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paigelts05 · 6 months ago

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Th353u5 and the Appraiser [FNAF, Renegade AU]

Published: Dec 22, 2024

Artwork: https://www.deviantart.com/paigelts05/art/1139778192 AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61762993/chapters/157894480

The Renegade AU reboots the Fazbear Frights and Tales from the Pizzaplex books so that they fit into this AU's timeline whilst also following my primary theories on the material.

TFTP gets a more heavy reboot and follows the TalesVRWorld theory, putting those events into a VR environment due to 1 - how a lot of it is incompatible with how the rest of my AU runs due to my more compact timeframe, and 2 - I personally believe that TalesVRWorld is more likely than talesgames. The Renegade AU also uses the FrightsSlander theory, and that gets elaborated on quite a bit here.

The TalesVRWorld theory stipulates that the TFTPP stories are in a VR environment that is run by Fazbear Entertainment. This system is likely linked to both the MOE system and VANNI network.

The Renegade AU follows a diegetic TalesVRWorld+FrightsSlander combination where the events of TFTPP are literally lab reports turned into marketable stories. The real megaplex is far too underfunded for even a quarter of anything in these books, and a 3D model costs infinitely less than a building, let's just say.

Also, following FrightsSlander, the regular Fazbears Frights books exist in universe too and are Faz Ent's attempts to slander many of its victims, painting the victims as the bad guys; not everyone depicted was as bad or did half the stuff Faz Ent claims they did.

Frights = slandering Faz Ent's real world victims. Tales = cover-up stories for experiments in the VR environment.

This Renegade series starts with Frailty.

More specifically, the events in the real world that lead up to Faz Ent publishing a specific incident from their VR environment that they could have just as easily swept under the rug.

Faz Ent had made a digital clone of Sarah using the remnant from her original body. Faz Ent also gave this virtual clone the fashion sense and post-incident personality of Millie. This virtual clone was then put into Faz Ent's VR environment and put through the same 'experiment' that Eleanor Talbert had put Sarah through.

Whilst Faz Ent was preparing this experiment to be run in the VR environment, people were moving on with their lives in the real world.

In the aftermath of the half-truths that Faz Ent had chronicled and published in 'To Be Beautiful' and 'Count The Ways', Millie and Sarah had begun to repair their reputations.

Sarah, whilst scrap metal, has come to terms with her new form and has mastered it. She feels like parts of herself are missing, but she feels like that's normal given her situation. And Millie had also survived her own ordeal, losing a hand in keeping her life, and also finding love from someone in the 'normie' crowd, branding her as a hypocrite in the public eye, but never regretting surviving.

The only thing that Faz Ent had left at their disposal to hurt Sarah and Millie was this digital clone that lived in the virtual world. So Faz Ent published that experiment report in hopes that it'd further damage the girls reputations again, but the fate of Sarah's remnant fuelled virtual clone, the aftermath of Faz Ent's publication of the experiment, and the reconciliation between the girl and her virtual clone will be for another day.

Note: ghost induced paranoia, ghost induced chronic pain, and other ghost induced medical conditions mentioned in this story (and others) are legitimate medical conditions in the world of the Renegade AU. It's just that there are only two or three psychologists and doctors worldwide who will diagnose someone with a ghost induced variant of a condition. So due to not being in contact with anyone who would diagnose them, the characters in this story only have a half understanding of thier conditions, and that understanding is 'a ghost is making me experience this physical/mental condition to an amplified degree'.

=°•.🌹 Story 🌹.•°=

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"Teen survives getting hit by a car unscathed after pushing a child out of the vehicles path," a newscaster said with no particular emotion, "gets up, and walks away. Onlookers said she momentarily looked like a pile of scrap metal-"

Millie Fitzsimmons, Antiques appraiser, turned down the volume on the television that sat mounted up on the wall in view of the main desk as she heard the bell on the door to her antiques and thrift shop ring.

"Care to explain why you're on the news again?" Millie huffed as her metal prosthetic hand drummed on her desk. "You know Faz Ent has already dragged our names through the mud."

"Not my fault people don't notice me. It was a zebra crossing! And they'd have hit the kid if I didn't dive in the way," Sarah rationalised as she set her arm - or more accurately the scrap metal that represented it - back into place, "besides, nobody was hurt in the end. And after that dead girl's family sued the pants off of Faz Ent for depicting their dead daughter's ghost like that, it's not like they'll drag ME through the mud using my real name again."

"But the whole town now has a hunch that you're not human." Millie pinched the bridge of her nose in sheer bewilderment. "That is bad."

"Yeah… But do you have any scrap?" Quick to change the subject, Sarah shifted the topic to why she came in through the front door instead of chilling in the back, "I kinda lost some in the crash and other parts got broken, so I need some replacements. Any scrap will do."

"You left proof that you're not human. At the scene." Millie replied, dumbfounded and concerned.

"Not the first time."

With a disappointed huff, Millie stood up and walked out from behind her desk, black and purple dress swishing, almost brushing the floor, as she walked. "I've got some old crap that would have gotten tossed out otherwise." She came to a halt near Sarah and sized up what scrap she'd need. "It's in the back. I have a box with what you need."

"Cool." Sarah smiled as she followed Millie into the familiar back of the shop. This place was like Sarah's second home. After all, when your secondary education is interrupted by a robot replacing every part of you with scrap, people don't seem to want to hire you as an adult, so it's hard to find a place to stay, so why not bum off your goth girlfriend's hospitality.

"The only reason I keep all this scrap and don't melt it down myself is because I know you'll need it," Millie said as she scoured the shelves for the scrap box, mumbling about how she should probably label the boxes better.

"Awwww, that's so sweet!" Sarah smiled as Millie located the box and placed it on the floor.

"Take whatever you need," the gothic appraiser stated before she stood back as Sarah rummaged through the scrap box, swapping and changing metal parts, tossing broken bits out of herself, and rearanging components.

As Sarah set her shoulder back in, the conversation shifted from scrap metal to the ornate canister that contained a seemingly ordinary plastic ball pit ball.

"What's that?" Sarah asked, pointing at the canister, readjusting the scrap in her hands as she did so.

"My ball." Millie replied. She thought that she'd had it hidden under her desk, but she'd accidentally left it in the open.

Sarah looked at Millie as if she had two heads, so she knew she had some explaining to do.

"You know how sometimes I get phantom pains and seem to have a split personality? It used to be worse. This ball contained the side of me that died in Funtime Freddy's stomach hatch that day. According to this detective and ghost duo, L and J… or something, a robot named Eleanor bound the souls of her victims to these balls. It was no wonder I was drawn to the ball pit. I managed to reunite my physical body and the dead half of my soul, and found myself able to now see which balls belonged to who." Millie looked over at the boxes on the shelves and the other canisters she had made. "Honestly they were surprised to see me alive. Then again, the detective ALSO shouldn't have been alive, so the first five minutes of explaining what happened was just two should-be-dead's staring at eachother. He hooked me up with a line to the station, and I wound up being in on something that wasn't actually over my head."

"So why do you have the others?" Sarah asked.

"Well, the detective must have relayed our entire conversation back to the station, as the police paid my store a little visit. They wanted my help," Millie smiled, "Being a victim of one of those incidents that was tied to the ball pit, and being one of the few people able to see what's inside each orb, and all that. During our conversations, one of the other victims walked in, unsure of why they came into this store but they just had a feeling like they should be here right now."

"Ooo, spooky!"

"Quite," Millie continued with a smirk, "Well, when they stepped through the door, the orb linked to them started to glow, so I handed it to them, and basically, the energy from the ball transferred back into them, like the energy from mine transferred back into me. The police figured that leaving the balls with me was the best way of getting them to the right place, as people are more likely to walk into an antiques store than a police station. But they do regularly visit to make sure things are going well."

"So, that's what this is," Millie said as she patted the top of the ornate looking canister, "a part of my soul. I've made canisters for many of the other balls based on what I've seen within them. It makes them easier to sort."

"Do you have any kind of plan on getting them back to their owners?" Sarah asked, noting that there were more balls than she could probably count.

"I don't really have a plan outside of my overarching objective. I just hope that they stumble into my shop. That's my plan for how I will find who these orbs belong to. If they are alive like me, they may finally feel whole again. If not, it goes to thier next of kin, and searching for next of kin is a police matter." Millie turned around to take inventory of some old Fazbear Entertainment merchandise that sat nearby, "But it's not all waiting and seeing. To find these people I make them find me instead. I collect legacy Freddy's hardware in hopes it'll draw in those I seek. It had already worked for some, but some of the balls are yet to be ID'd. Some are only able to be ID'd when the person or thier next of kin walks in. Some even glow with the hardware, like the freaky clown or the little Freddy doll… now seeing a sapient Freddy doll touch the orb, go limp, then less than an hour later seeing a panicking young man and his younger sibling run in and learning that the elder sibling had been body swapped with the doll and had been swapped back after the doll touched the orb… That's something you don't forget."

"What about the clown?" Sarah asked as she pointed to a photograph of a clown animatronic. She assumed this was the freaky clown Millie had mentioned, but wanted to see if she was right.

Millie went silent and shifted her gaze away from Sarah. "It went to his next of kin."

Realising that the clown was probably linked to a tragedy Millie didn't want to speak of, she didn't press any further and awkwardly looked away. A bright flash quickly caught her gaze, and it was coming from the box of unidentified balls.

"Millie, look!" She exclaimed, pointing at the box.

Millie's jaw dropped and instantly, she rushed over to the box and procured the one glowing orb that was in a case made up of mechanical parts.

"This one hasn't been fully ID'd, but I now think it's yours."

As she carried the case to Sarah, the orb glowed brighter, plastering the shadows of the case's frame as pitch black streaks across the room, leaving what was not cast in shadow to be engulfed in gold.

After taking the orb out of the casing, the only darkness in the room was cast by the shadows of the two women.

Millie held out the orb, and Sarah held out her hands so that the orb could be handed to her.

With the orb now in Sarah's hands, Millie placed her own hands around Sarah's so she wouldn't drop it, and slowly, the light from the orb dimmed as the energy contained within returned to Sarah.

Once the light faded, the ball returned to its normal plastic form.

"All I could gather from this one was a vague sense of machines and a want to be cute and not get picked on. Odd how it hasn't reacted until now." Millie said as Sarah stared at the plastic ball.

"Honestly, I'm both surprised and not that I have an orb." As she spoke, she subconsciously brought the orb to her chest, and the mechanical parts that made up her torso pulled the orb in, "It's just weird to think that I'd been missing that big of a part of myself."

Before she was entirely sure what was happening, scrap metal begun falling to the floor.

Before Millie coule begin to panic, she heard Sarah talking to herself.

"Don't need that, move that there, and done!"

The back room was in silence as around Sarah lay a pile of scrap up to her ankles, yet she looked the same.

"What … Happened?" Millie asked.

"Oh! After absorbing the orb, the scrap that makes up my body begun to move around. At first I was a bit worried, but then I realised what was happening: I'm able to maintain my form more efficiently now! So my body was just ejecting any parts that were too rusty or otherwise too broken or just not needed." Sarah looked around at the pile of scrap whilst stretching her arms. She sounded a lot less rusty than before. "Some of the ejected parts are still good though, so I'd keep hold of them. And what's odd about it not reacting until now anyway…. I still feel like something is missing though, like there's still a part of me out there somewhere that doesn't know I exist out here."

"You're just here so often I thought it would have reacted by now," Millie replied as she picked up and sorted the shed scrap into 'keep' and 'broken beyond salvage', "Then again, a pair of my regular customers - a father and son who come here for the cheap thrifted goods - came into the store the other day, and the father started having a migraine. At that moment, the orb that I could only identify as a normal domestic family who were somehow linked to the ball pit the orbs came from directly, started to glow. It was only then when I was certain that the pit orb was his. You see, whilst I can see into these, faces are impossible to distinguish, so ultimately, 'does it light' is the only real means of being certain on whose is whose, and the orb doesn't always belong to the involved party that you'd think it would."

"So who do you think the dog ball belongs to?" Sarah said as she looked at the orbs that were sitting on the shelf, sorted and in what she presumed were appropriate containers.

"I had to do some digging, but I found the names of the involved parties. Greg, and a girl whose family requested anonymity from this whole tragedy."

"Greg?" Sarah questioned, "Gregory sr? The comatose man with the dog bites? Didn't he have a kid about a decade ago? How old is that ball?"

"Yes, it is indeed that Greg: the comatose man with the dog bites." Millie replied with an objective tone, "It was the only one I could get a certain ID on due to the dog animatronic. Managing to ID this orb was very important, as whilst Greg grew up, he's almost thirty now and has a ten year old son, the shard in the ball is still 16 years old in a world that'll forever be 2007. And given that nobody has come forward and Gregory jr is currently missing, we are hoping that this orb may draw in the child."

Sarah was rather perplexed.

"Why would it draw in Gregory jr?" She asked, "Gregory jr wasn't born until like, so many years after the incident that made this ball."

Millie nodded. After all, why would it? The facts were simple: 1 - the dog ball was among the oldest, alongside the underground guard ball and the original balls tied to the mass murderer at the Freddy's location that once surounded the pit, and 2 - it was not confirmed which of the two were actually in the ball: Greg or The Girl?

And if it is a part of Greg, how do you even get something like this through customs?

"We don't know, but it's a long shot. There are only three options: it reacts to Greg, his son, or The Girl"

"What if it's The Girl?" Sarah questioned, "and how will you know it's them if they requested anonymity?"

"The orb will go to her family. And just because they wanted to remain anonymous doesn't mean I don't know them; they just don't want thier name tied to this incident," Millie said as she examined the orb as if it'd yield more answers that it had thus far, "Usually, when the one with a part of their soul stolen is dead, we'll want to reunite it with the family, as the rest of thier ghost usually lingers around there."

Before the conversation could continue, Millie heard the door bell ring: she had a customer. "So let's deal with this later, ok?"

At the front desk, Millie and Sarah watched as a duo of regular customers walked in: a pair of rookie film directors. One average height and slightly athletic, the other tall and lean. She mentally went over her stores incident procedures, as it was always best to be on the ball in the event of a customer experiencing a paranoia induced panic attack or collapsing from chronic pain, which these two often did to the point where it was practically routine.

"Looking for anything specific, directors?" Millie asked, knowing that those two usually look around for things that would make good props. Whilst a normal antiquarian would likely be adverse to such shoppers, her store was as much a thrift and Fazbear's junk store as it was standard antiques. Though Fazbear Entertainment stuff from the Fredbear era still counted as antiques.

"Nothing really. Just browsing, seeing if inspiration will hit," and hit was probably an ironic word as the taller directors words were cut short by him collapsing to the ground, hissing in pain.

The shorter director stared at the taller one, saying nothing. And it was clear why: the shorter director was shaking, his breathing patterns were abnormal, and he looked as if he too would soon wind up a heap on the floor.

As the shorter directed started screaming about a blackbird, Millie realised that she'd have to remedy the situation fast. She knew what he was screaming about: she had saw the newspapers, read about the taller director going missing on the train tracks, the feathers that were found, and how the taller director then was found injured but alive in a ditch a few days later.

He had also disclosed his hallucinations in passing.

She had also read the scathing and inaccurate hit-piece Faz Ent put out afterwards, even though that company didn't seem to be involved with the situation at all. The fact they tried to cover it up at all was suspicious.

Millie didn't know how, but she had a gut feeling that Eleanor was behind this too; she had to be if Faz Ent got involved in a situation where they could have had plausible deniability. But gut feelings only got you so far: she knew that a pair of aspiring directors were some of the victims with shards of themselves trapped in the balls, but without a positive ID from the orb itself, all it was was a gut feeling that maybe this duo and the duo from orb were the same, even if every other detail lined up. As she tried to manage the situation, micromanaging trying to ascertain as to where the taller one kept his medication whilst trying to mentally ground the other, Sarah stared off into the back storage room.

"I think one of the balls is glowing."

"What?" Millie exclaimed before turning around to see that indeed, one of the balls was glowing. And it was the one in the casing themed after film production. The one she had suspected to be theirs the whole time.

And that was the true positive ID she needed.

"Just stay put, ok?" She said before rushing into the back of the shop, picking up the ball, and rushing back, glowing case in hand.

"Ok," she sat in front of the two directors and opened the casing, "if you can, extend a hand."

Both of them obliged, albeit shaking. With too much practice behind her, Millie placed the glowing orb in the taller man's hand, and placed the other man's hand on top. She kept her hands around thiers for the sole purpose of ensuring that they wouldn't drop it - she didn't want to know what would happen if they did and it wasn't worth chancing it.

Nobody was certain if seconds or minutes had passed until the ball finally stopped glowing.

"It looks like it was equally both of yours. That may pose a logistical issue," Millie mumbled as she let go of the men's hands, and as predicted, thier grip on the ball pit ball immediately failed, so she simply put the ball back in its case. "Does anything feel different?"

"Well, I'm slightly less in pain than before. This would be the first time the medication has actually worked." The taller director said.

"And I don't know what you did, but it really helped ground me, thanks." The shorter one added.

They didn't have a clue, did they.

"Maybe that you now have the part of your souls back that Eleanor stole, you'll find that you're a lot more… 'normal'? That's probably the wrong word. The pain you feel is no longer unnaturally amplified by her, which is what she was doing to mine suffering, after all. It's somewhat like how before the balls were brought into my shop, I was an emotionless husk with non-stop phantom pains."

"And that's different to how you act now in what way?" The shorter director chuckled in a way where it was obvious he was trying to diffuse some kind of tension in the air.

The reply made Millie laugh, but she remained serious, "I had a whole half of my soul ripped out and that half believed that I bled to death. If anything I've just exchanged lacking half of my emotions for constant nightmares. But it's better than being dubbed a medical anomaly, having lost too much blood yet still living. Taking his hand to replace the one he took was all the revenge I could get," She glared at her prosthetic hand with a bitter mix of rage and regret; it was clear that her prosthetic was made from funtime Freddy's hand, "but enough about me. Let's get back on topic: you two."

"Wait… So you think the pain was being amped up by Eleanor?" The taller director asked, "And that's why my medication wasn't working before?"

"Effectively, yes. You had ghost induced variants of your conditions. That's the short version of it, unless you want me to go into detail and explain how that detective fellow found out about Eleanor and how she was using the suffering of us and the parts of us she stole to power herself," Millie replied, "You mentioned a while ago that your doctor said that scans showed that your pain should just be in your leg and not all over, and that your medication should work but just doesn't, am I correct?"

"Yes…" The director replied, "But they just waved me off with some medication after I told them that it wasn't just in my leg."

"Well, whilst I too don't trust doctors for… obvious reasons," Millie waved her prosthetic hand as she spoke, "Where is your pain?"

"My… Leg!" The tall director smilled and appeared to be incredibly excited about this, "the pain is just in my leg! I can finally look into getting treatment for it again…" His voice mellowed out a little, "I had given up after the first few checkups… Nobody knew what was wrong, and nobody except us really seemed to care. So I just gave up after they kept on just giving me medication and sending me away with a 'come back in a month'. But now I might actually get answers… But the damage is probably done by now and I'll probably be limping forever more, but better late than never."

"Honestly the extra beta waves should have given it away, but regardless," Millie sighed, paused, then smiled, "whatever she was doing to you won't be happening anymore. Though you might want to mention the phrase 'ghost induced chronic pain' if you want to get anyone to apologize for not taking your ghost induced chronic pain seriously."

"It's odd though, isn't it," the shorter director said, "I thought it would have just been him if either of us, seeing as before this I thought it was just the dead ones or almost dead ones who wound up linked to those balls."

Millie shook her head, "whilst a correlation, it's not entirely true. Some of the first people to come here were just as alive as you two, and another had been a victim of a digital consciousness transfer. All those linked to either Eleanor or the ball pit itself, dead or alive, were effected and have a fragment of themselves tied to one of those damn plastic things. It may take a while to ensure everyone gets back what was taken from them, but at least we're doing something to reverse some of the damage. Shame I can't say the same about our reputations… I still get called a shallow bitch in public, but that detective guy who dropped off these balls apparently knows a guy who knows a journalist. Maybe we should try and give Faz Ent a taste of their own medicine."

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#art #artwork #fnaf #fnaf au #renegade au #fnaf renegade au #fnaf fanart #five nights at freddys #five nights at freddy's #fnaf millie fitzsimmons #fnaf millie #fnaf sarah #FrightsSlander #the theory that Faz Ent released the Frights books in order to slander their victims meaning we can't take the stories at face value #TalesVRWorld #the theory that TFTPP are all events that took place within Faz Ent's VR Environment (MOE system VANNI network ect)#The events of this fic are in the real world and is what drove Faz Ent to release the lab report of their VR world experiment “Frailty”#blinkie usage

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cartoonus-maximus · 1 year ago

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Notes and Observations on FNAF TFTP Vol 1: "Lally's Game"

I want to start by saying I really enjoyed this volume! And I hope the rest of the series is just as good (or at least in the ballpark) as I thought this one was. I loved the characters presented in the first and third stories (Jessica and Maya are my new favorite protags!), and I liked all the surprise twists and turns.

I also really dig the cover art, even though it mainly focuses on this little robot character who we never see in any of the stories. I think it's supposed to be Lally, but that's not quite how Lally is described when we're introduced to him.

(However, the figure behind him could be Jessica, the protagonist from "Frailty," since she's described as having pale skin and wearing dark clothes, like this feminine-looking figure appears to be wearing.)

These are my notes and observations made while listening to the audiobook, which I borrowed from my local library. Fair warning: there will be spoilers. If you want the whole experience for yourself, you should skip this and go read/listen to the book yourself first.

Another warning: two of these stories focus a lot on people with serious illnesses being hospitalized or even dying from said illness. This isn't the usual FNAF fare, so I feel like I should mention it, just in case anyone is particularly sensitive to the topic. The rest of the horrific occurrences of this volume are pretty standard for FNAF.

Here are my observations on the other books in the series, if you are interested.

With that said, let's get to it.

"Frailty"

This story starts with a teenage boy who's died in a car wreck during a rainstorm, with two EMTs trying and failing to revive him. They have to declare him dead, and both turn away for a moment to retrieve equipment. One of them turns back and sees a slim silhouette standing over the boy with a knife, and he's quick to scare the threat off. As he turns back to the body bag, the teenager inside it suddenly comes back to life.

(I think it's funny that the EMTs were named Jack and Dave. Felt like a little nod to "Dayshift At Freddy's.")

We then meet the actual protagonist of the story, a 14-year-old girl named Jessica who works as a floor cleaner in the children's wing of a hospital. She doesn't speak unless spoken to, and avoids making eye contact with anyone, but is always hyper aware of her surroundings, and pays special attention to the patients.

"She was aware of each and every child in the hospital wing."

Jessica is a pale-skinned girl with dark hair, who is described as having "delicate facial features," being very thin and looking frail to others, and being basically pretty but hiding her features behind dark-colored clothing and her hair, which she keeps long and lets hang in front of her face. Some of her coworkers think kindly of her, viewing her as simply young and shy, while others are suspicious of her and think her creepy.

Several of the patients in the wing Jessica works at get better almost miraculously, but the nurses start noticing flecks of silver on these patients, stuck to their clothes and hair.

Jessica sneaks into the hospital chapel alone, where she pulls out a necklace pendant. It used to be bigger, and it used to be shaped like a heart, but she's been shaving pieces of it off over time. She prays to Whoever she believes is listening, praying that she continues "being good" and that she "completes her purpose" and "rights her wrongs." She's startled by the arrival of a priest, and they have a conversation about prayer and miracles.

The priest is named Father Jeremiah (and if I hear ONE MORE character named Jeremy/Jeremiah, I swear--!!).

(Also… There's a lot of conversations throughout this story between Jessica and Father Jeremiah, as they discuss religious questions, morality and ethics, and philosophical topics. It's not something I'd expect from a FNAF book, and it's not something that most of the readers for this kind of story would really care about.)

"… she wasn't there to enjoy life, but had to stay focused on her purpose."

During the evening hours, when the hospital is quiet and there aren't many people around, Jessica approaches a small boy who is a patient, coming up behind him while he sleeps. She pulls a knife out of her pocket and uses it to scrape shavings off of her pendant. As the silver shavings fall onto the child, Jessica feels weaker and weaker, her heart beat slowing and her breaths becoming more shallow; she knows he'll get better now, as she gives him some of her own life force.

(Green elephants, huh? The new "Dumbo" sounds great.)

Jessica goes to school the next day, even though she doesn't seem to need to, and she even asks herself why she keeps going. Her classmates openly bully her and say mean things about her strange appearance and behavior; one girl even refers to her as "a mannequin that barely moves."

Her class is broken into groups for a project, and Jessica is paired with a new kid named Robert, who is very attractive and has golden hair and wears pale blue. Robert immediately starts telling her about how his dad is an engineer, and how eager he is to work with machines like his dad does. (K… KELSEY???)

Robert feels bad for Jessica, having witnessed her being bullied by other girls. He expresses his disdain for bullies, complaining about the ones he encountered at his last school (I repeat: Kelsey? Is that you?), but Jessica tells him that she honestly doesn't care what any of her classmates think of her, which he thinks is cool.

Their project is to build a miniature robot that performs a single, simple task that they program themselves. They're told to use as many materials as they already own or can salvage for the project, instead of buying ready-made kits. Robert suggests they go to the junkyard to see what they can find, and Jessica is immediately uncomfortable with the idea. She tells him she can't go to the junkyard, and then promptly abandons him, running off in a panic.

Jessica goes to the cemetery to calm her nerves. While she's there, she wonders what her own headstone would look like, but then decides that she'll probably never have a proper grave. She closes herself up in an old family mausoleum to hide from the world of the living, and it becomes clear that she's been staying in this mausoleum during the nights, and isn't returning to whatever home she used to have.

Jessica has a good luck charm in the form of a rabbit's foot key chain, which is a perfectly normal thing irl but not in this franchise.

Returning to work at the hospital the next day, Jessica is interrupted from her normal mopping duties by the mysterious appearance of a rusty old fork on the floor behind her. She rolls her eyes, wondering why it's "a fork, this time?" and throws it away. (Girl, what you mean "this time??")

She befriends a new patient in the wing, who is a teenage girl with red hair and freckles. The girl introduces herself as April, and explains that she has cancer, and isn't handling the treatment very well. Over the course of the story, April and Jessica commiserate with each other over their (very different) ailments.

More industrial junk starts appearing in the hospital in Jessica's wake, including an old car muffler, nuts and bolts, a rusted tin can, and a rusty lock. The head nurse is determined to find the prankster that keeps leaving dangerous trash around the hospital wing, while Jessica just sighs heavily and throws everything away.

Back at school, Robert returns from the junkyard, and shows Jessica all the items he found for their robot project. Jessica considers the junk items and tries to keep from reflexively pushing them all off the table and getting as far away from them as possible. She later accompanies him to his home, where they work on assembling their robot.

"Robots aren't always original. Sometimes they're just made from boring old junkyard scraps." (… Do you have something you want to share with the class, Jessica?)

"You're not like other girls." "I know. … I'm weird." (I just thought this exchange was funny.)

Robert asks Jessica to go the prom with him as his date, and she's so startled and confused by the question that she doesn't answer him, instead running to the hospital chapel and having a panicked prayer moment.

She talks with Father Jeremiah, asking him if she's a bad person for wanting to be selfish and doing things for her own pleasure. (I told you - these conversations come up a lot.) She expresses shame about her past, but doesn't explain what specifically distresses her. Father Jeremiah tells her that he believes God wants what's best for his children, and tries to comfort the teen as best he can, trying to answer all her questions. Eventually, Jessica leaves the chapel, and Jeremiah notices a strange metal gear on the floor, left behind by Jessica.

"To her, Father Jeremiah represented life and death and forgiveness." (Let's not go putting our religious leaders on pedestals here, girl. They're only human, after all.)

Jessica agrees to go to the prom with Robert, but then realizes she doesn't have a dress to wear and doesn't know how to shop for one. She gets help from an older nurse, Macy, who is happy to help her. Nurse Macy wonders to herself why no one in Jessica's family is helping her, but tactfully chooses not to ask questions, instead offering to help Jessica herself. She takes the girl shopping after work, helping her pick out a dress and matching shoes.

While they're shopping for the dress, a store employee mistakes Macy and Jessica for a mother and daughter pair. Macy doesn't correct them, and simply assumes the role of Jessica's mother for the trip. Jessica is touched that the older woman is willing to at least pretend to be her mom.

"It was better to just let others see what they wanted to see."

Nurse Macy has being watching her younger coworker very carefully, and has come to conclusion that Jessica is suffering from some sort of personal trauma, based on her behavior, but doesn't have enough information to know for sure. Throughout their interactions, Nurse Macy tries to ask Jessica about her family, trying to learn if the teenager has a safe home or not, but Jessica never tells her anything about her family or her home.

When Jessica isn't forthcoming with info, Macy gets so concerned she decides to go against work ethics and looks into Jessica's employment file to find Jessica's home address. Going to the address, Macy finds herself in a run-down part of town right near the cemetery, at an old house where an elderly woman lives. The old woman is ill and mean, and owns a small dog that barks incessantly. The woman doesn't know a Jessica, and Macy is turned away with more questions about her teenage coworker.

Back in the mausoleum she's been hiding out in, Jessica has a nightmare where she's alone in pitch blackness, being chased by a robotic monster of some sort. The robot catches up with her and rips her arms off one at a time, and Jessica feels herself bleeding out on the floor. The robot starts to steal her pendant, but stops. Jessica wakes up from the nightmare, safe in the mausoleum.

Jessica returns to school, and she and Robert present their robot to the class. When Robert gets nervous about giving their presentation, Jessica gifts him her rabbit's foot for luck, a gesture he appreciates. He returns the gesture by gifting her a braided leather bracelet. (These two are actually so sweet with each other.)

"Look! It's Ken and Zombie Barbie!" (Okay, that's mean, but I would also love to see that doll pack.)

That evening, Jessica is at the hospital, and eavesdrops on the nurses discussing April's situation, which is gradually getting worse and worse. Jessica needs her life force to herself if she's going to prom, which means she can't help April -- she can't have fun and help the other girl, no matter how much she wants both. She decides to go ask for advice from Father Jeremiah, and wants to know if there's an afterlife she'll be going to.

"Jessica felt so alone. It was like how she'd felt when she first knew she'd been changed forever."

Jessica goes to prom with Robert. They dance and have fun and both admit to being attracted to each other. But then Robert tries to kiss her, and jumps back, his face covered in old, dirty grease. Jessica panics and tries to leave, and as she passes them, the other kids all stare and point at her in various states of alarm and confusion. Distressed, Jessica runs away.

At the hospital, the nurses check in on April again, only to find she's getting worse, and they can barely find her pulse.

Jessica bursts into the hospital with a wild, crazed look on her face, grease leaking down her face from her eyes and forehead. She runs past the nurses, leaving a trail of grease and junk metal behind her. She runs straight to April's room, slamming and jamming the door behind her to keep the nurses from following her.

Through the window of the door, Nurse Macy sees Jessica take her pendant and a knife in her hands and stand over April. The nurses, hospital security, and even Father Jeremiah rush the door, getting it open again, but Jessica is completely gone by the time they get inside. April is still asleep in her bed, and there's a pile of metal junk on the floor next to her bed.

"Smelly grease dripped from the pile as if it were blood."

They search the room, but don't find Jessica. Father Jeremiah seems to know something they don't, as he looks sadly at the pile of junk and quietly prays over it, as though praying over a dying or recently deceased person.

Before Nurse Macy can ask any other questions, April suddenly has a miraculous recovery.

What a story to kick us off with!

Jessica's story is interesting, as we're pretty clearly told what most of it is: she made a selfish, uninformed choice at some point (we're not told what that choice was) which led to her encountering and being killed by a robot. She was rebuilt from a pile of trash in a junkyard, and brought back to "life" by a necklace made of remnant. Now, feeling bad about the choices she's made and the person she's been in the past, she tries to make up for her past actions by sacrificing her own life force to save others from a premature death.

Jessica died some time ago, and no longer lives with her family (who presumably have already held a funeral for her and grieved for their loss), but she still goes to the same school she always has, meaning that the school still has all the correct information about her and her family on file somewhere. Have her teachers ever tried calling her parents to talk to them about her, like "Jessica's not participating in class" or whatever, and her parents are just like… "She's dead, of course she's not participating in class!" But also, you'd think the school would have been informed about her death at some point, so it's a little strange that the teachers still address her and assign her homework.

Jessica was killed by a robot that threw her to the ground and tore off her arms, leaving her to bleed out and die in extreme pain and agony. File that information away for now, because I believe it's something we'll revisit later in the series.

The necklace is… interesting, to say the least. It's a heart-shaped silver pendant made of remnant, and it's possibly the same one that we saw in the "Fazbear Frights" series. In that series, we saw this necklace being worn by Eleanor, who uses it to assume the appearance of other characters, but seemingly also uses it as an energy source. At the end of the series, the necklace was taken from Eleanor and given to Det. Larson, who was under the impression that the remnant contained the spirit of a kind person. We were never told who that spirit could have belonged to.

I'm curious as to how that necklace came into Jessica's possession. Her nightmare implies that she was already wearing it before she was killed, and that her possession of it is what allowed her to assume a different form after her death. But how did she get it to start with? Did she acquire it from Larson somehow? Are there more than one remnant necklaces in this universe, and she just happened to have one? Is she related to Ranelle Talbert, who also had pretty features, dark hair, and was given a necklace made of remnant because she was so frail and weak as a child? What's the story?!?!

Also, I guess this story is telling us that remnant can be used to heal living people from various injuries and illnesses, can bring people back from recent deaths, and (possibly) it can cast illusions around its wearer, causing them to look like a normal person.

I think it's interesting that Father Jeremiah seemed to know the whole story of what was going on. It's so weird. It's like dude??? who are you and how to you know this??? What other Freddy's-universe weirdness have you seen?!?!?!

There is also the repeated names of Jessica, Robert, and Jeremy/Jeremiah. I don't know if they mean anything or not, but they're certainly names that pop up with an alarming frequency in this franchise.

"Lally's Game"

In this story, we meet Selena and Cade, two fiances who have bought a fixer-upper country farmhouse and are working on moving into it.

Selena has a long (and I mean loooong) inner monologue about how wonderful she and her fiance are. Literally, they're a power couple of perfect people, both incredibly smart, good looking, and extremely business savvy. (If you listen closely, you can hear me rolling my eyes and gagging. "Meh meh meh, look at how perfect we are!")

"Selena's life was sailing along perfectly." (Oh, I guarantee it won't be for long.)

The pair oversee the movers that are unloading their furniture into the house. One item that gets unloaded is a locked chest of Cade's, which Selena is surprised to see. The two of them have a fight about the chest and its contents and whether it should even be here or not. Whatever is inside the trunk, it's a mystery to Selena, and Cade gets very defensive about it, claiming it's just junk from his childhood and she doesn't need to see it.

The two of them pay a visit to Janice, Cade's mother, who lives nearby. While at her house, Selena finds photo albums depicting Cade's childhood, and decides to look through them with her future mother-in-law. One photo shows a child Cade celebrating a birthday in a black light party room at a Freddy Fazbear's Pizzaplex. (Ah, we finally found a use for Funko's dumb black light line, I see.) The black light arena itself is called 'Lally's Game.' Selena shows the picture to Janice, who tells her that Lally's Game was Cade's favorite part of the Pizzaplex, and tells her a little about it.

Lally is a small, child-sized robot character that resembles Casper the Friendly Ghost. His purpose is to play and interact with the children who don't have friends to play with, playing hide-and-seek with one child at a time in his special arena. His space is the black light arena, which has prehistoric inspired caves and tunnels with brightly colored drawings on them.

(The words they're using to describe Lally remind me of how people tend to describe Funko Pops, which, given the relationship FNAF has with Funko, I find mildly amusing.)

Janice mentions that Lally's Game was shut down permanently at their local Pizzaplex when the Lally robot itself was stolen. When Selena asks if Cade was sad to lose his favorite game, Cade's mother says "Cade wasn't sad… Cade was scared." She doesn't explain what she means by that.

When Selena brings up the subject with Cade later, he tells her he doesn't want to talk about it, and says that "someone got hurt there" before shutting down the topic.

Their wedding day comes and goes. (We spend a long stretch of time on their wedding day and the event itself, which provides a lot of context for later parts of the story, but I'm going to spare you the details of this section.) After their wedding, they enjoy their honeymoon period while finishing up the refurbishing of their house.

After their honeymoon period passes, Selena decides to revisit Cade's mystery trunk. She feels that they don't have any secrets from each other, and the fact that Cade doesn't let her look in the trunk rubs her the wrong way. So, one day when he's at work and Selena is home alone, she decides to go look into it to see what it is he's hiding from her. She goes to where she knows he put the trunk in the attic, only to find it's not there. Realizing Cade has purposefully hidden it from her, Selena becomes very suspicious and angry, and she begins searching the house for the trunk.

"… [the farmhouse] had five closets…" (I'm trying to figure out how to make a 'Fifth Closet' joke but I'm not sure how yet.)

"Every box was empty."

Selena finds the trunk hidden in the back of the closet in a spare room of the house, hidden beneath blankets and behind a stack of empty boxes. But it's locked, so she still can't get it open. She gets some tools and fiddles with the lock for awhile. She gets the lock open, but doesn't open the trunk itself, hearing Cade arrive home downstairs.

When Cade comes home, she confronts him about lying to her about the trunk. Realizing that she found it, Cade goes into some kind of angry panic, grabbing her and asking her in a rage if she's opened it. He runs past her to find the trunk, and, when he reaches it, he throws it open. It's empty. Cade is extremely upset.

Selena feels terrible, realizing that she violated her husband's privacy, and seemingly for no reason, since the trunk is empty. She apologizes vehemently, and tries to explain why she was so suspicious about the trunk. Cade still seems distressed, but mostly forgives her.

"Pressed against his wet shirt-covered chest, she could feel his racing heart, and she felt the tightness in the muscles of his arms and shoulders as she returned his embrace." (Is it just me, or have the FNAF books gotten a lot steamier than they were the last time I read one?)

"That's what she was smelling: it was the stench of fear."

Cade is obviously terrified of something, but Selena doesn't know what. Deciding she's done enough damage for now, she doesn't prod him about it, or ask him why the trunk was empty and why he was so upset about it.

That night, Cade tells Selena that he's going to go straight to sleep, and the couple skip over the sex or cuddling that they would usually engage in before sleep takes them. He pretends to fall asleep, but, when Selena is laying in the dark and he thinks she's asleep, he gets up again and sneaks around the room. He seems to looking for something, looking in nooks and crannies and sometimes pausing to listen for something. When he doesn't find it, he returns to bed.

An hour later, Selena is awoken by Cade's footsteps as he walks around, searching again. He seems to repeat this process almost every hour during the night, and seems to be becoming paranoid about whatever it is he's not finding. The next morning, he's exhausted, and barely manages a morning run before going to work. This goes on every night for a week.

After a week, Selena turns on the light during one of Cade's searches, and asks him what he's looking for.

"You've been jumping in and out of bed like a jack-in-the-box for the last week! … You act like you're checking for the boogeyman."

Cade tells Selena about the Lally's Game section at Freddy's. He explains that, one week, there were construction workers doing some renovations at Freddy's, and some scaffolding fell and tore a hole through the wall/ceiling of Lally's Game. Lally went missing after that -- Lally wasn't stolen, according to Cade, but rather he thinks the little robot literally followed him home. He recounts seeing Lally appear and disappear from view around his and his mother's house in the weeks that followed, describing Lally's actions as "a game of hide-and-seek." He explains that he finally trapped Lally in an old trunk he took from his mother's sewing room, and that he's never opened the trunk since then, terrified to restart the hide-and-seek game.

During this story, Cade refers to Lally with human pronouns, saying "he/him/his" instead of "it/its" like Selena expected him to.

Selena doesn't believe Cade's story, but believes he suffered a childhood trauma that caused him to hallucinate Lally appearing in his home, and that he believes it to be true. Cade tells her she's wrong, and that Lally is somewhere in their house.

A few weeks pass uneventfully. Then, one evening while they have guests over for a dinner party, Selena goes to get extra sodas from the fridge in the garage, where she sees Lally the robot. Lally doesn't move while Selena looks at it, but she knows it's making eye contact with her. Selena runs back out of the garage. She pretends everything is okay in front of their guests, but tells Cade what happened.

Cade is an expert at lying, apparently. (Foreshadowing.)

The next day, Cade leaves the house, making up some excuse. Selena, left alone, keeps hearing floorboards creak and thinks she hears footsteps. Unable to take it, she soon also leaves the house, driving into town.

For the following weeks, Selena feels like she's constantly being watched while she's in the house. (Presumably, Cade also feels that way, since he's literally avoiding his own house at this point.) She keeps searching the house, expecting to find Lally watching her, but she never sees him.

Not getting any more information about Lally out of her husband, Selena goes to visit her mother-in-law to learn more about the robot that's apparently haunting her, and the relationship her husband has with it.

Janice tells her that she always felt that Lally was "like a little brother" to Cade, giving her only child someone to play with. She also says that one of Cade's friends once snuck into the game with Cade, which was against the rules (only one child could play with Lally at a time), and that this same friend unfortunately died not long after in some sort of accident.

Janice also says that Lally had no moving parts, and that, to play hide-and-seek with him, the kids would have to pick him up and move him around. (I literally burst out laughing at this point, both because we now have a non-moving robot walking around when it literally does not have the appropriate body parts to do so, but also because that's just the dumbest premise for a children's arcade game I've ever heard.)

(Actually, I'm wondering if it's more like Lally simply can't or doesn't move while people are watching, like a "Doctor Who" Angel, but presumably has all the right joints and motors to do so.)

Back at home, Selena hears strange sounds from various places around the house, and searches for the source, finding nothing. She becomes paranoid, and actually starts packing her belongings, preparing to leave both the house and her husband to get away from whatever has been released into the house.

During her searching, she finds Cade hiding behind the couch. He looks around the room, silently and frantically. Selena looks at his face and can barely recognize him. He ends up trapping her on the couch and threatening her. Selena becomes terrified of her own husband, and wonders how long he's been hiding this scary side of himself.

"If you upset Lally, you'll end up in the trunk next." (I'm sorry??? What the fricking hell, Cade???)

"She was coming to grips with the only logical conclusion presented by the facts: her husband was insane."

Selena asks if Cade killed his childhood friend to keep Lally to himself, but Cade tells her that Lally killed the other boy, reiterating that "the game is only for two."

In desperation, Selena knocks her husband out with a lamp. She starts to flee the house, but gets distracted by Lally, who appears out of the corner of her eye, and she panics, running up the stairs instead, unintentionally trapping herself on the second floor. She hides in a closet, hiding from her husband. While hiding in the dark in the back of her closet, Selena is startled to hear something approach her, and she hears a voice greet her with a wispy, spooky "Hi." She starts screaming.

From where he is on the floor downstairs, Cade can hear his wife screaming, but doesn't know why. He falls unconscious again for a time, and when he wakes up, he begins desperately searching for his wife.

(Ew, pulsing doors.)

"… he grasped [the doorknob]. His palms were sweating." (Knees weak? Arms are heavy? Mom's spaghetti?)

Cade runs to the trunk where he used to have Lally trapped, and opens it. He's met with a grisly sight inside the trunk, and nearly vomits, horrified and incredibly distressed by the trunk's new contents. Lally's voice floats down from a hidden upper shelf nearby, reminding him "The game is only for two."

(Side note: Cade's inner monologue says Lally's "five word sentence" is familiar to him, but apparently Cade can't count, because that's definitely six words in that sentence. Which, there was a joke earlier in the story about Selena not being able to count words, so I wonder if Cade's count is intentionally incorrect here, or if it's a legitimate editing mistake.)

"The words drifted down to Cade like the spray of a toxic mist. They engulfed him, and then they left him in silence."

Some unspecified amount of time later, we see Cade carrying boxes into his new house (a big Victorian fixer-upper), accompanied by his new fiance, Debbie. Cade is now the "head programmer for the biggest tech company in the state." We're never told specifically who he works for, but we are told that it's a new job, one that he had to move away from his mother for.

Cade remembers having a conversation with his mother about having to move away for his new job, and neither of them remotely mention Selena's existence even once during the conversation. It's unclear if they're just choosing not to talk about her, or if they've genuinely forgotten about her entirely.

Debbie notices the trunk and asks about what's in it, and Cade tells her it's "Just some childhood baggage." They leave it in the dark in the attic, and, after they leave, two "pinpoints of light" appear above the closed trunk, watching them go.

Cade and Lally are a weird duo, seemingly with Lally as the instigator and Cade as the unwitting accomplice, and are just Bluebeard-ing their way through any woman Cade brings home. Which is… weird, but also standard FNAF fare, I guess.

It's pretty clear that Lally killed Selena, apparently tearing her apart in the dark and then stuffing her remains into his own trunk for Cade to find. When Cade finds her, he's suitably horrified, and it's pretty clear that he both knew it was going to happen and also didn't want it to happen. Lally then speaks to Cade, and Cade apparently forgets the whole incident, like the past few years of his life are mostly erased from his mind.

The description of Lally's words as being "like toxic mist spraying on Cade" is interesting, given the use of hallucinogenic gas that will be brought up later in the series. Especially given that it seems Cade completely forgets about Selena after this sequence.

I was talking about this story with my sister (who fields a lot of my less coherent ramblings, so you all should thank her for her services, lol), and I told her how Lally is described looking in the story: small and vaguely humanoid, completely white, with big buggy eyes and the hint of a smile. I said it sounded like a blank Funko Pop figure to me, and she said it sounded like how the Biddy-Babs look in the games. After she said that, I remembered that there's that one bit of "Sister Location" where the player character hides under the desk in Circus Gallery, almost like playing hide-and-seek with the Biddy-Babs. So now I wonder if Lally is meant to be a Biddy-Bab, or at least something similar.

Obvious reference to the FNAF4 box is obvious.

I can see where the theory of "FNAF4 Crying Child was rebuilt as a robot, and that's what's in the box" came from in connection to this story. When we see the box in FNAF4, it's the older brother's grey dialogue text that tells us "some things are better left forgotten," and is this story we see a similar box containing pieces of a dead person, and a child-like robot that the chest's owner thinks of as "a younger brother of sorts." It's not much to go off of, but there's definitely a connection there.

"Under Construction"

This story opens with three 16-year-olds: Maya, Jackson, and Noel. They're visiting the Mega Pizzaplex for Maya's birthday, since the Pizzaplex is recently built and has been advertising all of its new shows and rides. They specifically want to try out a special VR booth.

(The kids refer to this booth as both AR and VR alternatively throughout the story. It's made clear that the kids know the difference between AR and VR, and they spend a decent amount of time explaining the differences, but they simply don't care enough to differentiate between the two. I'm just going to call it a VR booth for the sake of these notes.)

"The idea of immortality is totally whack!" "Well, quantum immortality only applies to the observer…" (This entire exchange was so funny to me.)

(I don't really understand the concept of quantum immortality myself, but I understand it relates to the idea of there being a multiverse, and idea of different versions of a person surviving while some versions of themselves die. We'll revisit this idea later.)

(Just as a side note: I love how Jackson is the scientist of the group while also being Southern (USA) and being mixed black/white. It's just a specific combination that exists in real life, but isn't often used for fictional characters, and I just thought it was fun.)

As Maya takes in her surroundings, we also get a feel for the Pizzaplex she's in (and we're told that it's just one of many). There's a section meant for the really little kids, which includes a ball pit and black light cave structures (Lally?!). There are small stores inside the Pizzaplex, where customers can purchase Freddy's merch, and there are a multitude of rides. An indoors roller coaster flies overhead, and a maze of plastic climbing tubes twist around it.

"… similar to crime scene tape…" (And it probably is.)

The kids head to the VR booth, but it's closed, a sign stating that it's "under construction." (James A. Janisse voice: "Title card!") They decides to climb inside anyway, ignoring the sign's instructions.

The booth is shaped like a giant snow globe, with a throne in the middle of it. A headband is sitting on the throne, and Jackson recognizes it as the headset for the system. Birthday Girl Maya puts on the headband and sits on the throne, and enjoys a simulated birthday party far more extravagant than anything her family could ever afford, including a beautiful cake delivered by Glamrock Chica. While they're in the booth, Jackson and Noel can also see and take part in the VR experience.

After they're done with the VR simulated birthday party, the kids leave the booth. The kids are exhausted from all the partying, and are surprised that none of the security guards came to pull them away from the closed attraction. Shrugging the lack of security off, they move on with their day, going to ride on the roller coaster.

The roller coaster features Foxy. The kids don't know Foxy's name. (What weird details to call out.)

After their day is done, the kids go home late in the evening. Maya's parents are waiting up for her, and she plays cards and drinks hot chocolate with them when she gets home. She then retires to the bedroom she shares with her sister Elena and goes to sleep, thinking about how wonderful the fake party was but also how much she loves her real life.

"I need my brain sleep."

The next day, Maya's family throws her a real birthday party, complete with a homemade cake and loud cousins and a pinata in the backyard. She has a mild headache during the day, but doesn't think much of it. Her headache gets worse later that night, but she once again decides to ignore it.

Among other things, one of her birthday presents is from one of her grandmothers, and is a necklace with a gold rose pendant. Maya loves flowers and cultivates a flower garden in her own backyard, with roses being her favorite. She's very close to her Gran, and the necklace gift is very meaningful to her.

We then get a short explanation of the following year of Maya's life, starting with the ominous "Looking back, Maya couldn't exactly pinpoint when she knew something was wrong. It all seemed so normal." (Paraphrasing, but you get the idea.) We're told that Maya has more and more headaches over the next several months, but, at the same time, her grandmother is diagnosed with breast cancer, and Maya doesn't feel like bringing up her headaches to anyone when her family is so worried about Gran. (I understand that feeling; this part of the story made me remember a lot about what my own family was going through irl when my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer.)

Maya's Gran dies, and her family grieves. Maya herself is devastated, and clings to the necklace she was gifted from the matriarch. Just as she's dealing with that, both of Maya's grandfather's are diagnosed with cancer.

Maya's sister Elena remarks how unlikely it is for three separate people (who aren't directly related but are part of the same family) to develop cancer at the same time. When Maya turns, she sees her sister is looking at an article online, and she scrolls to a section that cuts off suddenly with a "page under construction" image.

Mere days after the deaths of both her grandfather's, Maya's other grandmother is diagnosed with cancer, and dies very quickly. After this, the neighbors all around Maya's neighborhood and various classmates and their relatives begin to fall sick with cancer, and many of them succumb and die quickly.

When Maya tries to talk about it with Jackson and Noel, Jackson tells her that his mother was also diagnosed. Neither of them seem very concerned about it, and instead ask her if she wants to go hang out with them at the Pizzaplex soon.

Maya's aunts, uncles, and cousins begin falling ill, and then so does her father. Maya runs herself ragged trying to take care of everyone. While Maya feels like her world is falling apart, her sister Elena seems very unconcerned about the whole thing.

Maya hasn't had time to take care of her flower garden, but her flowers seem to be mysteriously fine, growing perfectly.

One of Maya's schoolteachers has a baby, and Maya and Noel go to pay her a visit at her home. The teacher introduces them to her new daughter, Cecilia. Maya goes to hold the baby, but then almost drops the "baby," as she finds herself staring at a doll that has a flat head with no facial features, its "skin" made of thin, clear plastic, and its body filled with gel.

"Cecilia likes being the center of attention, don't you, little one?" said by a woman nuzzling her not-real daughter's head. (Oooh, that's a wonderfully bizarre mental image.)

Maya goes home, only to learn that her mother now has cancer, too. Her parents acknowledge their upcoming deaths at the dinner table, apparently unbothered about the whole thing, and Elena also doesn't express any concerns about the whole affair.

It's made clear that this isn't something that's limited to the town Maya lives in - people all across the planet are getting sick and dying from cancer in enormous swaths, like a worldwide plague.

Maya is so confused as the people around her drop like flies, and the remaining people are extremely unaffected by their losses. She also encounters more people with newborn children, with each of the babies looking the same as Cecilia did: like an unfinished doll, or placeholder mesh in a computer program. These newborns are also growing unnaturally quickly, taking on "goopy" and "unstructured" bloblike appearances. They don't speak, and don't move much.

Maya walks past an "under construction" sign on the street.

Elena gets diagnosed. Jackson and Noel are actively sick and dying, as are everyone else Maya knows. But, as more and more of the people in Maya's life disappear, more and more of the blobby, mannequin-esque children appear to fill the streets, maturing into adulthood within days and mostly just… taking up space around town.

"But what about those… things… out there? The jelly people?"

(… The jelly people can be baptized. Interesting.)

"He was seeing what he wanted. He was seeing what wasn't there. Or… maybe she was seeing what wasn't there."

Late one night, Maya goes out to her flower garden, which has completely died out. She realizes she doesn't remember what her flowers looked like, followed by the realization that she doesn't recognize color anymore, now only used to the ashen faces of sick and dying people. Her headaches have only gotten worse, and are now a constant thing that she feels throughout every day.

Every time Maya goes out, she's surrounded by the "jelly mannequin things," which sit or lie all over the town, filling up parking lots, sidewalks, and stores. They appear to move from place to place, but Maya has never actually seen one move, and doesn't think their clear, jelly-like limbs have the ability to move by themselves. They seem to multiply rapidly, and appear to reproduce via budding (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budding). Maya actually sees a "child" jelly suddenly drop out of an "adult" jelly out on the street, the image making her think of a baby simply falling out of their mother's birth canal.

"All experiences are valid." (Jackson is such a weird fount of knowledge, lol.)

Maya returns home to find it surrounded by the weird jelly people. She thinks they look like "one large organism instead of several smaller ones." Inside the house, she finds her mother and father both dead, and her sister and remaining cousins doing extremely poorly.

Maya heads out on the road to stock up on supplies for her remaining family, passing by many more of the jelly people. She passes by a "road under construction" sign. Seeing it makes her realize that, everywhere she goes, she's see signs and warnings referring to a location being "under construction." She wonders why that is, but then shrugs it off.

Maya is basically the only healthy person left in the town (and likely the world), and she's running herself ragged as she tries to take care of everyone that's left. (We're told that one of her neighbors, an old man she doesn't like, is still alive, hidden away in his house. This is never mentioned again, and I'm not sure why it was brought up in the first place.)

Something reminds her of her visit to the VR game. She thinks about how real it felt, and how unreal her current life feels. She realizes that she could still be in a simulation and not know it.

The jelly people fill the street around Maya's house, and she tries to weave her way around them to get home. They rapidly multiply in front of her, filling in whatever space is left on the ground and crowding the street and outside of the houses. Maya accidentally touches one, and she feels cold and nauseous from the experience.

Maya realizes she's the only one left, and wonders if she really is still inside the VR unit. Her headache comes back.

"Had she entered a parallel universe?" (Into the Jelly-verse!)

A pile of jelly people leans against the house. There are so many of them, all of the windows and doors shatter, and the jelly people start sliding into Maya's home. Now the only person alive in the house, Maya runs away from the onslaught. She finds no way of escape. She finds herself trapped inside a sticky, cold, slimy mass of bodies, which overtake her and smother her. She's trapped inside a mass of jelly, somehow still alive but wishing for death.

… Wait. That's it? That's where the story ends?

I don't know what I expected. It just feels like there should be… more? For some reason, this story feels unfinished to me (much like the title suggests it to be, ironically).

I guess I just expected it to end on a scene of Maya still sitting in the VR booth back at the beginning of the story, with Jackson and Noel waiting for her outside of it and assuming she's having fun and seeing a pleasant simulation. Or something similar to that, anyway.

I don't really have much else to say about this story. Most of it is just implying that VR and AR behave the same way in the FNAF world, and that they can both manipulate the user's experience on a level so complete that they truly believe it's real.

I find it strange that it's mentioned one of her neighbors is still alive and well toward the end of the story, and that he apparently never got sick and has just been watching her from inside his house. It's a very random feeling detail, and I'd like to know what his presence represents.

Back to the Quantum Immortality thing: by the end of the story, Maya questions her potential multiversal existence. She wonders if her consciousness is living out a sort of "second life," separate to her original reality, and it's in this second reality where everyone she loves dies and she's trapped in a nightmare. If this is the case, this implies that everyone she knows and loves is alive back in the real world, and that the original version of herself is safe. Again, leaning into the idea that this entire story was part of a VR simulation that she's been experiencing ever since she entered the game booth.

Epilogue:

Some construction workers find a pile of old endoskeletons and endoskeleton parts while sifting through the debris of a partially demolished old Freddy's. They're distinctly working in the Pizza Simulator space right beneath the Pizzaplex in "Security Breach." The place is being renovated by the company, potentially being turned into a museum to memorialize the franchise's past. And, since this Freddy's building is partially underground, the company is working on constructing the Mega Pizzaplex right on top of it.

(Gil, you're annoying and an asshole. I know you're probably going to die before this story is over, and I also know I'm not going to miss you.)

The construction workers who are on the payroll for building the Mega Pizzaplex find a lot of the instructions they're given strange, but they're paid too well to ask many questions.

A shipment of animatronics arrive to the location, long before the building is actually finished or ready for them. All of the animatronics are brand new and shiny, but one of them stands out of the bunch, a guitarist character that looks too mangled and beat up to function properly, and has no outer shell. (Kinda reminds me of Glamrock Bonnie, but in endoskeleton form.) One of the renovation crew (Gil) takes the damaged animatronic and repurposes it to help sort and take apart the pile of old endoskeletons from the old pizzeria.

"The rest [of the animatronic's body] was dark and discolored, like it had survived some kind of fire. The upper part of its skull contained bulging white eyes in steel sockets, and the lower part contained a hinged, metal-toothed mouth. Jutting from the top of the head, a pair of bent metal ears stuck out like antennae."

" … the [animatronic's] white eyes turned orange."

The animatronic endoskeleton is specifically given the job of removing limbs and heads. It's meant to only do this to the old, unusable endoskeletons that litter the floor, but this particular bit of instruction isn't clarified.

At first, the robot tears through the pile of robotic parts the way it's supposed to, and the construction workers cheer. But then the robot turns on them, tearing off the arms and heads of the human workers as well, starting with Gil, the man who initially programmed (badly!) the animatronic to do this job.

"… the bloody carnage that used to be Gil." (What'd I tell ya, huh? Maybe next time do your damn job right, and also don't be an asshole!)

One construction worker (a guy named Danny) escapes the carnage unscathed. He closes the door behind him, and makes sure to seal it up with cement, closing off the Pizzeria Simulator from the rest of the Pizzaplex.

I think it's interesting that this mysterious animatronic is described in ways that made me think of Glamrock Bonnie and Burntrap, when I know from spoilers online that it's supposed to be the Mimic, which, ah... doesn't look like that.

Also, the whole ripping-arms-out thing tells us that this endoskeleton will later go on to kill Jessica, our protag from "Frailty," which is interesting given that it's sealed away in this section of the story. I guess either it becomes un-sealed later, or Jessica, much like Maya and her friends, ignores the rules and breaks into the basement herself.

#five nights at freddy's #tales from the pizzaplex #a brief analysis #my thoughts and theory noodles #my tftp analysis

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