======Chapter 1========

The hammer had came down,  and it came down hard, driving the nail halfway into the wooden post before another swing buried it in leaving a mark from the hammer's head. It hadn't been the first of many, and there were indeed many. An entire parade of them even as Norman Tolone, a man who had been well into his forties with hairy brows and an ungraceful balding head, reached his dirt and sawdust covered hand back into his bucket to fish out nails. It had been small and plastic, blue and red lettering in thick bold lines curved around it, surrounding an illustration of a clown with a shocked expression. To him it had looked like he was about to dig in to the world's most dangerous and iron filled ice cream because that was what it had originally been meant for.  

He rose his his arm, readying the hammer for its next victim and brought it down in a grunt, acquainting the latest nail with the rest of its family that would be spending a long time together, decades behind plasters, microfibers and more in the darkness behind a wall. The head met with the wood again like a kiss, leaving behind one hell of a hicky that was a dent. The sound it made was just one loud bang of many in that place. The screaming sounds of screw drivers, the thumping of mallets, the scratching as wall paint was scraped away. An entire room full of women, men, and an air so thick with dust and debris, they were lucky there hadn't been a window because the light of the early morning sun would have made it look like the smoke from a fire had been going.

It wasn't cheap construction work, but it also wasn't the most expensive either. Corners were cut, and costs were spared wherever they could be, and that translated to subpar tools that had the habit of breaking down before they could finish a contract job. That is if you could get them even to begin with. It had been month two that they had been waiting on a replacement set of nail guns, but all they got instead were reassurances they were coming, and brush offs out the door. His arm was going to fall off before the end of that shift if he didn't drown in his own forehead sweat first. It pooled inside his face mask and hung in beads off his nose as he took one heavy breath after the next.

They weren't building so much as they were renovating, repairing, and that building that had once been called the Fazbear pizzeria needed it something bad for years now. The carpeting was pulled up and stained, some floor tiles now missing, left dark, dirty sections beneath them. The windows were broken and the furniture, what had remained, had been heavy plastic tables full of scratches both undeliberate and otherwise. Hard wooden chairs lay toppled over the floor, a leg here and there broken that could be found somewhere inside the place, probably.

The front door had been forced open, its lock broken near completely off, and the many windows of the front entrance had been coated so thoroughly in dust that the morning sun which had been shining over them, gave a dirt brown feel to the place. The only natural light that been in that part of the store was from one of them that had been broken, the warm square of daylight shining against the grimy glass that lay in piles below it on the floor. It almost made them look like dirty little diamonds. Leaves long dried and rotting scattered the place in small piles having had years to congregate, various bits of plastic bags and other trash lodged into them.    

The place had been abandoned and most folks figured it was the owners skipping town, or one of them did at least. Who could blame them with all the problems it had seen. The pizzeria had been built like a rush job, more than a dozen families had caught some stomach bug from the pizza, a few winding up in a hospital for it. The parking lot had so many potholes you would think a new breed of gophers had come and made a family there. Then there was the light wiring through the whole place that would burn out leaving a foul rubbery smell in the air. Hell, you could still smell it there if you put your nose to the task for the kind of reward nobody wanted. It hadn't been the only Fazbear's Pizzeria restaurant, nor had it been the first. The reputation that came along with Henry Emily and William Afton haunted that town and was something most folks wanted to forget. There had been what they had called the bite of 83 with the young Afton boy. Terrible tragedy that all had been. Just terrible. And tragedy was what followed the Afton family name.  

There had also been the other business. The kind that had left yellow crime scene tape, fallen and long worn on the debris filled floors all around the building. Just one more thing to clean up, and as for the rest of it, well, it was probably for the best to leave the past where it belonged. Jones Cransby would know. He had seen the papers, had even been around still when every new shocking detail would somehow come out, one after the next, as if the horror would never stop. And he knew all the urban legends of that sick son of a bitch that had been William Afton. The things he had done to those children only to vanish without a trace, becoming a madman on the run before a fugitive on the loose, ready to strike any day again now, and finally into a kind of Boogeyman that owned the parks and streets late at night. Henry had left long ago, supposedly. But Afton would never be washed from that town. Never.

That kind of thing had the way of making the building and parking plot untouchable. Its price had gone down after that whole terrible business, and then again, and some more after that, year after year. Nobody wanted it. Maybe it was that the wounds of the past hadn't fully closed, and maybe they never would, or that perhaps the location had taken on a kind of miasma that loomed like a heavy, wet blanket over its missing and cracked roof tiles, only worsened by its decrepitness. Jones hadn't cared either way when he put the money down. The price had been just right, and he needed another project for eventual lease.

Jones Cransby was a man on the cusp of his late seventies, and his body showed this through every wrinkle along his face, and the wrinkles on his arms and neck. His hair had been near snow white, buzzed like a crew cut. He had small eyes that bunched up to his fat nose, and the man had been fat too,. It didn't bother Jones at all because he had the finest taste in steaks cooked rare and buttered potatoes with a full glass of beer. It was just about the only thing he ever forked a dollar over for when it came to anything else outside his work, the other exception being the cigs.

He'd made several purchases over the years similar to, if not laden with as much tragedy as the Fazbear's. After a lifetime of quick rich schemes and investments that sooner or later came to blow up in his face, Jones Cransby became the face of a renovator and plot entrepreneur, buying up and flipping the neglected and the unwanted haunted houses of business streets. And there was more than you might think in a place like that. If you were a man like Jones Cransby you would know. He had a straight forward way of speaking and a hardy laugh, and the elderly man's voice had a Texan accent so rich you could put a hat on his head and think he was a cowboy in a white, stained polo and pair of brown pants that were just about too tight around the waist.

You could usually find his hands on something somewhere, a wisp of tobacco smoke following behind him. There was hardly a time you couldn't see Jones without a cigarette in his mouth. He sucked the things down and finished packs on the daily as if it was the only way he could breathe air. He had lit a new one just then, taking a deep drag from the off brand stick before blowing it all out as he watched the construction crew do their work. They weren't the best he could find, but they were plenty cheap, and starting the kind of work on a place like this was anything but. They didn't work fast, but it saved him a couple grand so he had nothing to complain about. Sooner or later he'd get around to seeing it finished, and then he'd lease it and move on to the next just like all the others. Rinse and repeat.

One of the worker hands squeezed by him out the doorway, carrying a bin of cement scraps and dry wall chips. He hadn't known if it was the work being done or the smoke he was having, but Jones coughed hard and loud, thumping his chest as he walked away and down the hall to the music of the radio that blared Cyndi Lauper's Time after Time. They were all over the place, the work crew. They were hammering and drilling, tugging and pulling, lifting and throwing. He had nearly been walked into from one of the open doorways that was missing a door to go with it, two men lifting out a log of rolled up carpeting that left a trail of its flaking behind them. "Sorry Mr. Cransby." One of them had said, tipping their hard hat to him. "No problems here boys." He said with a smile before stuffing the cigarette back in his mouth and continuing down the hall as he shook his head.

He had just about been run into again as he turned a corner, stopping hard in his tracks and losing his cigarette to the floor. He had looked down, sighing with exasperation as it rolled up towards one of his shoes, and promptly stomped it. When he'd looked up again what he saw was a young man with long, curled hair, a blue denim jacket with matching pants, and a white t-shirt. He had been carrying a duffel bag on his back, gripping it as its strap hung over his left shoulder. "Woah, sorry about that!" the young man said. Jones looked him up and down before scratching at the rough stubble on his neck.

"Bit late to the party ain't ya? Well you can find some gloves somewhere I s'pose, but I wouldn't do none of it with that jacket." Tommy Nills hadn't dressed his best that day, or the one before that. In fact it was rare that he dressed clean at all. But the denim had kept him warm as He came off the bus before the sun rose that morning. He saw his breath in the air whenever he got caught in the headlights of a car driving down the streets he walked, now and again. He hadn't planned on staying long, though seldom did he just about any place he moseyed on into.

There wasn't anywhere special he was going. No final destination he kept in mind. But the roads were where Tommy kept walking, whether that meant by bus, some strangers car that stopped for him, or off the beaten path. He carried everything that he needed in the bag on his back. Everything except for what he needed the most, now more than ever. What had caught his attention off the sidewalk when he had been passing by. It had been taped to the buildings sign with a piece of cardboard, done up with duct tape and sharpie pen ink.

Looking for Electrician. Start pay $4.50 See Jones Cransby

It hadn't been the most attractive way of grabbing attention, but it did grab him. Tommy wasn't what you would call an electrician per say. You couldn't call him much of anything really if you wanted to see the papers for it. He hadn't gone to any trade schools, and he didn't have any professions. But what Tommy Nills had been was a jack of all trades who also just happened to have an itch for the next thing someplace else sooner than later. He had done many jobs, and been many things for the short time he did them. Mostly the kind of dirty work you would expect. Fixing pipes, cleaning cars, collecting trash. Hell, he'd even worked on a farm where all he did all day, every day, was shovel shit.

He had found however that he picked up a knack for fixing things along his travels. His hands were at their best when they were around things, electronic or otherwise, that he could examine, fix, and put back together again. " Oh no, I'm not here for that work, mister. There was a sign out front about an electrician? Would you know who Jones Cransby is around here?"

The old man chuckled with a wheeze and coughed into his hand. "Follow me to my office, son, and we can talk more about that bidness." He gestured for Tommy as he turned back and started down the hall. "You're Mr. Cransby then?" "As I live and breath, boy!" He said with a laugh.

The door had been shut to the office as Olivia Newton-John's Let's get physical had just started, the wooden frame having swollen in such a way it needed to take a shove a couple of times before staying closed and muffling the music. The office had been trashed like just about every other part of the building. The small windows on the wall near the ceiling that was oddly white brick, was the only light it got, and it showed just how grody and run down the room had been in its entirety. There had been holes in the walls, graffiti spray painted with names that couldn't possibly have ever made a lick of sense to anyone else but the one who made them in the first place.

Various splatters and discoloring stains littered the carpet, some of its patches having been missing like they were ripped right out and up from them. Out of all the dented files cabinets and busted shelves, broken lamps, and loose papers, it had looked like the desk had been just about the only thing that hadn't suffered. Not much any way.   

"Now then..." Jones sat into the dust covered chair on his side of the desk. He wet his lips and kept his mouth halfway opened as he breathed like a man caught perpetually at the part of a workout where you started to sweat. He had fished a packet from his pants and a lighter, pulling out a cigarette and holding it to his mouth before he looked back at Tommy. "Y'all mind?" He asked, and Tommy had no business saying no.

He lit up and took a deep breath before blowing out the fine ash in front of him, the air of the room quickly filling with the smell of unfiltered, burning Tobacco. He looked Tommy over again and flashed his stained yellow teeth of a grin. "You an electrician then?" Tommy nodded at his question, shrugging his bag off his shoulder and onto the floor. "Don't look like one." Tommy chuckled, looking down and checking his hands.

"And how is an electrician supposed to look, Mr. Jones?" He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, leaning back into his chair, and it cracked and whined with his weight. "Mr. Cransby. Please." He had already been halfway through the stick in less than a minute in. It was going to kill him sooner or later, the way he had been going, but he was willing to go down one hell of a good way. Tommy stiffened up and stopped smiling as he was corrected.

"Look more like you were running away. Ain't my business to need knowing. Only thing I need at the moment is them lights on. Think y'all can do that?"

The basement of what had been Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria had been something that you would call a full wide-awake nightmare waiting to happen to the poor bastard that ultimately got stuck with the job cleaning it someday. Its door had been a terrible, vibrant yellow with a red line through it. It had been metal and dented all over like someone had been trying to get in. Some of the paint had been peeling or scratched off revealing its dirty grey underneath. A rather heavy lock and big chains had been done around its handle, and that too had plenty of nicks and blows. But it ultimately had survived it all, finally giving in to the small copper key in Jones's hand.

Its depths were dark and black, the stairs made purely from white scratched cement. It had been like a freezer, cold as stone with the smell of something wet that shouldn't have been. A circle of light from the flashlight in Jones's hand danced along the rows of boxes and crates that had been thrown all around the place. It had looked to Tommy like the place had gone through an earthquake. The brick walls had cracks in them, snaking metal pipes busted and bent with sections missing that had fallen down onto wooden boxes that had exploded with the force, their contents spilling out.

There were mounds of plastic bags torn open, tall metal shelves toppled over one another like giant dominoes. Buttons and pins, shirts crumpled and wrinkled to the point that Tommy could just vaguely make out the face of a bear, or something like a bear. The light had drawn over a large hole in the wall. By the way the surrounding bricks had been, embedded into the nearby boxes, it had looked as if something had exploded out from the wall. Maybe a pipe had ruptured or some gas line had burst. He had tripped over a wet sign cone that he hadn't seen, smacking his head in a pile of deflated basketballs.

Jones had helped him up with a firm grip, grunting with a chuckle before he yanked Tommy back on his feet. "Damn lucky you fell there like you did." He said, pointing his flashlight down one of the room's corner. He could barely make out the glint of various metal wires, gears, and rods that stabbed out of the opened crates and in between. A mass of metal parts and components that lay scattered with the rest of the junk that had been stored in that eerie place.

When he had reached the breaker on the wall, Jones had handed the flashlight over. Tommy grunted and yanked the heavy panel off, lowering it before letting go altogether to the ground at his feet with a loud bang. He murmured under his breath as he looked it over, the light off Jone's lighter only adding his own while the man started another cigarette. The old man stood there for a moment, squinting his eyes and looking around them, barely making out the shapes in the darkness. For just a second it had sounded like something had been rattling down there, moving.

"Alright, I see your problem here." Tommy had said, and after he reached out and snapped each red and black switch, the lights in the basement had flashed on in a bright orange before flickering and going out again. At least the lights upstairs were still working. They cast down the walls and stairs from the doorway, giving some small hope yet for the place. "Ah hell, I could have gone and done that kind of jackass work!" Jones had started up and laughed as he headed back for the stairs. "At least you know yer way around the box, and that's a start! Come on boy, I think you have y'self a job!"

They had been watching when the door had opened. Hidden in the mountains of trash and mechanical parts both broken and used. They had been sustained there in that darkness, barely functional but not completely so. A cable had run up and into their back, if you could call what had been left even a back anymore. It had been pulled from the wall long ago, exposed copper wiring giving the faintest flow of electricity. Not enough to power a light bulb but just enough for them to have done little more than remain there. Awake, trapped and aware for all that time in silence before the sounds of the upper floors vibrated and loudly thumped with movement and life again for the first time in so many years.

When the older man had looked their way, they thought he had seen them staring back, and they were all too relieved that he hadn't. It would make things far, far easier. When they felt that small flow of electricity in them become a surging rush of power that flowed all throughout the Pizzeria again, it gave them exactly what they had been waiting for. They would wait a while longer, but they knew who had given them the power they were now feeding on and would eventually free them again. They watched him and took in all the features, the long hair, the jacket, and his voice. They would meet when no one else was around. When he was most alone. They could wait. They had already been waiting.

======Chapter 2========

The bulb of the ceiling light in the office had hummed with such an insistence, you would have thought a swarm of bees had been stuck under the glass, impatiently waiting to get out. Jones swatted the smoke that had lingered in the air in front of him as if it would make any difference when he had just about saturated the entirety of the room with it by then. The chair squeaked and rattled as he readjusted his weight in it, the thing suffering a new kind of torture and abuse from the man's shifting ass. "There aint no contracts you sign, and I don't do checks. Don't like the paperwork. Wastes good time and saves me ink. You do the work honest and fair, and I pay you honest and fair."

It made enough sense, and Tommy was more than happy to keep from any objections when it kept the paper trail off his back. Made things easier when it came to him moving on. "Four fifty, that's ya pay. You got a car son?" Of course he hadn't. The only side of the car Tommy ever rode in was the passenger, taking him wherever it took him. "No sir."

"Figured as much. Now I'll supply ya with the necessities but when you make that list, you check it three times. I don't waste my money nor my time, which is more money. Keep it small and keep it cheap." The man was an absolute penny pincher, and Tommy already hadn't liked him for a lot of reasons so far that morning. He was obnoxious, a sleaze, and had most likely given Tommy a couple jumps closer to lung cancer by sheer proximity alone. But he wasn't there for personality, and as long as the money came through, Tommy could bite down on whatever he had to chew.

"Just point me in a direction and I'll get to it, Mr. Cransby." Jones had looked absolutely pleased, most likely the man got off on hearing his own name that way. "Man with no questions. I like that. Keeps things real simple." He had just about been out of his seat before he paused, staring out somewhere Tommy could not see, his eyes bulging with the look of a snake that had just spotted a rat and was about to strike. He sat back down with a loud grunt, returning his stare back at Tommy as he flashed a large toothy grin.

"Son, you ain't from around these parts are ya?" He took a final, large suck from his smoke before rubbing it out on his desk. "No sir."

"There's something, 'eh, special about this buildin' you sitting in here now." He chuckled in his seat as he stretched his sagging wrinkly arms behind his head. "What, skeletons in the closet?" Tommy had asked and Jones seemed rather tickled by that. "Let's just say it has a colorful history and leave it at that. Now the door needs fixin' and I aint getting no help til Tuesday so I figuring somebody to watch the place at night now as we get fixin her up. Y'ever work grave shift? See, I been staying here the past week with all the work going on here. Shoot, I even got a setup where I's sleeps sometimes when the boys aint' hollering and hammering. The ways I see's it, you'd be the stone killing two birds here."

"No thanks. I'm no night worker."

Jones had wet his lips again, rubbing his eyes in minor thought. "Got ya a cot I been using in one of them cleaner rooms. Don't got anywhere yet, do ya, son?" He had said in between his smokers breath. "Give ya pay and a half during those night hours." It had been his final offer. Jones had already been paying low by two thirds for the position and could still come out ahead saving a great ton more if he just got the man to agree.

"...I'm good." Tommy had left it at that, and Jones just shrugged, taking a deep sigh that threatened another coughing fit. "Well I got you on at least and that's the main thing. What's your name, son?" Jones had reached out his hand over the desk. "Tommy Nills." Jones's grip was firm as he shook Tommy's hand, painful even, and he nearly shook his arm off before heading promptly to the door that was Tommy's exit for some desperately needed fresh air. He had been holding the strap of his bag as he sat there, hesitation creeping up his back.

He hardly had the money as it was when he'd gotten off that bus. Truth is actually that Tommy hadn't got the kind of money for a hamburger let alone night's stay some place. He didn't budget wisely and he didn't think ahead as was his lifestyle; and that always had a way of winding up and biting Tommy hard on the ass sooner or later like it was now. He could sometimes make due when he found some bench or place to sleep a couple hours, but it was going to be cold out there that night. Cold enough to see your breath, and cold enough to freeze your eyelids shut.

"Mr. Cransby?" The old man had already been yanking at the door, pulling it open with a loud thud before he turned to him with a heaving breathing. "About that grave shift...that still on the table?"

Tommy whistled as his eyes surveyed the room, holding both his hands on the back of his head while he took in the sight. There hadn't been one spot in the whole place that was spared from the years of neglect and abuse. The kitchen had mostly been empty of its original equipment, leaving behind a history of oil and grime that would forever be caked on its tiled floors. Whatever had remained was beyond hope of any repairman being able to fix. There had been an oven whose door had been yanked off, the inside stuffed with beer bottles, trash, and broken glass. Its knobs were all yanked out, the surface top bent inward as if someone had done a hundred pound belly flop down on it.

The walls had been their own horror show, done in the makeup of veritable hand paints and graffiti of animals, robots, philosophical musings and poorly drawn dicks. Large sections of it towards the ceiling had been missing. Long lines where cables had once been tucked behind, were now cracked and empty holes, the handiwork most likely of some junkies looking for copper to rip from the place. Cabinets had fallen or been pulled down from where they were once fixed.  Now Broken, cracked, and filled with crushed beer cans and plastic like a poor man's treasure chest for the homeless. The place was thoroughly trashed and it smelled faintly like shit.

It was an absolute haven fit for the dregs of society, vagabonds, squatters, and the criminally insane. To Tommy, it had been the worst room yet that he had seen on the quickly daunting tour. And he knew one way or another he would be back in that room eventually. The lights hadn't been functioning. He was going to have his work cut out for him and then some.

Some of the ceilings fixtures in the hall had blown out, likely from years of dust that had settled and whatever rodent found them satisfying to chew upon up in the ceiling gap. The thought made Tommy shudder imagining the time when he'd get around to poking his head around up there eventually. He didn't take rats too well, especially when the beady, black eyed things went scurrying. They were small, god willing, fast and usually numerous wherever they found a new home. And there was no doubt in his mind that what had once been Freddy Fazbear's Pizzaria had been converted in secrecy to rat city. The bathrooms were better left not being mentioned, the security office sectioned off from the main floor. It had sat nearest to the dilapidated stage area, divided by a single wall between, and not much further down the hall from Jones's office in progress.

Even without all the damage and signs of life that had once called the place home, the security office had been an eerie and confusing sight. It had two doors on either of it, length wise. One had been jammed, caught in an eternal fall sticking out from its frame. The other had been sealed, with a large upward dent near its bottom as if someone had unsuccessfully tried a crowbar at it. Probably got their hand busted for the trouble too. Windows sat on either side next to them, loops and circles of various scratches run across their surface. They weren't the kind that you could easily break with something like a baseball bat. Probably a bullet couldn't have even gotten through it, but a way had still been found to ruin them both as those scratches obscured most of what could hoped to have be seen through the glass.

He had tried to see past those scratches into the darkness of the window into the other side of the sealed door and could faintly make out the shapes of garbage bags and cardboard tubing. There had been a rather large black desk that had taken up most of the room, its drawers missing, having been pulled out. Its bottom right leg had been cracked in, and various scraps of papers and rolled up wrappers had filled most of the top. A single, small monitor had been caught in the gap between the desk and wall, its glass front broken open and revealing its dust covered insides.  

A single lamp had hung from the ceiling loosely, its light still functional and dim so that it gave the room a claustrophobic glow. Tommy couldn't help but notice a crumpled crayon drawing of a chicken on the top of the desk. There had actually been a few of them. Kids drawings of purple rabbits, a fox that was a pirate probably, and a bear with a black top hat. He had shook a layering of debris off a bent and curling newspaper. It had been nearly seven years old, bits and pieces had been torn away, the faded black ink barely legible in some sections of the column.

"Missing Children" had been the lead having taken up most of its upper page space. He had recognized what had been in the photo, a black and white picture of a rabbit, a fox, and a bear. Animatronics just like in the kids drawings. He recognized the same name that had been fading on the broken sign in the parking lot.

"A kid died here?" Jones who had been busy pawing over a desk fan he had fished out from beneath a pile of tarp, looked over Tommy's shoulder and saw the paper, taking a deep breath before coughing and shaking his head. "Not here, no. Not this one, but there had been a death. A few even. One of the owners who originally built the place, William Afton, a real sick freak. Took some kids and stuffed 'em in a couple of those animatronic animals they used for shows there. Mashed them right in." He had slapped his hands together as if to punctuate the morbid story. "Never found the bastard. Just went up in smoke! Yeah, no sir, folks don't plan to forget that business here." He waved his hands as he turned away and out of the room.

"Some say the animatronics walked around on their own at night. Souls of those kids in them looking for the man who gone and did what he did to 'em. Imagine that though, families eating pizza while they watch a stage full of metal suits dancing and singing, hiding the bodies."

"Jesus...What about this place? Any stuff happen here?" Jones had stopped in his tracks, Tommy almost running into his back as the man wiped the sweat off his forehead and began a wheezing set of breaths. He hadn't looked back at Tommy when he said it.

"No. No things here. Come on, I'll show ya your sleeping spot."

The cot had been bent around the lower middle, its fabric lightly torn so that some of it sagged. A small pillow and wool blanket had been draped over its edge, shoved against the wall in the corner. An off red cooler covered in scratches and dirty fingerprints had been at the foot of it. It hadn't been a large room, with an even smaller closet that was filled with empty boxes, a few having collapsed outside of it already. Besides a couple tables and furniture that had been poorly stacked and laid on top of each other on the other end of it, the room hadn't actually looked that bad. Not decent, but certainly not bad. The carpet had been thin and purple, littered with cigarette butts, small portions burnt away around the makeshift bed.

It could have been a break lounge once maybe. Wood and granite chips had been left in great indentations that lined the back wall's rug. A set of pipe holes having been left that had once connected to a sink line, a darkened stain running down the wall and pooling in a small black discolored puddle. It had a window but it was long since boarded up, lines of light slipping through the wooden cracks.

"I'll just let you get settlin' in here. There's some beer in the box if you wanting, so help yourself. You do what you have to but I'll be seeing you round' six." Tommy had dropped his bag before the door closed, allowing him the privacy of his rummaging as he dug in. He had cautiously sat in the cot, feeling the scratchy metal poke at his hand before he rested his back on it. The pillow had smelled like cigarettes, and Tommy didn't hesitate to throw it someplace else before unwrapping a Snickers and sighing. That smell was starting to make him sick. As far as places to stay went, it had probably been the worst, but it would beat the streets that night, he was certain.

When he'd crumpled and stuffed the candy wrapper into his pocket and settled in, he attempted to have what sleep he could get as more than half the building sounded like it was falling down around him. "You slept on buses, you can sleep through this." He had murmured with his eyes closed, fingers of light running along his eyes and face from the window boards. He hadn't been aware that one of the roof tiles had been ajar in that same room. A small blackness that the things which watched him hid in stillness within. They would continue to watch without disturbance as he entered into a shallow, restless sleep through that afternoon, creeping away as the others who had been in the building left, one by one with less and less daylight.

If the asphalt of the parking lot had gotten one more crack in it, Tommy was sure it would break off and float away from there like an ice shelf. They were as various as they were wide and deep. A fact reinforced as he listened to Mr. Jones's wheels bounce in and out of them, slapping the man's arm, that had been hanging outside his window to wave, right into the frame a couple of times before he had given up and finally pulled onto the road, driving in the direction of the falling sunset in a black cloud of smoke. The lot had been filled with four large dumpsters, three of them already full of the things that had come from the bowels of the building that day.

It had cleaned up nice actually, even if it still had a long way to go. The seating area had looked a lot bigger than it initially had with all the tables, chairs, and piles of leaves that filled the place that morning and now found their new home in the dumpsters outside. There had been lines of garbage still left, dragged towards the door, but at least you could see most of the floor now. The overhead lights had been blinking as Tommy walked on up the steps of the stage to check it over. The curtains had been a lavishing and deep red. Torn and if he had to guess from a rather large stain, pissed on at some point. Parts of its floor had been broken in, leaving what had looked like open screaming mouths in the wood.

There had been a couple of large green trash bins hidden behind it, set in front of a door whose exit sign glowed red against the wall, and whose gaps were sealed by some kind of thick cement. The handle had been broken off, a line of more of the stuff drawn against it in a slash. There had been a large shape of a smiling rabbit head with a bow tie spray painted in blue that bled against the wall near it. Its eyes were wide, its large cheeks puffed out with a human toothed smile. There had been writing beside it.

Afton's gonna get you.

Tommy popped the lid off the bottle, taking a deep swig of the cool beer. It filled his mouth with the bitter taste of barley and and hop hitting his tongue with an earthy foam. A taste he usually wasn't that fond of, but seeing as he had some good luck and fortune being there that night, he figured it was a thing worth celebrating. The taste went to the back of his throat and rose up to his nose, much to his increasing displeasure. The ice had nearly all melted, and by the time Tommy had finished the bottle with a disgusted smack of his lips, he was already a bit fuddled. Just enough to at least enjoy it.  

The hallways had taken on a much eerier look to them at night. Black and white check board patterns on them dashed on ahead to meet corners and continue onward out of sight beyond darkened doorways. Most of the lights had been working out there, even some of them that had come loose with exposed wire. His pen scribbled haphazardly across the blue lines of the notepad he had been holding. There hadn't been any floor plans he could use, so Tommy had been making his own half-drunk map of the place, room after room again as he clicked wall outlets, flipped light switches, and pulled out wall plugs to eye the connectors.

They had traveled along the blackened, thin passageways in between the walls. Scratching their body or what had been left of it around posts and nails. It had felt wonderful, having such freedom again. Navigating around the bent framework and things long rotting, dragging the full weight of their form with all the power they had once again. And they had known he was there and only him. Awake, alone. They had been following, and it was time.

There had been a torn desk chair in the security office that he righted and sat in. As he leaned back into the exposed cotton, he took in just how odd a room it truly had been. What in the possible hell kind of security had they needed here? He wondered this as he set down his pad and reached for monitor, tugging it across the table to look inside. It had been coated with the shard of dust and glass that had been broken in, sections of its internal boards having cracked with bent capacitors. The whole place had been one crime scene after the next, and its victims had been things like that aplenty.

A mass slaughtering of white lines in the shapes of broken speakers, smashed registers, and ruptured appliances that consumed that place. Their only crime that they had been there at the wrong time. Tommy hadn't liked most people for things like this, for where he was and why. The building had suffered the indignity of abandonment and neglect, further humiliated as its windows were broken and its doors forced open. Having to endure the last of any dignity it had left as trespasser after trespasser robbed it of the last semblances of what it had once been made for.

They had to leave their names on the walls, carve their moments into the carpets, and break monitor screens for the rage or fun or whatever it was that got them off in places like this. That's probably why he was so drawn to repairing things like he did. Fixing the damage that had been done. Making amends for the abandonment, the neglect, and the violence that had a way of coming out of people. Society had failed them, and they had failed the building, possibly just one before the next as they wandered on like Tommy did the roads.

Tommy didn't stick around anywhere long because he got to tossing himself out first before someone else did. So his life didn't wind up like ripped up carpets, or his heart like broken pipes. It was better that way. Always was and would be. He had leaned into the chair and let out a long sigh as he set the small monitor back on the desk, rubbing his eyes before feeling  the light crumbs of the ceiling falling down and across his face. He had opened them.

Tommy hadn't been sure what he had been looking at. A large hole in the ceiling, a panel missing. Pitch black darkness, and the faint realization that something was moving around inside. At first he had thought it was a light bulb, the way it had been with it's yellow glow, but it had been too large, and it was swaying. He could hear the sound now up there, this kind of scratching like running sand paper over metal. He had considered that maybe it had been a hanging lamp that had been left up there, until the true nature of what been within the ceiling revealed itself to him at long last.

It had slithered out from that cold darkness into the dim light of the room as a nightmare, the black nose of its rounded pink snout pressing out. A single glowing yellow eye upon its face for it had been missing the other as the rest of it came. It had looked like a fox, or something that had been a pale imitation of a fox. Scratched, dirty, wires running down its face. Rows of cone shaped teeth clacked together as its lower jaw snapped repeatedly against its upper as if it were chewing something Tommy could not see. And it traveled down to him, its neck horrifyingly elongated like some metallic body of a snake wrapped in bolts and springs. He had started from the chair suddenly with a yell as he scrambled to his feet. Its eye fully opened along with its wide mouth in a silent scream, and Tommy would swear that he had seen a second set of teeth buried deeper inside, before it yanked itself back once more into the ceiling and that darkness again.

======Chapter 3========

Jones Cransby was frugal by every definition of the word. He was a frugal businessman who lived in the cheapest one bedroom apartment in the cheapest part of town. He slept on the cheapest kind of mattress whose spring had dug into his back each night for the past 15 years. The mugs in his kitchen that he drank from were all plain Jane ceramic, his coffee black with no sugar or cream always. The way Cransby pinched his pennies in his golden years, you would think his mother had rationed his applesauce when he was still in diapers.

He hadn't married, had no kids, and the only people he ever caught up with were the kind that could make things happen for his projects, and he was a man whose projects would not end until he finally did. He drove around town in a brown Pinto wagon that hadn't seen a good wash in the last couple years, let alone an actual checkup longer than that. It didn't always cooperate and it had a mighty fine kick back when it started sometimes but it got him places he needed to go, leaving a black sheet of exhaust behind. That morning the pizzeria was its first stop.

He pulled into the parking lot with the loud sounding of his engine, the various pieces of gravel ground beneath the wheels as he came to a rolling stop. The place was still standing, and that was a good start. Nothing looked out of place, well, relatively speaking, as he walked through the door, lighting up as he went down the hall. The construction crew would be on in a couple hours, and a mighty fine job they had already been doing. Soon enough he would be able to walk the place without stepping over something or another. Yes, it was shaping up to be a mighty fine morning. That is until he couldn't get into his office no matter how hard he pushed and shoved his shoulder into it.

He was just about to put his full weight into it with one final charge when it had been yanked open from the other side. It had been that Nills boy, piles of bulky and heavy junk at his feet as he stood there with the look of someone who had just seen Jesus himself and discovered he was a Christian.

When Jones had heard Tommy recount what he had seen last night, the encounter in the security room and how he had barricaded himself in that office all night, he thought the kid had been tweaking. He certainly had that look in his eyes like he was on something at least. When Tommy had finally finished, Jones just stared at him from the seat, his brows furrowing as he took in a breath of his cigarette.

"I see...now, how were the beers I had left ya last night?"

"Well they were okay but I wouldn't...hey, hey now you just wait a minute there." Tommy had risen sharply from his chair, putting one hand on the desk while pointing his finger with every word he made thereafter.

"Now I may have had a light buzz going but I know what I saw was real! And what I saw up in that ceiling was a on eyed dog or wolf, or whatever that thing was! And I am telling you is it probably still there!" His voice had risen a few decibels by the time he had finished, and Jones Cransby looked like he hadn't heard a word of it. He took his cigarette from out of his mouth and blew a lungful as his eyes looked back and forth up at the ceiling. He licked his lips. "Don't see anything now."

His tone had been arrogant, half a grin showing on the old prick's lips and it just about had Tommy seeing nothing but red. What he had encountered and seen that night had been the scariest thing he had ever before experienced in his life. It had spooked him something so fierce that he hadn't even chanced himself making it to the front door before it grabbed him, yanking his shoes up off the floor, his head in its wide mouth as it dragged him up into the panels. He had held himself up in that office all night, the one spot in that building that had bricks for a ceiling, and braced whatever he could against the door, listening and waiting for something terrible that never came.

He had been shaking there in his shoes as he stared wide eyed with incredulous contempt for all that he had been through. He knew how crazy it had sounded. Hell, he thought he was crazy spitting it all out like he did, but Tommy Nills had seen something that night that he would never forget in his worst nightmares. But seeing that look on Mr. Jone's face, Tommy didn't know whether to storm out of that office and get the hell out of that place, or full on knock him square in the jaw right where he sat.

Jones had pulled out and begun rummaging through one of the drawers to shortly pull out what had looked like a faded metal box whose red paint had chipped off on its edges. He unhatched and swung it open with a loud creak before he reached it and pulled out a handful of papery crisp green bills. He shifted the cigarette between his lips like a baby teething on a pacifier as he began counting out the money in front of him. He laid a small stack down neatly, putting the rest back in before slamming it shut. He pushed the short stack over the desk his way.

"Last night's pay," He breathed out. "And a three hundred bonus." Tommy didn't know how to receive that. He just darted his eyes down at the desk then back at Mr. Jones.

"Well that's...that's mighty decent of you, Mr. Cransby." His voice had that inch of anger that was still lingering, but it was fading fast as he sat back in his chair in retreat.

"I can be a generous man, Nills. When I have the right agreeable people doing the job." He slid the stack closer, and Tommy's fingers had nearly reached it before Jone's hand came down hard on it again. Tommy took in an air full of smoke as the man leaned uncomfortably close over the desk at him.

"So's we have an understandin'. I want you to consider this here a sort of...a hire-on bonus advancement. You take this money, and you're in it for the long haul, boy. Maybe you seen a dog and maybe you didn't but as far's I can tell y'aint got one scratch on ya. So I don't want no more talk about some ceiling hounds unless you missin' an arm. So you tell me, son. You seen any wolves up on the roofs lately?"

It was all calculated and obvious, the words he had chosen, clear as the hard stare on the man's face. It was purely out of character for Jones, and it even pained him pulling that kind of money that he had. But he had plans that needed doing, and even if boy had been a tweeker or some nutjob, he had at least enough sense in him to get those things started and more. He'd get his return out of all this and then some by the end of it.

Tommy had audibly gulped in front of the man, his throat suddenly dry. It was a decent amount of money. More than he could make in a month even. That alone could carry him seven stops over. But it wasn't just that easy. It wasn't just hundreds of dollars, it was a bait with one massive catch of a hook in it. And Jones Cransby would have that hook halfway into his back if he said yes. For how long was anyone's guess.

He had looked the man in his squinting eyes and asked straightly. "What's a wolf, Mr. Cransby?"

Jones gave him front row seats to the show that was his yellow teeth in one big smile. "What's a wolf? What's a-" He had began his wheezing before the old man laughed, coughing into his same hand that had its clawing hold over the money. " That's why I like you, Nills! Know where your priorities are at!" Tommy had folded and slipped the money into his pocket, feeling just as dirty as they probably were. An ugly feeling was weighing on his back that he hadn't felt in a long time. Tommy Nills was stuck.

"Now about that list I wanted you fixin'..." Tommy had realized he had forgotten it in the happenings last night. "Yeah, I got it on the desk back in...the security office." The thought alone of heading back in that room ran a cold wind up and down his spine. "Well let's see it then! Time's a wastin', Pronto!"

Tommy had stuck his head into the room like a rat might as it got closer to a snap trap. Half expected to get his head grabbed and his neck snapped in a hold like a great metal line clamping down on in one swift motion. But There hadn't been anything waiting for him in there. No evidence of anything that had gone on. He stared in disbelief up at the ceiling again. Every tile had been in place, and it had left Tommy wondering if any of what he had seen actually happened. Had he really been that tipped last night? He hadn't felt that he was, but even now there was a kind of fogginess that was clouding his full remembering of it. It could have been from the lack of sleep all night. Maybe it really had been some kind of nightmare he had found in that chair, dozing off and getting carried away with it when he woke up.

Everything about the place had been off putting the way it had been already, and the night didn't make it any prettier. He could live with the answer. It at least made some solid kind of sense compared to what other truth it could have possibly been. He snatched the notepad, happier to try and forget, and still having a hard time believing it.

No matter how long or hard he tried, Tommy couldn't sleep that morning as he laid there in the cot. The noise of the workers had been one thing, but his wandering thoughts had been another. It hadn't just been all of what happened last night in his head. It was also the money, the idea of sticking around there longer than he ever had intending. And the more he tried to push that back for a moment's rest, it would just come washing over him and interrupting any chance he had at closing his eyes. He had been a walking contradiction that morning. Tired but not able to sleep. Hungry but not wanting to eat. He found some comfort grabbing a pair of gloves and giving the room a sweeping.

He'd nearly rolled one of the heavy wooden tables into a couch through the hallway, struggling to fit its shape out of the front doors as it banged against the metal frame's top. He tugged and ripped at the tape, folded and even stomped at the cardboard boxes that had been in the room's closet until there had been nothing left but a yellow and crusted white rag crumpled in its bottom corner. It got flung into a bag and any other piece of trash he could find, stuffing the poor thing to the absolute brim before he slung in over his shoulder and walked it out.

He'd felt a little better that afternoon, even if he was still tired as hell. Mr. Jones had came and went, driving off to who knows where else his business carried him. But wherever it did, there was no doubt it would leave a black trail in the air as a warning sign to others on the road. Tommy had managed a hammer that had been left lying around, yanking and pulling at the nails of the boards that had been over the window. And they wobbled with a series of loud squeaks like small animals having been yanked from their homes, falling to the carpet in a small pile. The light that filled that room gave it a much warmer look, but the other side of the glass didn't exactly afford what you would call a mountain vista's voice.  

The small portion of the lot that had been there was just as run down as the front. A tall brown gate surrounded the lot, hiding everything else other than the sky from its view. It was an odd sight to Tommy that moment, the way it cut away just about every other thing that could possibly exist of that town. As if nothing else could be outside that lot, and nothing more beyond its faded white dividers, overturned trash cans, and long dead trees. He could feel the cold coming off the glass as he held his hand against it, watching as a small tornado of leaves began in the starting winds, rushing to slap into the other side before falling and getting carried off elsewhere. It oddly felt peaceful, and Tommy could see an actual smile in the reflection of his face on it.  

He had taken off his jacket as he laid back into the cot. Covered it over his eyes with a deep sigh as he shifted into the uncomfortably stiff material before shortly and finally getting some sleep.

It had been foolish that they revealed themselves the way they did. Foolish in so many ways that could have ruined everything before it had even begun. They hadn't been strong enough or in any condition to have shown themselves but they had. It had pained them when they  heard his yelling, how he had stared at them with such horror and fear. It was enough to keep them back in that basement another ten years or longer. But they could not help themselves even now as they watched him sleep, staring from the loose tiling. They had heard him through the walls, doing as the others had been doing. They could not understand this fixation that had come over them about the man. Though they would still be watching, they would do so at a distance from there on, even if it pained them still in ways they could not recognize.

"See you went and did some redecorating. Not bad son. Definitely saves me from having the boys having to clean it." Mr. Jones chuckled as he set down the bags of wire spools and bulbs. Tommy had begun going through them and mumbling words only he could hear as he pulled out cutters and end clippers, insulation gloves and a dry wall saw. It wasn't everything he would need, but it could at least cover the preliminary work. The way Mr. Jones had scrimped out on the tools, Tommy was grateful he even fished out a voltage tester, because she sure as well wasn't doing it with his fingers. "There's a drill and some bits tucked in the bottom drawer in mah office if you be needing it. Sure you can find a chisel around here some place if ya look hard enough."

He saw Jones off to his car for the last look at the sun he would see that day. Watched as the man started the roaring engine alive again, near screaming that it had been given life once more. Jones had stuck his head out of the car's window with a big grin on his tired face.

"You just stay away from any hounds now, boy! Y'hear?" He said with a laugh that sputtered out like the exhaust pipe of his Pinto. Tommy had given him a false laugh and a fake smile, waving his hand in the air real friendly like. "Of course sir, Mr. Cransby! Safe driving!" When he turned back towards the entryway he muttered under his breath. "Jackass."

He hadn't had a drink that night, if not just for the experience it had left him with last time, but that truly and unreservedly, it was crappy beer. A portable radio had been left on a pile of flat boards outside one of the doorways while he carried his bags around. He had caught a glimpse of the entirely stripped room, and to Tommy it had looked like the kind of thing you saw only in solitary. Featureless, grey, and certain sections missing to reveal the chewed away and rotting wood that had sat hidden for all those years beneath. The floor had been covered in overlaying sheets of clear plastic, various whitened and thick splatters caught upon its surface for the day.

The radio came on with a push of his finger, blaring so loudly that it near blew out his eardrums from the sudden screeching drag of metal guitar strings and yelling vocals that shot out of its speakers like bullets of pure sound. He'd yanked the nob all the way, bringing the pounding noise down like he was trying to bring down his heart, and began chuckling as he searched for a station that called to him. Guns N' Roses's Sweet Child of Mine, Don't Stop Believing by Journey, Survivor's Eye of The Tiger. He'd well lost interest by the time he heard the midpoint of The Police's Every Breath You Take, and switched it back off, welcoming the silence of the night again. And what a night it had been for Tommy as he discovered how much of a fight he was just beginning with Freddy's. It had been a total rush job. An absolute maze of cable lines caught on nails, disjointed and connected where needed through frayed wiring that hadn't even been wrapped or insulated. It was a miracle the place hadn't caught on fire not just once alone but fifteen time over, the things he saw in those rooms.

He'd been back and forth down the stairs of the basement, working in the circular glow of his flashlight as he shut the power down. There hadn't been any signs for any of the breaker switches and which sections of the store they belonged to. If there had been one wish following him that night, it was Tommy getting his hands around the neck of whoever had okayed any of the work he was now cleaning up after. He had been taking a break, his back against one of the bathroom doors as he sat on the floor. A bit of dry wall had clung to both arms of his jacket like a field of small snowflakes.

There hadn't been a word for the kind of feeling that had crept upon and washed over Tommy as he sat there, staring into his flashlight. What had gotten him off his feet and down the hall towards the security room. He didn't know what he was expecting or what good it would do him if he ever got an answer. But the image of that thing he had seen last night was still so clear in his mind. So vivid and ingrained like it had been burned into his skull like the bright light of that eye. Maybe it had been a nightmare and maybe he was drunk off his rockers off only one bottle of beer but he didn't want to believe he was going crazy somehow in that place. He sat in the chair with a loud squeak, looking up at the ceiling that hadn't changed. He traced his eyes along it, back and forth.

It had been quiet. So quiet even that he could hear the winds picking up outside as they whistled against every crack and crevice that let the icy air in. The sound of new leaves finding their way into the store to dance its counters and halls. Tommy could even hear the near quiet crumpling of the plastic bag full of his tools. He had waited in that room in darkness, the shine of his flashlight aimed at the ceiling like a spotlight at the world's smallest premier. It was only him in that place. It had always only been him. "If you're there, I'm back!" He yelled out, and only silence replied.

The building seemed to groan as if it were telling Tommy that it was trying to sleep. There was a relief in knowing once and for all that there had been nothing. There was also a kind of disappointment, as if he had crossed with something unnatural, without a place in that world, and now it was already gone. But then he heard it. That sound again like various sandpaper pads rubbing into metal. Could hear the heavy dragging behind the ceiling tiles that creaked, letting down sprinkles of dust through the air. And then one moved. Tommy watched in a mixture of astonishment and returning fear as it was lifted and dragged open. And he had seen it staring down at him from up there. The yellow glow of an eye in the darkness.

He had slowly gotten up from the chair like a man might approaching a dangerous animal, a single step being all he got before it retracted away back out of sight. Almost as if it was...afraid of him as he had been of it. He could hear it retreating away from the room. "Hey!...Come back!" He couldn't believe he had called for it. Had covered his mouth even from the shock of realization. The snout had pressed into the room cautiously, the full face of what it had been attached to soon lowering through the air with it. He couldn't have believed his eyes at what he truly had been seeing. Had it actually understood him? It was metallic in skin and plastic that dotted sections of its face. Pink and white ears, a scratched up maw that hung open as if its jaw had been dislocated.

It had bulbous metal on its cheeks like blush of faded red, the same as the red on its lips giving the appearance that the thing had been dolled up. Its one yellow eye clicked and snapped closed, fluttering metal eyelashes as its jaw snapped shut. It had looked almost like a cartoon character, a fox that was like a clown. But what was it?

Another part of it had slipped out of the ceiling as he stood there in distracted thought, bending and snapping in the air towards him like a busted tube, and Tommy had realized far too late as it came closer that at its end there had been a four fingered padded glove. Its dirty and torn cotton spilling out as it fully opened and reached for him.

======Chapter 4========

It had held its hand there in front of his face, ears twitching up and down. Its body, if it could be called such a thing, had appeared as an elongated set of metal tubes and caged housing. A bending black metal spine so housed in various drooping and pulling cables that he could hardly begin to understand where the thing ended and began. It had been shaking as if the very gesture was straining for it, filling the room with the sounds of scraping metal and bending springs. It was a machine, that much was fairly obvious now, but the way it had looked...who would make something like this, and why? Had it actually been trying to make contact with him?

His hand had been sweaty as he reached back and braced himself as it closed around his fingers with a stiff shake before letting go once more. He smiled a little in awe. It really had been a robot of some kind. "My name is Tommy." His words had come slowly, gesturing to himself. Its mouth had begun flapping open and closed, its eye snapping all around the room. The fear had begun to fade, beginning a newfound curiosity that Tommy had never quite felt before. He leaned in to see the finer details, the texture of its metal, and the damage that had been done to its face. It hadn't liked any of it, snapping so quickly away from him that the fox's head hit the wall and seized up. "Hey, hey, woah! It's fine! I'm not going to hurt you!" He didn't know what to do, backing away and kneeling down on one of his knees as he kept his arms raised. The motors in its neck clicked and ground, its head twitching with a high pitched whine before it began pulling away and back into the hole.

"There's no use trying to talk to her, bud. Her voice box is broken." What Tommy had at first thought to be a speaker box attached to a fibrous cable line surrounded in a bulbous metal frame, grew into a greater enigma as it slithered through the air and down to him. If you had ever been to a dentist office before, chances are you had seen one of those models of a mouth. The kind you could open to see every tooth in it. The thing that had been speaking to Tommy Nills in the darkness of the security office that night had looked like just such a thing. A mouth full of metallic teeth attached to what had been reminiscent of the idea of a face. Where a nose should have been had instead been a slot connecting a ring which sat around its head. A single yellow eye sat on the left side of its face, the right, a damaged pair of colored cables pulled from a hole so that they drooped down its face.

Small mechanical nubs on either side of its head rose and turned animatedly with the gears beneath it, running against one another loudly. They had appeared almost like little horns so that it gave the impression it were a little metal devil that had spoken to him.

"You can..talk?" The pink plastic shell around its eye had slid over it, covering it completely before snapping open once more in a hard blink. "Sure can! My name is Bonnie Beledeer, and this here is my buddy, Foxy Forella! Well, actually you may know her as Fun Time Foxy." Its voice had been fuzzy, a scratchy and synthetic tone that had sounded high pitched and feminine. It had turned away from him to look into the face of the fox whose mouth began snapping up and down rapidly.

"Yes, I know. I know. Yes! Can you please stop treating me like a child?!" Had they been fighting? He had hardly believed that what was happening before him had been real. That any of this could possibly be more than some kind of fever dream in motion. They looked like the kind of thing you saw at a Disneyland ride if it had lost all its skin. The remains of something once cohesive, now a tangled mass of mechanical innards and exposed insides that had given it the appearance of something between an octopus and snake with a fox's head.

"What are you exactly?" Their heads had clicked to him, wide eyed and in silence from his interruption. "Isn't it obvious? I'm a rabbit, and she is a fox."

"No, no. I mean...what are you?" The small head had rolled its eyes at this, opening its mouth widely with a sigh as if the cold, hard depths of it could ever had let a breath in or out to begin with.

"You're confusing us. Now, Foxy cannot speak but I can still hear her. She has something she wishes for me to tell you." The fox's mouth began moving, clacking as her eye looked away in a half lidded gaze. She had drawn closer, tilting her head enough so that he could make out the set of gears bunched around where her right ear had been. When she had finally stopped, the fox looked towards her smaller counterpart. "She says thank you." Bonnie had said in short, eliciting the Fox's head to snap towards her, clanging her lips together so violently that Tommy thought they would break.

"Stop yelling at me! I can't remember every bit when you say so much! You're always making things too complicated!" Bonnie's voice had began to raise, cracking back at her silent partner before smacking her head into the fox's metal cheek. "You said her voice box had been broken?" He had barely just postponed the beginnings of another quickly escalating fight. "I'm a fix-it kind of guy...maybe I could-"

"Uh-uh, bud. I couldn't fix it. She couldn't fix it. And we fix ourselves a lot. Besides, Foxy isn't comfortable with anyone touching her." The white fox had been looking away as Bonnie said this. Her maw had squeaked as it inched itself like a rusted door hinge being pulled open. It had been as if she had been slowly speaking in a whisper. "You sure?...Well alright. She says its okay this time but be careful." Bonnie had whirred through the air right up into Tommy's face so that her teeth had been mere inches from his eyes. "If you hurt her, you're going to be in some serious trouble with me, bud."

Even with her voice, the threat had no falter in just how serious a tone it had been. "...Its beneath her lower jaw, behind the bow."

It was surprising to Tommy how easily he had grown comfortable with the peculiar arrangement he had fallen into. How unreal it had felt being so natural to him. How agreeably he had melded into all of this as if any of it had an inch of normality...But it did in a way to him. His hands had never worked upon anything quite like this before. Tommy had gotten his grips into the innards of typewriters and space heaters, radios, Walkmen, and even computers before. But he had never before touched something, even mangled as she had been, quite as sophisticated in hardware. She had resisted him at first as he came closer and sat on his knees in front of her. He had raised his hands up and she turned away. But they waited for her, open and still.

Ultimately she had relented, and drew her head up as if to stare at the ceiling, exposing a bright red metallic bow, and behind it had been a panel tucked on the bottom of her jaw. The underbelly of the machinery was a deceptive thing as Tommy delicately took a screw driver to each corner, undoing at the panel until, with a gentle pull, he popped the plastic casing off. It was a deceptive thing because as the mass of colored wires spilled out from that box, the green board they had been connected to revealed just how both rudimentary and complex the white fox had been by design. The board hadn't been seated, falling out to dangle in the air between the wires like an insect trapped in a spider's web.

Deeper still inside there had been a small black box with two sets of cables, its bottom messily glued to the back fuzzy panel of a speaker slab. He bit down on the butt of his flashlight, reaching for his gloves as he got to work.

Bonnie knew how Foxy had felt as the man grabbed at her wiring and reached into her. Not just because they had been connected together, sharing their thoughts with one another for so long, but because she had knew Foxy from everything they had gone through and endured. And she knew Foxy was absolutely terrified and in pain as her wires were snipped, and her delicate mechanisms prodded. It wasn't as if she could feel any of it, but Bonnie knew what was rushing through her thoughts. The vague images of reaching hands and distant laughter echoing like a terrible loop, all flashing in bursts of something failing to desperately be forgotten. Bonnie had drawn close to her once more, resting her small head against her white cheek with a dull, metallic thud. She knew Foxy was comforted by that.

The two hadn't always gotten together that well, but they were still partners, and Bonnie did care about Foxy. Even if she was a big joykill. Foxy cared about Bonnie too, and even though the little rabbit hadn't been a part of her from the beginning, she had become like her little sister the day she had been installed on her right hand. Everything that had once given her the appearance of a small plush rabbit had been lost now, leaving behind skeletonized remains of a hand puppet that was the thing of a child's nightmare. But Foxy could still see the white color of her belly and chin. The plush blue fur of her arms and face. Her long ears that had once swayed and flopped in the air like little blue worms, and her shiny, little black nose. They had both been happier back then. Before all the silent screaming and pain that even now, hadn't left them still, and perhaps it never would. Invisible, electronic wounds that could not heal.

"This is a bit more complicated than I thought." Tommy had been tracing the tip of the voltage tester along the metal lines and grooves of the board, checking both sides. There had been some erosion on the bottom that he had lightly scraped away with his screw driver. The soldering on the connector's ends had been amateur class that needed redoing. He had taken his pair of wire clippers and nipped at the redundant lines that hadn't bothered being removed. It would give the board a bit more breathing room without the things bunching up against its tubing and chips.

"I told you. It's broken." Bonnie had begun while Foxy began shifting a little outside his grip.

"Now hold on. I said it was complicated but that doesn't mean it's a lost cause. It doesn't matter how elaborate or complex any piece of machinery is. It all has to return to some basic laws and principles of design." The way he had said that gave Tommy a little chuckle under his breath. He sounded almost like some kind of scientist with the words he had used like that, and Tommy was no scientist. But he was passionate when it came to getting a job done, let alone right. And right now Tommy had been passionate in a way he hadn't quite felt before until now. He could help fix her, he knew he could.

Foxy did not understand what had drawn her to him. What had driven her to reveal herself not once but twice and let him touch her as he hand been now. For a long time as she sat in that darkness with Bonnie in the coiled ropes of what had remained of her body, she had never dreamed of allowing another to ever touch her again. And she did dream in a way, tucked away in the basement for all those years. They both did. And as terrible and dreadful that darkness had been for her, without it, Foxy might never have came to understand herself in a way that opened her eye to a kind of awareness she hadn't felt before then. It was like a screw finally being tightened, connecting her to something much bigger and larger that brought her out of the fog that limited her mind.

She had felt many things in that paralysis she and Bonnie sat with, and she felt them greatly. A deep loneliness and sadness, a biting anxiety and fear what would become of them, and hope. Hope that somehow, some way Bonnie and her would be free again. The images repeated in her, day after day. Her feet touching the ground, her legs taking her through the hallways and doors. That no one was there to grab her, to pull and yank, and tug. Her white tail wagging as she reached for the doors and walked out into the blinding daylight. No longer having to be afraid. It comforted her greatly. Bonnie had comforted her too as they shared the vision, and if it hadn't been for her, Foxy was sure that shred of comfort would have spiraled into despair and remain there long ago.

When the lights of the building had come on again, when that power flowed brilliantly back into them, that hope had come pouring with it into her. The inner assembly of her separated appendages and various hands starting once more. When she had seen his hands on the breaker box, when she took in each and every one of his features, something had clicked inside Foxy that she had felt so little of in so long. She had felt a happiness and gratitude. It was like a great magnet which fixated her to him from that moment, and while Bonnie would never admit it, she knew the rabbit had been drawn to him too.

"Can you try saying something for me?" Tommy had looked up to her and waited. The speaker had let out a garbled and fuzzy, static white noise. He pressed one of the wires down with the plastic tip of his screwdriver so that it connected between two points. "And now?"

It had come out muffled and shoddy at first, still a bit hidden under static, but as Tommy pressed down more firmly, he could begin to hear it. "Ahhhhhh. Ahhhhhhhhmy. Tommy." A smile had begun to creep upon his face as he heard the first word come out of her mouth, or rather box beneath her mouth. He had bitten off some black tape and pressed it over the wire, tightening it against the board. "One more time?"

"Tommy?" He couldn't help but chuckle and lower his head. "Foxy?" Her neck had twitched, her head starting in a shake in front of him. Such joy she had felt hearing her own voice again, having lost it for so long. She hadn't realized how much she had truly missed it, and swayed her head back and forth as she began "Do, re, me, fa, so, la, ti, do!" Her voice would cut out now and again, its pitch warbling and becoming muddy as if her voice would teeter back and forth haphazardly between a tinny, light feminine and heavy masculine tone. It wasn't perfect by any means, and this certainly didn't mean that what Tommy had done was the correct way of going about it. For all he knew, he probably had just taken a temporary and messy shortcut. But for now he could live with messy shortcuts.

"Hey, Foxy?" Her eye had clicked down to him, her maw open wide to show all the painted alloy of her teeth as if in an open mouth smile. "Would you mind? I kind of need to close up here." Her head had lowered to him once more, and Tommy felt a spark of satisfaction seeing that she hadn't hesitated. He had taken taken two of the screws and turned them through the holes of the green board into the black posts inside the panel. He didn't want it rattling around with that tape job, and the outer covering could make due without two screws for now.

"Well color me impressed! I didn't think I'd hear that voice again. Well not in that way anyhow. You do sound a little weird though, Foxy. I can't remember, are you supposed to sound that weird?" "Bonnie, please be quiet." The head stiffened at Foxy's words and turned away with a loud sigh. "Fine." She had said, sharp and short like a storm was just beginning in her.

"Tommy I...thank you. For this. I did not think I would ever...thank you." Though the mechanical face had been too stiff and limited to show more than a frozen smile, the sincerity in her soft and shy voice had been clear. "Don't mention it. Y'know, I could fill an entire page of with a list of all the things I've done. Never thought working on a robot would be one of them." The thought had suddenly came back to him that he hadn't been actually talking to a person that moment.

"Hey! There is no need to say things like that!" Bonnie had butted her head in once more, wedging in front of his face like a raised hand between them. "I do not think he was meaning to be impolite, Bonnie...were you?" He had gotten back up to his feet with the look of a proud smile on his face. "Oh no, like, if anything I think you're amazing. Like something out of a movie even. I didn't think that something like you could even exist yet." Her neck had retracted somewhat as if she was pulling back in retreat. "I...thank you." She had said in a whisper. She hadn't spoken to any one like this in a long time. And even then it had only ever been with one other person.

"Is Henry still here...?" The expressions he made had already told her before Tommy did. "I don't think so. Whose Henry?" The twinge of pain that had run throughout her circuitry was like a set of invisible nails. Some that had been inside her, buried and old, being pulled out while new ones pressed firmly in. It had been Henry Emily who had created her, and it was Henry Emily who inevitably left her in the state she had been in. Though she could not have possibly understood let alone felt outside her programming then, he had been something to her with great meaning. In her dreams she had seen him coming back for Bonnie and her. Taking all the time and care in the world to put her back together again just as she once had been. As her eye shifted around the room, seeing the years of garbage and broken furniture, there was finally closure in her knowing once and for all that he had abandoned her and never would return. "It doesn't matter..." her voice had drifted into static.

"Can I ask you something?" Her head silently nodded to him in permission. "You look like one of those animatronics. Were you?" She hadn't answered him, recoiling and shying away as Bonnie drew closer.

"We used to be part of the whole gang, bud. We even had our own stage. Before, you know, getting tossed out with the trash." "That's not true..." Foxy had whispered in denial. "Yes it is true, Foxy, and you know it is! They fixed us and kept fixing us until we weren't worth fixing anymore! They might as well have thrown us down the stairs, the way they shoved us down in that basement with all the other junk!" Bonnie's voice had near been yelling, making the fox's head retreat further back.

"The way people used to love us on that stage, you would think we were the main attraction! Now look at us. Two eyes between us, not a leg to stand on...I don't even have my arms anymore..." Bonnie's eye had searched its bulbous, serpentine-like body. "Yeah, bud...this was our place and still is. And it bites...hey...they're not, you know, tearing this place down are they?" The two of them had found some small relief as he told them all that had been happening with the Fazbear building. How the doors would be fixed and the windows replaced. The floors filled and once again shined. That in a way it was the end of Fazbear's Pizza once and for all, but it would become something new, maybe something greater. A second chance. And both Bonnie and Foxy knew they had no part in it.

"What's going to happen to us, Bonnie?" The little head shifted and looked away. "I don't know, Foxy. I don't know." The both of them hung there in the air, sharing the silence between them. Even if they had once looked like and been a part of the Fazbear gang, they knew they had been something different, something more. Like a part of them could see things that the Freddy and the others hadn't. They had all been in a dream, Freddy, Chica, Bonnie, and Foxy. And that dreamed remained in the others, but the two of them had woken up to see what they could not and would not ever see. They had wished in some small way that they never had. That they could have allowed themselves to turn off like the others. Been taken away like the others.

"Well I don't know about tomorrow or the day after that, but as far as tonight goes, I could take a look at the rest of you for a little. If you wanted." Tommy wasn't sure at all what he could possibly do. She had looked like the world's largest bundle of Christmas lights cables without the bulbs, never mind the fact he had never laid his hands on a robot until now. Neither Foxy or Bonnie had been sure either, given all the damage that had been. The hours and hours of unseen jury rigging littered their mass with pieces that hadn't belonged, desperately sought and forced improperly to work as the pieces that once completed them were cannibalized off their body, what was left by then, one after the next over time.

Foxy was a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces had been mashed and forced together, making the semblance of a complete picture without little of any hint to give an idea what it was meant to be. But she knew, and Bonnie knew. And perhaps...maybe Tommy could learn and come to know too. "Alright, Tommy." He could hear the hope creeping in her voice before the rest of her began pulling out and falling down from the ceiling's hole, noisily piling with the rest of her in a grey and black mass of twisted cables, thick rubber wires, and scratching springs on the floor.

The hours he had spent looking over her had been eye opening for Tommy. He had never felt the kind of curiosity and exhilaration that he had while combing over the strange assembly and maze that had been Foxy. She had multiple limbs; gloved hands and three toed feet, some with a metal cover that gave it the appearance of white with pink nails, the others stripped to reveal their rusted and dented underneath. A large thickened tube which poked between a series of rubber balls that grew smaller towards the end, had given him the impression that the non-functioning part had once been a tail.

At first it had been embarrassing, even humiliating for Foxy being looked at, the way that she had been. Her body had once been brilliantly tall. A sleek, white frame that had slimmed down towards her hips. The pink paint rolling beneath the red bow tie she had worn so that it went down in a large line across her stomach and chest. She once had dotted pieces like freckles, now lost from the front of her maw. Her lips had been more vibrant, more colorful, and shined once just like her black nose did. A long and brilliant white tail with a pink tip would follow behind her, and while it hadn't been made with actual fur but rather a heavier, divided rubber, it still wagged whenever she had been happy. If it could work, Foxy had realized it would be wagging now.

It was a mixture of terrible anticipation and relief being so vulnerable there on the floor, watching his hands delicately grab at and examine the parts that held her together. She had guided him, revealing the hanging parts of what made up the exoskeleton. The bent metal, the loose bolts and screws. He couldn't do much with what he had on him, but it comforted Foxy, watching and listening to Tommy as he spoke to Bonnie. And what she had felt was something Foxy believed she would never feel again. She wasn't going to be hurt. She was okay. She was safe.

"-And that's what he's got me doing around the place for now. I'm thinking of starting with the hallway's lights." Bonnie had been resting her head over his shoulder as she listened to Tommy finish. "Not going to lie, That's just an awfully boring story, Tommy." He laughed and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Even with how cold the building had been without central heating, Tommy had still managed to get hot, doing all the work he had been. "That's just the story of my life. I don't get to make it all fancy. I just go with it as I do."

"Well I can tell you greater stories than that!" Bonnie had said proudly before he shrugged her head off his shoulder. "I used to tell wicked cool stories! Like dragons and aliens, unicorns and dinosaurs...and pizza!" And Bonnie had infarct been a story teller once. It was the one thing even that she loved doing more than anything back when they had that stage of their own. Telling her stories even while the kids grabbed at her ears, and the adults jokingly told her to shut the hell up. "What about you, Foxy? What did you do?"

"I...told jokes." She had hesitated telling him this for the same exact reason that was Tommy's brow raising, a grin stirring on his lips. "Can I hear one?" Her voice had dipped in and out as she began stuttering, thinking whether or not to truly tell one. The images flashed in her mind again. The grabbing hands, the pulling and yanking at her parts by children who inevitably pulled so hard that one of her arms came loose. Her head turning, lips moving with the words of a joke as she was broken down and ripped apart over and over again.

"Go on, Foxy. Tell him a good one!" Just as quickly as they had appeared, they vanished, the memories sinking once more into the back of her head. Not forgotten but manageable again for now. She was there now. She kept repeating in her mind. She was there now.

"What do you call a bee that can't make up its mind?" Her head clicked back and forth as if she were telling her joke to an audience. "A may bee!" There had only been silence in the air. Tommy had even stopped what he had been doing as he rested his hand against his eyes and lowered his head. Had she done something wrong? His back began to shake and heave as Tommy started laughing. "I don't think it was that funny." Bonnie shrugged while Foxy watched him, taking in the warmth of Tommy's laughter as if it could heat her up somehow. It felt good, and the memories seemed all the more out of reach, unable to hurt her anymore that night.

======Chapter 5========

Tommy had been asleep when the door opened. Nearly fell out of the cot when he felt the light kicking at it. Mr. Jones had been standing there in front of him, taking off his sunglasses that were so small, they had left a white on his skin where they had pinched on the side of his head and nose. He had fallen asleep sometime around two or maybe four that morning. He couldn't believe that he had. But it all came flooding back into him as pulled himself up from that cot. It was still so very easy to believe that it had been a dream. That when he watched the animatronic wolf slip back into the ceiling tiles to cover it up again, he was simply looking upon the after images of a trick played on his mind.

But he had known she was there now, and that she was real. Both Bonnie and her someplace within the ceilings and in between the walls. such a thought that would otherwise concern, even terrify others, had instead comforted him. But that comfort was quickly vanishing now as his employer crossed his arms with a mildly amused look on his face. "Would y'mind telling me how you ended up doing it?" And Tommy felt a sense of shame as he got his pants back on. "I'm sorry about falling asleep, Mr. Cransby, sir. I just-" but he was already being spoken over.

"We can talk about that later. What I'm talkin' about now is all those ceilings lights." The tone in his voice hadn't been one of annoyance, let alone anger. In fact, Mr. Jones had sounded like a man who had just seen a magic trick and wanted to see behind the curtains. Tommy just stared at him confused before he got back into his shoes.

All the lights had been working throughout the hall, their fixtures firmly seated as the bulbs hummed in unison one from the next. A trail of empty packaging once meant for them had been left on the floor, bits and pieces of left over rubber that had been nipped from wires covering small patches like confetti. One of his wire spools had been left sitting against one of the doors.

"How on god's green Earth did you do it, son?" He hadn't. But Tommy knew who had, and he wasn't about to say any time soon. "What'd you do? Just climb up through there all night?" Mr. Jone's had said with a wheezing laugh. "Just doing the work you wanted me to, Mr. Cransby." he had said with a smile, but it was a smile born from his thinking on what he would even say that night, if they came and paid him a visit again. "I knew there was something about you, boy!" Tommy took the hard slap on his back, tensing his shoulders so hard that he could probably squeeze out a diamond between them and his neck.

The part of the town that Fazbear's once belonged to, that location at least, hadn't been pretty. The sidewalk had been uneven and discolored, roots and weeds having taken up home in them in the early day's sun. The brickwork of the buildings had been old, moss growing between the grooves. Windows had been boarded up over shops, some of their signs being the only thing remaining when everything else had gone. Tommy hadn't known it but it had once seen the many cars and traffic down the poorly filled cracks that was its streets. That most of those shops whose doors were trapped behind boards and metal gates had once even thrived.

Fazbear's Pizzeria had been like the community sized version of a tumor or cancer. And when everything about it had been found out, it should have been cut out too, but it wasn't. It was left to stand, unmonitored and unchecked so that in a way the horrors that had been Freddy's reached beyond its parking lot and dirty streets, slowly and surely killing each and every shop that even came near it. The past, lost on a young man like Tommy, was still a deadly thing to the right places at the wrong time. And Tommy had the feeling sooner or later Jones Cransby would get his finger prints somehow over it if he lived longed enough.

He was all too grateful the man had been absolutely pleased as punch that morning, but Tommy needed out of that place for a little. His ears didn't want to take the work crews first thing again that day. He could feel the warmth of the sun on his jacket, the cool autumn air on his skin. It felt nice to wander again even if the place he had been walking was more a ghost street, and the pull of an invisible collar kept him on a town sized leash. The further he got from Freddy's the more life seemed to return with open signs and busy street lights. He sat that mid morning, hanging his legs off a brick fence outside a park, chewing around the wrapper that had blanketed the Gyro he had halfway torn into.

It was tempting for Tommy, the thought that kept repeating in his head, wandering the sidewalks and catching his reflection in the passing windows. Tempting to just take the rest of the money that he had gotten and just skip town. Just go. He had a fleeting thought of his mother calling out to him in the middle of the night. His fathers grip on his shirt as he got shoved into the car door. The feelings of anger and guilt hit Tommy in the head like a soccer ball, bouncing off and away again as it sometimes did, even now still. He hadn't had what you would call the most healthy relationship with his Mother and Father before there wasn't a relationship at all.

"Now you don't turn your back on me!" It came down on him, that stirring feeling like his back had been shoved against the metal and glass of the car door. "You can pull that crap with your mother but not with me. Now you are going to get your head out of your ass and smarten up." He shook his head and took a deep breath before blowing it out loudly as if somehow he could blow away the memories. A part of him knew that was one of the reasons he didn't stick around long. Some nights that were rougher than others he even knew it was a bigger one. The idea that his old man would find him somehow one day on the street. That he would pass Tommy by in that blue Ford Escort, pull over into a ditch and slam Tommy right back down against its glass again.    

It had been four years and Tommy was twenty six, a fully grown man. And the thought still scared him imagining his father beating the ever loving shit out of Tommy out on some city street or county view, and he probably would have deserved every bit of it. If Tommy had been anything at all, he was one poor choice after the next. He used to be at least. He wanted to believe the ones he made were fewer and further in between those last couple of years. He'd made plenty of them when he'd been in high school and gotten into fights like it was his extra curriculum. His grades slipped and his attendance was shifty, and if there was a word that Tommy was known for being called it was a slacker.

He honestly didn't even know how he graduated. Had he graduated? So much had happened since then that Tommy found it hard to remember, and even if he did, he didn't have the diploma to show for it. Things didn't turn around for him after he graduated. If anything it only seemed to expedite the rocky path Tommy was running down. He didn't plan on college and couldn't hold a job. He'd take the car for long nights out and sometimes bring it back late mornings. He even swiped some cash from his mom's purse a couple times. Poor choices.

His father had meant well in his own way, probably...but when he grabbed Tommy like that and forced him against the car door, he took a swing at his old man and missed. He didn't bother looking back as he bolted out of the driveway and down the street. He was too angry and too scared to think straight as his mother called out to him and his father yelled his name, but deep down he knew he wasn't going back. He was out of their lives and out of there period. And that's what followed him every step of the way among other things new and beginning that rested on Tommy's shoulders as what if's and regrets. Keeping people away, going before he had a chance to disappoint them like he did so many others. He was doing his best not looking back now.   

No. He wasn't going to pack his bag and run. Not yet at least. He had a job he needed doing, and he shook on it. It was one of the few things Tommy picked up along the way that did him any good. He found a little integrity and a pinch of pride. But it wasn't just that. And it wasn't the biggest reason either. It was her. That strange enigma of twisting metal that called herself Foxy. He hadn't known how or why but she had so easily wiggled her way into his thoughts, and not just because of what she had been. It was...how she was, how she acted, how she sounded. The way she made him laugh and, well, captivated him. He hadn't felt that way before. And the way Tommy had taken to her, a part of him wanted to believe he could do right by her if not someone for once in his life as a friend.

He could even fall for a girl like Foxy if she had been human. And he shook the words out of his mind too. He couldn't believe they had even found him. Maybe he was just tired.   

Something had caught his attention as he passed by one of the windows of an open shop. It had been the kind of place you bought things you'd only see in old folks homes. Shelves of fake lavender and hydrangea stuffed in silver buckets. Stacked piles of individually wrapped bars of various soaps. It had the look of a rustic home gone mad, but it wasn't any of those things that had drawn his gaze. Hanging in the window on the metal hooked branches of a small fake tree among other things, had been a necklace or charm. It had been a small fuzzy and orange patch of fur with black bead eyes which stared his way across the glass. It had looked to him like a fox.  

Bonnie and Foxy had been in the the basement that afternoon, as much as they had spent, to them, a lifetime's worth in its cold, wet darkness. Their various hands were delicate as they sifted through the opened boxes of discarded connectors and used up motors. Time hadn't done most of the the pieces any favors, but it hadn't been what Foxy was after. The two hadn't said a word to each other and they didn't need to. Not out loud anyway. But as Bonnie's intrusion became more insistent, Foxy couldn't help but stop searching in frustration. "I said stop it, Bonnie!" Her voice had been heated in a whisper as her shyness gave way to her irritation.

"Why are you being so defensive and acting like nothing's there? I know what you are feeling, I can hear your thoughts, Foxy." Bonnie hissed back before one of Foxy's arms lightly pushed her away. "I don't even know what I'm feeling, so it doesn't matter what I'm thinking. Now will you please just help me look for any spare parts?" Bonnie's eye had reluctantly turned back to the piles of finger monsters, kazoo's and other long forgotten kids prizes that once lined the upstairs shelves. But Foxy heard it in her head, and she knew Bonnie wanted her to hear it.

"You're thinking about him."

Foxy's neck twisted as she let out a loud and frustrated sigh that threatened becoming a growl. Being charged had given the both of them the means to finally move again and do what they were doing now, but it was as if it had also magnified their thoughts and feelings. Where previously before the power had come back, their minds had melded together, almost becoming one in a smooth and harmonious way. But there was nothing in the way of harmony between them now, and the way that it was gave Foxy the animatronic equivalent of a headache.

"You're thinking about him. We're both thinking about him. This is embarrassing and I don't want to talk about it so will you just stop?!" Her words were loud in Bonnie's head, and she knew that she had pushed Foxy a bit too far that time. It had actually been Bonnie's fault for the way they had both been feeling ever since last night. It was her stories and ideas that had become a part of Foxy. The stories that had drawn her to learning and even yearning for the ideas of princes and princess's, and magical spells broken through the power of love and a kiss. They never were that popular with any of the guests, and they were too long to tell. But Foxy had become so very intimate with the idea, and not even Bonnie would tell her that she had seen those dreams she also had in the dark.

That she saw them again flashing behind Foxy's eye last night, and it was Tommy who had been a part of it. "I'm sorry..." Bonnie's voice had been timid and meek. A rare thing that Foxy ever heard. She turned to and grabbed the little head, leaning it into her forehead as her one glowing eye closed. " Oh Bonnie...I'm sorry too...I didn't mean...to yell...do you forgive me?" The once rabbit nodded, and Foxy had known Bonnie was smiling again even if just a little. "Come on, let's keep looking."

For all the problems that they had on and off throughout the years, Bonnie had known Foxy had cared deeply for and taken care of her. The best she was to Foxy was a big mouth, because in an odd way, she could feel things with it. Actual textures, warmth, cold, and softness. She would often gnaw on the tables when no one had been looking, and it felt nice to both of them, but she knew she never could give back enough to Foxy for what she had done.

When both her eyes had been taken, it had been Foxy who gave up one of her own just for Bonnie. Even if it didn't seat properly, she never forgot. Maybe that's why she was always so pushy when it came to Foxy. She just wanted to protect her, make her confident and strong again, but she never went about it the way Foxy needed. They both had gone through so much together, and it had mangled her body and mind. That's what the staff had started calling them back then, even as they both quietly suffered indignity and shame. The Mangled.

They had been damaged and pulled apart in so many ways. The stage that Bonnie and Foxy had wasn't like the others. It was smaller and without stairs to keep most kids away. And it was the kids who had treated the two of them like a life sized pull-apart play toy and jungle gym. That after so many times of being taken back and repaired, whispered kindness and encouragement by Henry only to wind up tossed and forgotten like a broken toy...it had done a number on Foxy. It wasn't like it hadn't affected Bonnie either but she grew angry and resentful. Foxy...? She just grew more quiet and afraid. When Foxy had made that joke last night, it was like seeing that part of her that Bonnie had secretly missed and hoped to see again.  

Their various metallic tendrils had slid in between the piles, sifting through the various metals and alloys. When Foxy had felt it, she had thought she was grabbing hold of a plush. But as the mechanical fox pulled the thing she had slipped her fingers around, her eyes lit up. "Bonnie, look!" She held it in the air to her, its form hanging limply in a purple mass. When Bonnie had realized what it was, she just about took it in her mouth. "Can you put it on me? Please? Right now, please!" But Foxy shook her head.

"We can do that later. We need to see if we can find any more of your parts first." And Bonnie dove right into a pile of t-shirts, worming around beneath before she slipped noisily in between a couple of boxes that rattled from her violent snaking motion. "Don't scratch your face, Bonnie."

"Hey...what is this?" Bonnie had been completely inside a box, having wedged herself at deep down as she could. When Foxy had come to see, she reached in and pulled out what transfixed Bonnie. She didn't know what it had been. It was smooth, pink and white. She had thought at first that it had been some kind of cup but there hadn't been any grip let alone hole inside. She could tell it was heavy, and grew even curiouser when she turned it over and found a feeder line connection pin. A strange feeling had come over the both of them. Like they had seen it before, or the idea of seeing it. Written on its side in sharpie ink was the word "ProT02"

The longer she stared, the tighter Foxy's grip had become. The images flashed before her eye as if she had been day dreaming, pressing it against...Tommy. That somehow such an image felt distant and wonderful, good to both of them. And she neither understood what it had meant or why waves of embarrassment were flowing through her. It had been a rush, overwhelming and sudden in how strong it had felt. Both her and Bonnie hadn't said a word let alone looked at each other after they set it back down and continued their search the rest of the afternoon. By the time the sun had began going down outside, they had slipped back into the large hole in the basement's wall, their hand snaking out to grab it and take it with them back into the vents.

Just about all the trash and broken junk from the upstairs had been taken outside. The parking lot had been more like an outside furniture store, full of stacked chairs and tables set side by side. Tommy hadn't been out there long as he saw of Mr. Jones, his hand feeling the beginning of raindrops from the dark grey sky. He took in the icy cold caress of the beginning night, shivering as he held his jacket and headed back in. In a matter of minutes the asphalt of lot had been utterly soaked and anything else out there that had been in it. Tommy had just stood there, leaning against the door frame of the front entrance.

He had always loved the rain, and that certain kind of smell you could never quite put a name on that came with it. He enjoyed the feeling of the humidity, how is blew against him like a damp, cool blanket of air. He listened to fall of the water, the drops of the various puddles forming from the lot's many cracks, and the sound of the running wheels of a car as it drove down the slick surface nearby. He had seen the distant spark in the sky and waited there until he heard the delayed sound of thunder.

He had been in a kind of dream-like state as he just about glided down those lone halls back to the lounge where he had slept. He wasn't sure where to start that night but he could at least grab his tools. He had fallen back when he'd opened the door, seeing the black shape of a figure from the window, and it sent him landing square on his ass with an immediate groan. A yellow eye had been staring at him from the dark now, and he sighed with the strain of pulling himself back up. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting you...yet." Foxy had crawled out into the light, dragging parts of the bunched cables as her three hands gave her some balance.

"I can leave if you wish." Her voice had been stuffier, fuzzier than before. The warbling in her tone had grown worse too. "No, no it's fine. That's not what I mean, I just.." He had chuckled as he inched his way past her through the door. He had sat down on the cot and began reaching for a small, black, plastic bag he had left near his duffle. "I wanted to say thanks. For the lights I mean. I didn't know you could do something like that, but I mean, looking at you, it should have been a bit more obvious. So..." She was confused when he held it out to her. "Its for you."

She had taken it gently into her gloved hand, her eye blinking rapidly as the fox looked back from it to him before reaching inside. It had been small and furry, easily fitting in her hand. It had two small black eyes and a black nose, and Foxy had realized what it had been. Tommy wasn't sure if the noises she made were happy or something else as she repeatedly held it up in the air then back to her eye. When she hugged it against her cheek, Tommy had known she had made a new friend.

"No one's ever given me...a gift before." Her excited clatter had dropped to a shy murmur realizing fully what she had done. "Thank you...Tommy." Her ears twitched up and down as her head swayed.

"Ugh, are we not going to talk about the most exciting thing here?" Bonnie's voice had been muffled, hidden somewhere within the mass of metallic tubes. He had been surprised when she sprang out at him as she did. Not just because she had outreached a small paw that grabbed at Tommy's cheek, but because she had more of an actual face to go with it. One that pressed its glowing yellow eye into his. He hadn't known how, but Bonnie had actually looked like, well, an actual rabbit. Or something as close as it could get, being the hand puppet of a cartoon rabbit. The fur on her face had been soft and short, purple with lighter colored patches surrounding her mouth and nose.

Around her little neck had been a red bow tie that matched the lipstick around her small lips and circles on her cheeks so that in a way it had looked like Foxy and her complemented one another. Her ears limply flopped back and forth, missing anything to hold them upright, only one of her arms moving as she placed her paw over the button on her chest and took a bow. "Foxy went and did most of the work! Purple's not exactly my color but I think it's more than fitting, don't you?" Her eye fluttered its metal eyelashes as best it could in a series of clicks.

"Huh...that's not bad, Bonnie. So that's how you looked huh? Did you do all that?" That was it? That's all she got for being almost back in show form? She had felt stunning! Sure it wasn't the best fit she ever had but she didn't think she looked bad. She had looked to Foxy who had closed her eye, rubbing the small fox against her red cheek as if she were someplace else altogether. "Well I thought it was exciting..." She murmured under her breath, feeling utterly defeated.

They had talked the night away throughout the building as Tommy took down notes on his pad. It was much easier getting to outlets and switches when you didn't have to do the splits over room full's of garbage bags all over the floor. He had learned some of the favorite stories of Bonnie, and Foxy had learned more of some of the places Tommy had been over the last couple month. How he had seen golden gates on the oceans and rolling hills that seemed to go on as if forever. Green pastures and farms where actual animals were. She had loved every laugh she had drawn from him as she told more of her jokes, as if she had a kind of power or key in the shape of awful puns that opened the box in Tommy Nills that was full of his laughter. She even found herself giggling too. She liked it; made her feel warm again. Tommy liked it too.

He hadn't realized how much he really had been missing laughter in his life. Not the kind when he was being fake and sarcastic, but actual, genuine laughter that these two animatronics seemed to pull out of him. He hadn't also realized how much he missed the company either. When it had came to most people along his travels, it was always closer to the way it had been with Mr. Jones. He was short with his words at least and tried to be polite when the moments came and went, but even that didn't always give him protection from overzealous folks with life stories that took Tommy as the verbal equivalent of a hostage for their one sided ride. That's probably why Tommy usually would end up being grateful for the silent drives with blaring music, or pretending to fall asleep in his seat on the buses.

But he wasn't pretending as he listened to their stories. Hearing how the Fazbear building had once been to them when it had still been young and alive. Busy and loud, full of laughter and the sounds of arcade machines. There was something different about the two of them to Tommy. Of course there had been; they were one giant twisting ball of disjointed cables, wiring, and hands. They weren't even human. But there was something more too. Something in their voices, the way they acted and talked that spoke to Tommy and made all that fade away. It had been a long time since he felt the feeling that he had made new friends.  

Bonnie knew Foxy was thinking of what they had found in the basement that afternoon and connected to themselves. They both were, most of that night because up until then it had felt almost as if had done nothing. But it was stirring now with the sensations only he seemed to bring out of them.

They had watched through the window as the rain fell. Tommy had taken a swig from the bottle each time they had seen lightning flash, and cringed as he felt that bitter taste fill his mouth. He didn't know what had possessed him to take the last bottle in the cooler. Maybe he just wanted the stuff finally out of there, and he was paying for it with each gulp of skunky beer that he took. Bonnie had been resting on his shoulder, her eye watching as he took a deep gulp. A part of her wondered what it tasted like because even though he made those faces he was still drinking it.

By the time he'd finished, Tommy's head was already light and fuzzy. He always had been a lightweight. He let himself fall into the cot, making that rip in it just tear a little bit more. "Whoops...think I'm going to call it a night here, guys." His head was swimming as he chuckled and ran his hands over his face into his hair. "I'm tired, and I'm pretty sure I'm a little drunk, so I gotta at least get some sleep before morning hits." Foxy had hesitated as he took off his jacket and made a makeshift pillow from the thing. Her eye darted back and forth as she searched herself for something to say.

"M-my hands are pretty soft too..l-like...a pillow." She muttered out under her breath. She could hear Bonnie just about screaming in her head. "Sorry, what?" Tommy had murmured, stretching a leg as he let out a big yawn. "Tom..T-Tommy! Would it be alright if we...you see the rain and lightning is..." Foxy had strained and stammered out each word, all the more exacerbated by Bonnie's mental intrusions as the little rabbit tried to pivot and guide her back. "Could we please stay in here tonight?" It had all came rushing out of her maw in one warbling gust, and both Foxy and Bonnie wanted to slink away from the embarrassment they were both feeling. "Go for it." He had kicked his shoes off to the carpet and sighed.

"R-really...?" Her coils had tightened like a throat, all the mechanisms stirring in both Bonnie and her with relief. "mm-hm...Do you think you could hit the light off?" "Hit the light off? Hit- oh...yes. Right." If she had a real mouth it would have been dry as she crawled to the side of the cot so that her snout could poke up to its side from the floor. The one thought that had been on both their minds as her hand slithered through the carpet and up the wall to raise a finger to the light switch, was their mutual wish that cot had been bigger, and then clicked off the light.  

======Chapter 6========

They listened there as they laid on the carpet, Bonnie and her. Listening to the rainfall of the storm, the distant thunder that hadn't been so distant now. The way Tommy softly breathed as he laid there so close and yet so far. Bonnie had, with a growing impatience, been waiting for Foxy to do or say something, anything, but as she prodded her in complete silence, Foxy had once again become one big ball of timidness and hesitation. Fragments of distant and even sad thoughts that were already leading her towards giving up. She did not understand but the thought of showing him the piece they had found, that they had connected to themselves...it brought her great anticipation as if in her mind that piece wasn't just meant for them, but that they wanted it to be meant for Tommy too, and it brought out her sheepishness. How ironic for a fox.

When they had finally attached the strange unit to themselves in the vents, both Bonnie and her had found the most oddest sensation pass through them from it. It had almost been like a jolt to their system and in some way it had enhanced that fondness, those growing affections both of them shared. And they just about near overloaded them when their thoughts turned to Tommy. And they knew, Bonnie at least, that it somehow connected them far more closely to this kind on infatuation that had already been magnetizing them to him from the moment they saw him. Maybe it had been some kind of heart. Probably not...      

"Maybe we should not show him. It's not the right time. Maybe we should never show him in fact-" But Bonnie's voice was already overlapping over her own internal one. And before Foxy could stop her, Bonnie let out an audible and impatient sigh out of sheer frustration. Foxy truly was too timid to handle any of this. "Tommy, you still awake?" Bonnie had already slipped past Foxy's grasp, her voice begging her inside to stop. "Yeah? What's up?"

"We found this thing in the basement and we're kinda sure what it is but not kinda sure. Maybe you might know? Can you take a look at it?" Bonnie was yanked back from the cot in Foxy's tight grip. "What are you doing?!" She had near been screaming in the bunny's head. "If you're not going to do it then I am!" Bonnie yelled back just as equally loud. Though it had seemed like they were fighting just then, the two of them had known and been closer than they wanted to admit. They both wanted the same thing.

"Uh..you think this can wait a bit later? I don't think I'm exactly.." "No." The firmness in Bonnie's voice couldn't help get a chuckle out of Tommy. Even if he was out of sorts and on the cusp of sleep, he had the stirrings of a growing curiosity. "Alright, what is it?" Foxy had tried to bury it further inside her wires. To tighten and hold it from Bonnie's grasp, but the rabbit's will was stronger, and it loosened those cables until they could no longer hide it.

The light of the flashlight clicked on as Tommy sat there and rubbed at his eyes as it sat coiled in his lap. He didn't know what to make of it. It had been bulbous, made of metal on either ends. The middle section had been another flexible, firm material but it hadn't been anything like rubber or plastic. It almost looked like the thing was a pink and white potato that had ribs. Maybe it had been some kind of socket connector or even a shoulder section? He couldn't possibly know because the only hint to what the thing had been was on a poorly drawn on word.

"ProT02"

He had begun pulling at it, feeling the ribs extend before contracting back. His fingers had felt the grooves of a line around one of the ends and gave a firm tug before he felt it give and begin to unscrew like some kind of jar. " Well now I think we're getting somewhere." Bonnie had snuck her way back onto his shoulder, and even though she wanted to be confident, you could barely see her eye peak as he undid and set the lid in his lap. He wasn't quite sure what he had been looking at when he shined his flashlight and looked inside.

It had a silicon like texture. Powdered and translucent like water that had turned to jelly. He could just barely make out the obscured wiring and compacted machinery buried deep inside it. He could feel heat rising off of it, floating up to his hand. There had been a kind of hole or slit in its center, and he couldn't help but trace his fingers along the warm outer parts before lightly prying it apart to see the inside in both curiosity and utter confusion.

The way his fingers had felt...they could feel his fingers! Their warmth, their softness, and when he touched at that center, it was like the charge of being plugged back into a wall as a surge of sensations and energy flowed from his hand and into them. Foxy's head had twitched, her lower jaw lightly snapping. Bonnie's little paw began tightening on his shoulder as she pressed her face deeper into it. He was touching them, and they liked the way it had felt. They were practically melting, if that were ever such a thing possible for metal.

When the hole and contracted in a squeeze, a sound like a spoon being dipped in pudding coming from it, Tommy was struck with the sudden realization what he had been holding. "Oh what the hell!-" It had dropped from his hand, knocking away both his flashlight and both the animatronics out of that safe headspace they had been in. It had quickly retracted from the cot, Bonnie backing off from Tommy's shock as Foxy's head sharply rose from the floor. "W-what is it? Do you know what it is?"

It was like Tommy had been kicked upside the head when he'd realized what he had been dipping his fingers in. He began to chuckle from all the idea's running through his head now. How messed up it had been that such a thing had even been made, and the sheer fact it had been functional, on them of all things, gave Tommy the beginning suspicions why Fazbear's had probably been closed. The owners or somebody there at least had put in the time to make this thing that would never wind up being used, and Tommy couldn't help but wonder...Was someone going to eventually? Was it Henry? Had the sicko actually gone and made something like this just for Foxy? She had told him that she was different, that she had been made special. Was this really the next logical and insane step in all that? Course he knew what it was, or at least what it was trying to be. He felt dirty having just touched it like he did.

Tommy didn't know how to put it or the right thing to say. What the hell would you say to that? "It's uh..." He couldn't help it, finding himself clamming up as the humor wore off. He didn't really know if he wanted to tell either of them what it had been. It wasn't the kind of thing the average person could ever be prepared for, talking to a robot rabbit and fox about the birds and the bees. The buzz he had going didn't make his thoughts come any easier or clearer either. "It's a private...thing."

They had waited for him to say more but Tommy just sat there in the dark. "...And?" Bonnie prodded him further, and he couldn't help but laugh at how absurd it had all been. He was glad that he was laughing at least. "And it's not just something you go showing anybody. It's...hm...It's like what a woman uses when she wants to...make love. With someone. You know...?" But they didn't. They were starting to get an idea but what had it meant 'making love'? Was it different from love, and how was it made? Tommy couldn't believe that he was actually half-drunkenly explaining this to them. "Its something you let someone that you,like...like-like, touch and...make you feel good."

It was beginning to make sense now to Bonnie and Foxy. They were starting to understand and even appreciate what this was building up to mean in their minds. And he had been right that when he had touched them the way that he had, such a small thing had felt good to them. "Tommy?" Foxy had asked softly at first, almost like a whisper. "We...mm..we might..like-like you...w-would you...want to touch us more and..make...love?" She had been timid, her entire body rattling with her shaking. He had taken a deep gulp of air realizing what she had just proposed. He could feel his chest going as if it was pounding all the way to the back of his throat. He couldn't believe that even for a fraction of a moment he was actually considering...He was just as sick as whoever made that part to begin with.

"No thank you." His words had been as quick as they were quiet, and Foxy couldn't help but feel her mechanical heart drop somewhere in the pile of her body's mess. He handed her back the lid and quickly turned to lay facing the wall, his back to her in the dark. "O-o....kay." Foxy had rested her head down on the carpet, weighed down by the heaviness of guilt she had showing him that piece of her. She hadn't meant to upset him or have any of this happen, but the way he had looked and sounded was so uncomfortable and off put, Foxy wanted to bury her head beneath that carpet, then through the floor and into the dirt so deep, you'd find her with the dinosaur fossils. Bonnie had been resting her face against Foxy's cheek, sharing those same feelings. "It's okay, Foxy. At least we know. Now we don't have to wonder about stories like that anymore." She knew Bonnie was trying to be tough for her, for the both of them as she always had, but deep down Bonnie was feeling that twinge of pain too. It was like a fairy tale being cut short because they knew it wasn't meant for something like them. It never would be.

He had tried to sleep, laying there for what had felt like an eternity, but that was impossible for Tommy now. He Tried to think what he would say to them the next time they saw each other. Would he just pretend that none of this had happened? Would they? Was it possible a machine could actually like, or even love? Why had it been him? His heart had been beating hard and he could feel himself shaking a little. The sensation had been on his fingers again like an after image of feeling. The smooth touch of that powdered silicone as he touched her. He was ashamed that he could tell parts of himself were responding to those thoughts. That they were responding not just because of that, but because of her. That it was her, and that she wanted him to...to touch her. Maybe there had truly and deeply been something wrong with Tommy. Something far wronger in the truth that part of what he liked, even loved about her, was the way she had looked, and that she looked at him.

That she made it so easy for him to like her, even Bonnie. That he didn't just want to touch, but that he wanted to be closer to her. And as he laid there staring at that blank wall, Tommy could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He had turned away from it, looking towards the carpet. Was it a mistake what he was about to ask? Would it have been a greater mistake if he didn't? "Foxy...?" She hadn't responded at first as if she had been asleep. But he could hear the shifting and bending springs as her head lifted to look up at him. "I...did you want to...still?" He couldn't bring himself to say it, but he didn't have to. Without a word her body had become undone, the various cables dividing as if she were becoming a series of roots.

Bonnie had climbed the end of his jacket so that her little paw could reach out and rest on his cheek. "Took you long enough." she had sounded so assured as she teased him, but Foxy had known she was just as relieved, just as happy as if little hearts could come floating out from her ears. And Bonnie was happy, because even if it had looked like she always had a smile on, she really did that time. Bonnie had dreamed of a moment like this. One she thought would never come for her, for a lot of reasons. But there he was, waiting for her.

"Y'know Tom, you're looking like a prince right now.." Bonnie had stared into his eyes, the yellow glow of her one, closing as the plush rabbit pressed her small lips to his without hesitation. He hadn't known what she meant, and he hadn't expected the kiss, but a shiver ran pleasingly down the back of his neck as he relaxed into the little purple rabbit's hold. It was just as you might expect a thin layer of fur over a metal mouth to feel like, but Bonnie reveled in the experience. In feeling his lips press and lock with hers. Almost as if her mouth had been made for kissing and no one ever bothered telling her the secret until now. How warm and soft he felt against them, and how his breath bathed them in his heat. It was everything she had ever dreamed of and more.

And she was sharing it all with Foxy who couldn't help watching bashfully from the carpet. If it hadn't been painted on her face, she truly would be blushing. And though she could feel the impression of his lips as Bonnie firmly showed him her tender affections, Foxy couldn't help but feel jealous.

Her mouth had been like an alligator's, large and with teeth just as sharp. She had the makings of luscious red lips but they were cold and hard, unable to feel anything at all. But Bonnie was different from her. In a way her small mouth was like a hand to Foxy, and she drew those feelings through their connective wiring undercurrent like the touch from a finger. It was overwhelming for her now knowing how he had actually felt. That she had been sharing that kiss too, but she still wished she could be where Bonnie had been that moment. To Bonnie it had just been like one of her stories, Sleeping Beauty. Only it had been the prince who was being kissed, and instead of a princess it was a tiny mechanical hand puppet rabbit....and there wasn't any magic. It wasn't anything like the story actually, the more she thought about it. But it was theirs that night. Their moment, and she wouldn't trade it for all the fairy tales and stories in the world.

Bonnie's small rubber tongue had flicked out, rubbing against his lips. It couldn't taste, but it could still feel, and everything about doing it had felt absolutely right for her. Her black nose bumped up against his as she pressed more insistently into the kiss, leaning Tommy back into the cot from her sheer over friendliness alone. A grunt escaped his lips as she slipped her curious nub in between them, bumping it ungracefully against his own, and he did press back. It hadn't felt like the most comfortable thing in his mouth, but Tommy had responded to the firm furry lips and hard rubber tongue all the same as if they had been real. What was happening now between them was real. Her purple paw felt up his face, running down his cheek and holding his lower jaw as her lips parted repeatedly in their deepening kiss.

"Um...e-excuse me..I don't want to interrupt but..." Foxy had been utterly shaking to pieces, darting her eye back and forth from the two of them and the floor. "Guess I kind of got carried away. Eh-heh." Bonnie had retreated back into the mass of metal before curling back onto the cot and dropping that private part of theirs in his lap. The white fox's head had come to rest her lower jaw near Tommy's face while she watched him unscrew the cap. The cold air of the night was exhilarating as they felt it against the soft surface of their newly exposed electronic femininity.

Both her ears had begun twitching, her eye fluttering as she felt his fingers trace along it again. "Do you think one of you could reach into my bag? There's this kind of oil.." Foxy's hands had all probed deep into the duffle, tugging and pulling at nearly everything so that it all spilled out onto the carpet, and she was confused when she brought the small, clear bottle with a purple cap to him. "Do you need oil, Tommy?" She watched with curiosity as he popped the lid and began pouring some of the thickened clear liquid onto his fingers. "Well it's more of a lubricant actually but..well, y-you'll see." He had felt a bit embarrassed, his cheeks a deep red almost like hers as he rubbed it against the entrance of the translucent hole he held in his hand.

When they had felt the wetness of his fingers, the cool sensation of the gel as they easily slid into their hole, Bonnie and Foxy were just about seeing sparks in their vision. Though they could not breath, Tommy had heard a gasp escape Foxy's lips. And he could feel the servos and mechanisms within her firing up from that one welcomed intrusion alone. The inner walls of the device had gripped around his fingers, squeezing tightly against them even as they pulled back out, leaving a kind of empty feeling for the two. But it was soon filled again as those fingers pressed back in far easier and deeper with the wetness it was coating them with, letting out a loud squelch. Tommy was fingering them, and Bonnie and Foxy were in absolute ecstasy because of it.

Bonny had clung to his chest, her grip getting tighter and tighter with every plunge he made in them, sending electrifying pulses of pleasure so that Foxy and her were caught in a kind of field of white noise, if that white noise could touch them and get under their skin in the best of ways. When he had stopped, Foxy had buried her nose into his jacket, letting out a soft and satisfied whimper. Was that it? Foxy may have been content with that, but Bonnie hadn't been. If that was what love was, she wanted to dive deeply into it. And she did dive, literally, under Tommy's shirt. He had begun laughing, squirming at the sudden furry invader that was Bonnie who looked over his chest and examined anywhere she could beneath the white fabric.

"Hm. Interesting I guess." She had poked at one of his nipples before sliding back out, and Tommy was grateful for the mercy. She had searched lower down his body until she bumped her nose against the buckle of his pants. "We want you to feel good too, Tommy. Is this where we do it?" Her little paw had started pulling at his belt. "That's where...y-yeah." Her ears had flopped hearing this, and she just about yanked the button off his pants, the bulge of his underwear slipping out. "There's More...? Why are there smaller pants down here?! No one gets the best of Bonnie." He couldn't help but curl up as she grabbed at and even got her teeth into the sides of his underwear before aggressively tugging it down, getting the bottom of her chin smacked by his fully hard erection as it sprung out, fully revealing himself to her. "Don't hurt him Bonnie." Foxy had been in her head as she watched in curiosity and concern.

It hadn't looked anything like the one Foxy and her had found. She had curled her body around it, examining the textures, looking around the length of it, ending on the smooth and round head it had for a tip. Her paw felt at it, traced along the veins of the curiously hard yet soft thing. "This is it, Tommy?" "Y-yeah.." She tapped her chin and looked up to him with that big smile on her face. "It's not removable? That's weird...still." She had pressed her entire purple body into it, wrapping her arm just beneath the head of his shaft. "It looks kinda yummy. Like a carrot. And since I can't use fingers..."

Tommy nearly had a heart attack as she tilted her head back, closed her eye and opened her mouth wide before bringing it down on him and stuffing some of his length in. His leg kicked, half expecting her to actually take a bite. It had been surprisingly a lot softer in her mouth than he had been expecting. But it was still as hard as it was cold, at least deeper down towards the back. He was just grateful her teeth hadn't clamped down as she pulled her mouth off it. "How did that feel?" Bonnie asked with the vague hint of huskiness in her voice. "Cold." He had to be honest and she sighed at the answer. "Oh..." "But kinda good too." "Oh!" She had just about opened wide again before Tommy had stopped her. "wait, wait, wait, please-"

When he had put some of that lubricant on his length, she had started to get the idea. "You know, all this is pretty weird, not gonna lie. I think I could get used to weird." Bonny said in between licking at the oily substance, coating her lips and getting it all into her fur before giving the tip of his head a kiss and sighing around it as she pushed his shaft back into her mouth with a wet, lubricated swallow. She liked the way it had felt sliding in, how that smooth firm thing dove into her mouth and glided over her small tongue. It was kind of natural in a strange way that she couldn't describe, bobbing her mouth up and down in Tommy's lap. She loved the slick and wet sounds it made going in and out, and she loved the sounds that he made too as she fully realized just how much power she had over him even with her little size. And she was doing this all with just her mouth.

Foxy had brushed her nose into his neck, enjoying the moans that Tommy had been making. She was worried when he had started at first, but she could see that whatever Bonnie had been doing was something he liked. How his hand rested on her little head as her purple ears flopped up and down. She could feel that same odd feeling that had come over Bonnie. Almost like there was an actual spell being cast of the two. And as she took Tommy's hands in her own, guiding them back to the silicon, and resting on them as he began teasing them both with his fingers again, it was as if a part of her was unlocking for the first time.

A door opening inside Foxy as she let herself be touched this way. A deep and wet, swirling mixture of pleasure and desire that yearned and had been yearning so long. That she wanted him and only him touching her. She she had growled into his ear. It felt right to her as she began giving in to this inner pulsating heat that was like a fire starting inside her inner workings and tubes. And she wanted it to burn for him. She wanted to hear Tommy moan and she wanted to moan with him. As if their sounds coming together could complete this passionate boundary she wanted to break. Bonnie had pulled off his length with a wet pop, a long string of lubricant going from her mouth to the tip.

"Ugh, just tell him what you want, Foxy! Can we put this in our, you know, whatever it is?" She had asked but Bonnie already knew the answer and began manipulating the tendril from his hands so that the cup that had housed the center of their need, hovered above his shaft. Foxy's eye looked into his, and it glowed to him as his did to hers. Both with love. She couldn't look away, even as his hands gently took the sides of that mechanized housing and began lowering it down. She dreamed so dearly of kissing him that moment, and Tommy had dreamed of kissing her. He didn't care how insane it might have been. Her cold lips had brushed against his own, and though Foxy could feel none of it, she knew that he could.

And as he began penetrating gently into their inner most folds, Foxy felt connected to him. "T-Tommy I.." she had begun and he waited for her just as he waited from the start. Unfortunately, Bonnie didn't.

"Look will you just-" The small rabbit put her entire weight down on the part, slamming it into his crotch and forcing Tommy all the way into the tight confines of their sex with a loud, deep slap as he bottomed out. Foxy was seeing white. It was like a grenade going off as her entire body seized up, her inner walls spasming around Tommy's length as she let out a screaming yelp. Her various hands grabbed at whatever they could in a death grip, and even Bonnie wasn't immune. Her back arched, her mouth hanging fully open as her eye rolled into the back of her head. Her little paw shook as her voice cut in and out somewhere between a high pitched moan and squeal.

It freaked Tommy the hell out, and he pulled off just as fast, much to the two's continued enjoyment. "Oh jesus- are you alri-" But her gloved hand shoved him back inside just as firmly as the first time. Foxy's warbling moans had mixed with Tommy's own as her various cables and rubber tendrils began sliding over the cot and over him. Bonnie had been like a rag doll, completely lost in a vacuum of absolute bliss as she was moved aside.

He had felt the weight of her various lines as the wolf brought all of her disjointed parts over Tommy. Her hands had been over his in a firm grip, both of them thrusting the unit down as he thrusted up inside again and again. Foxy began to rock her head back and forth, moving her neck with every thrust that he made into her as if she had her body again. Her actual one. As if she had a long white tail that met with her hips, trailing up a pink belly and chest. She knew how horrible she had looked there, a scratched and white head in the darkness of that room, the lightning giving her the appearance of some pile of snakes devouring a fox. And though she had pinned the man down beneath her, she had felt absolutely vulnerable in every way. Ugly...mangled. "You're beautiful." She had heard Tommy pant out.

Every part of her had joined with his hands, thrusting down onto him as he thrust back into her. Her head had tilted back to the ceiling, her jaw flapping as she let out one bark after the next. The cot had ripped out from beneath them, finally having given up after the terrible weight of their mutual abuse. And even as Tommy's back fell to the floor, Foxy continued to thrust down onto him. and in that one moment they had been completely connected, man and machine. Something more than what either could have ever realized or known. They were beautiful together.

Tommy had cried out, finally succumbing to the rough torrent of the fox's thrusts, and she felt him fill her with a warmth in a new way. Deep and penetrating, sticky and hot as Tommy came so hard he just about thought he was going to die. Foxy had howled, every inch of her igniting inside as if entire minefields were going off within her and would never stop. She had felt absolutely and lucidly alive as she experienced the first orgasm of her life. And if her howling hadn't been so loud, Tommy might have heard Bonnie screaming in pleasure too. She had came down on him. Hard. He was only too lucky that some of the metal rails of the cot had stopped some of her because Foxy collapsed into Tommy, her head burying into his chest as her body spasmed and twitched.

He breathed deeply, lying there beneath a good hundred pounds of rubber and metal. And even if she didn't have the lungs for it, Foxy had shared his panting breaths too. She laid on him, her eye looking away as her afterglow faded. They had made love. and as her jaw closed, Foxy's eye turned to the window, she couldn't help but wonder. What now...?

She felt his hand come around one of hers, the fingers interlacing between them in a gentle grip as he held on. She truly did not have the answers, but she felt beautiful then. The sweaty and bruised man beneath her that had been Tommy Nills was beautiful to her too. Maybe...just maybe...beautiful things would come, because they were connected together now.

======Epilogue========

He had done it. The son of a bitch had actually gone and worn a tall, white cowboy hat with a metal engraving and two brown curls on his head. Mr. Jones took it off and fanned it across the glaring sun glasses on his face as they stood in the warm, summer sun of the parking lot. In ways it hadn't changed all that much, at least on the outside. The place that had once been Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria had gone through a kind of transformation that had taken its pain and finally given it closure. And while it was not laid to rest, the building had gone beyond a restoration, becoming something of a waiting birth for someone else's dreams.

The roof tiles had been a a vibrant teal, the windows, shined. New wood had been laid down in patches giving the building the look of something between the modern look of the city and rustic feel of the country side. The newly planted trees leave's swayed in the parking lot breeze. The divider paint hadn't been put down yet but that wasn't really much of a concern. Not yet any way.

The work had taken a bit longer than he wanted it to, but Jones Cransby had gotten, as he wanted, his money's worth and then some from the enigma that had been Tommy Nills. He had shaken his hands hard and firm, giving Tommy one hell of a slap on the back that nearly knocked the life out of him. Jones hadn't known how he did it, all the work that he had over the months. Like the boy had eight arms all over the place. All you had to do was give him the right tools. And in the end he didn't want to know because even for an old man like him, Jones still wanted to have a little magic left in his world. Young people. He loved their gumption. And he found it for the right price. One thing was for certain for him. He would never do anything like it again.  

He had counted it out in front of Tommy, the bills flowing between his fingers as he sucked down his cigarette and Tommy's ears took in the humming of nearby Cicadas in the trees. The duffle bag had been heavy on Tommy's shoulder, already giving him a pool of sweat down his back. "And one twenty five. Consider there a little parting ways bonus, son." The wind carried the smoke from him into Tommy's face. Mr. Jones snorted as he looked at the building one last time. He snorted, didn't need to say much of anything else. He always had been a man of few words unless it came to business. He had turned away and headed back to his car.

"Mr. Cransby-" Tommy had called out just as the old man had been reaching for the car door. He had been surprised when he'd turned and found the Nill's boy pressing the money back into his chest. "For first month's rent." Tommy had said plainly. Mr. Jones just looked at him then down at the small roll. He took it delicately and pulled off his sunglasses.

"You do be realizing first months with any of my leases is three times the amount." Tommy shrugged. "Got more." Mr. Jones chuckled and looked towards the road before putting both his hands on his hips and looking Tommy straight in the eyes. "Son, you don't just hand a man some money and expect to buy a place lock stock and barrel. There are market appraisals and lease terms that....Ah hell!" He had laughed until he coughed. "Place grew on ya, huh?" Tommy chuckled and scratched the back of his head. "Something like that.." He knew the idea was far too tantalizing to the man, all the money that he'd been giving him, that Tommy had been saving, going right back into his pocket. "There's a kind of balance to all it." He had said as he stuck his hat back on.

"Let's just see how them papers turn out. I'll be in touch." He had held the key up to Tommy, and before he could take it, Jones closed his hand around it, looking Tommy dead in the eyes. "So's we have the same understandin'...you take this son, you in it for the long haul." When his hand opened, Tommy looked him straight back and took it. "Be seein' you real soon, Nills. Reeeal soon." Mr. Jones laughed again as he got into his car, mumbling as he closed it loudly "Paperwork. Gonna hate me that paperwork..."

If there had been one piece of furniture that had been left in the place, it had been the desk Mr. Jones had used and abused all winter long with its scratches and burn marks. When he had opened the door to the office, Tommy leaned his shoulder against the frame as he crossed his arms. "I think we might have a place here." A pair of bright, fuzzy ears poked up from the other side. "He's gone, right?" Tommy chuckled "No Bonnie, he's right behind me." The small rabbit rolled her eyes. "First it's Foxy and now you. Why are you picking on me?"

"Because you pick first." Foxy had said gently as she rose from behind the desk. The fox had been standing on her two feet. They had done a lot of work together those last few months. Both on that place and each other. Sure it hadn't been perfect when it came to what they could find left, let alone usable for her parts. Most of her torso was still missing. Her legs were a discolored greenish-yellow, not properly jointed so that when she took her steps towards him in the doorway it had looked like she had been hobbling. They had both been missing one eye, just the two between them still. But Bonnie and Foxy finally were starting to bare some resemblance even if only in small pockets to how they once looked.

But even as they searched and would continue to look  search for those parts that Bonnie and Foxy longed for, the two of them had still been perfect to him then. If it hadn't been for either her or Bonnie, he wouldn't have made it. He wouldn't have lasted. Somewhere out there in some alternate universe there had been a Tommy Nills who was still riding those buses, still looking over his shoulders, and still suffering. But he had been there now, and it was because of her, because of Foxy. They healed more than the building together. They healed each other. "What will we even do with this place, Tom?" He leaned his head into the door frame. "Maybe it could be a library?" Bonnie's eyes had lit up hearing Foxy say that, her ears flopping over her face. "But what about kids?" They all sighed. "I was thinking, I dunno..what if we made this some kind of computer and electronic repair shop?" Foxy's eyes clicked up and down as she thought it over. "How about something with Pizza?" Bonnie chimed in and was met with a hard "NO!" From both of them.

"I'll actually be right back, I need to do one last thing here." He had felt her hand grab at his shoulder. Foxy used to ask Tommy before if it was alright, but she leaned in to give him a kiss...before Bonnie did. "Why do you keep doing that?!" She had near been yelling as Bonnie stuck her small tongue out. "He likes it better when I do it, you know." The white fox was about to have a complete and total meltdown with her hand puppet while Tommy found his safety zone somewhere else.

He had put the last quarter in the slot, the black phone against his ear. He scanned the streets outside the glass of the phone booth, taking a deep breath. He had waited, listening to the dial and then...it picked up.

"Hey mom...yeah...it's Tommy."