It took Moon a while to remember where he had seen the shirt before. A couple years ago, he and Sun had found it in a trashcan near the loading dock. That particular line of merchandise had been discontinued, but other than that it was a perfectly good shirt. They never understood why someone would throw it away. It didn't fit them, but it was sparkly and colorful, so they used it as a decoration. Unfortunately, it was stuck in their room. After talking it over with Sun, Moon told Vanessa the plan.

"First, you need to find Kyle. Since it's Friday, he'll probably be over in Bon- I mean, Superstar Bowling. When you find him, tell him we need this from our room." He handed her a drawing of the shirt. "It's got our signature on the back, so he'll know you're legit."

Everything went smoothly, and the next day, she gave him the shirt. The first thing he noticed was how filthy it was. It made sense, considering they never cleaned their room, but that was no excuse for giving someone a dirty gift, so he washed it in the bathroom sink and hung it up to dry. After it was clean, he noticed that it was an adult size XXL, way too big. Although Ginger was taller than the children, her head barely came up to his shoulder, and he was below average height himself.

"Don't worry, girls love oversized sweatshirts," Vanessa assured him.

Monday morning, he folded it as neatly as he could and placed it in a gift bag that Vanessa apparently had lying around. Hopefully, she was right. He didn't want to mess up his first birthday present. When they got to the Pizzaplex, he stopped at the top of the slide. He almost slid down like usual, but he didn't want to crinkle the gift bag, so he decided to take the stairs instead.

"Oh, hey! Is the slide broken?" Ginger asked.

"Just thought I'd try something different. How was your birthday?"

"It was great, thanks for asking! You ready for today?"

"Almost. I'm really sorry that I missed your party."

"Don't be. We already talked about this."

"I know, but I wanted to at least get you something. Here." He held up the present. At the last minute he added "It's from both of us."

"Aw, you didn't have to get me any-" She dug through the tissue paper and caught a glimpse of what was inside.

"No way."

She pulled the shirt out, holding it up triumphantly. "No way! I've been scouring eBay for months, and all I could find was a significantly overpriced Freddy shirt! How on earth did you get this?"

"I know a guy," Moon smiled. "Sorry about the size, it was the only one I could find."

"At least it's not too small." She pulled the sweatshirt on over her uniform. The baggy sleeves bunched up on her arms, and it was so long she could almost wear it as a dress. "It's perfect! Thank you so much! Can we take a selfie?"

"Sure."

Ginger pulled her phone out and switched to the front-facing camera. Moon winced as he saw that face on the screen. She didn't seem to notice.

"You ready?" She held her other arm out and… stood still? After a few seconds, he realized that she was asking him for a hug. If Sun was here, they would have already been squished together, but he wasn't. Moon had a choice. Part of him wanted to escape, but he couldn't do that to Ginger. Not on her birthday (or more accurately, birthday observed). He cautiously wrapped one arm around her, which she quickly reciprocated. The layers of sweatshirt fabric felt especially soft, and her freckled face was warm on his chest. Really warm. He was getting so warm he was starting to sweat, but it was a good warmth, nonetheless. Maybe hugs could be nice, under the right circumstances.

"Cheeeeese!" They smiled for the camera as she snapped a few pictures.

When she let go, she removed the sweatshirt and looked up at him with a different smile. He had seen that smile before. She made it when Starshines showed her their drawings, when her friends sent her pictures of silly-looking animals, when she watched the recordings of him and Sun. But this time, she was smiling at him. Just him. Right here, right now, not doing anything special. For some reason, this was different, more different than it should have been.

"I'm glad you like the shirt."

"Are you kidding me? I love it! All the Chicas get such cute merch."

All the Chicas? How many were there? Moon knew that there had been other Freddy's locations, but he didn't know any specifics. There were various posters, plushies, and other artifacts scattered about the Pizzaplex, but he had never paid much attention to them.

"I didn't think there were that many Chicas."

"Oh, yeah! Each Freddy's had their own new line of animatronics, and each main line had their own version of the main four: Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy. That doesn't even begin to touch on location-specific characters, holiday variants, etc."

"How do you know all this stuff?"

"From the internet, mostly. Some of it I learned from my parents and my grandma. She was old enough to see the first Freddy's opening. Technically, it wasn't even Freddy's yet, it was Fredbear's Family Diner. Didn't your family ever tell you stories about Freddy's?"

"No, not really. We're… not from around here."

"Ah. Would you mind if I… educated you?" The excited and slightly mischievous look on her face was something he simply couldn't say no to.

"Not at all."

Ginger proceeded to tell him the history of every Freddy's-related animatronic, restaurant, carnival and park, official and unofficial, tying in the local legends and all of the major evidence for and against them. Moon was overwhelmed. He had no idea the rabbit hole went this deep. If children had been going missing ever since the first location, why had they opened more? And why had people kept coming? Did not enough people know what was going on? Did they not care? He wasn't the first Fazbear animatronic to go haywire, and if the past was any indication, he wouldn't be the last. They were all doomed from the very start. Doomed to bring pain and misery, to tear families and homes apart, until the day they were destroyed.

Moon knew that he wasn't supposed to exist anymore, they had told him that years ago. But now, he saw that none of them should have been built in the first place. Not Sun, or the Music Men, or the S.T.A.F.F. Bots, or even the Glamrocks. They were all horrible, cursed machines, fit only for the scrap heap. But that was not for him to decide. The company thought he and Sun were gone already, so they might let them stay dead, but not the others; they were too popular. There were dozens of Glamrock endos in storage, waiting to be fitted with shells and personality chips. Even if the whole Pizzaplex was destroyed, it wouldn't matter. Fazbear would come back a few years later, bigger and brighter and deadlier than ever before.

"I always come back."

"…Gabe? You ok?" Ginger rested her hand on his shoulder. He was shaking, and his palms were sweaty. "I can stop if you want."

"No, I'm fine. Those stories… do you believe them?"

"Not really. I think they're interesting, but kids go missing all the time, with or without Freddy's. Besides, if all of those murders really did happen, wouldn't they have found at least one of the bodies by now?"

"Underground. They're underground. All of them. I brought them there, I must have. They want me to find them. I need to find them."

"Probably. But… this Afton guy, is he still in charge?"

"Nope. He went missing years ago. So did his business partner. If they're still alive, they're pretty old by now. There are theories about that, too, if you want to hear them."

Moon was torn. Part of him wanted to know more about these men whose work had, unfortunately, led to his existence. But as curious as he was, he wasn't sure his body could take it. His heart was pounding hard against his ribs, like it was trying to break through. Why did human emotions have to be so physical?

Before he could answer her, the door opened, and in walked a woman holding a baby carrier in one hand and a diaper bag in the other. Moon tried some of Vanessa's breathing exercises to calm down, or at least look calm. If the parents didn't like the daycare, they wouldn't bring their kids back, and shaking in fear wasn't very professional. Ginger greeted the mother while he was recovering.

"Good morning! How can we help you today?"

"Just dropping off this little pumpkin." She held up the carrier, showing off the curly-haired baby inside.

"Why, hello there, Jason!" Moon greeted him. Jason had only been to the daycare once, but Moon recognized him immediately. They didn't get many babies. "I'll take those for you, Mrs. Kendall."

"Oh, hello. I don't remember you from last time."

"I'm new here."

"Of course," she said, looking him over. "What happened to the little robot thing?"

"Routine maintenance, ma'am. Don't worry, we'll take good care of Jason."

"Well… yes, I'm sure you will." She put down the carrier and diaper bag, picked up Jason, and gave him a kiss on the forehead. "Don't worry, baby, Mama's gonna be right back. Be good while I'm gone, ok?"

She placed him back in the carrier and hesitantly handed it to Moon.

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Thank you. Bye-bye, Jasey! Bye-bye!" She waved, then left.

"Man, everyone's using the door this morning!" exclaimed Ginger.

"Well it's not exactly safe to send a baby down the slide by himself."

"Of course it's not. I just thought it was interesting that you and the first kid took the stairs today. By the way, how did you know Jason's name?"

"I, uh, checked his file."

"Really? When?"

"I guess while you weren't looking."

"Guess so. I dunno how I missed that."

There was no way she actually bought that. She was too smart. But she didn't question him anymore. Strange.

Now they were alone with the baby. While older kids sometimes had more varied reactions to their first time in the daycare, babies were always at one extreme or the other. Some were perfectly calm, as if he and Sun were just normal grownups, while others immediately started crying at the sight of them, assuming they weren't crying before they came in. Jason was one of the latter, leading to him being handed off to the guard on-duty as soon as possible. But today, he was calm.

Moon placed the carrier on the security desk, stowing the diaper bag behind it. Even looking straight into his eyes, Jason kept peacefully chewing on his teething ring.

"Aw, look at him!" Ginger gushed. "Such a little sweetie pie! I think this is the first baby we've had in here."

"Yeah," said Moon. Jason giggled.

"I think he likes you."

"Me? You think so?"

Jason didn't like him, he knew that much. But he did seem to like Gabe, and if it stopped him from crying, maybe that was enough for today.

"Uh, yeah! He hasn't taken his eyes off of you since he came in!"

That was true. Jason's big, brown eyes hadn't left him for a moment. He thought that it was from the shock of seeing a new face, but he hadn't seen Ginger before, either.

Moon picked him up and cradled him in his arms. It had been so long since the last time he held a baby. Between his significantly lower arm strength and about a month of Jason growing, he was much heavier than before, but Moon didn't mind. This was one case where he was thankful for his weakness. He had always been afraid of accidentally crushing kids' bones, but that wasn't possible now. He held out his finger for Jason to grab onto.

"Hey, Ginger? Do you ever wonder why babies have such strong grips?"

"I actually read something about that the other day. It's called the Palmer grasp reflex. Basically, since they don't know how to properly grab things, they automatically squeeze anything in their hands at tightly as they can."

"So, they're just practicing grabbing things?"

"Yep!"

Practicing or not, babies still had absolutely no reason to be that strong. That was one way they were alike. It was almost comforting to know that he had something in common with such a perfect creature.

"Can I hold him?" she asked.

"Sure." He handed the baby over. She cradled him in her arms and gently rocked him. She was a natural! So few guards handled babies this well. Jason's happy cooing was interrupted by the sound of more kids crashing into the ball pit.

"Duty calls. Watch her for me, will ya?" Moon asked, lightly booping Jason on the nose.

"Don't worry, we'll be fine," giggled Ginger.

For the rest of the day, Moon was focused on watching the older kids, but he would still check in on Ginger and Jason fairly frequently. Sometimes they would switch off, and he would get more baby time. This included one dirty diaper and some vomit, but that was fine. He was not prepared for Jason shoving his tiny little fingers up both of his nostrils. In fact, he had quite a visceral reaction to this, staggering backwards and almost dropping the baby. Ginger laughed as she asked if he was ok. He was, technically, but next time he would be sure to protect this newly-discovered weak spot.

He left briefly for lunch, but instead of eating his usual pizza, he decided to peruse the various relics displayed in Rockstar Row. He could always eat extra for dinner.

The crowds were more sparse at this time of day, so it was easy for him to examine the exhibits. The display cases were mostly full of old animatronic parts and accessories—a Freddy's ear, a Foxy's torso, a Mr. Cupcake. Each plaque listed a basic description of the item and which location it had belonged to. The most prominent ones came from the 1980's, apparently their most popular (and profitable) decade. According to Ginger, it was also when the "accidents" began. After that, every time a new Freddy's opened its doors, children would disappear. The Pizzaplex had lasted longer than most, but that changed last year. There must be some reason why this kept happening, and a way to stop it. He was hoping that, somehow, these random pieces might help him solve the puzzle. He wasn't able to learn much from them, but they were certainly interesting, if a bit gruesome.

At the end of the hall was a series of cardboard cutouts. These ones were Easter themed, displaying a grassy field scattered with eggs. The main two characters were a golden-yellow bear and rabbit, most likely Freddy and Bonnie variants. The bear wore a purple hat and bowtie, and held a bag of candies. The rabbit was wearing a matching purple bowtie and vest. He was holding a basket of eggs in one hand, and a single purple and green striped egg in the other, the same pose Bonnie had in a previous year's cutout.

Everyone missed Bonnie, but now Moon saw that he was the luckiest of them all. He hadn't lived long enough to see the virus, at least not at full strength. Or maybe he had, and that's what killed him. However it happened, that was when death became real at the Pizzaplex. Bonnie was proof that there were some things you couldn't come back from, no matter how much they wanted you to. And if that happened, they would try to erase you from history, as if you never existed.

But everyone remembered. They pretended they didn't, that it was always this way, so that the Faztechs wouldn't erase their memories for real. The memories were all they had left. And now, they were trying to replace him with this… this golden imposter. Moon hated his smug grin, as if he knew what he was doing, and he cherished the opportunity to profit from another's misfortune. Moon clenched his fists. He wanted to rip the poser to shreds, but doing so would most likely get him fired. Maybe he could ask Monty to take this thing out.

"Excuse me, sir." Moon knew it was a S.T.A.F.F. bot before he turned around.

"Yeah?" He replied icily.

"Employees are not allowed in public areas outside of their assigned stations during business hours. You have t minus thirty seconds to leave this room before disciplinary action will be administered. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven…"

"I'm on my break."

"…twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three…" Should've known that wouldn't work.

"Alright, I'm going!"

As he left, he passed more S.T.A.F.F. bots. A lot more than there should have been. Usually, there would only be this many active at night. He retreated to the utilidoors and found even more. The most recent security concern he knew of was his and Sun's disappearance, but that had been weeks ago. They must be responding to something, but what?

He sighed.

He would have to ask Vanessa.