Chapter Text

“Before you is an animatronic found in the back alley. We are...unsure of its origins. It is your job to complete the maintenance checklist before claiming it as salvage. Or, if you choose to, you can throw it back into the alley where you found it and forfeit payment. Make your choice now.”

Michael paused the tape and sat, shaking at one end of the cold wooden table. On the other side was a mechanical beast, its parts exposed and metallic, one of its multiple heads locked in eye contact with Michael as the other two drooped to the sides. It certainly wasn’t the scariest thing he had encountered in these salvaging sessions, (that would be what he had seen last night,) but nonetheless he felt a shiver go down his spine despite those nerves being long since dead. He began to analyse the robot’s appearance in his own mind.

The bear head, the center head, stared through Michael in a way that reminded him of the ‘animatronic’ he had met after his first night on the job. However, this one was a face he didn’t recognize. It was a Freddy head with his signature top hat, somewhat like the one he had seen during his night guard job in 1993, but it was plastic and had bright red cheeks which would make it slightly cuter if there was a proper endoskeleton inside and a lower jaw was attached. Its eyes were deep empty holes, something that Michael was surprised he hadn’t come across during his last 3 nights.

Glancing lower, Michael saw the large unfitting black bowtie (another thing that reminded him of what he had seen after his first night), but his attention was drawn to the two exoskeleton heads positioned on the being’s shoulders. They teetered hollowly, appearing almost sorrowful. On the right (Michael’s right), there was the head of a chicken, which Michael instantly recognized as a type of Chica created in the same style as the plastic Freddy head. It too had rosy cheeks and the lower jaw removed. On the left was a blue head, one that Michael found hard to recognize. It just looked like a blue version of the Freddy head. Eventually he settled on it being some sort of Bonnie variant, as it was the only thing that made sense to him. Its lower jaw was also removed. Everything looked like the husk of something that was once beautiful, and it actually made Michael a bit depressed looking at it.

Michael’s eyes wandered to the paper figure underneath the bowtie, which deterred his sadness. Its big goofy smile and silly colours made him giggle due to the juxtaposition of its brightness and childishness against the hard metallic skeleton. He joked with the idea of that being what controlled the whole thing and that it was an all-powerful god, and then he remembered what he was there to do and his smile faded. It was time to make a decision. Salvage it for a hefty profit, or toss the piece of junk out of the building to never be seen again? It was so tempting to do the latter. On the first night, Michael had been foolish enough to use his taser every 5 seconds on the animatronic he had tried to salvage, forgetting that doing that would make the value degrade to about 0. The second night he didn’t use it at all due to his fear of damaging the hardware, even though that wasn’t the only reason he refused to shock it. He almost died that night, but that thing he had witnessed spared him. The third night, he threw her out immediately, and tased her for good measure. Michael was aggravated at even the thought of keeping that creature anywhere near him. It had a voice with a voice and word choice that didn’t match, yet both were all too familiar. And now...there was this. It didn’t trigger any bad memories, since he had never seen any components of it in his lifetime, so he felt he had no reason to not try and salvage it. He continued the tape.

“You have chosen to proceed with the maintenance checklist. Remember, use your company issued taser to return the animatronic to a neutral state if you feel that it’s becoming unstable or aggressive. You can only use it 3 times before it begins to damage the animatronic, and decrease its value. Begin audio prompt in 3...2...1.”

The mechanical screeches of hell as Michael liked to call them began to play, echoing off the walls like it was a robotic spider crawling around the room as it shrieked in agony. After what felt like an hour of the grueling noise, it came to a halt, and Michael was asked to document his results. Doing as he was told, he brought his issued sheet of paper to fill out to his face and crossed the ‘yes’ box, because he knew it would be preparing itself to attack right now. He returned his attention to the animatronic and, right as day, the blue head was now facing towards him. Michael knew its hand was closer towards him, even with shadows now obscuring it.

“Begin audio prompt in 3...2...1.”

A different sound effect played out, and Michael found it equally if not more irritating than the last. He cupped his palms around his ears until the tape told him to document his results another time. Picking up the paper, he crossed off ‘yes’ again, and laid the sheet back down. Chica’s head was fixated on him now, they all were. Even the paper doll seemed to be looking at him now. The clawed hand had moved back to where it originally was now, but Michael was still uneasy. Not taking his eyes off the machine, he reached out for his taser. As his hands only felt smooth wood instead of slightly rusted metal, he inhaled sharply and glanced for his weapon. The table was empty.

Michael bent over on both sides of his chair, even looked under the desk for his only defense, but was only met with shadows, some legs, even more arms, and 2 extra heads that had been hidden from him, a fox and a round one that baffled him. He slammed the back of his skull into the edge of the table’s underside and let out a low but loud growl, clutching that section of his scalp. Now he saw where his taser had gone. Raising its hand, the animatronic crumpled the small grey box with just its fingers, dropping the shrapnel and wires to the floor. What was happening now was obvious, and Michael made no hesitation in dashing out of his chair. He barely made the halfway stretch towards the doorway before one of the beast’s many limbs snatched him from behind and slammed him to the floor, splintering the floorboards. Panicked yet immobile, Michael could only watch as the monster stumbled through the door, and heard combatting voices which he couldn’t hear as anything but the thing that had tricked him and used his body decades ago. His last strain of sight drained away as he was rendered entirely unconscious.