Horror Fan Fiction ❯ Five Nights At Freddy's: The Hidden Souls ❯ The Compromise ( Chapter 4 )

December 9, 1975 - 3:15 PM, Circus Baby World  (Not present time)

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Today is finally the day! I'll finally be able to go to Circus Baby World for the very first time, thought Elizabeth, eagerly waiting to get inside. She had been waiting forever for her father to let her go visit Circus Baby World, and now that it was her seventh birthday today, she would finally be going to visit there. She was looking forward to the pizza, the ice cream, and of course, spending time with her friends, but the thing she looked forward to most was meeting her favorite animatronic: Circus Baby. From what she had heard, she could scoop ice cream, play song requests, and even make balloons, all on her own. She even had a Circus Baby plushie that her father bought her. Baby seemed so wonderful in Elizabeth's eyes.

She invited a lot of her friends to come over for her birthday party that day, so they would be getting the birthday-surprise treatment, specifically created by the employees at Circus Baby World. They would all get to meet and see every one of the animatronics sing and dance for their amusement while eating all kinds of delicious food. It was a special occasion that no kid wanted to miss out on here.

They entered through the doors of Circus Baby World, but didn't find too much since they were on the employee floor. All that was there to see was the checker-styled tiled floor, the white plaster walls with a fun red and pink lattice pattern on the bottom half, and a few rooms, each being authorized to employees only. There was an elevator in the back right corner, one that read out "Employee Elevator", and another elevator near the far left that read out "Customer Elevator". You see, at Circus Baby World, the technicians, janitors and other employees would often take the employee elevator, which then leads to a system of ventways and control modules, while the customer elevator was for the visitors, who didn't need to crawl through any vents to get inside. She didn't understand why the employees needed to crawl through vents to get to their work stations, but it's just what she heard from her father, and she really couldn't care less about it.

Elizabeth, her friends, their parents and her father took the customer elevator down to the Funtime Auditorium. This elevator was much different than the employee elevator, as instead of the cold, steel interior of the employee elevator, the customer elevator was much more relaxing, and offered some music to play while its guests waited. When the elevator came to a stop, the guests stepped out and followed their "tour guide". He wasn't really a tour guide, rather he was just there to show them where the different rooms where, which ones had the different characters at, et cetera.

Anyways, they entered the Funtime Auditorium, where they saw several large, bench tables, each decorated with balloons, presents, confetti, and all the delicious food the children wanted. They were given pizza, ice cream, and all sorts of delicious treats, and turned their eyes to the Funtime Stage. Out of the red curtains came a large fox animatronic onstage. Hey, that's Funtime Foxy! She's one of my favorites, Elizabeth thought. Funtime Foxy's appearance was sort of similar to Funtime Freddy's appearance, not counting the Bon-Bon hand-puppet. Foxy's snout was pink, three small purple dots on each side, and had a small black nose. Her eyes were yellow, and she had a large, white tail attached to her back, with just a tad bit of pink at the tip of it. She also had bright pink cheeks, a large red bowtie, and long, sharp pink fingernails.

Funtime Foxy began to sing and dance for the children's amusement. She wasn't as good of a dancer as Ballora, but the children still enjoyed it. All except for Elizabeth, that is. She and the others took a seat at the table assigned to them by their tour guide there. Elizabeth wasn't in the best mood at the moment. She liked Funtime Foxy, but she just really wanted to see Circus Baby, more than anything else. She was getting very impatient, and wanted to ask her father if she could maybe skip ahead.

"Daddy, can we please go to see Circus Baby now?

"Why now? Do you not like Funtime Foxy?"

She didn't want her father to think that she wasn't enjoying the show, so she tried to explain the situation to him.

"No, I do like her singing and dancing, but I've heard so many things about Circus Baby. I just want to see her so badly!"

"I'm sorry, Elizabeth, but we can't do that now. Besides, I heard the tour guide tell me that she's not available now. She's being repaired, so you can't go see her yet. Go on and at least try to enjoy Foxy's show, will you?"

Repaired? No one told me anything about that. I didn't even remember the tour guide saying that. This doesn't make any sense.

"Daddy, just once, let me go play with her. She's so pretty and shiny. Please, let me go to her!"

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March 5, 1976 - 9:00 A.M. - William's Apartment (Present Time)

Ah, finally, a relaxing cup of coffee to help calm my mind from everything that's been going on. He wasn't able to get too much sleep last night, mainly because he was still terrified of his experiences with Funtime Freddy and Ballora. If this is the kind of shit I'm being forced to put up with, then I'm not taking it. I need to have a nice little chat with Mr. Cunningham about all of this. He was still very pissed off, and spent the entire morning trying to figure out what to say to his boss about his "work conditions".

William's apartment wasn't too small, but it provided enough room for him to feel at home. The walls were painted light green, the carpet was bague, and the door was dark brown, with a shiny doorknob. Inside his apartment were two small tables, one where he put his small TV and the other where he put his lamp at, a cushion chair, and a medium-sized bed. Although it tended to get a little cramped, he was just fine with living here.

Alright, got my work outfit on, I ate some breakfast, and I should be good to go. His outfit was a button-downed teal blue shirt, along with a dark grey tie and a little silver badge near his chest that read out, "William Afton - Technician". Looks good, better get going. He got the keys to his apartment and left, walking out of the building to get to the parking lot, where he kept his purple Ford F250. Ok, just need to explain to Mr. Cunningham what's wrong carefully, and hopefully, I can finally get some answers to my questions. He opened the car door and turned on the engine, and  began driving his way to work.

Alright, what exactly do I tell him first? Maybe about why the robots are trying to kill me? Wait, I haven't thought about that at all. Why am I just realizing this? Ok, just make sure to tell him everything, and see what he can do. Or maybe I should just quit and look for work elsewhere. No, maybe not, there aren't too many well-paying jobs available around here, anyway. But I better be getting a raise if I have to keep putting up with this shit. William's past week so far has been nothing short of a trainwreck - moving into a new apartment, getting a new job, nearly and nearly dying on the second night of the job. Coming back to a job where the robots you are trying to repair are secretly trying to murder you takes a lot of nerve. Oh well, at least I'm still getting decent payment for this job. I might as well see if there's anything Mr. Cunningham can do about it.

Around thirty minutes of driving later, William arrived at the parking lot of Circus Baby World. Luckily, it wasn't too crowded, as William's boss mentioned to him last week that not many customers come in on Wednesdays. How convenient, he thought. He got out of his car and went through the entrance to the above-ground level of Circus Baby World. Apparently, most of the customers take an elevator inside of the first level of the building to go to the galleries that the animatronics would be performing for them at, while the rest of the first level was where all of the administrators and employee rooms were located. William knew the place well, he remembered the little tour he was given last week before taking his position as a technician here, so he knew where his employer's room was located. As William was walking towards Mr. Cunningham's room, he bumped into another employee.

"Hey, look where you're walking."

William didn't recognize this employee. He had dark brown hair, probably in his later thirties, and was wearing a purple jacket, with a little gold name tag that had the following words on it: Dave Miller, Head Technician. He must work on the animatronics, too. Maybe I don't even nead to go to Mr. Cunningham to get some answers. This guy could probably explain it to me. After realizing he just bumped into the man, he apoligized.

"I'm sorry, uh, Mr. Miller, I didn't see you there. Say, you're the head technician, right?"

"If you can read what my name tag says, you wouldn't have to ask. I am."

Dave seemed to have a deep, soothing British accent. William did not like the arrogant attitude Dave was presenting to him. Yeah, I get it, you're the head technician. No need to rub it in my face, man. Alright, let's just get this over with already. He could see that Dave was looking at his silver badge.

"So you're William Afton? The new technician, right?"

"Yep. That's me. What about it?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry I wasn't able to give you the heads up before you started your shift here. You see, Mr. Cunningham was supposed to notify me of any new technicians being hired here so that I could give them the proper tour and guide for the place, but I didn't hear anything about you getting hired until Randy told me on Monday night! By that time, you were probably already done with your shift, right?"

"Yes, I didn't see you when I left for home on Monday night."

"Ok, so listen. Don't be pissed off at me for not showing you around. That was Mr. Cunningham's fault for not alerting me about you. So I'm sorry if you got the living daylights scared out of you by the robots last night."

"Wait, so you knew that these animatronics would try to kill me?!"

"Well, we know that the robots are unusually aggressive, yes, but there hasn't been any deaths caused by the robots here, or at least that we know of. Anyway, yes, we do know that the robots tend to get very aggressive and violent.

"Yeah, that's an understatement. Now can you please why the hell these things were trying to kill me last night?!"

Dave seemed to hesitate for a moment before giving his response.

"Well, you see, we don't really have a definite answer right now. For the past few months, we've been having a few difficulties with reprogramming the animatronic's software programs. They started out as minor glitches, so we didn't take it as much of a problem at first. But after that alleged child death incident happened, the animatronics started showing... much more hostile behavior than before. We're not sure how, but they seem to be unusually violent to not only the employees but also to the customers. We think it might be a glitch in the programming system, but we're still not sure. All we do know if that something isn't right with them."

"You're telling me that you guys knew that these furries are incredibly angry and violent and that you didn't do anything to stop it?!"

Dave did not take this remark from William lightly. His face showed a very stern, serious experssion.

"Look, William, never refer to my inventions as 'furries'. Ugh, it's such a disgraceful and undignified term for my hard work. These animatronics are state-of-the-art mechanical creations, not some animal fur suit robot. These animatronics don't have a single speck of fur on them, and I prefer to keep it that way."

"You really hate furries, don't you?"

"It's exactly why my designs didn't have any fur for my creations. Alright, I'm getting carried away here. To answer your question, no, we did do something about it. In fact, we did a lot of things about, things that helped make your job much safer."

"I'm sorry, safer?! Last night I literally had to crawl under a desk for protection, I had to crawl on the floor just to avoid Ballora, and the Freddy robot and his handpuppet tried to kill me while I was rebooting the power! And on top of all that, I had to spray fire extinguisher in his face just to get out alive!"

"Listen, William. Believe me, you job right now is much safer than it was in the past few months. Back then we didn't know what these robots were capable of, so we faced a lot of problems and lawsuits when we found out they were hostile. We had to undergo some serious changes and adjustments to them. We had to forcefully lock Ballora's eyes shut so that she wouldn't try hurting anyone in her range. We had to give Funtime Freddy a handpuppet as a friend because nothing else would calm him down. We literally have to keep Funtime Foxy in a pitch black room to prevent her from mauling the technicians. And Circus Baby...well, she's not nearly as angry or violent as the others, but she's very shifty. She's also much smarter and devious than the others as well."

"Well, okay, then can you at least answer my other question?"

"Sure. Fire away."

"How can these things speak freely exactly?"

"I'm sorry, what? Our animatronics can only speak the lines we programmed them to speak. Other than that, they aren't supposed to talk."

"But I had a conversation with one. It told me it's name, and it even gave me tips on how to stay alive down there! If she hadn't spoken up, I probably would've gotten mauled by Ballora!"

"Wait, which animatronic are you talking about?"

"The little-girl robot, Circus Baby. Also, the bear robot, Freddy, was trying to taunt me when I was in the breaker room, too."

"I see. Don't worry about it rookie, I'll look into that myself. It's probably nothing too serious. Oh, by the way, I have to leave here in a few minutes for my break, so if you have any other complaints you want to tell me, please tell Mr. Cunningham. Have a great day!"

Well, that was a random exit, thought William. Something's not right with him. There is something deeper going on here. I think he knows more about this than he is letting on. Better go to Mr. Cunningham now, I guess. And hopefully I can finally get some damn answers from these people.

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After William finished his little chat with Dave, he found his way to Mr. Cunningham's office. Take a deep breath, just don't loose your cool too much, and at least try to explain it to him calmly. Of course, considering everything that's happened to him just last night, it didn't look like it was going to be easy. He knocked on the door to the office, patiently waiting for a response. Mr. Cunningham was a busy employer, so William was fine with waiting outside his office for a few minutes. Then, his boss gave him the okay signal.

"Come on in."

William opened to the door, and walked into Mr. Cunningham's office. He saw him sitting at his large desk in a grey swivel chair, working with his typewriter. There were several tax files and documents visible on the desk as well, including a large blue lava-lamp that seemed a bit random. Mr. Cunningham didn't take notice of William for a few seconds since he was busy typing, and once he was finished typing around a few seconds later, he turned to William.

"Ah, good afternoon, Afton. Sorry about making you wait, there was just some very important work I was working on. I'm supposed to be getting a call from Mr. Emily shortly, so I'm kind of rushing some things today."

"That's fine, sir. I've been waiting quite a bit this morning to get to speak with you. I'm somewhat of a patient person."

"Patience is a good quality, Afton, remember that. Well, I'm happy to see you this morning. Anyways, is there, uh, anything you want to talk to me about?"

William thought about how he should bring the situation up to his boss. Sure, he felt like going on a rant about what happened last night with him nearly dying, but he didn't exactly want to get fired just yet. Not until he knew if Mr. Cunningham could do anything about changing his work conditions. William also didn't want to sound like he was going mentally insane in front of his boss, so he tried a more calm approach instead.

"Yes, I do, sir. For the past two nights, I certainly found out many more things than what you told me during the tour I got last week. I have...many certain complaints relating to my... work environment."

"Oh, really? Could you please be a little more specific, Afton?"

"On my first night working here, there weren't many problems with my job. In fact, I was starting to enjoy it until last night. That's what I wanted to talk about with you, sir."

"Well, I'm happy to see you enjoyed your first night here. Anyways, uh, did you happen to have anything to do with the power outage here last night?"

"Wait, you heard about that?"

"Yeah. I just got the report in from Dave. It seems that main power to the facility failed to reboot last night, and that it seemed you were able to restore it manually, right?"

"Yes, that's true, sir, but the only reason the power went out was because-"

"Don't worry. I've heard from some of my other technicians here that there have been a few problems with the Hand-Unit recently. So I'll try to get that all sorted out so that this little incident doesn't happen again."

"Ok, but can I get to what my complaints are finally?"

"We still got some time left before Mr. Emily calls. Go ahead."

I can't hold this in anymore, thought William. I have to tell him what happened. But if I do, will I just sound crazy? Didn't Dave said they knew the animatronics were aggressive? Then it shouldn't sound too crazy.

"Ok, last night I practically went through hell just to reboot the power. I had to deal with two little robots trying to kill me, I had to crawl on the floor just to get past the Ballora, and then Freddy and his little puppet attacked me! And not just that, but my piece of shit Hand-Unit nearly got me killed twice, in the same night! I don't know what the hell is going on around here, but all I can say is this is insane! And all of this happened in one night!!"

Once he was done with his angry rant, William started taking a few deep breaths, feeling happy that he finally got that off of his chest. He calmed down for a minute, as he could see Mr. Cunningham looked at him surprised, and in a kind of annoyed manner.

"Are you done, Afton?"

William took a deep breath in and out before giving an answer.

"Yes."

"Look, Afton, I am truly sorry for what happened to you last night. Believe me, you are not the first employee to come in here and explode like that. I know that Dave is aware that the robots here are a bit aggressive-"

"Oh, and that's another thing, Mr. Cunningham. I just talked with him outside your office a moment ago. He told me that the only reason he couldn't give me the heads up was because you didn't tell him that you hired me! You realized I could've died last night, right? My Hand-Unit was practically nothing but trouble down there!"

Mr. Cunningham let out a big sigh. He didn't respond to William for a few seconds, before trying to talk to him again.

"Mr. Afton, I think you should sit down for this. Do you know why I hired you?"

William took the seat in front of Mr. Cunningham's desk.

"You needed another technician here on the night shift, right?"

"Well, yes, but… there was another reason I assigned you to the night shift."

"What's that, sir?"

"For the past few months, we did know that the animatronics were acting aggressive, and for the record, yes, Dave did mention the whole 'glitch' issue to me. The thing is, though, is that I don't exactly believe he's telling me everything."

"I kind of got that sense, too, sir, but I just don't understand why."

"I know Dave's been through a lot in the past few months: his wife and kid left him, and he's been a suspect in the 'alleged' child death incident and kidnappings, but I think there's something more to this. To be honest, I don't think these animatronics were even having these kind of problems up until that incident occurred. Even I don't know what the hell is causing it. There's something he isn't telling me, or anybody else here for that matter."

"So where do I come in with all of this?"

"I needed someone who Dave had no connections to, and I needed a technician with the right training and robotics knowledge, like you, to try and find the real reason these animatronics are acting so aggressive. Fazbear Entertainment is grinding me to come up with an answer to this soon, and if I don't bring any results, I could get terminated. And not only that, this place could get shut down along with me."

"Let me get this straight: you sent me down to work with robots that you knew were dangerous and would try to injure me because you wanted to know why they were behaving that way? Why couldn't you get someone else to do this?"

"Afton, I tried. Last week I hired a brand new technician Jared Piedmont. But after he, uh, was heavily injured in an accident with Funtime Freddy, most of my other technicians wanted to work a very safe distance away from the animatronics."

"And why the hell should I continue helping you? I'm not risking my life down there for nothing. "

"I'll give you a quarter-raise of your salary."

William considered this. He didn't want to work at a job he could easily die at, but he also needed some more money to help pay off his bills.

"Eh… I'm not sure."

"If you are successful, I'll also throw in a promotion for you."

Ok, this could work out. Sure, this is very risky, but it will all be worth it in the long run.

"Well...okay, Mr. Cunningham. I'll stay."

"Wonderful, Mr. Afton! I knew you had it in you! Well, anyways, I wish you the best of luck. Hopefully, we can get this done by the end of the week, at least. Have a good day, Mr. Afton!"

"You too, sir."

As William walked out his boss's room, he started questioning his decision about staying. Should I have just quit, he thought. It would certainly be safer for him, but since he needed more money, he thought it was just best to stick with his job for the time-being. Besides, he already had been through a lot last night, so he figured he would be prepared for whatever came next for him. William got his security uniform, put it on, and walked out through the front door of Circus Baby World, and returned to his car, driving back home so he could relax before his shift began again.

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Meanwhile, Mr. Cunningham was having a conversation with Mr. Emily over the telephone. Mr. Emily worked for Fazbear Entertainment, and his job was to make sure every one of their chain restaurants in the county was running smoothly. Although, given the last few months, there have been some covered-up reports of dismemberment and other issues relating to the animatronics at Circus Baby World, which Henry was not happy with explaining to his CEO.

"Alright, look Henry, I know things look bad right now for Circus Baby World, but I'm telling you, there's nothing to worry about-"

"Don't give me that bullshit, Harold, I've heard the reports! I know about those kidnappings and dismemberment incidents that have occurred recently, and let me just tell you, my superiors are very pissed off with you right now!"

"Give me a moment, Henry! I've already got a new guy hired to find out what is causing all of these problems. Don't worry, I promise, we'll find it out in no time."

"You better find it out soon, Harold, because I'm not happy explaining this to Fazebar Entertainment. You know what? The next time one more of these little 'accidents' happens, I'm coming down there to investigate myself, and let me tell you, you do not want to know what happens if we do find any evidence against you."