel like everything was blowing up right now? Why was she asking herself so many questions?

"Aaaaahhhhh!" She cried out, smacking her head repeatedly. "Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up! Just shut up, brain! Nothing is wrong! Everything is okay! God…" Baby sighed and slumped against the wall again, already feeling more normal. Although she did still have that ominous feeling deep inside of her, and that sense Candy Cadet was watching her from nearby.

And out of the corner of her eye she caught a brief flash of multi-coloured lights.

Squeaking in terror, she scrambled out of the room, slammed the door closed behind her, and pressed against the wall opposite the door as much as she could. Her heavy, fearful breathing was the only thing breaking into the silence as she stared at the door with wide-eyes. One thought that would escape her mind during this was that she was certain Candy Cadet would be in her nightmares for the foreseeable future.

She let out a shaky sigh and headed down the hall, getting back on track to get what she originally wanted: a meal, or at least something like that. After the whole scare, she was feeling a bit distracted, and her mind was drawing a blank on somethings.

"I think I need to sleep more after this…" She mumbled to herself. "Maybe you've just got cabin fever, Baby. This place is getting to you…"

She continued to skate along her way, turning corners as she neared the dining room. The whole building was almost dead silent aside from her, so it made her wonder if literally everyone but her were picked out for the night shift. It made her feel a bit weird, being left out in a weird way, but she shook off the feeling and entered the main dining room…

And as soon as she pushed the door open, a bucket filled with cake batter above was knocked down and spilled all on her. Baby screamed in shock and rage, stumbling into the room and crashing into a table. She wiped her eyes free of all the batter, and looked around frantically. She looked at the bucket, and looked around at the table she had completely smashed in.

And when she looked towards the kitchen, she saw Toy and Classic Chica giggling from the open kitchen door. Baby's eye twitched, and she felt like screaming and crying right in that moment. But she just took a deep break and stood back up, heading towards the connected bathrooms to wash up. As soon as she entered, she beelined towards the sinks and used a lot of wet paper towels to try and clean off. After an hour, she was at least decent.

She rolled out of the bathroom bitterly, glaring at the now closed kitchen door, and sat down at one of the tables with her arms crossed. As soon as she did, a penguin waiter rolled up to her and looked up expectantly. She mumbled her order and the waiter was instantly off, leaving her to sulk all on her own.

As she waited, she reached into her hair to pick out any batter that was still stuck in there, and slowly more of the others slowly started to head inside the room. They all glanced at the spilled batter and the trashed table, and whether they started laughing at her or even just put two-and-two together, she didn't really notice. She was not having it today.

When her pizza arrived, she ate it slowly as she somewhat zoned out, only partially aware of the things going on around her. But one thing she was a bit freaked out about was that she hadn't seen Molten, NightBon or Lefty at all yet.

"Maybe they just are hungry", she mumbled to herself as the stares were slowly getting to her. All the eyes that would occasionally glance at her made her tense up. So she decided to just eat as much as she could and then get out of there.

Which, of course, meant food was thrown at her and another food fight broke out. Baby felt her nerves fraying, so she just abandoned her pizza and took the food that was hurled at her as she left the room. She ignored it all, all the chaos, all the jeers, all the taunts, and left the room hastily.

When she was in the hallway again,she was covered in cake, pizza and all kinds of stick sodas, the whole ordeal leaving its mark on her. She choked out a shattered sob, then sucked in a shuddering breath, and continued along her way to the nearest bathroom.

~X~

Baby's day just kept getting worse and worse as time trucked on. After getting washed up as best as she could, even though she was still a bit sticky from the shoe, Baby went on the hunt for her friends to seek some sort of comfort after how catastrophic things got earlier. But everywhere she turned, there was something that made slowly lose her mind more and more.

First, when she left the bathroom, almost immediately a pillow exploded against her as all the Balloon Kids ran past, obliviously having a pillow fight. Most of the feathers stuck to her body, and while she tried to pull them off, some of them were too stuck down against her body for anything to really be done.

Her eye twitched again as she continued along her eye, a loud thumping sound in the vents grating her nerves and making her wince. She wasn't sure what the cause of it was, and she didn't really want to find out. But, sadly, life had a way of screwing her over as Mangle suddenly burst from a vent right above her emitting their usually garbled static.

Like the BBs before, the take-apart animatronic didn't acknowledge Baby at all and only scurried across the ceiling, even after the vent grate banged against the clown's head, chipping some of her paint.

Baby cried out in pain and stumbled back, bumping against a wall, which only made her more hurt as she smacked against a prop hanging from it. The clown cursed as she nursed the first sore spot, then the second one, and as she pushed off from the wall, she felt something rip off.

Looking back at the surface, she saw the remnants of a piece of paper, and groaned as she knew exactly where it ended up. She brought her claw up so she could try and get it off her back, but it was no use. She just couldn't reach it. So she gave a defeated whine and continued along her way back along her way.

Which was only met with more misfortune as she went. From heading past Music Man's impromptu band practice and hearing the screeching trumpets and crashing cymbals, getting covered with more cake when an oblivious Nightmare Foxy walked right into her (even after she gave him more room), slipping because someone cleaning the floor didn't put a wet floor sign and thus meant she fell on the floor and slammed into a wall…

Let's just say she was having a really bad day.

By the time she made it back into the storage room, Baby was shaking in fury. She was dirty, sticky, wet, scuffed, scratched, and so mentally shattered that she just needed some time to herself. What made her even more peeved was that she had no idea where her friends were, and she was just at wits end to the point where she felt like she needed something to comfort her.

Instead, she was greeted with a bit of a disturbing sight. She couldn't see the lights from her tent, and that triggered her brain into a panicked overdrive. She bolted forward, and when she pushed past the boxes, she found the whole thing dismantled and like it was never there.

She started breathing a bit heavily as an intense ringing filled her head, and she looked around for any evidence about what happened. But there was nothing, no sign of any sort of struggle or who did this.

So Baby simply crumpled on her knees, looking down at the floor with a cold, lifeless look with her eyes wide. Everything was falling apart today, it was all coming crashing down before her, and she was losing control rapidly.

The sound of a rush of footsteps and dragging wires hit her non-existent ears, and they stopped when a trio of gasps sounded off behind her.

"Oh Cassidy is going to regret this!" Molten roared as he dashed around where the tent once stood. Lefty and NightBon helped a shaken and shattered Baby back to her feet as the wire amalgam paced around like a furious jaguar. "I swear, when I get my wires on her, she will truly get what FEAR means!"

As Molten continued to rant, Lefty looked Baby over as Bon tried to get all the stuff off of her. "What happened to you, Scrapy?"

Baby let out a shaky breath as she tried to quell her chaotic emotions. "I just had the worst day ever. One thing after another, it was just endlessly bad, like getting dunked in cake batter twice, being caught in a food fight, having a pillow and vent smashed in my face…" She trailed off when she saw Bon's look of realised rage. "You guys know about it?"

"It was the others", Bon snarled as the torn picture he pulled off Baby was crumpled in his grasp. "They kept pulling the three of us around, but it felt too suspicious. And things we caught out of the corner of our eye were stuff like Nightmare Foxy with a cake, Mangle entering the vents, and overheard Music Man start up his practice…"

"It was all a set up from Cassidy", Lefty hissed out. "She must've set this all up just because she was mad at us. Keep the three of us away from you, and set it up so you just had an awful day."

"It's like I freaking said!" Molten screeched. "All of this was just so Cassidy can keep up with all this stupid bullying. She's so set on getting revenge on Afton that she's willing to act no better than he did. She's become a monster in her own right, and to the people she's supposed to be on the same side as!"

"She's become so consumed by her anger she's willing to become a dictator", Bon said as he hugged Baby close, uncaring if she was still sticky and covered with cake. "Baby, I am so sorry we weren't there. If we could…"

"I don't blame you guys for this…" Baby whispered in such a small, broken and quiet voice that it made the others all look at her in sadness. "This is my punishment, I guess. This is what I get for wanting to be someone new, to be who I want to be and not conform to someone's… BULLSHIT ideals."

Lefty and Bon nodded sombrely as Molten huffed. "I swear, if that golden bear shows up again at any point, I'm taking over her suit and ripping her apart from the inside out."

"You try and do that and she'll kill you, Molten", Lefty said sternly. "We need a better plan than that, because, if anything, we need to expose Cassidy for who she really is." She turned to the hugging duo with a hard look. "I have a little theory that I start to believe more and more, but I feel like Cassidy doesn't actually care about anyone in her inner circle."

"What makes you say that?" Bonnie asked as he hugged Baby tighter.

"Charlie. She's lamented to me that she feels like Cassidy is straying further and further from any sort of side, and is just embracing being a wild animal. I then suggested to her that Cassidy could have always been like that… and Charlie fell silent."

Molten's ears perked up and he looked over and Bonnie's expression became one of shock. "You think Cassidy has always been like this, even as a kid?"

"You can't make someone act like the way they aren't", Lefty said. "If Cassidy is this spiteful, vindictive and controlling, then she was always like this even when she was alive. A kid can be mad, but this is something else entirely."

Baby whimpered and buried her face into Bon's, the rabbit stroking the back of her head reassuringly. "But how does that help us?"

"If we get Cassidy to expose that she never cared about us and was only out to get Afton, thus robbing all of us of a proper afterlife", the black bear explained. "Then that's it. Her whole revenge scheme falls apart because she needs Charlie to help her with getting everyone set up for the night shift. So if she's done with Cassidy's lies…"

Molten started to light up like a Christmas tree. "Then we're finally free from all of this garbage! Lefty, I love that!"

"Question is, how do we get her to admit that?" Bon asked.

"I say we do something during the night shift." Molten said. "Maybe do something to get it set up so Cassidy has a reason to send everyone after Afton, and then we could do something to crease Goldy to no end that she just explodes."

The rabbit nodded at the idea. "It is sound. But as much as I would like to go through with the plan…" He subtly looked down at Baby repeatedly, and the other two winced.

"I understand that, Bon, but what choice do we have?" Lefty said desperately. "If things keep going at the rate they are, all of us are going to suffer for it. We need to put an end to Cassidy's reign of control and terror now."

Bonnie looked extremely unsure, then looked down at Baby. She hadn't said a thing, and didn't seem to even acknowledge the conversation going on. With a defeated sigh, the rabbit nodded sadly.

"Fine. But if Baby gets pushed too far, you get to take the fall."

Lefty nodded and looked at Molten. "Molten, me and you are gonna try and talk Afton into agreeing with the plan. Bonnie, you stay here and make sure Baby is safe."

Bonnie nodded and watched as the other two left, leaving the rabbit and clown on their own. Bonnie looked down at the clown sadly, caressing her hair. "Do you want to talk about this?"

Baby shook her head.

"Do you want to get cleaned up?"

Baby nodded. Bonnie did his best to smile, considering the circumstances, and led Baby out of the room to get cleaned up before things completely exploded. Because considering how bad the day was so far…

It was going to get so much worse…

~X~

Chapter 10! Only three more till the story will end. I will warn you, this chapter and especially the next one will both be a bit shorter than usual simply because I don't want to fill them with unnecessary detail and, as I would say, 'noise'. This next chapter needs to get right to the point, so be ready…

But yeah, Baby had a really, REALLY bad day. This was the last little bit, especially with her meeting with Candy Cadet at the start. I will say that I do like making Candy Cadet like this sort of cryptic-like in nature, being this ominous storyteller/omen bringer that just does whatever they want. Genuinely, more people that make FNaF fanfics should do that, it's really fun.

Otherwise, not a lot to say. I do have something I plan on sharing in the main discord servers I'm in after this fic is done, so for those of you in them, keep your eyes open.

Also, imma try and get this fic done in time for FNaF's 10th anniversary. Hopefully. Maybe.

Up next: After weeks of being beaten down, belittled, and being mentally torn apart…

BABY'S HAD ENOUGH

~Caleb~