Original titles: "We Are the Darkness" and "Mechanized". At long last we get to the one that started it all for us...

Chapter Twenty

We Are the Darkness, Mechanized

A much younger Clara had fallen in love with the old diner, as those times had been much happier despite William and Henry's busy schedules, managing their fledgling establishment into what it would have been if Evan hadn't been taken from them.

This place? Thank God she never came here, even when the children were abducted.

Being here, seeing it as a shell of what it was from its heyday. Parts of the linoleum peeled, which also happened in the wallpaper, and all bore stains of dirt and other stuff best left to the imagination. If things had been different, if they'd remained a family when this place would have been built under better circumstances, Clara would have said both Henry and Will had outdone themselves this time, and they'd brought a new attraction for the town's residents and tourists coming through. If horror and tragedy had never struck, Fazbear Entertainment perhaps could have opened another location or two, maybe three, throughout the country, and other countries would have been inspired to do the same, like Disney. But no. Everything was now a swamp of forgotten, colorful memories now overshadowed by monstrous deeds.

It was also overshadowed by the presence of them on the stage, revealed without curtains to cover them - Clair had done that herself so they would keep a better eye on them here - and appearing frightening to the adult eye as well as heartbreaking. Heartbreaking because the little lost souls were in those machines, suffering and filled with so much anger and hate towards the one who did this to them, and as for the robots themselves, their faux-fur was batted with debris and the smell of rot reached their noses, causing all to gag even though some of them were used to it at the hospital. Where the bodies had been hidden - very clever of you, William. And frightening because of their facial features, not just what was inside them. If it hadn't been that, there was also the offness about them, period: the wide eyes within the open sockets that were dark enough to pass as shadows, giving them a half-lidded expression; the broad, separated, near-humanlike teeth also didn't help.

"Now we can safely ask how in the hell they were ever loved by kids," Melinda pointed out, then added, "No offense, Henry." She was standing in front of the stage, arms folded in front of her, then turning her entire front back to them.

He chuckled humorlessly. "None taken." He then looked back at Clair. "The fact YOU chose to be here as the latest night watch, even though I understand your reasons?"

The young lady looked down at the table surface in front of her. "I'm undercover, as you both know. I came here under an alias - Clair Monroe, because that was my mother's maiden name and common - and was interviewed directly by the person who now owns this establishment after Afton was kicked to the curb." The name of the new owner wasn't even mentioned once the word got out, and the privacy of it all was like snakes swimming underwater. "A guard before me who worked here - I get recorded phone calls each night, as of the very first night. Starts off with an introductory greeting, blah blah," Clair said with sideways bobs of the head that Clara couldn't help but chuckle to, Henry and the children with before it was sober again. "Anyway, Fazbear Inc. isn't liable for anything like damages, injury, or death. And if you go missing, a report is filed within ninety days after the premises are bleached and everything."

"Corrupt pieces of shit," Jeremy spat, glaring up at the animatronics who were still immobile. Fourteen minutes until midnight, according to Clara's watch she peeked at.

"Yeah, but I wasn't even able to find the bodies of any missing guards here, not while those things on stage...well, I'll get to that, but you already know. Nothing to worry about? Utter bullshit, and we know it. I knew it even before I was 'hired'."

"Yeah, we got that much, but what about the animatronics?" Michael demanded.

Clair scowled at him. "I said I was gonna get there, but okay. Phone Guy, whatever his name is, said they get a bit...quirky at night. I thought it was weird, especially when he said they used to walk around during the day and are now on nightmode so their servos didn't lock up or something, since the Bite of '83 and an almost-another incident in '87 with Afton." Clara held her breath at the mention of her youngest baby's accident. "I noticed what he meant as soon as I started looking at the cameras, and they do move at night. It still creeps the crap out of me, but I tried comforting myself knowing I had this and that I would just follow the rules."

Now Kaleia had her turn to speak after being quiet long enough. "Did they ever try to come to the security office, or into it while you were there?"

Clair's face then blanched immensely for being a semi-hardened police rookie. "They do. Guy said if they showed up, they might not see me as a person, but as another endoskeleton that needed its covering. It meant -" She halted there, shoulders then trembling and starting to break a bit when they all noticed it was now eleven minutes until the witching hour.

Henry finished it for her, hollow as a tunnel.

"They'd put you in one of the spare suits, where the parts close in on you and kill you."

~o~

Okay, everything's coordinated.

Intercom speakers were all over, more than at Fredbear's, which gave an advantage from the security room.

Everyone had a walkie on them so they could keep in touch.

As soon as they saw an animatronic or at least heard the footsteps, run and hide immediately and stay quiet, as well as give the warning to the others.

"If any or all of them catch you and try to force you into an empty suit with ALL the animatronic parts inside - no full room for a human being - and the wires, crossbeams, and gears will crush you. Phone Guy said your eyes and teeth are the only ones to see the 'light of day', and no, I'm not making the pun. He did. No shit they never tell you this when you sign up, but I'm not surprised at all."

"No shit" is right, Kaleia thought. She and Melinda were currently in the damned kitchen, which they had been informed Chica was said to occupy, except the cameras here were not functional save for the audio, leaving everything to the imagination. This place where the pizzas were once brought to life for the tastebuds and stomachs' pleasures, but now it was an abandoned wreck in which the boxes, pots and pans, and every item on the shelves were in disarray.

"Freddy and his friends tend to get more active as the week goes on." Clair also was told to peek at the cameras while he spoke, and it was a good thing she did...or else, we wouldn't be here tonight.

Freddy Fazbear didn't get off that stage often, but tonight, they all got to hear the phone call in time from their places. Mike and Clair were in the office with the cameras and doors, Henry in Parts and Service to get intel and keep an eye on things - whilst also hiding where he could in that tiny space - Clara in the left hall closet outside the security office, and Jeremy outside to keep tabs in case anyone would be in the area.

Phone Guy had to be dead by now, or missing at the least, and Kaleia had the terrible feeling. "Hello, hello! Hey, you're doing great! Uh..most people don't last this long. I mean, you know, th-they usually move on to other things by now. Uh, I'm not implying that they died. Th-th-that's not what I meant. Uh, anyway I - I better not take up too much of your time. Uh, things start getting real tonight. H-h-hey listen, I - I had an idea. If you happen to get caught and want to avoid getting stuffed into a Freddy suit, try playing dead! You know, go limp. Then there's a chance that, uh, maybe they'll think that you're an empty costume instead. Uh, then again, if they think you're an empty costume they might try to...stuff a metal skeleton into you. I wonder how that would work. Y-yeah, never mind, scratch that. I-it's best just not to get caught. Um...o-okay, I-I'll leave you to it. See you on the flip side."

Jeremy scoffed. "Flip side? Yeah, I'd rather live and see the green grass with Mel babe." On her end, with Kaleia, Melinda giggled and agreed before it was serious. Laughter on the other ends mingled together before it ended just as the clock struck midnight.

The witching hour had started.

The "fun" began.

~o~

Bonnie moved first the last couple of nights, and it seemed he was the most active and aggressive by far, for some unexplained reason. That robot scared his wife the most when she was a kid, though Michael had a hard time trying to figure out why. Now he could see one reason: Bonnie's appearance was the simplest of all of them, bringing to mind the saying "Less is more".

"I used to like Bonnie, actually," Clair told him when she sat at the computers, waiting for the call to come and looking through the monitors on the screens. "The fact he was a rocker, and I used to play the guitar as a kid. Used to do it for the family on Friday night, which was family night...before everything fell apart. Even Gabriel loved it so much."

Michael didn't miss the melancholy. They had that in common; he got what it was like to be blamed for something when he was a kid and had no real control over it - and sympathized when he wished he was a better sibling, and it was too late. "We both got little sibling and daddy issues," he said, trying to lighten it a little.

She made a noise that was in between a laugh and a snort. "Yeah, except you still got a mom who loves you."

"Clair, it's wrong to compare traumas. We're both here now and doing the right thing not just for us, the people we still have - you got someone not your parents since then? - the families of the victims, and to keep William from doing it to anyone else. Finally. For years, I hated myself for what happened to Evan. It never should have gone that way, but I know it all went back to my sperm donor. If I could go back in time, I would, but I've moved on and here I am." Michael had been looking at the monitors, the current being the hallway with that one poster of Freddy himself, and now he looked at her. Clair was looking at him from the corner of her eye, scowling tightly but listening, and then she smiled.

"I have a girlfriend. Don't judge me, but then again, what do I care? Not like I'll see you after this is over anyway."

He couldn't keep his chuckle in. Yeah, society's fault for that crap. Two of his old friends aside from Jeremy were gay, but it was the damned eighties, and shit hadn't changed much. "No judgment. Not my business." He held up two fingers crossed as the promise.

She smirked, flipping the screen to the star-printed curtain of Pirate's Cove, the darkness giving no outline or a hint of Foxy. "Your wife seems like a total badass. Your mom, too. And it looks like they love each other. You don't see that every day."

"Nope."

"What about that sperm donor as you called him?" There was a biting edge.

Michael glared at the screen where the trio on stage were still facing forward. "Personally, I want him either dead or locked away forever to answer for what he did. I'll take either one -"

And just like that, the alarm for midnight rang. And now the show begins.

The new call from Phone Guy arrived, and he and his partner-in-crime had the system connected to walkies for all to hear, learning that one option was to "play dead" only for that idea to be shot down because you might appear as a stuffed Freddy suit, in which an endoskeleton would be forced in somehow. Nothing was off the table, because Clair ingeniously had brought up hiding places like the closet in the security office and any other spot in the pizzeria -

- except for a couple of places where animatronics would wander. Such as the closet outside the left door, where Michael stood at the moment.

"I'm in position, Clara, kids," Henry announced. He and Charlie who was still in her box were in Parts and Service. Mom replied from the west hall closet which Mike had thought was a BAD idea in the beginning, but at least she was close to them in case she needed to make a run for him and Clair. His wife and Melinda took point in the kitchen, leaving Jeremy outside to guard and watch for outside intruders. Including William. Michael felt his heartbeat begin; all of them were ready and not at the same time.

Oh, God...oh, God, the horror even though it was expected.

All three heads moved towards the camera watching them on the stage: Bonnie, Freddy, and Chica slowly but surely turned their soul-piercing eyes towards him and Clair. They know someone is watching them. "They do this every night," she whispered to him, "and with one glitch on the screen even when you're looking, they look ahead again, and - damn it, Chica is off this time! It's usually Bonnie first!"

She exclaimed this just as he followed her gaze to the next scene where Chica was shown on the floor where the tables were. Tall and with her head slightly backward, staring at the camera on her and with her gaping beak showing those teeth. If Michael was a weaker man, he would have both pissed and shit in his pants. Clair just swallowed and took a few breaths to calm herself down.

"Eventually, she's gonna go to the kitchen."

"Girls," Michael said into his walkie, "heads up. Get ready for the chick."

Clair switched the view towards Parts and Service, where Henry and Charlie were. Now she finally saw the puppet in action, huffing. "Hell, when I told my superiors about the past two nights, I just said it looked like the robots were programmed to attack or something, but couldn't locate the source from inside this place. They're gonna need solid proof of possession, but then again, what if we get a goddamned government cover-up after this?"

And wouldn't that be the shit, continuing to spit back at the surviving families of the victims?

~o~

"Okay, Charlie is out. She's gonna try to talk to them."

Henry was in Parts and Service, Clara herself in the closet across from the security office's west. And the Grace girl said Bonnie came in here, known for looking up into the camera, one eye shadowed so that it appeared he only had ONE. That image brought one long, brief shiver up her spine, passing in time for her lover to announce he was allowing his daughter to float through the halls to get through to the animatronics outside.

Didn't seem Chica had entered the kitchen, otherwise, the girls would have said so, or Mikey would have so they wouldn't use the walkies and give away their position to the chicken animatronic. Bonnie usually moved first, but this time was different. He wasn't active until later, by the looks of it, so it looked like Henry and Clara were both safe at the moment. Foxy's head hadn't poked out yet on the cameras, otherwise Michael would have notified all of them.

And within moments, the puppet was in the dining room where the stage was -

"She's calling out to them."

Her son announced it steadily and nervously. Now they could wait it out, and maybe breathe a sigh of relief? If not, she was screwed in here. Clara held her breath from the musty smell of this damned supply closet. She had no chance if the blue-purple bunny made his way in here; there was nowhere to hide amid the single shelf across from the door, which was filled with different labeled cleaning bottles, the broom in the corner further away and the mop and bucket joining. She had the advantage of reaching for the sunlight in the center of this somewhat cramped space, but that was it. Clara stood close to the door, the window frosted so she couldn't see anything. Her walkie buzzed with static as she waited to hear Michael and Clair's updates.

A really long time passed before they heard Charlie's voice.

"Guys, it's okay now. They're waiting to see you."

~o~

"We're actually gonna see them move, can you believe it?" Kaleia knew she shouldn't be excited, but she couldn't help it.

It was both sick and sad to see the very kitchen where the pizzas, drinks, and other sides had been made, once upon a time, being in the disarrayed state it was in now, but it wasn't compared to waiting for Chica to come in. She and Melinda dashed out - "They're waiting to see you" - in time to run into the others from all directions just as Charlie's puppet form appeared in their sights along with the other animatronics gathered in the center of the dining hall.

Jeremy had to insist on staying outside, stating someone had to keep watch outside just in case, so no one disagreed there, but Michael and Melinda, knowing him, pointed out he had enough living animatronics in a short period of time. "Maybe as soon as you see William or anyone on the police force, maybe someone random, you should get your fine ass out of that car and run in here to join us," Melinda joked to her fiancé, taking her finger off the button for his response of "Yeah, maybe, babe!"

Clara and Henry were out first, followed by her and Mel, and ending with Clair and Michael directly behind. The undercover herself then drew her firearm and a taser - electricity was a good weapon if not a permanent solution, according to both their creator and the rookie - as her ultimate defense, prompting the start of the hostility of the giant animal mascots before them.

"Oh, God!" Melinda yelped, getting an eyeful of those immense eyes that still peered into your soul, but for Kaleia, while the cold latched onto her rapidly pounding heart, the thrills in her nerves increasing, she was also excited to talk to the children because even though they might be "responsible" for what happened here since their deaths and resurrections, that was what they were: children who needed someone there for them. He took their dreams and whole lives from them, so this is what they need before we take their killer down...as soon as he shows his face.

The way they moved - their joints clicking and the gears audibly turning, each step they took thunderous against the linoleum. Their eyes blinked sometimes, the noise also reaching their ears. Chica's jaw was the only one, aside from Foxy's which was very dislodged to the point of hanging loose unless he chose to raise it a bit, that remained open to show her teeth. Freddy's, too, though maybe not as bad. Bonnie had no brows and kept his maw clamped; that was why he scared her as a child, the simplicity.

"My dad, guys," Charlie said happily, hovering before the group and motioning towards Henry who held up both hands in the surrendering format, stepping forward as he'd once helped build this place AND them. "We're finally getting help."

Chica spoke first - Susie Stampler - her voice being a high-pitched take on a country girl in the south. Her lids halfway closed over her eyes, narrowing in a slightly intimidating way, something uncharacteristic of the peppy only girl in this group but not so with the young soul within.

"Pssh, bullhorns, Charlie. What makes you think they'll help us when no one bothered? When no one saved us before he -?!" She stopped there, closing her eyes then as if remembering her final, brutal moments. "I was the first, you know. I saw what happened to all of you after me. When I just lost my puppy and he tricked me!" she suddenly shrieked, making all of them jump. That horrid noise accompanying her words was a sick blend of something not of this world.

"I lost Lizzie, then my - HE CUT MY THROAT AFTER SAYING I WAS NOTHING BUT USE TO HIM AFTER MY BEST FRIEND AND SO WERE OTHERS AFTER ME!"

Her screams rattled their eardrums.

"Susie, calm down!"

The speaker was Freddy Fazbear AKA Gabriel Grace, Clair's baby brother she'd fought to see again and find out the truth. His brows were slanted outwardly in an expression of great sadness. "Guys, yeah, I believe it. I told you when I saw my sister." At that mention, Clair stepped out from behind them.

"You recognized me, Gabe." And it wasn't a question. "And I thought you were planning on killing me like the others because I was a bad sister..." She lowered her eyes in shame. "I'm sorry."

Loud, deliberately slow footsteps made her jerk her attention back to him. If only he could smile, but you could tell from looking at a certain angle. Gabriel in Freddy's form showed his teeth a bit and tilted his head somewhat, the group parting like the Red Sea - Michael backing further away to hide his face - and letting brother and sister properly reunite.

Large, brown, faux-fur arms enveloped a stunned Clair who in return broke into a sobbing mess without tears, her body wracking as she latched onto the baby brother she -

Goddamn it, the moment had to be ruined just now...and oh, God, no.

"Oi, be on the lookout, mateys!" Foxy growled, talking for the first time and brandishing his hook, his single exposed eye narrowing with a dreadful fury, the others following his attention and joining in, sans Freddy...and it landed on none other than Mike. "He looks just like HIM."

Clair's cover name Monroe is from the idea that Vanessa in the movie was originally gonna have that surname, but then the creators changed it to Shelly for unknown reasons.