#findingequinoxfic

[celestial-robots]

Finding Equinox

A Sun & Moon X Reader Story

Chapter Six: Activity Check

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Word Count: 6092

Summary: It's the start of your second week and the Pizzaplex is busy with crowds wanting to see the newly-repaired Glamrocks. While going about your day, you let it slip that Sun and Moon are still active, and the head technician insists on checking things out. Should be fine, right?

Author’s Note: I meant to finish this about two weeks ago, but unfortunately life got in the way. You know how it is. Anyway, I won't waste any more time, you guys have already waited long enough XD Hope you like the chapter!

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The weekend passed without much of note. You finally had that doctor’s appointment Monday morning to talk about your back injury. Sure, that resulted in scheduling another appointment on Wednesday for an X-ray (because apparently that couldn’t be done on the same day), but at least you got a doctor’s note saying you shouldn’t be doing any hard manual labor. Now management would have to be careful about what tasks they’re assigning to you. You made a quick stop at the library after the appointment to scan the note into a PDF, emailed that to management, and then drove out to the Pizzaplex.

There was a line out the front doors when you arrived, so you went in through a staff entrance in the loading dock. Then as soon as you left the staff-only tunnels, you found yourself in a crowd of customers. “Holy shit,” you whispered under your breath. The public areas of the Pizzaplex were absolutely crowded!

Well, that made sense, didn’t it? The Glamrocks were finally back. Sure, only half of them, but people loved the band. No wonder everyone was coming here to see Roxanne and Chica’s return.

You were curious about them, too. But not as curious as you might have been before. You’d already spent the whole week with an animatronic, the novelty of how the robotic band members worked had worn off.

Speaking of the animatronic you’d spent all last week with, time to go to Daycare! Better hurry before they started slamming you with tasks.

It took a few extra minutes because of the crowds, but as soon as you entered the Daycare area everyone abruptly cleared out. It was silent except for the bouncy music playing over the intercoms. You walked right up to the wooden doors and pushed your way inside.

“Heeeeello!” Sun popped up from behind one of the play structure’s tubes. He waved and skipped on over. “Welcome back, friend! It’s been so long!”

You laughed. “Hey, Sun. I missed you.”

“You did? I missed you too!” Sun’s rays wiggle. “I’ve been so busy! Look at everything, it’s all cleaned up!”

“Uh... yeah, I’m surprised.” The play area was brighter, all the colors more vivid. The cart of cleaning supplies was sitting by the wall with bottles knocked over and splashes of dirty water around the wheels. “Uh... you remember I said you didn’t have to clean the whole time, right?”

“I do, but...” Sun tapped his fingers together. “O-once I started going I couldn’t stop! Couldn’t stop until alllll the supplies were used up!”

“Hmm...” You frowned. “Well, I guess you probably have like... programming or something. But, uh... still. You could’ve taken breaks or something.”

“I couldn’t, I really couldn’t! Clean up, clean up.” Despite the cheerful little chant, you could have sworn there was a nervous edge to Sun’s voice. But before you could think about it that much, Sun moves on. “Oh! But I didn’t forget about what you said. You wanted to see some drawings, right? Here, over here!” He hurried over to the desk and picked up a few pieces of paper, holding them out to you.

“Oh cool! Did you have fun?” You followed him and took the offered papers, flipping through them. They looked more like kids’ drawings than anything else, with shaky lines and scribbled colors. Most of them featured the Glamrocks and other Fazbear-related things, but one of them was different. “Hang on, is this me?”

“I hope you don’t mind!” Sun said hurriedly. “But you drew such a nice picture of me that I wanted to return the favor. I know it’s not as good as yours, but here it is!”

“Awww.” You smiled. “It’s fantastic, Sunny boy. I like how you drew my hair. And all of these have such great colors!”

“Really? I-I snapped a few crayons so I thought I was pressing too hard.”

“Oof. Yeah, be careful with that. You’re a whole-as—you’re all mechanical and stuff, you’d be a lot stronger than us fleshy guys. But there’s nothing wrong with pressing hard to get those bright colors. I used to do that, too.”

Sun clapped his hands. “I’m so glad you’re happy, friend! I suppose it was a bit fun. Here, you can keep them if you want!”

You shook your head. “No, I couldn’t do that.”

“Oh really, I don’t mind!”

“...Alright. How about I keep the one of me and you can have the rest of them?” You separated that from the stack and put the remaining ones on the desk.

“Hmmm, okay! That’s fair!” Sun fidgeted with the stack on the desk, making sure the edges of the papers were all lined up.

“Great.” You carefully slid Sun’s drawing into your backpack. “Hey, I noticed you drew the Glamrocks. Did you know Chica and Roxanne are back?”

Sun’s face rotated, confused. “Back?”

“Oh! Right, you wouldn’t know! Something happened to the Glamrocks, like... a while ago. The Pizzaplex was closed for about a month. No one really knows what happened, but uh, at least Chica and Roxanne are back again.”

“Are they okay?” Sun asked.

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen them yet,” you admitted. “Did you... know the Glamrocks?”

“Well, not too well, but we used to sometimes take the kids out for trips into the rest of the Pizzaplex!” Sun said. “They would visit the band sometimes! So sometimes we would see them. I-I don’t think think they would remember me, though.”

“Hmm. So you guys are just, like, coworkers and not friends. That makes se—”

Ping! “New task added!”

“God da—!” You cut yourself off with a scowl and looked at your FazWatch. Two new tasks had been added. Cleaning up a mess in Chica’s Cupcake Factory, and rescrewing some vent covers that had fallen off. You sighed. “I’m so sorry, Sun.”

“It’s not a problem! You have to do your job.” Sun nodded understandingly.

“Yeah. But I’ll see you again today, I promise.” You smiled.

“Okay! I’ll look forward to it! Can you take the cleaning cart out with you? It’s been taking up space ever since I used everything up.”

“No problem, man.”

After quickly dropping off the cart of used supplies at the nearest janitorial closet—probably not where you should put it, but you were in a rush—you headed off to take care of the tasks.

The new crowds in the Pizzaplex meant you were forced to take the utility tunnels most of the time, which resulted in you getting turned around more than once. Stupid winding underground hallways. The more time you spent getting lost, the more tasks appeared on the FazWatch. At least you were getting used to the stuff they had you do here. A lot of cleaning, some maintenance, moving things around. Not too difficult. The most difficult task proved to be putting on the vent covers again, since some of them were in high, difficult-to-reach places.

It was a bit strange, actually. There was no sign of wear or anything on the vents or the screws holding them in place. Why did they fall off? They looked fine to you. But then again, you didn’t know anything about vents. Were they usually this big? A person could easily crawl inside.

Finally, everything was done. You headed back to the surface and were just about to leave the staff-only areas when—

Ping! “New task added!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” you shouted.

Something clattered behind you. You spun around and saw a familiar face. It was that blonde kid from last week. Jeremy. Apparently he knocked over a trash bin, sending it crashing into three other identical trash bins lined up next to it. “Oh sorry!” he said. “You just—I was coming to say hi. Did I bother you?”

“No, no, don’t worry.” You walked over and helped him right the fallen bins. They were all colored to look like Roxanne Wolf. “Jeremy, right?”

“Yeah. And you are, uh...” He paused. “Sorry, I’m not good with names.”

“It’s fine.” You told him your name again. “And don’t worry about me shouting, I’m just frustrated with this thing.” You checked the FazWatch. “All these constant tasks.”

“Yeah, they never stop, huh?” Jeremy laughed nervously. “I, uh... this is my first job, is this normal?”

“Depends on where you work. But yeah. It’s just annoying when you have something you want to do.” You sighed.

“Oh! Did you want to go see the show?” Jeremy asked.

“The huh?”

“The show’s starting soon!” Jeremy’s eyes lit up. “I haven’t gotten to catch one yet! It won’t be the whole band but I bet it’ll be awesome anyway!”

“Oh. Showtime.” You paused, reading the new task. Cleaning up some tools in Parts and Service. That could wait, right? You were a bit curious. “Y’know what? Let’s check it out together.”

“Awesome!” Jeremy jumped at the chance. “Come on, I know how to get to the stage from here.”

Showtime happened five times a day on the stage in the atrium. You wondered if every time slot was this popular, because the massive atrium floor was absolutely packed with people. Most of them families, and most of those families with little girls; clearly, little boys weren’t as interested in a show with only Chica and Roxanne.

“Who’s your favorite?” Jeremy asked you as the two of you stood at the very back of the room. “When I was little I loved Foxy, but they don’t have him here anymore, so I guess Monty’s my new favorite. He’s cool.”

“Really? Uh... I never really thought about it,” you said. “I guess... Freddy or Bonnie, maybe?” Honestly, you were never really drawn to one animatronic in particular. Until you stumbled into the Daycare, that is. Did Sun and Moon count?

“Oh that makes sense.” Jeremy nodded.

You raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I dunno, they’re just... the classics. Older people tend to like the older characters.”

“I’m only like, eight or nine years older than you.”

“Yeah? That’s a whole decade.”

You laughed.

The atrium lights dimmed. The distant stage was lit up with pink, purple, and white spotlights. The crowd cheered in excitement. You saw a little girl in pigtails climb on a bench to try to see over the adults in front of her, showing enthusiasm that clearly wasn’t matched by the brown-haired boy next to her. Then, rising up from the ground, you saw the silhouettes of two tall figures. TV screens on either side of the stage showed a close-up for the people in the back: Chica and Roxanne, waving at the crowd. Everyone cheered.

“God, I wish we could get closer,” Jeremy said. “We should be able to, cause we work here and everything.”

“Well, I mean, I’m technically a technician, so maybe I can see them really up close some time,” you said.

“Really?! Cool!” Jeremy smiled. “Hey, if you ever get the chance, could you—this is gonna sound stupid, but, introduce me? Sometime?”

You smiled back. “Sure, I can try and do that.”

“Awesome.”

The show was short. Chica and Roxanne only preformed a couple songs, possibly limited by just the two of them. But it was fun. Like a mini concert. You didn’t know Chica could sing; Freddy had always been advertised as the lead. And the two of them moved so fluidly, like they weren’t robots at all but actually alive. Or maybe any mistakes were hidden by the fog and flashing lights.

The show ended with Chica grabbing the microphone and announcing, “Thank you all for coming! Roxy and I will be in Rockstar Row until our next performance!”

“Stop on by to say hi,” Roxanne added. “We might even hand out autographs!”

And then the stage they were standing on lowered, taking them out of sight. The Pizzaplex announcer said, “Thank you for attending the Fazbear and Friends Glamrock Show. Come back at 9:00 for our next one!”

“That was so cool, right?!” Jeremy said, looking at you and grinning.

“Yeah, really cool. Wonder what it’d be like with all of them.” You checked your FazWatch. “Ah, shit, I still have to do that one task before I can take my break. How do I get to Parts and Service from here, again?"

"I hear the stage elevator leads down there, so if you're brave enough you could jump on up there,” Jeremy said jokingly.

“Ha ha. I’ll figure it out. Hey, thanks for suggesting this. See you around?”

“Uh, yeah, sure!”

“Great.” You smiled at him. “See you later.” And you broke into a run.

Luckily you found your way down there quickly. But Parts and Service wasn’t as empty as you expected. The moment you walked in, you noticed activity in the big glass cylinder in the middle of the room. “What the...?” you whispered. You slowly walked forward and peered through the glass. Inside was a woman you recognized as Pamela, the head technician. She was bending over an exoskeleton laid out on the table/chair thing in the middle of the cylinder. There was no plating on the exoskeleton, but there was a bright red mohawk and a row of sharp teeth. “Jeez,” you muttered. Montgomery Gator had looked better. “Alligators. Can they kill your children? ... Yes.”

A few seconds passed while you tried to figure out what Pamela was doing. Then she straightened up and immediately saw you standing there. You started a bit, feeling strangely guilty, then gave her a wave and a nervous smile.

Pamela nodded once. It was hard to read her expression. Hopefully she wasn’t freaked out by you watching.

The door to the glass cylinder slid upwards and Pamela walked out. You immediately started talking. “Sorry, uh—I came down here to sort some stuff and I saw you and I wondered what you were doing—is that Monty? He looks weird without the, uh, shell thing—”

“Yeah, I’ve been finishing up his repairs,” Pamela said. “You’re new. Have you heard what happened to the Glamrocks?”

“Uh... no.”

“You’re on the same page as everyone else, then.” Pamela walked over to the computer by the cylinder and clicked something on the screen. “The day shift left one evening, then came back and found them all wrecked and the security footage gone.”

“Oh. That’s... that’s weird.” Really weird. “Wrecked like... smashed up?”

“Yep. No one knows what happened.”

“Maybe... someone broke in to destroy them?” You speculated. There were enough people out there who hated Fazbear Entertainment. Surely one of them would be crazy enough to do that.

Pamela shrugged. “No idea. What are you sorting?”

“Huh? Oh, right.” Your task. “Apparently there were a lot of tools in disarray...” You glanced around. There was no obvious mess in sight.

“Oh those.” Pamela nodded. “I took care of those before I started on Monty for the day.”

“Really?” When had she had time to do that? Well... you had delayed for a bit watching the show. You felt a bit bad for putting it off now. “Uh, sorry for leaving that for you. I-I’m still getting used to the layout of this place—”

“You probably wouldn’t have known where to put them anyway,” Pamela dismissed.

Your shoulders tensed defensively. She was right. But she didn’t have to say it like that.

“Want to see where it’s all kept?” Pamela asked.

“Oh, uh... no thanks, I wouldn’t take up any more of your time.”

“It’s fine. I’m almost done with this guy, anyway.” Pamela gestured back at Monty in the cylinder.

“Well, I, uh...” You checked your FazWatch. There were no new tasks after the sorting one. “I, uh, actually have more stuff to do.”

“Where?”

“Uh—in the daycare.” You were so surprised by Pamela’s unexpected ask that you said the first spot that came into your mind. And honestly, it wasn’t wrong. You did have stuff to do in the daycare. They just weren’t Faz-tasks.

Pamela raised her eyebrow. “In the daycare? That place has been closed for months. No one even uses the theatre or party rooms anymore.”

Shit. “Yeah, well, uh—doesn’t mean there aren’t problems!” You laugh nervously. “Like, uh, that animatronic in there. There’s probably a ton of problems with him, being all stuck in there.” Stop talking stop talking stop talking—

“Wait, you mean the Daycare Attendant?” For once, Pamela’s neutral expression broke into surprise. “They’re still up and running?”

“Uh... y-yeah.” You were also surprised. “They’ve... been active this whole time. Shouldn’t you know that? As the head animatronic technician?”

“I’m fairly new to the job, to be honest,” Pamela said. She ran a hand through her dark, curly hair. “I was working here while the Daycare was open, but I assumed that they’d shut down the Attendant when it closed. Maybe even scrapped them. Shit. You’re right, they probably have a lot of problems if they’ve been active this whole time. Hang on. I can help. Give me a moment.” She walked over to one of the rooms along the edge of the main Parts and Service hub.

“Oh. Well...” You wanted to say ‘that’s probably not a good idea, Sun has anxiety issues that probably wouldn’t be helped by the head technician appearing, and Moon is still a wildcard who might attack you.’ But what you actually said was “Yeah. Sure, come on.”

“Great.” Pamela ducked inside the room, then reappeared with a red duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She shoved a weird two-pronged tool into the bag and zipped it up. “You lead the way.”

The walk to the Daycare was awkward. You couldn’t really think of anything to say so you didn’t say anything. Pamela didn’t start a conversation, either. But you couldn’t help but feel you should be talking. If not to make small talk with your boss—she’s your boss, right?—then to explain what’s been going on with Sun and Moon. At least let her know about your quest to reopen the Daycare. But how the hell are you supposed to say that?! ‘Hey I know that kids were hurt and went missing in the daycare but I want to make it so they can go in again because I’m emotionally attached to the Daycare Attendant’? That sounded insane.

Eventually, you arrived. “Hey, um...” you said, finally finding your voice. “Do you mind if I head in first and tell S—the Daycare Attendant that you’re coming?”

“Sure.” Pamela nodded. “Going to slide in?” She pointed at the ‘Slide Into Fun!’ sign.

“Wha—no, of course not!” Though you still wanted to try that sometime. “We’ll just... walk down to the doors.”

You quickly walked down the stairs, Pamela behind you, and up to the big wooden doors. Pamela hung back as you pushed open one of them and ducked into the play area.

“Welcome back, friend!” Sun was straightening the barrels again, but he jumped up as soon as he saw you. “They really keep you busy, don’t they?”

“They really do.” You sighed. “Uh, Sun. So. I ran into someone, and I-I might have mentioned I was going to the daycare, and... well, someone else is coming. Is that okay?”

“Oh! Yes, of course, I’d love to meet another new friend!” Sun visibly perked up. He practically ran over to the door and skidded to a halt, bouncing with excitement. “Who is it? Are they going to help us?”

“Um... maybe. I-it’s the head technician.”

Sun instantly froze. “It is?”

“Y-yeah, I... mentioned you and how you’ve been, uh... active this whole time, and how that might mean, uh... problems. With...” You gestured vaguely at him. “...with your body. Like, joints and stuff. So—”

You were interrupted by the sound of the wooden doors opening. Spinning around, you saw Pamela shoving her way inside. “Heavy, huh?” she grunted. “Don’t think a kid could open these. Seems a bit stupid for a daycare.”

“Pamela! Hi!” You gave her a little wave. “Uh, so—this is Sun. I mean, you said you knew about him, but this is him. Sun, this is Pamela.”

“Hey.” Pamela walked over to the desk, letting the door close on its own.

You glanced at Sun. He wasn’t saying anything, staring at Pamela. Then he started. “Oh! You’re new!” he said. “Hello, friend! Welcome to the Superstar Daycare!” He gave a big, sweeping wave over his head.

“Hey. Thanks.” Pamela nodded. She cleared a spot on the desk, pushing aside the random stuff on top, and set her duffel bag down on top of it. “I saw you around before. But you looked different.”

“O-oh, really?” Sun dropped his hand. “Well, I’m not the only Daycare Attendant! There’s also... Moon.”

“Yeah, them. Or... him?” Pamela looked at you as she unzipped her bag. “You used ‘him’, right?”

“Uh, yeah, they’re both ‘him’s,” you said, a bit surprised at Pamela asking. You weren’t expecting her to clarify Sun and Moon’s pronouns. “They, uh... they share the same body, but when it’s light, it’s Sun, and when it’s dark, it’s Moon.”

“Really?” Pamela tilted her head, curious. “Two AIs in one body. With a light trigger. That has to be hard to code.” She glanced at Sun, giving him a quick once-over, then looked down and took something out of her bag. You recognized it as a laptop case. “Impressive.”

“Oh.Th-thank you?” Sun sounded a bit uncertain. He probably wasn’t sure how to reply. You reach over and grab his hand supportively. His head turned to look at you, and then he gently clasped your hand as well.

"You mind if I ask you some questions, Sun?" Pamela said. She unzipped her laptop case and took out the computer inside. It was unusually colored: pink and white with a big bow decal on the back.

“Yes of course! I mean, no! I-! mean, I don’t mind at all! Ask away.” Sun gave a little laugh. He was once again swaying slightly on his feet.

“Great.” Pamela looked down at her computer screen, typing and clicking. “You’ve been here in the daycare the whole time?”

“Yep! But... Moon’s able to go out and about. The roaming protocols were restricted for me, but not for him.”

“How have you not run out of charge?”

Sun paused. “W-well, there’s a charging cable in our room that I use. I always use it! Always. Always. Just in case someone shows up!” There was a manic hint in Sun’s voice that worried you. You squeezed his hand, wondering if he would even feel that. He did, and he gave a slight—very slight—squeeze back.

“Hmm.” Pamela nodded. “Have you been especially active while you’re in here?”

“Sometimes! More now that my new friend’s been checking in on me!”

Oh shit that was you. You stiffened a bit as Pamela turned her attention to you. “I mean—I-I’ve been coming in... occasionally...” you said. “To... see how things are going.” You noticed Sun’s face rotate, as if confused. But he didn’t say anything.

“Hmm. That explains why you knew the Attendant was still active.” Pamela looked back at the computer screen. “Sun, have you had any trouble? Stiff movement, broken parts? Software errors?”

Sun hesitated. He looked at you, as if silently asking permission. You thought about it, then shrugged, unsure if Pamela should know about Moon’s possible glitch. Sun looked back at Pamela. “Nope! I’ve been having no issues! None at all! Perfectly functional!” That might have been a bit of an overcorrection. “N-no need to check anything!” That was definitely an overcorrection.

"Calm down, Sun," you whispered.

"Right, right, sorry!" he whisper-shouted back.

"Don’t apologize, nothing was wrong, it’s just—”

“I can hear you, you know,” Pamela interrupted.

Both you and Sun stiffened. “Uh, sorry!” you said. “We weren’t ignoring you or anything—”

“It’s fine, I’m checking some information, anyway,” Pamela said. “Old stuff. Schematics. Shit, this file is dense.”

“No swearing in the daycare, new friend!” Sun said automatically.

You were more concerned with something else. “Wait, you’re looking at Sun’s blueprints?”

“Well I’m not exactly familiar with his design,” Pamela said. “It’s pretty different from the Glamrocks I’m used to. There’s some coding data here, too, but it’s way too much for me to look at right now. Not to mention everything else in this file. Really big ‘Incidents’ section.”

You looked at Sun, trying to gauge his reaction. It’s hard to read with his never-changing expression. But he was holding your hand pretty tight. Not tight enough to hurt, but it’s definitely noticeable. “Uh, let’s focus on one thing at a time,” you said.

“Right.” Pamela nodded. “I’ll trust what you say, Sun.”

“You will?!” Sun sounded surprised. He hurried to cover it up. “Well thank you, new friend! It’s always good to trust each other!”

“Not always,” Pamela muttered darkly. You almost couldn’t hear her. But she, too, quickly moved on to cover it up. “There’s just one thing I want to check. I want to see what happens when you switch into night mode. Then ask Moon some questions, since he has different features that might need maintenance.”

Silence. “You... want to see Moon?” Sun asked. His posture was stiff, worried.

“Yeah.”

“Um...��� You raised a hand to get attention. “Moon is... Moon’s kind of... unpredictable. He, uh—”

“Yeah, I know the basics,” Pamela said. “Don’t worry. There’s a note here that the Daycare Attendant can’t roam behind the security desk in the daycare. I don’t think that’s changed.”

You look at Sun. “Is that true?”

“That’s very true, friend!” Sun agreed. He relaxed. “I-it will probably be fine if you and Ms. Brooks stay behind there. Besides, that’s where the lights are.”

“Oh. Okay. So... are you good with going lights-off right now, then?” you asked. “It’s okay if you’re not. Pamela can come back some other time.”

“No no, it will be fine.” Sun put his hands on his shoulders and turned you so you were facing the light controls. “Go ahead! J-just remember to turn the lights on again soon! The lights are supposed to be on during daytime.”

“I remember, Sun.” You turned back and gave him a smile and a thumbs-up. “I’ll turn them on really quick. It’ll be alright. Don’t worry.”

“I-I won’t.”

You walked towards the light controls, leaving Sun standing there, fidgeting again. “On three,” you said to him and Pamela. “One... two... three!” And you hit the button.

The darkness was instant. You hurried over to the desk, where Pamela’s laptop screen was now the only source of light in the daycare. With its glow and the light coming in through the glass around the play area, you could see the transformation starting. It wasn’t as... intense as the last one you saw. Probably because Sun wasn’t screaming. But the mechanical noises and jittering animatronic limbs was still upsetting to see. Sun fell over right as you reached Pamela’s side. And didn’t stand up again.

“Hello?” you called.

A blue-and-white hand grabbed the edge of the desk. Then another. And then Moon’s face slowly rose over the edge. “Naughty naughty,” he said. “Not naptime yet.”

“You don’t sound too upset at that,” you said casually.

Moon chuckled. In one smooth motion he jumped onto the edge of the desk, crouching on its surface. His red eyes landed on you, but then he quickly noticed Pamela and turned to stare at her. Was it just your imagination, or did you notice Moon tense up?

“So you’re Moon.” Pamela was shockingly calm given that a giant animatronic with freaky red eyes was only a foot away from her face. “I’m Pamela. I’m the head technician here. Your friend—” Her head jerked towards you “—told me that you and Sun were still active, which I didn’t know.”

Moon’s face swiveled over to you. “You told?”

“No!” You raised your hands defensively. “I just—mentioned I was going to the Daycare and—and things just sort of spiraled from there.” You glanced at Pamela. “Not that I was going to keep them a secret from you or anything—"

“It’s fine,” Pamela said, doing stuff with her laptop. You glanced at the screen and saw dense text paired up with a drawing of the Daycare Attendant’s inner workings. “I’m just here to check that everything’s still functioning with you. Is it?”

Moon didn’t answer. But he did return to looking at Pamela instead of you, which was relieving. He leaned forward, inching his face closer to hers. Pamela, to her credit, didn’t flinch.

“You know, I don’t think... Moon talks a lot,” you said haltingly.

“That’s fine. I work with the DJ sometimes, he doesn’t talk at all. I can work with this.” Pamela clicked to a different page on her laptop. “Sun said that he didn’t notice any problems. So it’s probably okay. But it says here that the two of them have different features and protocols, so there’s always a chance something’s gone wrong with their individual systems. I’d like to know if that’s the case, Moon.”

Moon’s head twitched. “All fine.”

Bullshit.

“Alright, then.” Pamela nodded. “It’s always good to run a check-up anyway, so if you two ever want to come down to Parts and Service—"

Moon leaned even closer to her. “All. Fine.” His voice was a low growl.

Pamela finally reacted, but only to lean backwards. “If you say so. In that case, there’s nothing more for me to do right now.” She shut her laptop and looked at you. “I don’t want to get in the way of whatever you were doing here. You can handle it, right?”

“Uhhh yeah.” You glanced at Moon. “I can take care of myself.”

“Great.” She put her laptop back into the case, and put that back in her duffel bag. “I’ll leave you here.” And she promptly walked away. Pamela wasn’t much for small talk, was she?

With Pamela now leaving, Moon turned his attention to you. He leaned closer. Unlike Pamela, you weren’t confident enough to stay in place while that happened, and took a couple steps backwards. “You told,” Moon said.

“I didn’t mean to,” you insisted. “She just started asking questions and I-I panicked. And I can’t tell her to not do something, she’s, like, technically in charge of me, so when she invited herself along—Why do you care, anyway?” You folded your arms. “Is it because you don’t want anyone knowing what the hell your deal is?”

“No swearing in the daycare,” Moon said.

“You do that, too? Well, I guess it must be in your programming or whatever.” You sighed. “Look. I’m not gonna tell Pamela anything you don’t want her to know. But she is the head technician. It might be good to have her on our side. Why are you so—so—weird about what’s happening?”

Moon’s face rotated. You could have sworn he looked thoughtful. “Naughty kids must be punished.”

“Okay. What does that mean in this context?”

Before Moon could say anything else, the lights in the Daycare all turned on again. “No!” He jerked backwards, falling off his perch on the desk. “No more lights! No more naps!” Mechanical clacking sounds filled the air. Moon slammed his head against the side of the desk, dislodging everything as he growled and struggled. And then everything stopped.

“Moon? Sun?” You leaned over the desk and saw Sun lying on the floor on his back. “Are you okay?”

Sun was quiet for a moment. Then he gave you a thumbs-up. “I’m in tip-top shape, friend!” he said in an overly-cheerful tone.

“Hah. Right.” You turned back around to look at the light switch. Pamela was standing there with her hand on the button. “Uh—Pamela, I—maybe you should warn us next time?”

“Sorry.” Her hand dropped to her side. “I didn’t think it would be that... difficult.”

Sun popped up. “Oh, it’s quite alright! All good here!”

“Right.” Pamela nodded slowly. “Hey, actually. You.” She looked at you. “Can I talk to you for a second? Out here?”

“Uhhh... ssssure.” You gave Sun an apologetic glance and made your way over. “This’ll only take a second.”

“Oh. Okay! Of course. Be back soon!”

“Definitely.” You waved, and then followed Pamela out through the big wooden doors. They closed solidly behind you.

Pamela paused for a moment, staring at the doors. Then nodded and looked at you. “So something’s definitely wrong with them.”

Your stomach dropped. “What? What do you mean?” you asked, trying to sound casual about it.

“Well first of all, no animatronics should be making those clacking and rattling sounds when they move,” Pamela said. “They’re designed to be quiet. But that’s probably just due to a lack of cleaning and proper maintenance. The light trigger is what really worries me. It shouldn’t be that... that...” She paused. “It should be a lot smoother.”

“W-well, uh, they’ve been transforming like that the, uh... the whole time I’ve seen them,” you said slowly.

“Hmm.” Pamela pressed her lips together. “I’m just saying. I don’t know if they’re aware of it, since they both said everything was fine, but something’s probably gone wrong with the software or the actual physical mechanisms. I could issue a Service Ticket for them. But I don’t like to do that unless everyone’s on the same page.” She jerked her head back to the doors. “I don’t really care what you do in there with them. But if you could, at any point, convince them to come down for some simple maintenance, that would be great.”

“Uh...” You weren’t sure how to respond to this. “Yeah. I can... I’ll try.”

“Great.” Pamela nodded. “I’ll see you around.” She spun around and left.

“Uh—see you!” you shouted after her. You watched her walk up the staircase and disappear, then you turned around to look back at the play area entrance. A moment passed. Then you sighed and headed back in.

“Is everything okay, friend?” Sun was waiting right outside the doors. “Are you in trouble? Are we in trouble?!”

“Everything’s fine, don’t worry,” you reassured him.

“Oh good!” Sun’s shoulders slumped in relief. “What was that all about, then?”

“Uh... I’ll tell you later,” you said slowly. “For now,” you tapped your FazWatch, “I’m finally on break, so this can’t drag me away. Is there anything you want to do?”

“Oh there’s so much!” Sun gasped. “We can keep fixing things up around here, but no, you probably don’t want to work on your break, do you, friend? We can play a game! I need to practice for playtime again! Oh, no, wait! You should eat something! You’ve been working so hard, you should have something nice while you have a chance.”

“Right, right.” You nodded. “I did pack a lunch. Almost forgot about it.”

“Never forget to eat, friend! Food is the fuel to keep you going!”

You laughed. “Is that a line you used on the kids?”

“Sometimes, but it’s true!”

“It really is.” You set your backpack on the desk, opening it up and rummaging around inside—being careful not to fold Sun’s drawing from earlier. “I’ll eat and we can talk, then once my break is over we’ll see if I have any new tasks.”

“Sounds good to me!” Sun said.

Unfortunately, the tasks did draw you away again after your break, but at least you had fifteen minutes of peace. Sun seemed eager to forget about what just happened with Pamela so he encouraged you to talk about whatever was on your mind. Which was mostly video games. Afterwards, you headed back into the Pizzaplex, where you stayed busy until it was time to go home.

You didn’t forget about what Pamela said about maintenance. She was right; Sun and Moon needed to have someone look at them. They’d been left alone for so long that they probably had a ton of problems, even if they functioned fine. But neither of them wanted it. Moon didn’t like talking about his problems in the first place, and Sun... well, he might go along with your suggestion, but he was clearly anxious about the whole thing. Was he afraid? Were they both afraid? Of what? Maybe... of what the check-up would find?

It was hard to figure out. But you would tell them about Pamela’s suggestion soon. Maybe some maintenance would help them both.

[celestial-robots]

Finding Equinox

A Sun & Moon X Reader Story

Chapter Three: Mr. Sunshine and Mr. Moon

First | Previous

Word Count: 6943

Summary: After the disaster and injury of your last shift, you return to the Pizzaplex with a peace offering and a new determination to figure out what the hell is going on with Sun... and that other personality, too.

Author’s Note: I know, I know, it’s been a HOT minute since the last chapter. The only explanation I have is that the executive dysfunction got real bad guys :( I completely forgot about this story, but now I have remembered all the ideas I had and I am determined to finish it. Please hold me accountable. I hope anyone who remembers this story find this new part and enjoys it XD :)

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True to your word, you had gone down to the nearest first aid station after leaving the daycare, grabbing a cold pack and wrapping your torso in bandages. It was sheer luck that you didn’t have that many tasks for the rest of the evening. That night at home and the next day absolutely sucked. The pain from landing on your back faded, but didn’t go away, lingering in the back of your mind and flaring up when you moved the wrong way.

Your doctor’s office closed at eight, meaning that by the time your shift ended at nine it was too late to call and schedule an appointment. So you did that the next morning, braving down the dreaded “making a phone call” part of being an adult. It went easier than you expected. Unfortunately, you knew that getting your injury checked out wouldn’t be so easy. You would have to make an appointment with your doctor, then get your doctor to help you make more appointments for various procedures, then go to those procedures to figure out what was wrong...ugh. At least Fazbear Entertainment provided surprisingly good health insurance. They probably expected injuries like this—or worse—to happen on the job.

Speaking of which...was it worth it to email management and explain that you were injured? Would they tell you to get to work anyway? You highly suspected that was the case, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ask for a lighter workload anyway. But then again, maybe they would make you stay home. And you needed that explanation from Sun. Not to mention you promised him you’d show up the next day to prove you were alright.

In the end, you drafted a very polite and unassuming email to management explaining that you’d injured your back and that you were willing to come to work but would prefer if you had less laborious tasks. They responded the next morning saying that they would keep that in mind but that “If there is something that needs to be taken care of and you are the most convenient option, you will be assigned to it.” Yep. That was about what you were expecting.

Well if you had to head to work, which you did, (damn you capitalism!) you would have to add to your Survival Pack. It now included bandages and an ice bag—one that could be refilled with ice from the various restaurants around the Pizzaplex. Sun suggested that you cool your injury for twenty minutes every hour, and that lined up with a lot of the advice you’d seen online. So it looked like you were going to have to stop working every twenty minutes to move the ice pack to a different area of your back and secure it there with the bandages. Hopefully that email was at least slightly truthful in the task decrease. Otherwise you might end up staying late. And when your shift already ended at three in the morning, staying late was far from convenient.

The moment you stepped through the doors and clocked in on your FazWatch, you were greeted by that familiar ping! “New task added!” Groaning, you checked the screen. A STAFF bot had fallen down some utility stairs and broken off its arm. You were required to replace it.

Dread filled your stomach. It had finally arrived. The fateful moment where you had to try and repair a robot, which you had no idea how to do. At least it was just a STAFF bot. Those were simple in comparison to the headlining animatronics, and you were pretty sure they weren’t as sentient, either. But still, you knew this would take a good while to figure out how to reattach a robot arm. You hesitated, standing in the middle of the front entrance, watching happy families flow around you to the various Pizzaplex attractions. After a good minute of putting it off, you finally started moving again, looking for a way into Parts and Service.

It took a while, but eventually you found your way through the maze of utility tunnels and arrived at the red double doors that led into Parts and Service. Pushing through those doors, you found yourself in a large room, with various smaller rooms around the perimeter. Your attention was immediately drawn to the middle, where a big glass cylinder stood as the room’s centerpiece. But also, equally as attention-grabbing, there were two real human people standing by a computer terminal and talking.

You half-wanted to go up and introduce yourself, but the two of them looked busy. So instead, you walk around the edge of the room, looking for that broken STAFF bot. There it was: in one of the side rooms. You hurried over, passing through the already-open door and into the side room. Alright...how were you supposed to do this?

There was a box on a table. You glanced inside and saw a detached STAFF arm as well as some tools. You could identify the most obvious of them—hammer, screwdrivers, wrenches of various sizes—but some of them eluded you. Was that a drill or a nail gun? Was the long metal tool with a hole in the end also a kind of wrench or was it something else? And, most importantly, which of these were necessary for arm replacement?

You slowly pick up the STAFF arm, thinking that maybe if you looked at the joint you could figure out what to use. But before you could do that, there was a SLAM! behind you as the door suddenly closed. You yelped in surprise and spun around. That was startling. But no problem, you just had to open the door again...except that it wasn’t opening. You tried pushing, pulling, and sliding, all to no avail. The door was locked. But luckily, the wall next to it is glass. “Uh...hello?” You wave through the window. “I’m locked in!”

Outside, the two people had moved and are right outside the room you’re in. They must have closed the door. One of them, a woman with dark curly hair, noticed you. She reached over and tapped the shoulder of the other person, a man with auburn hair. Once he turned back to look at her, she points at you and then at the room’s door. The man’s eyes widened, and he hurried over, opening the door from the other side. “Sorry about that,” he said the moment it was opened. “I didn’t even see you in there.”

You laughed. “No, uh, it’s okay. I’m just confused. I-I couldn’t open the door.”

“Yeah, they’re set to a ridiculously high Security Level. There’s no real reason for it, not like there’s anything dangerous in here.” The man chuckled. “Are you new here?”

“Yeah, it’s my third day. I’m, uh...well, technically I’m a technician, but I’m not really qualified. They just decided that I should be one, I guess.”

“Oh cool! That means Pamela here is your boss.” The man gestured back at the woman, who was standing some ways back. “I’m Seth, by the way. Security.”

You introduced yourself, giving the pair of them a better look now that you were no longer distracted by being locked in. Both of them were older than you, with Seth looking to be in his mid-30s and Pamela in her 50s. Seth’s hair was neatly coiffed underneath a black baseball cap with “SECURITY” written across it in white letters. He wore a white button up shirt with black shoulders and an image of a badge on the lapel. Pamela’s curly hair was pulled back with a red bandanna. She wore overalls, but underneath you recognized the same style of shirt you were wearing: the employee T-shirt.

“Well it’s nice to meet you,” Seth said, grinning. “Right, Pam?”

Pamela hummed a vague affirmation.

“Had any trouble yet?” Seth continued.

“Uh...not much,” you said slowly. “But, you know, I did hurt my back recently, and uh...doing manual labor with that is gonna suck a—it’s gonna suck.” You refrained from saying ‘it’s going to suck ass’ in front of your work superiors.

“Oh, well, if you ever get any task that you don’t think you can do, why don’t you call Pam or me to come help?” Seth offered.

“Hey, don’t rope me into this,” Pamela grumbled. “My desk is piled high with Glamrocks.”

“I thought you didn’t have a desk.”

“It’s a metaphor, genius.”

Seth chuckled good-naturedly. “Well, if you ever get a moment of free time, you can help out the new kid, right?”

“I’m not a kid,” you muttered under your breath. Thankfully, neither of them seemed to hear you. You continue, in a louder volume, “What do you mean call you? Like, on your phones? Should I give you my number?”

“No, on the watch.” Seth held up his hand, and you saw that he also had a company-issued FazWatch, identical to yours.

“Call...on the watch?” you repeated, blankly looking down at your own FazWatch.

“Yeah, it works like a walkie talkie. Oh, but you have to enable it in the settings.” Seth leaned over, helpfully pointing at the gear icon in the corner of the screen. “You can also change your voice settings there, the text size, screen color, all that fun stuff.”

“Huh.” You shifted the STAFF bot to your elbow and tapped the gear icon with your newly free hand. The settings opened and you navigated through the menus until you found the ‘Enable Calls’ option. Once you returned to the main screen, a new tab had appeared, simply labeled ‘Calls.’ “Well would you look at that. ~The More You Knooow~!” You laughed. It soon became awkward as neither Seth nor Pamela laughed with you. “...ah. Uh, I’ll add you, then?”

“Yep. Just search up our names.”

A few seconds later, you had added Seth (Seth Myer) and Pamela (Pamela Brooks) to your FazWatch contacts. Out of curiosity, you also searched up that Jeremy kid from yesterday and added him as well (Jeremy Patrick). “Well, uh, thank you,” you said. “I-I’ll keep that in mind for the rest of my shift, haha.” You took a step backwards. “For now, uh...I gotta figure out how to replace this robot’s arm.”

Pamela sighed, and stepped forward. “Alright. I’ll do it.”

“Oh I wasn’t trying to—”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not gonna be doing this for you all the time. You’re gonna stay right here and watch me do this so you know.”

“...Oh. Um, okay. Thanks.” You stood there and watched as Pamela rummaged through the box on the table and began pulling out bolts that had collected in the bottom. You appreciated the help, but felt a bit offended that she didn’t wait for you to ask for it.

Seth stepped backwards, giving a joking little salute. “I’ll be heading out, then. Guess I’ll be seeing you two later.”

“Yeah, see you later.” You waved a bit awkwardly as you watched Seth walk out of the red double doors and disappear into the utility tunnels.

“Hand me the arm.”

You started. “What?”

“Arm.” Pamela held out a hand.

“Oh, right.” You’d forgotten you were still holding the replacement STAFF arm. You held it out to Pamela. “Heh. You want me to lend you a hand?”

Pamela was not amused, as she took the STAFF arm and held it up to the empty spot on the STAFF bot. “Now, do you see this round space at the shoulder of the arm? That’s for the joint. It’ll take a bit to pop it on, but don’t push too hard or you’ll break it. Once you got that on, you take these bolts...”

Pamela ended up going over the entire robotic anatomy of a STAFF bot, explaining the fine details of joints and wheels and ocular sensors until your head filled up with information and started to leak. It was sort of interesting, but there was just too much of it, and by the time she let you leave three new tasks had been added to your list.

You weren’t sure if it was luck or if management had actually listened to your email request, but the tasks this shift weren’t too intense. Well, some of them were. You spent about half an hour with your arms buried in the back of a large stage speaker as you cleaned dust from the insides. But hey, at least you could sit on the floor for that and didn’t have to bend too far forwards or backwards. The rest of the tasks were similar, ones where you could find some way to avoid moving your back or breathing too heavily—which was difficult with your ribs bruised, to say the least.

The Pizzaplex was a lot emptier after nine o’clock, and it got even emptier as closing time approached: midnight. By about 11pm, the place was basically a ghost town except for you and the STAFF bots. And, presumably, the few other human employees like Seth and Pamela, but you didn’t see them.

Soon, the intercom turned on. You took off your headphones just in time to hear the announcer say, “Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex is now closed. Initiating nighttime protocols.” That must mean...you checked the time on your phone. Yep, midnight. Closing time, and also your break. Perfect time to go talk to Sun. You double-checked your backpack to make sure everything was there, then headed over to the daycare, walking as quickly as you were able.

Nothing had changed in either the daycare or the surrounding areas. It was just as empty after closing as it was during open hours. That thought made your chest sink with sadness, especially now knowing that Sun wasn’t allowed to leave. You put your headphones into your backpack, allowing that catchy daycare tune to fill your head, and went through the big wooden doors into the playplace. One day, you were going to go down the slide. You swore it. Just not today, when you had some serious questions to ask.

The playplace seemed empty. You looked up to the overhead balcony to see if Sun was there. He wasn’t. “Hello?” you called. “Sun? It’s me, I’m here.”

There was no answer. Confused and a bit concerned, you wandered around, looking for any sign of the animatronic. It shouldn’t be too hard to find him, considering how tall he was. Then again, he was pretty thin and flexible, maybe he could fit into smaller spaces.

Then you saw it. In the middle of the ball pit, poking up from the surrounding colorful balls, was a crest of yellow triangles—the top of Sun’s rays peeking out. Was he hiding from you? Trying to avoid your questions, or just putting them off? Surely he knew you could see his rays.

“Hmmm,” you hummed, pressing your lips together. “Well. I guess you’re not here right now. That sucks, I’ll have to wait to give you this present.” You turned around, starting to walk back towards the doors.

Immediately there was a flurry of plastic balls as Sun shot to his feet. “Wait, don’t go!”

“Ha-ha!” You spun back around and pointed at him. “Ja’cuse! I knew it was you!”

“I-I’m sorry for hiding, friend—well, I wasn’t hiding, I was just preparing myself.” Sun climbed out of the ball pit, throwing any balls he knocked out of the pit right back in. “But I’m sorry! I-I needed a moment.”

“No, it’s okay, dude, don’t worry.” You gave him a reassuring smile. “I don’t really know what the whole deal is yet, but if you need to mentally prepare, go ahead.” You decided not to point out that he had more than a full day to prepare. “Anyway. Because I know this is probably going to be a serious talk, I decided to bring you something to, uh...help offset the mood.” You took your backpack off your back.

“You said something about a present, right?” Sun leaned down over your shoulder, trying to get a good look inside your backpack as you rummaged around. “Ooo, how exciting! I haven’t gotten a present in a long time! Not since the daycare was open! Some of the kids were really, really sweet.”

“Ha, I can imagine. Well, this is sort of similar to that.” You pulled a plain manila folder out of your backpack, carefully slinging the bag back on before handing the folder to Sun. “I mean, you probably got a lot of these from kids. But I thought it would be nice.”

Sun’s face tilted, curious, as he took the folder and opened it up. “Oh. Oh!” Though his smile didn’t change, the way his voice brightened made it seem wider. “Friend! You didn’t have to go to all this effort for me!”

“It wasn’t a problem, really.” You awkwardly bounced on your feet. “I like to draw. And it seemed fitting. You know, since we were doing arts and crafts for our first meeting.”

“But you really didn’t have to!” Sun spun around—once, twice, three times in pure excitement. “It’s so pretty! I look so bright and happy! I did get a lot of drawings from kids, but they usually drew Freddy and his friends, not me. This must’ve taken a while to make. Wow!”

You chuckled. “Glad you like it, bud.” You’d spent a good while that morning digging out your old art supplies, finding a good position to sit that didn’t hurt your back, then sketching, lining, and coloring a drawing of Sun. It was cartoony in style, sort of similar to the candy ads that featured Sun. Not a copy, as you changed up the color scheme a bit and added a cooler-colored background to contrast with Sun’s warmer tones. You hoped that you were able to capture the excited energy Sun always seemed to have. Well...almost always.

“I do like it, very much! Wow...you’re so talented, friend.” Sun bent over and gave you a quick one-armed hug, squeezing just enough to avoid hurting you. “I’m going to put this in my room later.”

“Your room? You mean...that place?” You pointed up to the balcony.

“Yep! That’s our room!”

“...‘our’ room?” you repeated.

Sun froze. All the happiness seemed to drain out of his posture, leaving behind only a nervous, shuffling anxiety. “W-well...” He fidgeted with the manila folder for a bit, flapping it and the drawing it had inside. “I...guess I can’t avoid it for much longer, can I?”

“Sorry, bud. But...I-I’m really confused and I would appreciate some answers. Um...why don’t we sit down?” You lowered yourself to the ground, crossing your legs. “I wish we had actual chairs here or something,” you muttered. “I like sitting on the floor, but sometimes you need a chair.”

“There are a lot of tables and chairs in our room,” Sun said, trying to be helpful. “I could go get one—”

“Sun. Please.”

“Eheh...sorry.” Sun got down on the ground as well, folding his lanky legs beneath him and clutching the folder with your drawing to his chest. “Just thought I should offer.”

“And thanks for that. But not right now.” You let out a deep breath. “So. Yesterday.”

“Yesterday.” Sun nodded. “I-I see you’ve patched yourself up. Did you go to the doctor’s yet?”

“I tried, but I couldn’t. I made an appointment, though. It’s for Monday morning. Soonest I could book it.” You paused. “Yesterday. Was that...you?”

“No no no!” Sun shook his head furiously. “That wasn’t me at all! I would never hurt anyone, especially not you!”

“Okay...But that moon-face guy turned into you.” You shivered a bit as you remembered the transformation. Even though it was a mechanical process, the screams and shuddering made it so much more visceral that it should have been.

“H-he did...” Sun said slowly.

“If it wasn’t you, then who was it?” you asked.

Sun hesitated. “...Moon.”

“Moon?”

“Moon.”

Of course it was. Sun and Moon. Whoever named these robots was sorely lacking in creativity. “And Moon isn’t you. So...what is Moon?”

“Moon is...someone else.” Sun spoke very carefully. “The two of us have always been together. We’re the Daycare Attendant! When the lights are on, it’s my turn, but when the lights go off...he takes over.”

“Oh. Okay.” You’re beginning to put the pieces together. “You guys are two different personalities in the same body?”

“Yes! Yes, exactly!” Sun nodded. “Moon was supposed to watch the kids during Naptime and Lock-In Nights, while I looked after them during Daytime Activities! We were...supposed to work together.”

“...huh. Alright. I can see that.” You nodded as well. “Fazbear probably wanted to save money, so they built you two as one robot with two different...I don’t know, personality chips, or whatever. Instead of forking over the money for two animatronics. That fits with what I know about this fricking company.” Seriously, you’d only worked here for three days and you kept running into more money-making schemes. That thing with selling cameras in golf and then confiscating them? You were pretty sure that was illegal. “So why did Moon hunt me down and drop me from the playplace bridge?”

“I-I-I...I don’t...know,” Sun admitted.

“You don’t?” You’re a bit surprised by that. Somehow, you expected him to know. “Why not?”

“Well, I can’t exactly ask Moon why h-he does anything,” Sun explained. “We can’t talk to each other if we’re out at different times.”

“Have you never, like, written him a note or something?”

“I used to! But...Moon didn’t write a lot. Just a couple sentences, i-if anything. And some time ago, he...stopped answering at all.”

“That’s weird,” you muttered. “Okay. Then...if you had to guess. Why do you think he dropped me from the bridge?”

Sun went quiet for a moment, thinking. “Well...Moon was always scary,” he finally said. “Not a lot of kids liked him. But he kept them safe! He would never hurt a child! Then...something changed. He stopped being just scary and...things started...happening.” He paused. “Then they closed the daycare and started the Lights-On Protocol. I...I did wonder why, but like I said, he stopped answering my letters. But I could guess...I could guess.” Those last words were whispered in a hushed tone. Then Sun shook his head and his voice returned to its usual volume. “Um...did he...say anything? When he was...going after you?”

“Yeah. It was a bunch of creepy shi—stuff about it being past my bedtime and me needing to sleep. Which made no sense, because it was like six in the evening. My guess is that he was going to knock me out. As some sort of fricked-up way of putting me to bed. It makes sense with what you said about him being in charge of Naptime.” You thought about it. “Maybe...something went wrong with his protocols? Like a glitch or something. Made him start using force to put anyone to sleep.”

“A glitch?” Sun’s face rotated to the side. “That would make sense, but is it possible?”

You laughed darkly. “Sun. I know you can’t leave the daycare, so you probably don’t realize this. But there’s some scary rumors about Fazbear Entertainment. Apart from shady corporation things, I mean. They’ve inspired horror games for a reason. A glitch that makes animatronics hurt people, or even kill them? It’s exactly the sort of things people whisper about with this company.”

“Oh.” Sun went quiet for a moment. Then suddenly, he leaned forward and grabbed your shoulders, bursting into fast, frantic words. “But I don’t have a glitch! I promise! I would never hurt anyone, I would never even think of it! Even if Moon does, it doesn’t affect me, so there’s nothing wrong! I promise, there’s nothing wrong! I’m alright!”

“Whoa, whoa, Sun, calm down!” You instinctively put your hands on top of his, gently pushing them off your shoulders. You held his hands tight—even though each one was almost twice as big as your own—and smiled reassuringly. “I know you’re alright. You’ve been nothing but nice and great these past couple days. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Or Moon. Or the both of you.”

“Are you sure?” Sun asked in a small voice.

“I’m sure.”

After a second, Sun sighed, and leaned back. He slowly pulled his hands away from yours, seeming reluctant to you. “Well...I-I’m sorry about Moon,” he said.

“It’s fine, it’s not your fault,” you said.

“I promise, I really don’t have any control over him.”

“I know. You guys have like, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing going on, I get it.”

Sun’s face rotated to the side. “A who and who thing?”

“Oh. Oh! That’s right, you probably don’t—I don’t know why I thought you knew. Even when the daycare was open, I doubt kids were telling you about that.” You laughed. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a gothic novel that’s kind of developed into a pop culture symbol of alter egos and split personalities. Basically this scientist guy, Dr. Jekyll, makes a potion...formula...thing that gives him a second person in his head, Mr. Hyde, who he transforms into. Hyde looks different than Jekyll and causes all sorts of trouble and chaos. There’s a really good musical about it, actually, where Hyde is the darker form of Jekyll. It’s great, but the original book is a bit...different...” You trailed off.

Sun had gone still at some point during this explanation. His white eyes seemed even blanker than usual as he stared at you.

“You, uh...you alright, dude?” you asked slowly.

Sun suddenly jerked to attention. “Yes! I’m great, friend, thank you! Tha-that’s a very interesting story.”

“Yeah.” You nodded slowly. “It’s really good. I think I can pull up the musical’s soundtrack, if you want.”

“Oh. M-maybe another time, friend? I...I think I need...some time.” Sun looked down, again fidgeting with his bells and ribbons.

“Alright. Take all the time you need.” You uncrossed your legs and get to your feet slowly, careful not to aggravate your bruised ribs. Then you check the time on your phone. “My break ends soon, anyway, and I still need to eat.”

“You shouldn’t be eating so late in the night, friend,” Sun said, looking back up.

“Well I burn a lot of calories working here, so I need the energy. Besides, I’m not going to bed for at least four more hours.” You began to realize how much your work schedule was going to mess up your sleep schedule, and mentally curse. “I have another shift tomorrow at these same hours. Should I come see you then?”

“Yes, yes, that would be great. Thank you.” Sun got to his feet. “I’m going to go put your present in my room. I’ll hang it up right on the wall!”

You laughed. “Alright, bud. Thanks. I’m glad you like it.”

“I’m glad you gave it to me! I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Yeppers.”

“Great! Great.” Sun nodded. “I-I’ll look forward to it.”

“Me too, bud.” You headed towards the wooden doors. “See you then.”

“See you!” Sun waved as you left, the movement more subdued than usual.

You ended up eating at one of the many pizza places around the Pizzaplex, grateful that they still made food after closing time. Soon after you finished your second slice of cheesy pizza, your FazWatch let out its distinctive ping! “Two new tasks added!” You wondered if you could mute it. But alas, the most you could do in the settings was lower the volume. Well, at least your headphones would drown it out.

The next hour passed smoothly, and as 1am neared, you found only one task left on your list. One you had gotten near the start of your shift, but purposefully put off. Unjamming the coin slots in some arcade machines in the West Arcade. That task filled you with dread. You’d looked at enough arcade cabinets to know the coin slots were usually low to the ground, and you usually had to crouch on the ground and bend over to unjam them. That was already going to be hell on your back, but also, the West Arcade was a giant three-floor area, and the jammed cabinets were scattered throughout it. There would be a lot of crouching, bending, standing, climbing stairs, and walking.

Reluctantly, you took the elevator up to the Pizzaplex’s third floor, preparing your small screwdriver and keys in anticipation of the unjamming to come.

Well, at least the West Arcade was one of the coolest-looking places in the Pizzaplex. You stopped for a moment to take it all in. The neon here was bright, but not overwhelming. And the holes in the walls were an interesting design. Before you headed off in search of the jammed cabinets, you ducked into the side room with the dance floor, just out of curiosity. You hadn’t been a big fan of the Pizzaplex before getting the job, but even you had heard of the DJ animatronic in the Fazcade.

“Holy shit,” you muttered, staring at the massive animatronic on the stage. They appeared to be sleeping, resting their head on their folded front arms. “Um, hi?” You clicked your company-issued flashlight (they never asked you to return it after the blackout yesterday) on and off a couple times, shining it at their face. “Music Man? Are you awake or in like...rest mode or something?” The lack of a response was an answer in and of itself. “Well, if you can somehow hear me, hi, I’m new, I’m going to be working in this area for like...at least the next hour. Will probably show up again some other day. Uh...good to meet you. I hear you’re pretty cool.” You started to feel kind of silly talking to a sleeping robot, so you turned around and headed out.

The task on your FazWatch gave you rough locations for the jammed cabinets, but not specific directions. You stood at the entrance to the West Arcade for a moment, formulating a plan, then decided to start on the first floor. You’d just found the first cabinet listed in the task—something called Plushtrap Chaser—when the lights went out.

You froze, wondering if this was another blackout like yesterday. And then you remembered something that management told you when assigning you a night shift: “Every hour from one A.M. to six A.M., the power in the Pizzaplex is diverted to the recharge stations for the Glamrock animatronics. The building will be dark for five minutes. Do not worry. This is completely normal." So, even when there were no Glamrock animatronics, that programming still held up. Probably too much effort to change that.

What, exactly, happened to put all the Glamrocks out of commission for so long? You remembered that earlier that night, Pamela the technician had said her desk was full of Glamrocks. Was she repairing them? Or...in charge of the team repairing them? How badly damaged were they? This all seemed very weird.

Well, if the lights were going to be out for five minutes, you might as well get comfortable. You slowly lower yourself to the floor and leaned back against the Plushtrap Chaser cabinet, stretching your legs out in front of you. This place was very spooky with all the lights out. Something about there being a bunch of places to hide in between arcade cabinets. Anxiety slowly creeped up on you, and you paused the music in your headphones so you could better hear your surroundings. Your flashlight beam darted around the big, empty space of the West Arcade. In particular, it lingered on the big holes in the walls. They’d been so cool when they were lit up with neon, now they were just spaces for something to hide.

And hide something did. The circle of light landed on a hole about eight feet off the ground, one of the smaller ones that was still easily big enough for a person to sit. Or an animatronic. As proven by the familiar moon-faced robot crouching in the opening.

“Oh mother of fuck!” You jumped. The animatronic—Moon—didn’t move at all. He just stared down at you with those glowing red eyes. “Uh...uhhh...hi?”

Moon’s face rotated until it was upside down. The rest of his body stayed crouched in the hole. “It’s past your bedtime,” he said in that raspy voice.

“Well I understand where you’re coming from this time,” you admitted. “But I’m still an adult, and I still work here. I’m on the clock.”

Moon kept staring at you. His face rotated back into position, the nightcap somehow staying on his head.

You kept your flashlight beam pointed at him. He was still very, very creepy. Not to mention he clearly didn’t mind harming you—or anyone else, reading between the lines of Sun’s earlier explanation. But knowing what he was drained some of the fear from you. Not all of it. But some.

You remembered your encounter with him yesterday. Specifically, the part where you yelled at him after he dropped you. He hadn’t moved to attack you again until after you finished talking. Maybe he wouldn’t attack you at all tonight if you kept saying whatever random bullshit came into your brain. “You know, people’s circadian rhythms are different for a reason,” you said, proud of how casual you sounded. “Some people are night owls, some people are early birds. That’s because when we were all living off the land or shit, if you had different people awake at different times, they could watch out for danger while the others slept. You’d take turns protecting the others from...I don’t know, lions, or whatever. But for some reason, our society puts a lot more emphasis on the morning and waking up early and all that. Sucks for night owls like me. But hey, at least I can take night shifts.”

Sure enough, Moon hadn’t gotten any closer during your rambling. Well, he’d leaned in a little, but hadn’t moved.

“It’s kind of like what you and Sun do, I guess,” you said.

Moon suddenly jolted.

“Surprised? Yeah, Sun told me about you two,” you continued. “Well, he told me what he knew. Which wasn’t a lot. I think he’s scared of you. I don’t know if he always was, I mean, he said he used to write letters to you. Maybe he was always afraid. Blacking out whenever the lights go off and getting your body taken over by someone else...yeah, that would be scary even if the other person was super nice. Lack of control, and all that. But either way, it suddenly became a lot scarier when things started to happen. He didn’t tell me what, but judging by your reaction to me yesterday, I can figure it out. Not to mention them closing the daycare. They let you look after kids? With glowing red eyes? I’m surprised the daycare wasn’t sued into closing earlier.” You squinted up at him. “Why’d you change? I wondered if you got a glitch or something, but maybe you just decided to start being murderous. Heh. You’re probably not gonna tell me, are you? You don’t seem very wordy.”

A moment passed as you and Moon stared at each other. And then Moon turned around and vanished into the hole in the wall. You could hear the usual mechanical noises, as well as metal thumps as he climbed through some sort of tunnel.

“Good talk,” you said. At least he didn’t jump at you or anything.

A minute later, the lights turned on again, illuminating the West Arcade in beautiful neon pink, purple, and blue. “Bisexual rights,” you muttered. Then you turned around to face the Plushtrap Chaser arcade cabinet. Time to start actually doing your job.

Unjamming all the coin slots turned out to be as painful and time consuming as you feared. The one upside was that you weren’t getting any new tasks. That allowed you to take your time, standing and crouching slowly to delay the inevitable heavy breathing against bruised ribs. It took a full hour to find and unjam all the arcade cabinets, with half the time spent just locating the damn things.

You finished on the third floor, and took a moment to sit down and chill on a sofa in one of the karaoke rooms—or at least, that’s what you assumed they were. Shortly after sitting down, the lights went out again as 2am approached.

Even though you were expecting it this time, it didn’t make the sudden darkness any less eerie. You took out your flashlight once more, this time pointing it at the doorway to the karaoke room.

One minute later, a familiar face appeared in the doorway. Moon was standing right outside. His crescent-moon-face leaned into the doorway from the left side, hands gripping the frame. He waved at you. It was both cheerful and somewhat threatening.

“Hey, Mr. Hyde,” you said, aiming your flashlight at him again. “You know, I was wondering something. Sun can’t leave the daycare. How the fuck are you here?”

“Forgot to change permissions,” Moon said simply.

“Permissions?”

“For roaming.”

“Oh.” The gears in your mind spun for a moment. “You mean...both you and Sun used to be able to roam the Pizzaplex—or at least, go beyond the daycare. But they changed the protocols in your programming, and now Sun is stuck in the daycare, but they forgot to change yours so you aren’t. That’s kind of a massive oversight, isn’t it? Hey, we’re gonna restrict the movement of this animatronic because he’s probably hurting people. But we’re just going to do it on the mind that isn’t the one being all creepy and shit, and not the one who’s actually dropping people from bridges. No, I am not gonna let that go, that’s for asking.” You glared at Moon. “But anyway, I’m not surprised Fazbear made that mistake. I’m actually surprised they didn’t give you more stuff to do! Hell, let’s have him serve pizza to the kiddies! Nothing will happen, surely!”

Moon chuckled. Wait. Was that in response to your comment, or was he just laughing because he did that a lot? “Mr. who?”

You blinked. “Huh?”

“What you called me,” Moon explained. “Mr. who?”

“Oh! Mr. Hyde? Yeah, I was telling Sun about that earlier. There’s this book called The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s a gothic novel, and it’s sort of become a symbol for split personalities. Reminded me of you two, cause you’re also two people in one body.” You chuckled. “Honestly, though? Even though the name’s become known for evil alter egos, the book itself is actually a little different than most interpretations.”

“How?” Moon asked.

“Uhh...” For a moment, you were thrown off by the question. Was he...actually interested? Or was this some sort of distraction? You decided to talk anyway. It worked before. “Well, in the book, Dr. Jekyll is this scientist who makes a potion that can transform him into Mr. Hyde. That’s in most interpretations, too, but what’s different in the book is that Jekyll and Hyde aren’t really that different from each other. Hyde is, like, Jekyll but without any impulse control. And Jekyll remembers what he does as Hyde, which is really different from most interpretations where neither of them know what the other does. Jekyll took the potion on purpose so he could do impulsive, dangerous stuff without feeling guilty. Stuff like killing a random guy on the street. But of course, Hyde leads to a bunch of legal trouble because of him committing crimes, so Jekyll tries to stop being him. But that doesn’t work because for whatever reason Jekyll starts turning into Hyde more and more, and he can’t control it, and as Hyde he can’t control himself, so it’s really...uh...frightening.”

At some point, Moon had gone very still. Not like the stillness before a predator pounces. More like...the same was Sun went still when you explained Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to him earlier. Was Moon having that same reaction? Whatever that reaction was?

“How does it end?” Moon asked. “The book.”

“Oh. Well.” For some reason, you hesitated. “Jekyll tries to find a cure to turning into Hyde, but nothing he’s doing is working. Meanwhile, the police figure out that Hyde and Jekyll are connected and start to hunt him down. Eventually, Jekyll realizes that he’s going to become Hyde, with all of his lack of control, permanently. So he writes down everything as a confession. Then he turns into Hyde forever, and when the police and the book’s narrator—not Jekyll, by the way, but some other guy—track down Hyde, he, uh...immediately shoots himself in the head and dies. It’s...not a very happy ending. But it’s not a very happy book.”

Moon gripped the doorframe harder. You could see the tightening of his mechanical joints from where you were sitting. Did he not like the ending? Was he going to take that out on you? You instinctively brace yourself...only for Moon to disappear. You could hear his mechanical footsteps retreating.

You keep your flashlight on the door until the lights turn back on.

No more tasks arrived for the last hour of your shift, so you stayed in the karaoke room until it was time to clock out, thinking about Sun and Moon and the idea of being two minds in one body.

[celestial-robots]

Finding Equinox

A Sun & Moon X Reader Story

Chapter Five: Night Shift

First | Previous

Word Count: 6980

Summary: It’s Friday night, and you return to the Pizzaplex later than you’ve ever been there before. You have two goals: to help Sun start the long process of getting the daycare fit for kids again, and to get Moon to open up. It’s hard to tell which one is more difficult.

Author’s Note: This turned out longer than I thought it would. Hope the word count doesn’t deter you guys, haha. I couldn’t find a good spot to cut the story in half. But it’s fine. This way the whole shift is in one part sahfjkl

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Friday was your first night shift. Not just your first night shift at this new job, but your first night shift ever. You weren’t exactly sure what to expect or how to prepare. But getting a good amount of sleep seemed like a good place to start, so you slept until noon.

Once you were awake and ready, you spent the next few hours combing through the Internet for reports about things going wrong at the Pizzaplex Daycare. It was extremely boring. As terrible as many of these incidents were, it was easy to get desensitized. Your brain slowly started to go numb from the tedium of research.

You weren’t sure how many of the incidents were real and how many were made-up, fueled by Fazbear’s reputation, but you took note of the most plausible ones. And if these reports were to be believed, the Daycare wasn’t exactly... up-to-code, even from the start. But there was a difference between people complaining because the Daycare Attendant was scaring their kids, and people rioting because their kids were being hurt or even disappearing.

Why the sudden shift from being scary to being actually dangerous? Was your theory about a glitch correct?

Well, Sun didn’t know, so you’d probably have to figure that out yourself. You could try to ask Moon again. He hadn’t liked it when you brought it up before, though, so you should probably have a backup plan.

When searching through incidents got too draining to continue, you tried to take a nap before your shift. But your mind refused to calm down, even with the support of an extra-strength melatonin tablet. You fell asleep eventually but were awoken by your alarm only thirty minutes later, bleary and confused.

It was strange driving to work so late at night. The roads were empty, and the employee parking lot at the Pizzaplex was nearly deserted. The deep shadows and lack of people made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. You couldn’t help but look around anxiously, your eyes tricking you into seeing movement in the darkness.

The front entrance was closed by the time you came in for your shift, which seemed like an oversight for all the night shift employees. But whatever. You went in through a back entrance that unlocked in response to your Security Level. Inside, the massive Pizzaplex was desolate except for some STAFF bots that served as patrolling security units. It was so strange. Even though your shift yesterday had gone past closing time, it was entirely different to walk in and see it all empty from the get-go.

Well. Your FazWatch wasn’t giving you any tasks right away. You could probably head to the Daycare.

And so, for the fifth time that week, you walked there, glancing around for people who were watching. Seth’s warning about the Daycare yesterday had made you paranoid. But there was no one there. Didn’t change the fact that you were probably on camera, but it made you feel better.

Sun was waiting for you today. You could see him through the glass surrounding the playplace, anxiously bouncing in place. That bouncing became much more excitable when he saw you coming. You chuckled and waved. He waved back.

The moment you walked into the play area through the big wooden doors, he started talking. “I’m so glad to see you’re alright, friend! I was reeeaally nervous after you had to sudden leave last night, heheh. But it looks like you’re okay! Well you still have those old injuries, which you really should get looked at soon, but nothing new! I-I remember what you said about Moon being able to roam the building. Did you—did you see him last night?”

“Uhhh, yeah, once,” you said. “Lean back a bit, bud, don’t loom over me like that.”

Sun had indeed been leaning over you, but he jerked back as soon as you said that. “Sorry! I didn’t know I was doing that, I swear.”

“Nah, I get it. You’re just worried about me.” You reached out and patted Sun’s arm. “No need, though. Like I said, I saw Moon, but only once.”

“Did he... do anything?” Sun asked.

“Nope.” You shook your head. “He grilled me about my sleep schedule, which was a bit weird. Then I mentioned that we wanted to reopen the Daycare. And for that to happen, we needed him to stop doing stuff like dropping people from bridges. Not sure how he felt about that.” You paused, gauging Sun’s own reaction. He wasn’t looming anymore, instead playing with his bells and ribbons again. Still nervous, then? “He said a few weird things.”

“Oh?” Sun’s face rotated to the side. “Like what?”

“Well, first, when I said I wanted to help, he said ‘you can’t.’”

“That’s a bit rude.”

You laughed. “I guess. He definitely sounded sure about it. Which... was weird. I-I tried to get him to tell me what happened. You know, what started the whole... incidents thing.”

Sun stopped fidgeting.

“You okay, bud?” You asked.

“Y-yes, I’m sorry.” Sun nodded. “Keep going. Did he say anything? D-did he tell you? What happened? Was it r-really a glitch?” His whole posture was tense. Waiting. Leaning forward again, as if he was desperate to hear what you said.

“He didn’t... say anything,” you admitted. “Just that ‘you can’t’ thing.”

Sun’s shoulders slumped, and his voicebox made a sighing sound. “I guess that would have been too easy.” He was clearly disappointed, but not surprised. If anything, he sounded... resigned.

“I guess, yeah.” You coughed. “Anyway. Is there anything you want to do today? I don’t have any tasks yet, but they could appear at any minute, so nothing that takes too long.”

“Oh!” Sun’s posture popped back up. “I was thinking about this all day, actually, but if we’re going to get the Daycare reopened we need to make sure everything is clean for the kids!” He spun around, gesturing at the whole play area. “We need to be sure everything is in its place!”

“Uhhh... I think we’ll need to do more than that, Sun,” you said. “I mean, I love how you’ve been keeping everything orderly in here, but we probably need to, uh... dust things and disinfect them and stuff.”

“Yes! That too.” Sun’s head and torso twisted back around to look at you. “I haven’t been able to do that because there were never any supplies in the places where I could still roam. But now that you’re here we can get some more!”

You nodded slowly. “Right. Hang on.” You check the map on your FazWatch, but, as usual, it was not very helpful. “Uh... I’m not sure where the closest storage closet is, but I can go look around. There has to be one in the area.”

“There’s a lot of storage area beneath the theatre,” Sun suggested.

“Great, I’ll check there first.” You looked up at Sun and gave him a little salute. “Be right back, bud.”

“Be right back!” Sun watched you as you turned and left.

By the time you found the cleaning supplies, loaded them onto a cart, and slowly dragged them back to the daycare, it was 12:30. There hadn’t been a single task assigned to you yet, which was super lucky, but you were sure the tasks were coming. Right now, though, you were more concerned with Sun and Moon. There was something else Moon said last night that you thought Sun needed to hear. You just weren’t sure how to bring it up.

“That’s a big cart of stuff, friend!” Sun held open the door for you when you returned. “Here, let me help. You shouldn’t be pushing something this heavy!” As soon as the cart was mostly through, he grabbed the front end and pulled it into the center of the play area.

“Yeah, I know, I know,” you said, letting go of the cart so Sun wouldn’t end up pulling you along as well. “And I know it’s a lot of stuff. I, uh... thought we’d need it.” You don’t even want to think about how much dirt and grime covers everything in this area. Though you’ll soon be forced to confront it. “Alright. Speaking of physical limitations, I don’t think I can clean the inside of the play structures. Can you get in—wait, yes, you can.” Moon had climbed inside the play structures on Tuesday when he was chasing you. Sun shouldn’t be any different.

“Alright, I can start on that right away, then!” Sun began examining the cleaning products, picking each one up before putting it back down. “Hmm... I think this will work! Oh, and I see you brought a mop and bucket!”

“Yeah, I would’ve been here sooner if I wasn’t filling that up.”

“That’s okay, friend, it’s more important to be thorough the first time! Okay, you use the mop and start cleaning up the floors. Be sure not to trap yourself in a corner!”

You chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll be careful.” Then you checked your FazWatch. Still no new tasks. Huh. Strange. Well, you’re not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Keep in mind, I could need to leave at any moment.”

“Keeping it in mind!” Sun gave a little twirl, then headed off towards the nearest play structure with two bottles of cleaning products and all the washcloths you’d brought. “Clean up, clean up!” you heard him chant as he headed out.

“Clean up, clean up,” you repeated absentmindedly, and started pushing the mop and its wheeled bucket over to the back of the daycare.

For a while, you just mopped, putting on your headphones and turning up the music to keep your mind busy. It didn’t fully work. You were still thinking about last night’s brief talk with Moon. Hard not to dwell on it. He hadn’t said much, but what he did say was so weird...

You were so concentrated on the memories and the mopping that you just about jumped out of your skin when something moved in your peripheral vision. Shrieking, you spun around—only to see Sun also jumping back, raising his hands in a “don’t shoot me!” sort of gesture. “Jeez, Sun.” You paused your music. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“I’m sorry, friend! I thought you could hear me!” Sun said. “I guess your music was really loud. You shouldn’t turn up the volume so high, you know! It can damage your hearing, and besides that, what if someone else was sneaking up on you? Someone wh-who wasn’t... so nice?”

“All very good points,” you muttered. “Anyway, did you want to talk to me or something?”

“Ah, well you see, friend, after yesterday I’ve been keeping a close eye on my internal clock, to not lose track of the time,” Sun explained. “I thought you should know it’s currently 12:45! Ten minutes until lights off.”

“Ohhh right.” You nodded. “Thanks, Sun. I’ll set a timer for five minutes. Then you’ll want me to leave the daycare, right?”

Sun nodded back. He was swaying back and forth in an almost absentminded way.

“Alright.” As you set the timer on your phone, you decided that this was as good a moment as any. “Speaking of yesterday... Moon said something else strange when I talked to him last night.”

“O-oh?” Sun’s face rotated to the side. “What is it?”

“He said...” You hesitated. “He said that you hate him.”

Sun stopped swaying.

“I-it was almost completely unprompted, too. I mean, I was talking about how we wanted to help, a-and that ‘we’ includes you, too, and he just... said that. And I just...” You paused. It was hard to ask this. “I just... want to know... why he said that. If he thinks that for a good reason.”

No answer. Sun looked down, staring at his hands as he clasped them together. You simply waited for him to say something. A solid few seconds passed before he did, speaking in the quietest voice you’ve ever heard him use. “Hate... is a... strong feeling. I-I don’t think... Moon’s not exactly the easiest person to like, but... That’s such a strong word.”

You stared at him. “I know you’re scared of him,” you said quietly. “It’s okay to have... other strong feelings.”

“No, no, I-I don’t think I—! Oh, i-it’s so hard.” Sun shook his head and folded his arms. He kicked at the mats on the ground—slightly more colorful now that you’ve wiped away some of the dirt.

“Feelings are hard,” you admitted. “It’s fine to not have them all figured out.”

“Did Moon say he hates me?” Sun asked quietly.

“...No. All he said about you was that you weren’t scary.” You paused. “Do you think he hates you?”

The lack of an answer was answer enough. Then, suddenly— “Oh goodness! I almost forgot I was cleaning!” Sun’s head popped back up, and he jumped into a straighter, more energetic pose. His voice was cheerful again. "I should get back to that! Remember, friend, you have to be out of the daycare before lights out! But you should come back later, too!”

“Wha—”

And before you could say anything, he was gone.

...How did an animatronic that big move that fast?

And then your timer went off. You sighed, and walked towards the wooden doors. “I’m heading out now, Sun!” you called.

Sun shouted something back, but you had trouble figuring out what it was, since it was echoing from inside one of the plastic play tunnels. Maybe “be safe” or “be careful.”

“I’ll be back!” you shouted, and then left through the big wooden doors.

You sat down at one of the tables—the same one where you’d taken that lunch break on your first day—and took your sketchbook out of your pocket. The one you’d been using to take notes about the weird stuff around the Daycare. You wanted to quickly review what you already had. The list of plausible incidents, mostly. You frowned as you scanned them. If even half of these were true, would anyone want to come back to the Daycare if you somehow managed to get it opened again?

And then the lights went out.

At the same time, you heard a ping! “New task added!”

You groaned. Seemed you wouldn’t be able to head right back into the daycare to clean some more. Not just yet. You took your company-issued flashlight out of your bag and turned it on, lying it down on the table so the beam was pointing at the wooden doors but still lighting up the table area. Just in case a certain animatronic wanted to stick his head out. Then you checked the glowing FazWatch screen. And groaned again, even louder. It seemed you were required to transport some endoskeleton parts through the utility tunnels to Parts and Service. Great. That wouldn’t take forever at all! It was totally a reasonable request to ask the person with an injured back and ribs to push heavy carts down long, winding tunnels! You couldn’t believe that Sun had been more considerate when he’d taken the cleaning cart from you earlier. A literal robot had more empathy than whoever was handing out these tasks.

Anyway, you should probably explain to Sun why you disappeared while the lights were out. Otherwise he might have a panic attack. God, were you really worried about a robot having a panic attack? Yes. Yes you were. It felt like a valid worry to have.

You looked up and stared at the wooden doors for a moment. No sign of Moon opening them. So you turned your attention back to your sketchbook, took a pencil out of your pocket and wrote on the nearest blank page: Got a task. Will take a while. Be back later. See you then :) You signed your name, then carefully tore the page out and stood up. You picked up the flashlight and walked up to the playplace wall.

It took a moment to find a spot where the note could be pressed against the glass without any tape, but eventually you slid it into a small gap between the glass and a decorative cloud. You turned back around, the flashlight beam swiveling in a wide arc—

And landing on Moon, crouching on the table you’d just left.

“Holy shit!” You started, making the flashlight beam jerk. Moon jumped into the air—and just kept going up. Before he completely disappeared into the darkness, you noticed the hard-to-see black wire attached to his back. Oh. So that’s what the loop on their back was for. Made sense. You vaguely recalled Sun mentioning “flying trips” being “forbidden for a while.”

But how did Moon leave the daycare without you noticing?!

You hurried back over to the table, flashlight darting around. You used it to scan the walls, the ceiling, everywhere you could see.

And you caught sight of Moon again. Now he was back in the daycare, clinging to the mesh netting that covered the top of the play area. Like some freaky spider robot. The moment you noticed him, he turned and scuttled head-first down the mesh, disappearing into the daycare. “...alright, Dracula,” you muttered. “Lizard-crawling man. Er, animatronic? Ah, whatever.”

That wire must have somehow transported him in and out. You weren’t sure exactly how it worked. Maybe there were tunnels of some kind? Moon had seemed familiar with those wall-tunnels in the West Arcade.

Whatever. You had a task to do. The sooner you got it over with, the sooner you could come back. You reached down to grab your sketchbook... and noticed something strange. There was more stuff on the page with the list of incidents. Writing. Definitely not yours.

Moon had been at this table when you’d turned around. Crouching right on top of it like a little gremlin. Was this... his? The letters were cramped together in a sharp scrawl, written in that darker gray that you got when you pressed down harder on the pencil. You could make out three phrases in this new handwriting: DIDNT HAPPEN, NOT REAL, WASNT ME. Each seemed to be connected to one of the incidents on the list via a drawn line.

...Interesting.

You closed the sketchbook, picking up your pencil and putting it back in your pocket as you walked out of the Daycare area. This warranted further examination. But after you finished your task. You wanted to take care of that as soon as possible, because god knew it would take a long time.

And indeed it did. In fact, it took the whole hour. It could have taken a shorter amount of time, but you had to go slow. You know. On account of the injuries that you’d explicitly told management about. Did they think that two days was enough to recover ? Because it certainly was not. Maybe you could do some of the lighter tasks, but something like this? Loading a cart full of endoskeleton parts, then pushing that cart through the utility tunnels with these weird doors you had to constantly open and close, then unloading the parts inside Parts and Service... It was a bit more physically intensive. You had to take frequent breaks to catch your breath and recover. Maybe you should have brought that ice pack again, but you thought it would be fine.

You took a shortcut back up to the surface of the Pizzaplex: the showtime elevator. It was kind of cool to come up onto the stage. You knew how to get to the Daycare from here, but you were still exhausted from pushing a heavy cart through narrow tunnels. Time to take a short break.

The nearest place to sit was inside one of the photo booths dotted around the floor, so you climbed inside one and took your sketchbook back out, turning it to the list of incidents Moon had vandalized. It seemed like he’d decided to correct you by nixing out two of the incidents as fake. And the last one as being apparently “not him,” which surprised you a bit. That one was about a parent getting their arm broken by the Daycare Attendant. Was Moon lying, or was that...?

Suddenly, the lights outside of the photo booths went out. Right. It was 1:55, time for the hourly five-minute darkness. Guess you were staying in the booth until it was done. Though, actually... you had an idea.

You took out your flashlight and pencil and wrote a note on a blank page of your sketchbook: You’re not messing with me about the incident list, are you? And if you’re not, is it just those three you have a problem with? Were the rest really you? Why?

And then you leaned out of the photo booth and placed the open sketchbook and your pencil on the floor next to it.

About a minute passed before you heard the distinct mechanical noises of the Daycare Attendant’s movement. Sounded like Moon had gone out into the Pizzaplex. Maybe looking for you. And, judging by how the noises were right outside the photo booth, he’d found you.

For the next few moments, you wondered if it had been a stupid idea to corner yourself inside a small room with a dangerous animatronic right outside. Then you decided it probably had been. And you mentally cursed yourself. It was your own damn fault if something happened.

You could actually see the red glow of Moon’s eyes coming from around the curtain. The glow brightened for a few seconds as he turned to look at the photo booth. And then the side of the curtain moved. A mechanical hand inched into the gap, easily recognizable as Moon’s. The hand waved... and then disappeared. The red glow faded, and the mechanical movement sounds vanished.

Your heartbeat slowed down and you let out a deep breath. The trill of anxiety you’d felt was now fading to annoyance. “You’re real funny, Moon,” you muttered. “I swear, you did that just to freak me out. ‘Hey look at me, I’m a scary animatronic,’ that’s not gonna stop me from getting weirdly attached to you and Sun.”

The lights turned back on, and you pulled back the photo booth curtain. Outside looked the same. Your sketchbook and pencil were on the floor where you’d left them. But you could see that something had changed. More dark writing, taking up half the page. Carefully leaning down, wincing as the motion hurt your back, you picked up the book and pencil and read what was written there.

NO. YES. YES. YOU SHOULD BE ASLEEP.

...Well. Moon had answered three of your four questions, and then told you off for being awake at night again. Was that in his programming or was he just being irritating on purpose? You were more and more convinced it was the latter.

You weren’t surprised that Moon hadn’t answered your “Why?” question. But you were disappointed.

You were also disappointed that he’d used half the page to write seven words, wasting a lot of the space, but that was a different issue.

Closing the sketchbook again, you left the photo booth and headed back to the daycare.

“Hello again, friend!” Sun immediately greeted you as soon as you walked in. “You’re really back!”

“Yep, I’m really back,” you said. “What, did you think I’d just leave?”

Sun gave a little laugh. “Well, it was a while, after all! And the lights went out, and I-I was—Anyway, while you were gone, I kept cleaning!”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Sun seems to have left most of the floor alone, perhaps leaving that for you to do, but you could see the gleam of water on one of the plastic play structures. Sun must have wiped it down. “There’s still a lot to do, but great job!”

“Thank you!” You could hear a smile in Sun’s voice to match his face. “Still a lot to do, a lot to do, but progress is progress!”

“We should try to get as much done as we can before the weekend.” You dropped off your backpack behind the security desk—which you notice is still as dusty as ever—and headed over to where you’d been mopping earlier. Sun followed you, hovering close behind. “I mean, I guess you could keep going on your own, but you wouldn’t be able to go get more supplies if you run out, so you should be careful.”

“The... weekend?” Sun repeated, latching onto those two words.

“Well, yeah, I’m not gonna be here to help you,” you said casually. The mop was standing right where you left it, and you picked it up. “I don’t have any shifts.”

“But you could come anyway, a-as a guest!” Sun suggested.

“I guess I could, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to get in,” you explained. “Apparently your security permissions are turned off on days you don’t have shifts. Something about safety from past employees, I dunno, I didn’t really pay attention to the reason part of the email. So I’d need a pass to get in, and I doubt they’d sell ones to get into the daycare, since it’s closed...” Sun was being pretty quiet. You looked back at him. He’d stopped following you. “Sun? You okay, dude?”

“Oh! Yes, of course!” Sun perked up and skipped over to where you were. “I just—o-of course you wouldn’t be able to get in, I-I don’t know why—of course! Of course.”

You stared at him. Guilt curled around your stomach. Sun had been stuck here for months, with seemingly no visitors. No wonder he was so clingy. No wonder he depended on you coming every day. No wonder he was worried you wouldn’t come back earlier. “It’s going to be fine,” you said quietly. “It’s only two days. I’ll be here on Monday.”

“I know that.” Sun nodded. “You don’t have to worry about me! I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, well...” You weren’t sure how to finish that. Was there anything you could do? “What if, uh... Would it help if you had something to do while I was gone?”

“I can clean the daycare! Do anything we don’t finish today!”

“No, I mean like—besides that,” you said. “Uh, do you still have that bin of colored pencils and stuff?”

“Well it wouldn’t disappear into thin air, would it?” Sun put his hands on his hips and shook his head playfully. You got the feeling he was laying it on a little bit. “Here, if you want it, I’ll go get it!”

“That’s not why—aaaaand you’re gone, of course you are.” You sighed. You wondered if all animatronics in the Pizzaplex could move that fast, or if it was just Sun and Moon. There was no way for you to know until the Glamrocks were finished being repaired. Well, while Sun was gone, might as well continue mopping.

He was back in just a few minutes, of course. “Here you are, friend!” he called. “I’ll put this right by the desk. We wouldn’t want to get any paper wet, or get the newly cleaned daycare dirty!” And he did so, then skipped back over to where you were standing and waiting.

“Thanks, Sun, but uh... I was wondering if you wanted to do it,” you said.

“Hmm? Me?” Sun’s face rotated to the side. “Why would I need to use the crayons?”

“Well, maybe you won’t need to, but it might be a good way to pass the time while I’m not here.” You looked down at the floor as you wiped the mop from side to side over the same colored tile. “I’d like to see what you draw.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s not as good as anything you’ve done!”

“I’d still like to see it.” You shrugged. “Skill isn’t the thing here. I think you’d have fun. And that’s what matters. If you don’t like drawing, of course, you don’t have to, but I just thought, you know?”

Sun didn’t answer. His face rotated back to normal. You could have sworn he looked thoughtful. “I didn’t usually do the drawing, that was mostly the kids. The supplies are for them! And for any other guests, of course. So I didn’t want to use them up! But sometimes one of the little ones would ask, and I would try...” He trailed off. “Are you sure, friend? What if I end up using the supplies all up? We’ll need them for the daycare!”

“I don’t think you’d use them all up,” you reassured him. “Maybe if you spent two days straight drawing, but that’s not what I’m suggesting. Just... a few pieces of paper, you know?”

Sun nodded. “Alright. I’ll try! I’ll make you proud!”

You laughed. “Don’t worry about that. Just do what you want.”

“I will! Oh, but right now, we need to keep cleaning!” He spun around and ran back to the cart. “It needs to be all clean! All clean!”

“All clean,” you repeated, nodding. It would be a while before the daycare was close to ‘all clean,’ but as Sun said earlier, progress was progress.

You spent most of the rest of your shift in the daycare, trying to get the dirt off everything. Emphasis on trying. Nine months of abandonment had really done a number on the place. You were getting the surface layer of dust off everything, but there was grime around the edges of the room and play structures that wouldn’t go away with simple soap and disinfectant. This was definitely going to be a multi-day project.

Sun continued to take care of the play structures, leaving the floor, walls, and desk area for you. The two of you didn’t talk too much, as you turned on your music again. But you did let him know once when you were going to refill the mop bucket with some clean water. And he let you know when it was getting close to 2:55 and the hourly lights-off.

Not much happened during that five minute period. You sat at the same table you’d sat at earlier, outside the daycare, and watched for signs of Moon. He was being a real cryptid today. You saw him climbing on the mesh nets again, but he didn’t do anything beyond stare at you for a few seconds before disappearing. Was he avoiding you? Or... avoiding seeing you in person, at least? He didn’t have any trouble getting close to you a couple days ago. Was this related to...

“You can’t.”

Those words were burned into your brain. Something about the denial, the refusal to accept help, made it hard to forget them.

You took your break once the lights turned back on. Today, you’d packed your own lunch, since you weren’t sure if the restaurants in the Pizzaplex would be able to make food during the night shift. And then it was back to cleaning. It was starting to get tiring, but you weren’t about to leave it all for Sun to do. Your pace had definitely slowed, though, so you spent this hour trying to dust and organize the security area, a fairly easy task. And one where you could duck under the desk and take a break every couple minutes.

The 3:55 light-out was pretty much identical to the last one. Afterwards, you went back into the daycare and tried to continue cleaning the desk area. But there was still a lot to do, and you were exhausted. Maybe you should take a break. The desk area didn’t have any chairs, so you sat on the floor beneath the desk and closed your eyes...

Ping! “New task added!”

And then you jolted awake, neck and shoulders stiff, to that familiar notification sound. What the...? What time was it? You checked your phone. 4:47 am. Nearly an hour had passed. Huh. Maybe Moon was right. It was past your bedtime.

But, unfortunately, you needed to keep this job, so couldn’t just nap the whole time. You shook your head of sleep and checked the new task on your FazWatch. They wanted you to... move endoskeleton parts to Parts and Service. “Are you Faz-fucking kidding me?!” you shouted. That was the exact same thing they made you do earlier! What the hell?!

“Friend, is everything alright?” Sun called from inside one of the play structures.

“Yeah, it’s fine!” You pulled yourself back up using the desk. It was easier on your injuries than just standing up unassisted. “I just got another task. It’s gonna take a while, so I won’t be back before my shift ends.”

“Oh. Alright! Wait one second!” Loud thumps came from one of the play structure’s slides. You saw it shudder slightly, and then Sun rolled out from the end, head over heels in a somersault. He kept rolling and stopped not too far from the desk, immediately springing up with arms extended overhead.

“Nice!” You clapped, impressed. “That was like a circus trick or something, how you just jumped up like that.”

“Yes, thank you, thank you.” Sun bowed to an imaginary audience. Then he walked over to the plastic bin of drawing supplies by the desk, bending over and opening it. He took something out, then leaned over the desk to hand it to you. “Here you go!”

“Huh?” You took the offered item. A twelve-pack of colored pencils. Clearly used, given how one of the cardboard flaps was torn off and the pencils were all different lengths. “Why’re you giving this to me?”

“Well, I thought you could use it!” Sun said, standing up straight. “Though it does belong to the daycare so... you might want to bring it back on Monday. So nobody gets in trouble!”

You raised an eyebrow. Was this Sun’s way of making sure you came back? It was harmless enough, so you didn’t mind. “Sure, Sun. I’ll be back to drop these off on Monday.”

“Please do! W-we don’t want anyone to get in trouble.” Sun gave a nervous little laugh. “I’ll see you then, then?”

“See you then, Sun.” You smiled. “Promise.” You picked up your backpack and headed out. “Goodbye for now!”

“Goodbye friend!” Sun waved as you left. Even once you’d left through the big wooden doors, you could see him continuing to wave as you left the whole Daycare area.

The lights went off as soon as you found one of the stairwells down into the utility tunnels. That wasn’t unexpected by now, but you felt uneasy walking down flights of stairs in the dark. Even when you were armed with a flashlight. So you leaned against the wall and took out the sketchbook. If earlier tonight was any indication, Moon would be trying to find you—even though he didn’t seem to want to talk to you. But he was fine with writing earlier, at the photo booth.

After about a minute of thinking, you write down, Is there any particular reason you don’t want to explain anything to me? Or are you not going to explain THAT, either?

And then you opened the stairwell door and set the sketchbook on the ground outside with your pencil. And waited.

You were starting to get worried that this plan wasn’t actually going to work when you heard the sound of mechanical movement outside the door. The noise died down for a while, almost disappearing. You saw the door start to creak open, but then close again, and the noises started again before fading away. So... Moon wasn’t going to try and scare you this time. While you were grateful, you were also confused.

Inevitably, the lights returned. You opened the door and picked up the sketchbook and pencil. There was a response to your writing, but it wasn’t very long... or very helpful.

STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.

“I most certainly will not,” you said. And then you felt strangely embarrassed for saying that out loud. Why? It’s not like anyone could hear you. You were alone in an empty stairwell, feeling self-conscious for no reason.

Quickly, you put the sketchbook back in your backpack. You still had that task to do. So you headed down into the tunnels.

Even though you didn’t understand why the fuck someone would want you to do the same exact thing only a few hours apart, you did it anyway. Maybe there was a reason. Maybe they needed more parts than expected. Or maybe you brought the wrong ones the first time. Whatever it was, you hoped that reason was worth the two long, difficult trips. Why didn’t Fazbear have robots to do this sort of stuff?

By the time you arrived at Parts and Service, your legs and arms were aching from the effort of pushing the cart. Not to mention the stitch in your side that was sending pain up your bruised ribs every time you breathed. Maybe you weren’t as good at manual labor as you thought you would be. Or maybe it was the injury slowing you down. Damn it, Moon!

You didn’t even bother to take the parts off the cart. Instead you just left it by the room entrance and left. If someone needed these parts so urgently, surely they wouldn’t mind putting everything away. They would be more qualified than you.

It was 5:50 when you found yourself back in the main lobby. You were about ready to just head out, but the main doors were still closed. Rather than walk all the way through the Pizzaplex to another entrance, you decided to wait, and sat down on the little ledge around the giant golden statue.

You wanted to relax, but somehow, you found yourself pulling out your sketchbook again. You reread what Moon wrote. STOP ASKING QUESTIONS. Why was he so touchy about this?

It probably wasn’t a good idea to push a hostile animatronic too far, but you couldn’t help yourself. You had to know what was going on. Why? Were you just excited by the mystery? Or did you actually care? You knew you cared about Sun, even though you’d only met him a few days ago. But did you care about Moon, too? Was that it? If it was, what was wrong with you? Why were you feeling bad for the robot that dropped you from ten feet in the air?

Hesitantly, you wrote something new down on the page. There was still plenty of space for it.

I want to help. And it’s hard to do that when I don’t know what’s going on.

Because you did want to help. It wasn’t fair that Fazbear had abandoned Sun and Moon. Even if the daycare had been closed for a reason, you couldn’t believe they would just leave them there. They seemed so human. How could anyone leave them to rot like that?

The lights were about to go off. You left your sketchbook open on the ledge, along with the pencil, then swung your backpack onto your back and stood up, walking around the statue and sitting down again on the other side of it. You took out your flashlight and waited.

The Pizzaplex went dark. You moved your flashlight around the area, the light catching on some of the STAFF security bots. A couple minutes passed. You couldn’t hear any of those mechanical noises—

A snarl came from behind you.

You jumped, swiveling around and instinctively pointing the flashlight towards the sound. On the other side of the statue, you saw a familiar moon-faced robot duck out of sight. Okay. So Moon was right where you wanted him to be. Doesn’t mean that sound didn’t scare you, or that you weren’t nervous as you slowly turned back around.

Who programmed an animatronic to make that noise? Why the hell would you do that?

More sounds. Growls, this time. Your shoulders raised, and you glanced back over your shoulder without pointing your flashlight. Moon’s glowing eyes weren’t focused on you. He sounded... angry. No, wait. Frustrated.

Then you saw him fly into the air again. He was gone. And only a couple minutes later, the lights turned back on.

You stood and slowly walked back over to where you’d left your sketchbook. As expected, Moon had written some more, but this time... they weren’t words. Just scribbles. You could make out the vague shape of letters beneath them. Combined with the frustrated growling earlier, you assumed that Moon hadn’t been satisfied with what he was writing, and decided to just cover it all up.

Not all of the scribbles were in regular pencil. Apparently the packet of colored pencils Sun had given you fell out of your backpack when you stood up, and Moon had decided to use one. The purple one. It was broken in half now, but you could see the evidence on the page. You couldn’t quite tell what Moon was trying to write. It didn’t look like words beneath the purple scribbles. Just some shapes. You could pick out two tall loops, but nothing else.

This was all so weird. Unfortunately... you couldn’t stay to check it out. It had been a long day. You needed to go home and go to sleep. Surely Moon would approve. So you collected your sketchbook and pencils, put them in your backpack, and headed out through the front doors.

As you walked out, you almost didn’t notice the front entrance’s new decoration. Almost. But then you glanced back over your shoulder at the right time and saw the large banner stretching over the doors. Large blocky letters read THE GIRLS ARE BACK! with smaller letters beneath them listing Monday’s date. On either side of the words were cartoon drawings of two of the Pizzaplex’s animatronics: Roxanne Wolf and Glamrock Chica.

So the Glamrocks had been repaired? Or, some of them, at least? Cool. Neat. Strangely enough, you weren’t as excited as you thought you would be.

You were already looking forward to seeing a different animatronic again on Monday.

[celestial-robots]

Finding Equinox

A Sun & Moon X Reader Story

Chapter Four: In Opposition

First | Previous

Word Count: 6125

Summary: You never expected to get so attached to an animatronic—or pair of animatronics, whichever was more correct. But now that you are, might as well try to help Sun and Moon out, right? Sun’s happy to hear that, but Moon’s going to be a bit more difficult to deal with.

Author’s Note: Welp. New chapter, I guess. Only two weeks after posting the last one. I’ve been fueled by all the FNAF news that started up the day after I got back into the fandom XD But I’m happy I’m getting back into this, hopefully these chapters can come out with some regularity now that I’ve started writing again :)

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The next day, you woke up extra late and spent most of your time before work looking up information about the Pizzaplex’s daycare on the Internet. You didn’t expect to find much. With how successful Fazbear Entertainment was, despite having a literal ton of bad rumors about them, you figured they were pretty good at covering things up. But hey, it was worth a shot.

You started with the most unreliable narrator: the official YouTube channel for the local Mega Pizzaplex. Because of course it had an official YouTube channel. Of course it did. You opened up YouTube in an incognito window—because if you didn’t, YouTube would start recommending corporate channels to you—and found the channel. From there, you searched for “daycare.”

With YouTube being what it was, the results brought up anything including the word “daycare” even once. But the first three videos were the only ones with “daycare” in their titles: The Superstar Daycare is Now Open for Business at Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex! The Superstar Daycare is Temporarily Closed at Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex Introducing Lock-In Nights at the Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex Superstar Daycare!

Whoever ran this YouTube channel was not good at titling videos.

You opened all three videos in different tabs and looked at the dates they were posted. According to these, the daycare was opened about three years ago, with special Lock-In Nights becoming a thing a couple months later. The Daycare was “temporarily” closed nine months ago. Interesting.

Settling down in a more comfortable position in your desk chair, you opened up the notebook you’d found to write stuff down in. It was a sketchbook with a cool, space-themed cover that you bought for an art class but hadn’t even gotten close to filling up. Might as well use it for this. You grabbed a pencil and started watching the videos in the order they were released.

They turned out to be short, three-to-five-minute animations done in the same style as the candy ads all over the daycare area. In fact, most of the videos were advertising the Sunnydrop and Moondrop candies. Even the one about the Lock-In Nights, which was supposed to be an ad for a different service, spent about half the runtime reminding the viewers that the Sunnydrops and Moondrops were “perfect for kids of all ages!” Which you highly doubted, but that wasn’t important.

What was important was what the videos said about Sun and Moon. Most of it confirmed what Sun said last night; Sun was supposed to take care of the kids and play with them most of the time, and Moon was supposed to look after them during the two scheduled Naptimes (at 9am and 3pm). They seemed to be pretty much in charge of all daycare activities, with no mention of any human staff. Then again, maybe the human staff just couldn’t fit into an attention-grabbing three-to-five-minute time frame.

Then there were the Lock-In Nights. They were advertised as “sleepovers at the Mega Pizzaplex!” where the kids could spend all night hanging out with their favorite animatronic characters! Clearly, they were no longer running, or you would have heard about it. But when they did run, they took place from Saturday nights to Sunday mornings, with the main sleeping area being in the daycare but leaving the kids (mostly) free to wander the Pizzaplex. As Sun said, Moon seemed to be in charge of these, with the video taking great care to explain how he would keep the kids safe. In fact, that came up a lot in the Naptime segment of the last video, too. Moon keeping children safe. Was that his job? Or...was it supposed to be, at least?

The video about the daycare closing didn’t offer much information. In fact, it was frustratingly vague. It reminded you of all the news Fazbear put out a month ago saying the Pizzaplex would be closed for “maintenance” reasons. Which you were starting to doubt. Fazbear’s main way of ignoring incidents must be dancing around the subject.

With that, you turned to your second-best source of information: looking for lawsuits against Fazbear Entertainment. They were known for their suits, most of which were based around accidents. Yet, despite hearing a lot about Fazbear getting sued, there was hardly any news coverage of the suing. Or at least, reliable news coverage that wasn’t biased towards the company. This would have to take some digging. Digging that you, unfortunately, didn’t have time for due to your late waking.

But just before it was time to leave for your shift, you found something that might be helpful. After carefully phrasing your search request, you found a small, seemingly legitimate article about complaints at the Mega Pizzaplex. There was a long, detailed list of subjects, but you quickly found the section featured around the daycare. The complaints started out small—mostly parents talking about how scary the Daycare Attendant was, particularly the Naptime Attendant. Yeah, that made sense. But then it became more concerning. Kids with scrapes and bruises, parents with more serious injuries...and then came the missing persons reports. You’d heard about people going missing in the Pizzaplex’s vicinity, but you’d always sort of doubted their legitimacy. Mostly because you lived within an hour’s drive of the place and seen nothing. But...well, it was different reading the multiple reported disappearances.

The list had links to other articles, but you didn’t have time to check them out. You bookmarked the webpage and quickly scanned the list of daycare complaints one more time. Most of them were about Moon, either directly or because something happened during Naptime or a Lock-In Night, but there were a few talking about Sun as well. You’d be lying if you said you weren’t surprised to see those. Sun was so nice. But...well, he was a little touchy-grabby. Maybe he got carried away a few times.

You could ask him about that later.

The Pizzaplex was even more empty tonight than it was last night. Thursdays must not be that busy. Your FazWatch didn’t ping! the moment you clocked in, which lent more credence to that theory. Well, if you weren’t going to be immediately slammed with tasks, maybe you had time to stop by the daycare and talk to Sun. You began hurrying across the front lobby.

“Oh hey! New kid!”

You stopped immediately, silently cursing the fact that you waited even a little bit to put on your headphones. Now you had to go through small talk when you had plans. Your first task of the night was steadily approaching! You didn’t have time for interruptions! But it was too late. You pulled up your emergency face mask to hide your scowl, and turned around. “Oh, uh...hey. Sorry, what was your name again?”

“Seth. Don’t worry about it.” It was the same security guard from last night, the man with auburn hair. He gave you a friendly smile. “In a hurry, huh?”

“Haha, yeah. You know...got those tasks...and stuff.”

“Yeah, I do. You know, I was on general staff duty at a different Fazbear location before I got transferred here,” Seth said casually.

“Oh really?” You replied politely, while mentally scrambling for a way out of this conversation.

“Yeah, nothing this big, but it was a decently sized place. I worked my way up to supervisor, and then got an offer for security here. I worked at a firm before this, you know. So when the last head of security quit, they called me up and offered me the position. Came with more pay, so I said, ‘well of course!’”

“That’s cool.” You began slowly inching your way towards the distant stairs, hoping that Seth would notice your eagerness to leave and let you go.

He did not. You were trapped for another three minutes as he asked you about your past jobs and your college courses, in turn regaling you with experiences he had working for Fazbear Entertainment. Until, finally: ping! “New task added!”

“Oh.” You looked down at your watch, then back up at Seth. “Sorry, man, I, uh...I really should go. Don’t want this to pile up.”

“Right, right.” Seth nodded. “Gotta be hard with your injury. You know, my offer still stands to help you out with any tasks you can’t do. I work from nine to six every night, so I’ll always be here.”

“Good to know.” You started to step backwards. “I’ll...just go take care of this, then.” You spun around and began to walk away.

“Oh, by the way,” Seth said. “I know you’re new here, but you should really stay out of the daycare area.”

You stopped in your tracks and turned back around. “Really? Uh, why would you say that?” Did he know you were heading there?

“I have access to the security cameras on here.” Seth raised his arm, showing off his FazWatch. “You had to reset the daycare generators on Tuesday, right? I couldn’t catch all of what happened cause the stupid things don’t have night vision, but I saw your fall.”

“...ah.” Right. Security cameras. That made sense. Anything you did in this place was probably captured on video. Including going into the daycare playplace to meet up with Sun. There wasn’t anything wrong with that, was there? Why did you feel weirdly guilty?

“It was logged as an incident by the software so I had to review it,” Seth explained. “But yeah. You should avoid the daycare. It’s closed for a reason. As you probably figured out on Tuesday.”

“So...uh, even staff isn’t supposed to go in there?” you asked, trying to sound casual and not give away your increasing heartbeat. “But the doors let me in. On Tuesday, I mean.”

“Well, I guess there’s nothing stopping you,” Seth said. “If your security level lets you in, then you could technically waltz right in. As the company likes to say, ‘we are free of liability, do as you wish.’” He chuckled lightheartedly, then his expression fell into something more serious. “But really, though. Be careful. It’d suck for something to happen to a kid like you.”

You refrained from telling him that you weren’t a child. “Thanks. I’ll...keep that in mind.” You raised a hand in goodbye and turned around again. “See you later, then.”

Unfortunately, you were not able to go see Sun before your midnight break. There weren’t a lot of tasks, but there were enough to keep coming in a steady stream. You finally cleared up the list at 11:50, cleaning up a mess in Mazercise. And by that point, you decided “fuck it” and immediately made for the daycare, regardless of any new tasks that might show up in the ten minutes before your break.

You pulled open the door to the playplace, calling out as you did so. “Sun? It’s me! I’m here!”

Sun was busy fiddling with one of the toy barrel stacks, but the moment he heard your voice, his head spun around—followed shortly by the rest of his body—and he ran on over. “Friend! It’s good to see you again! I’ve spent all day making sure the daycare is clean and tidy, see? Isn’t it nice?” He held his arms out in a ta-da gesture.

“Uh—yeah. Looks great.” In reality, the daycare was just as dusty and abandoned as ever. But the toy barrels were orderly, and that seemed to be what Sun meant. “Hey, uh...I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh? A-are you sure you wouldn’t rather do some fun activities?” Sun’s voice had a desperate tinge to it. “Like the first time you were here? We can play until dawn! We can color together—”

“I’d love to, bud, really. We can do that later, but right now I want to talk to you about something important.”

“Well...alright.” Sun straightened, putting his hands behind his back. Like he was making sure you knew he was paying attention. You could hear a slight jingling. He was probably playing with his ribbons.

“Okay. I guess I’ll start with the most...potentially worrying part,” you said. “Did you know Moon can free roam around the Pizzaplex?”

“He can WHAT?!”

“Jesus!” You took a step back. When Sun yelled, he really yelled. “Yeah, I saw him twice last night.”

“Oh no. Oh no no no!” Sun’s entire body shook slightly, metal rattling. “This is bad! I knew he moved around during the recharge period, but I thought it was just around the daycare! I didn’t know he could leave! I’m so so sorry, friend! Oh no, oh no, who knows what he’s been up to? who knows how many people—I-I swear I had no idea!”

“Whoa, whoa, calm down, Sun! Breathe! Or—well, you can’t breathe, but...” You glanced around the daycare. “Do something grounding, like—I don’t know, count how many overhead lights there are.”

“One hundred and eight.”

You blinked. “What?”

“There are one hundred and eight overhead lights in the daycare area,” Sun repeated matter-of-factly. “Twelve rows of nine. Not all of them are visible from the ground, but they’re all there.”

“Whoa. Okay, then.” You said slowly. “Was that programmed into you?”

“Oh no, I counted them!” Sun explained.

“Right now?”

“No, of course not, friend. I counted them before, a lot of times actually. I also know how many tiles there are on the ground, in total and in each color, how many bars make up the play structures, the number of bricks in the castle towers, the number of balls in the ball pit—”

“Okay, I get it.” You nodded quickly. God, how much free time did Sun have? Well... actually... you knew exactly how much free time he had. “But anyway, back to Moon. Don’t worry, he didn’t try anything. I just talked at him for a couple minutes until he went away. I guess he was coming back here.”

Sun paused. “I’m not detecting any more injuries,” he said slowly. His posture wilted. “Oh, I’m so glad, friend. If something happened to you—if Moon did something—I don’t know what I’d do.”

You nodded slowly. “Well, this brings me to another, uh...important matter. I want to help you.”

Sun’s face rotated. “Help me what?”

“Help you get the daycare open again,” you explained further.

“Oh. Oh!” Sun leaned down and grabbed your shoulders. “Really?!”

“Really really,” you confirmed. “But it’s not going to be easy. Because, well...that means we need to help Moon.”

Sun tensed. He let go of your shoulders and leaned back. “Right. They did close it because of those...incidents,” he said slowly. “Friend, are you... What you said yesterday, about how Moon might have a glitch. Are you sure about that?”

“I am...ninety percent sure,” you said, being seventy percent sure. “I looked up some stuff online. Not a lot of it was helpful, but I noticed that things suddenly started getting serious all of a sudden. That wouldn’t happen for no reason. A glitch could be an explanation.”

A moment passed. Then Sun nodded. “Alright. If you’re sure. I-I hope that’s true. If it is... I’ll help.”

“Heh. That’s great, Sun. Thank you so much.” You pulled your backpack off, reaching inside to pull out your space-themed notebook and a pencil. “If that’s the case, I need to start with asking you some questions.”

“Alrighty.” Sun plopped down on the ground, folding his legs under him and putting his hands in his lap. He looked up at you with wide, white eyes. “Ask away, then!”

You opened your notebook up to a blank page, tapping the pencil on the edge. “Okay. So, when did the daycare close?”

“Oh, it was a while ago. If my internal clock is still functioning correctly, I’d say it was about...nine months, eight days, and eighteen hours ago when I first heard about it closing.”

“Alright. Thanks. That matches up with what I found out on my own.” You nodded. “And...what about the lights? You mentioned something about a protocol, or something?”

“Heh.” Sun tapped his fingers together. “Yes, the Lights-On Protocol. That started on that same day. I was really confused about it, because nobody told me when the daycare closed that all the lights were going to be staying on. But it was for the better! I-if Moon was going to be—we should keep the lights on! Lights on in the Daycare!”

“Lights on,” you repeated absentmindedly. “What was it like before the Lights-On Protocol?”

“Oh, before that, the lights in the whole Pizzaplex went out at midnight when everything closed! They would turn on at six once the night shift ended. Except for during Lock-In Nights. We wanted the kids to be able to have a good night’s sleep, so the lights would be out at eight and on at eight. In the Daycare, at least. They would still be on in other areas.”

“That makes sense.” You nodded, writing this down. “Um...okay, so you’re not allowed to leave the daycare area—or...well, really just this area.” You gestured around at the playplace. “Because the Daycare is much bigger than just this. Did they change your permissions when they closed the daycare?”

Sun hesitated. “Well... not right away.”

You tilted your head, sensing a story in those words. “Alright.” You lowered yourself to the ground so the two of you were sitting across from each other, just like last night. “Why not?”

“Um...you see, they didn’t tell me that the daycare was going to be closed,” Sun said carefully, fidgeting nervously. “So, that first day, when nobody showed up to drop off their kids—not even the usual families!—I thought it was a...a weird coincidence. Maybe they were all busy! Even...even the security person. But then, two days passed, and I couldn’t wait around anymore. So I went out to ask about what happened. I talked to a few people before the head technician showed up and—and explained the whole situation. In a very...loud...way.” Sun looked down. “But it’s fine, I shouldn’t have been out there anyway, I probably should have waited. They would have told me eventually.”

You glared down at your notebook. Something told you there’d been no plan to tell Sun anything. “So, then they changed your permissions?”

“Exactly. The head technician took me down to Parts and Service, and...and removed the free-roaming protocols. It was very...strange.” Sun said that word very carefully, as if it was a substitute for another word he didn’t want to say. “Then we came back here, and I’ve been here ever since.”

“You’ve been here...for nine months,” you said, mostly to yourself. “Holy fucking shit.”

“Friend, that language is not—”

“No, I know, sorry, I’m just...I’m just realizing something.” You set your notebook down on your lap. “You’ve been in here. Not leaving, not even able to leave because of your programming...for nine months. Without anyone coming in.”

Sun nodded.

You paused. “I’m going to apologize ahead of time for the language, but—Are you. Fucking. Shitting my pants right now?”

“Um... putting the language aside... no?” Sun said, his permanent smile almost visibly confused.

“It’s an expression, Sun, it just means that this is—this is freaking unbelievable.” Your eyes widened. “Wait a minute. Wai-wai-wuh-wah-wait. The Lights-On Protocol has been active for these nine months. So, Moon has only come out for those five minutes every hour each night, right?”

“Right?” Sun was still confused, but went along with what you were saying.

“That’s only from midnight to six. That’s five minutes per six hours, meaning—meaning Moon has only been able to exist for freaking—screw it, for fucking thirty minutes per day?!”

“Yes, that’s how math works, friend,” Sun said.

You leaned back, processing this. Sure, Moon might have tried to kill you, or at least bring you bodily harm, but you’re not sure he deserved that. Sun definitely didn’t. “So, you have all the time in the world, but you’re trapped in this tiny-ass space, and Moon is able to roam the whole Pizzaplex, but only for thirty minutes per day. That’s...Sun, do you know how fucked up that is? Why didn’t they just power you off if they were going to shut down the daycare?!”

“I don’t know,” Sun admitted. “But—but it’s probably like asking ‘why didn’t they just put you in a coma while you’re not doing your job,’ right?”

“But—” You started to point out that you were a person with a life outside of work, while Sun and Moon were an animatronic actually owned by the company, but then you stopped. For some reason, you felt uncomfortable saying it, even if it was true. “Maybe it is. I-I don’t know. Sun, do you have a rest mode or something? That you could have just gone into? Like falling asleep?”

“Hmm. Well, sort of,” Sun said slowly. “We have a timer on our rest mode, only lasting one hour. It’s so that we never leave the kids unattended for too long. And once we come out of rest mode, we can’t use it again for another twelve hours.”

“I—okay, that makes sense in theory, but—jeez.” You imagined only being able to sleep for one hour every half a day. The idea was sort of appealing at first, but the longer you thought about it, the more horrifying it became. You shook your head. Maybe Fazbear didn’t know how alive their robots were. Maybe this all made sense from a corporate perspective. But from where you were, this whole situation was impractical at best and messed up at worst. You took a deep breath, then moved on to your next question. “Okay. Um...so. When did Moon start acting weird?”

“Oh. Um...” Sun paused. “I mean, he was always a little weird.”

“You know what I mean, though, right?” you said gently.

Sun nodded. “You mean...the incidents. I think the first one was a year ago. Or at least, that was the first time I heard the complaints.”

“A year ago.” You picked up your pencil again and wrote this down. “Did anything else happen around that time? Anything? Even the smallest thing could be important.”

“Well, I think we got some new staff members! I didn’t really talk to them much except to say hi and welcome them to the company.”

“New staff.” You weren’t sure if that was noteworthy, but you wrote it down anyway. “Nothing else?”

“Um...they did move that old arcade game to our room,” Sun said slowly.

“An arcade game?” You asked, intrigued.

“Balloon World!” Sun said excitedly. “I don’t know why they put it there—I think maybe they just ran out of places to put it—but it’s there! And they haven’t taken it out! I have the high score now!”

“...huh.” That seemed a little random, but again, you weren’t sure how related it was. Still, you made a note of it. “Can I...see the game?”

Sun paused. “Well...it’s in our room.”

“Yeah, you said that.” You looked up at him. “Do you not want me to go in your room?”

“W-well—you’re not banned from there! I don’t think you could be banned from there, since your permissions still say you’re a technician. But—but it’s hard to get up there. The door outside is hidden and they set up some security measures that are hard to get through—and I can’t bring you up there through the balcony! Taking people on a flying trip has been strictly forbidden for a while! So—so you can’t really get up there, anyway, really, i-it’s not worth looking—”

“Sun, if you don’t want me to go in your room, I’m not gonna go in your room,” you said patiently. “It’s your space, you can decide who can come in.” You paused. “I mean, unless there’s an emergency or something. But under normal circumstances, I’m not going to go in there unless you say I can.”

“Oh.” Sun still looked tense, with his shoulders somewhat hunched. “Well...if you really, really want to, it’s alright.”

“It’s fine.” You shrugged. “Up to you.”

“O...kay, friend.” His shoulders relaxed a little, joints drooping downward. “Th-thank you.”

“No problem.” You closed your notebook and checked your FazWatch. It was now 12:10am. No new tasks had appeared while you were talking to Sun. Your stomach growled.

“Friend, are you hungry?” Sun said, apparently having heard that. “You should remember to eat!”

You laughed. “I know, I know. Hey, question. Are there rules about eating in the daycare?”

“No.” Sun gasped, clapping his hands together as his smile seemed to grow. “Are we going to have a pizza party?!”

“I was just thinking about getting a sandwich or something from one of the restaurants, but pizza does sound pretty good right now.” You grinned. “Alright. Give me a few minutes to run over to the nearest restaurant and get some pizza. I’ll be right back.”

Luckily, since the Pizzaplex was closed, the kitchens had no other customers to slow you down. Even so, it took a full twenty minutes for you to power-walk over to the closest pizzeria, grab a pizza and some Fizzy Faz, and power-walk back to the daycare. Sun watched you approach through the glass windows and ran over to open the doors for you. “Pizza delivery!” you shouted.

“Wow! Just in time for dinner!” Sun said, giggling. “What excellent service! You deserve a thousand-percent tip!”

You couldn’t help but chuckle as well. “Hey, um, I’m gonna have to set this down on the desk. Is that okay?”

“Yes, that should be fine. We don’t want to put food on the floor! That’s not clean at all!”

“Great.” You used your hoodie sleeve to wipe some dust off a section of the desk, then set the pizza box down. “The STAFF bots wouldn’t let me use any of the plates—kept waving me away from the station. So we’ll have to hold the slices in napkins.” You awkwardly hopped onto the desk, wincing as the twisting movement aggravated your injury. But there were no chairs in the daycare, so you had to sit on its surface. “I probably should’ve asked you what toppings you wanted,” you said, opening the box. “Sorry, I forgot.”

Sun paused. “Um...friend?”

“What?” You looked at Sun. Stared for a couple seconds. Then the pieces clicked in your mind. You reached up and smacked your forehead. “I’m an idiot.”

“No you’re not!” Sun hurried to say. “You just made a little mistake! And it’s fine, really. I can still be part of the pizza party!” He reached into the pizza box and picked up one of the slices, smushing it into his smile and smearing cheese and sauce all over his face. “Mmm, see? I love eating food! It’s something I do every day!”

You burst into laughter. “Sun! Ah, you’re great, dude.” You reached into your backpack, taking out the cans of Fizzy Faz and a stack of napkins. “I love the commitment to the bit, but you’re getting it all over your face. Here.” You held out the napkins.

“Oh. Thank you!” Sun took the napkins, putting the smushed pizza slice back into the box. “You’re right, got to keep things clean. Clean up, clean up.”

As he wiped his face, you grabbed one of the Fizzy Faz cans and opened it, pulling off the tab and putting it in your pocket. Ah, the refreshing taste of fake grape flavoring. Honestly Fizzy Faz tasted pretty good, but there was probably a million grams of sugar in each can. Fazbear pizza was also alright. Not the best quality pizza you’d ever had, but smothered in cheese and with a nice crust. You devoured a whole slice before Sun was finished cleaning. “Mmmm, pizza,” you said. “This combination of cheese and tomato is very pleasing to my hyu-man taste buds, and certainly not my antenna.”

“Hmm? What are you talking about, friend?” Sun asked.

“Ah, don’t mind me, it’s just a bit from this video online.” You shrugged. “You reminded me of it earlier. Thought it was funny.”

“Really? Do you watch a lot of videos online? On the—the world wide web?”

You smile. “Yes, I watch a lot of videos on the Interwebs. Play a lot of video games, too. Did you know that Fazbear has inspired a series of horror games?”

Sun’s face tilted. “Like—games you play to be scared on purpose, right? What are the games about?”

“Well, on the surface, you just have to survive five nights while... uh... animatronics try to...kill you,” you said awkwardly. “But there’s really this hidden lore! It’s really interesting! Like, it’s all about these five kids who... uh... died...in a Freddy’s restaurant...” You trail off.

Sun’s white-eyed gaze was piercing. “That doesn’t sound very nice.” His voice was very quiet.

“Well, Fazbear always said that the games were completely made-up,” you said slowly. Though, based on your own recent experiences, you were wondering just how much was imagined in those games. “Uh...but I like other games, too.”

“Oh really?! What’s your favorite? I’d love to talk about that!” Sun hurriedly said, his sudden enthusiasm clearly an attempt to change the subject. But hey, it was a subject change you welcomed. This one was making you uneasy.

You spent the next little while telling Sun all about the video games you played. He listened intently, occasionally asking clarifying questions. Before you knew it, you’d finished half the pizza and two cans of Fizzy Faz, and the time on your phone read 12:53.

“Oh...oh shit!” You jumped off the desk. “Ah, fuck!” That second cry was a response to the pain brought about by the sudden change in position.

“Friend! Are you alright?!” Sun grabbed your shoulders, staring at you. “O-okay, nothing’s—you’re not hurt, that’s good.”

“Yeah, no more than I was already.” You pressed a hand to your ribs, immediately yanking it away when (surprise, surprise) the pressure just made it hurt more. “Sun, it’s almost one o’clock. The lights are going to go out in two minutes.” You double-checked the time. “Shit! One minute, it just changed!”

“Oh no!” Sun started, suddenly yanking his hands away from you. “Friend, I-I know you said you want to help Moon, but—but you’re—you should leave the daycare!”

“Way ahead of you, bud.” Sure, you wanted to help with the possible-Moon-glitch situation, but ideally, you would help from a safe location. You started to run towards the doors, but had to stop when your ribs flared in protest. Before you could say anything, Sun ran forward, scooping you up like a sack of four. A second later, he deposited you on the other side of the wooden door. “Thanks,” you breathed. “H-hey, my shift tomorrow is all night shift, twelve to six—”

“Yes, yes, very good!” Sun nodded frantically. “I’ll see you then!” And then he closed the doors.

You checked the time again. Still 12:54. You turned around and walked as quickly as possible away from the daycare door. But...you didn’t leave the Daycare entirely. Instead, you stopped when you were a good ten or more feet away from the door, and turned around to face it. You took out your flashlight and braced yourself.

The instant the lights went out, you switched the flashlight on and aimed the beam at the daycare door. Your eyes darted to the glass walls, looking for movement beyond them. Nothing. But you didn’t move.

Then the daycare doors creaked open. Out reached a slender, metal hand, followed by a large, circular face with red eyes. Moon stared at you. He waved. “It’s past your bedtime,” he said.

“Again, I am an adult who works here,” you said, keeping your voice as calm as possible. “Besides, the thing about sleeping is that you need a regular schedule. Even if you sleep at the worst times, if it’s regular, then you’ll get a restful sleep.”

Moon’s head tilted as he leaned further out the door. “Is yours?”

You blinked. “Is my what?”

“Sleep schedule. Regular.”

“Oh.” That made sense. But... “Why do you care?”

Moon said nothing. His face rotated a full 360 degrees.

You decided to keep talking, to keep him busy. “Well, it was, but this new work schedule is gonna mess with that. My shifts are at three different times over five days. That’s going to suck. But like, what are you gonna do? I need a job. For moooneyyy. Money can be exchanged for goods and services. I bought some extra-strength melatonin recently, hopefully that’ll help.”

“Moondrop,” Moon suddenly said.

“What?” You were confused for a second, then you remembered. “Are you seriously advertising those sketchy candies to me? Is that in your programming or something? Or did you just say it because the thought of taking stuff to fall asleep reminded you of them?”

“Moondrop.” You could’ve sworn Moon’s grin was a bit more smug than usual.

“Great.” You took a deep breath. “Well. Anyway. I need to tell you something. The same thing I told Sun earlier. I want to help get the daycare reopened.” You paused to gauge Moon’s reaction. But unlike with Sun, whose body language was easy to read, Moon’s was a bit more difficult. Also, most of his body was hidden behind the door. “But in order to do that, you need to stop causing incidents.” Another deep breath. “I really don’t think you were always like this. I looked up some stuff online, and you just sort of...suddenly changed one day. Is it really a glitch? Or did something happen? Either way, I’m...I’m sure I can help.”

“You can’t.”

You instinctively took a step backwards at the harsh growl. “I mean, I’m no programmer. I did take, like, one programming class in college that I did pretty good in, but I’m sure that whatever the hell’s going on in your robot brain is a lot more complicated than ‘Hello World.’ So, yeah, I guess you’re right, I can’t help directly. But I want to do something. You and Sun have been stuck here for way too long. I’m sure you’re really upset about the Lights-On Protocol. If we can—can, uh...” You weren’t sure how to phrase this without sounding rude, something you definitely didn’t want to sound like to the tall, dangerous animatronic. “If you can—if whatever’s happened with you can...stop happening...then we can eventually get it reversed, and everything can go back to normal. I don’t know if you can do anything about your...situation. But if you can, I’d appreciate it if you helped me help you. Sun would appreciate it, too.”

Moon had been bouncing the whole time you talked, almost absentmindedly. As soon as you mentioned Sun, he immediately stopped. “Sun...?” he asked.

“Yeah, Sun wants to help, too.” You nodded.

Moon laughed darkly. “Sun hates me.”

“Wh...what?” You asked, surprised.

“Hates me,” Moon repeated.

You...weren’t expecting this. But you couldn’t pin down why. What was so strange about this? Then you realized this was the first time Moon had...referred to himself in your brief conversations. Unprompted, at least. You weren’t sure if your asking about the free-roam permissions counted. And he’d never mentioned Sun before. “Well...I do think he’s scared of you,” you said slowly. “I told you that last night. It’s a scary situation, to have your body taken over any time the lights go too dark. I mean, I think you’d understand that. You’re in the same situation. You’re not scared of him, though. Are you?”

Moon laughs again. “Not scary.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d say that. I mean, personally, there’s going to be an inherently scary thing about any animatronic to some people. But Sun’s one of the least intimidating. Besides the height. Seriously, it had to have costed more to make you two so tall. But we’re getting sidetracked. The point is, I want to help, and Sun wants to help, regardless of what you think his opinion of you is. But it’s going to be hard to do that if you won’t—won’t reach out. So. Is it a glitch? Is that why the incidents started?”

Moon said nothing in response. His red eyes stared at you for what felt like ages, as you stood there and tried not to be intimidated. Then, he said it again: “You can’t.” And disappeared back into the daycare, closing the door behind him.

You stayed there for a while more. Then the lights came on again, and your FazWatch ping!ed. You were still on the clock, after all. So you slowly headed out to do your assigned tasks. You didn’t see Moon again the rest of the night.

[celestial-robots]

Hey! I just started reading you "Finding Equinox" story (The ruined dlc just came out like days ago and reawakened my soft spot for the lad) and I gotta say I LOVE IT! I adore how you capture the characters and their personalities so much! Keep up the awesome work!

Aw thank you so much! Equinox is posted pretty infrequently but I do love it ^-^ I am currently figuring out how to incorporate the new info from Ruin about Eclipse and stuff haha, but hopefully Part Six will be out soon. All depends on my schedule, but hearing comments like this is very encouraging! :,)

[celestial-robots]

Finding Equinox

A Sun & Moon X Reader Story

Chapter One: Dawn of a New Day

Next

Word Count: 6363

Summary: You have a new job at the famous Fazbear Mega Pizzaplex! Surely this will be a normal retail job. Unfortunately, that notion is quickly disproved, as you find yourself severely underqualified for the position Fazbear put you in. But on the bright side, the sun-themed animatronic in the Daycare is nice.

Author’s Note: I’ve been talking about this fic for a while, now’s the time to post it. I’ve never written an X Reader fic before—heck, I’ve only used self-inserts a handful of times before. But I’ve been inspired by a lot of good fics I’ve seen centered around Sun and Moon, and I wanted to throw my had in the ring ^-^ This is going to be a longer series with a bit of a slow burn on the romance part. I mean, you gotta get to know the guys before you date them, right? I hope you all enjoy it, I’ve had a lot of fun writing this :D

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Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex. It sounded like something out of a children’s show. Some place where the characters would hang out in between going to school classes and fighting supervillains...or something. But no. It was a real place, a massive building that was a cross between a mall, a theme park, and a robotics lab.

It was also the site of your new job.

Honestly, you hadn’t expected them to actually look at your online application. Fazbear was notorious for using robots whenever possible, and you’d heard all about the Mega Pizzaplex’s STAFF bots. You weren’t really sure why they were hiring in the first place if the STAFF was oh-so amazing. But you needed a job to pay rent on your brand-new apartment, and your current one sucked. At least the Pizzaplex was willing to pay more than minimum wage. Surprisingly.

So, when they emailed you back with congratulations on getting the job, you snatched it up. Sure, it would mean commuting to the Pizzaplex outside of the city five days a week, but you liked driving. And you would be lying if you said you weren’t fascinated by working for the Fazbear Entertainment. The company that spawned a million ghost stories—not to mention multiple genuinely scary horror games. The legend appealed to you, as terrible as the rumors were.

Your first shift was on Monday, starting at 3pm. A decent enough time. It took a solid forty minutes to drive out to the Pizzaplex, though, and you weren’t sure if there’d be trouble getting in, so you left at 1:40. Luckily, the massive building—seriously, this was probably bigger than your college campus had been—had an employee parking lot nearby. You found a decent spot, then gathered your items for the day.

The email you’d gotten from Fazbear Entertainment said you were allowed to bring or wear whatever you wanted, as long as you acknowledged that Fazbear Entertainment wasn’t responsible for lost or damaged items. And you’d done your research on the Mega Pizzaplex shortly after getting the job. In accordance with your research, you put together a little Survival Pack:

Work uniform. It was really just a T-shirt with a logo on the front and back that read “Fazbear Entertainment Mega Pizzaplex Employee.”

Company-issued FazWatch. It had been sent to you in the mail along with the shirt, and looked a lot like some of the novelty toys that Fazbear sold. That wasn’t going to be confusing at all. But apparently it gave you security clearance.

Headphones. Connected to your phone via Bluetooth, so you could listen to music or a podcast while you worked, and hopefully drown out the sound of the large crowds that went in and out of the Pizzaplex each day.

Charger and portable battery. Headphones wouldn’t be much good if your phone died.

Sunglasses. Looking at the promotional pictures on the website, you knew that there would be bright light galore inside the building. And you would prefer to not have to stare at those for your entire shift. The pair you brought today were especially big, with round lenses that covered almost the entire upper half of your face.

Face mask. Just in case you needed to dull some strong smells or avoid breathing in any sort of particles.

Zip-up hoodie. Allowed the logo on the T-shirt to be seen. You hadn’t been sure if the Pizzaplex would be too warm or too cold, so you brought this just in case of the latter.

Backpack with packed lunch. Sure, the email said that food would be provided for you, but you’d been screwed over by messages like that before, so you brought something just in case.

With these powers combined, you gained the Ultimate Ability: Getting Customers to Leave You Alone Unless You Approached Them First.

Walking in through the front entrance was easy. The logo on your T-shirt allowed you to skip the massive lines. You strolled right in through the glass doors...and stopped short. Wow. This place was...really, really cool. And funnily enough, looked a lot like the pictures on the website. You’d been half-expecting some Expectations Vs. Reality shit, but no. On the surface at least, this place was incredible.

Also very, very loud, and very, very bright. You mentally patted yourself on the back for thinking of your Survival Pack. You glanced around, unsure where to go, before calling one of the elevators. The email said to go to the atrium when you arrived. So, one short elevator ride later, you stepped out onto the center balcony, overlooking the massive neon-lit expanse of the Pizzaplex.

“Hello New Employee.”

You jumped at the sound of a robotic voice behind you. Spinning around, you saw one of those patented STAFF bots: simple robots with painted-on facial features and wheels for feet. “We are glad to have you here as part of the Fazbear family,” the voice continued. “Take a map.” The bot held out a folded sheet of paper in one of its clamp-like hands.

“Uh...suuuure.” You took the offered map. Surprisingly, your FazWatch beeped. You glanced at it and saw a notification, telling you that a map of the Mega Pizzaplex had been added. “Huh.” You looked back at the map in your hands. Yep, it was paper, alright. How did it connect with the watch? Or did the bot do that?

“Your company-issued Freddy FazWatch will alert you to any tasks you have to complete on your shift,” the STAFF bot said. “All tasks must be completed before ending your workday. New tasks can and will be assigned at any point during your shift. These tasks may include janitorial services, transport of goods from storage using the utility tunnels, animatronic maintenance and repair—”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“—and upkeep of devices such as arcade cabinets, musical equipment, and any internal systems of the Mega Pizzaplex. Remember to smile, you are the face of Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex.”

“Wait a minute, what was that second-to-last one?” you asked. But it was too late. The STAFF bot had already rolled away, and was hounding the incoming customers to “take a map.” You almost pursued it, but decided against it. The bot probably wasn’t programmed to do anything more than give you that introduction and map.

Still...was that really it? You weren’t going to have any training or anything? Were you even going to meet your supervisor? Did you have a supervisor? You stand there, confused, for a good few minutes, looking down at the atrium and getting in the way of incoming families. Well...guess you would have to make do.

You shuffle off to the side, pass through a few doors, and somehow end up in a gift shop full of kids asking their parents for plushies. Another STAFF bot behind the counter seemed to be handling the transactions, thank god. You’d manned the register before in other jobs, and it always made you feel awkward. Well, nobody was looking for you, so you take a moment to pull out your phone and put on your most energetic music, cranking up the volume until only the loudest of children’s screams pierced the barrier of sound. Then, you decided to check out this FazWatch.

The interface was easy enough to figure out. You had a tab for tasks, a tab for the map, and a tab to remind you of your schedule. It seemed you had a fifteen-minute break scheduled for six o’clock. You could also clock in and out from this tab. Right now, it was 2:50, so you tapped the “Clock In” button. Nothing wrong with being early, right? There was also a gear icon in the bottom left for settings, and a lock icon in the bottom right that told you your security level. It was Level Four...which seemed a little high for what the job description was, but you weren’t going to complain.

Now. Onto the tasks. Cleaning the glass in Rockstar Row...fixing a STAFF bot that some kids messed with...restocking the ice cream parlor in Bonnie Bowl with new ingredients...and a few other things. Most of it didn’t sound too hard, but you were a little worried about that STAFF bot. Sure, Fazbear liked to brag about how their animatronics were extremely advanced yet simple to use, but you didn’t think you were qualified to work on anything robotic-related. You hadn’t even taken any math classes in college.

Well. Better get to it. If that STAFF bot from before was right, new tasks could show up at any moment. You shouldn’t let them pile up.

Sure enough, all the tasks you’d been assigned were simple to figure out. The biggest obstacle in your way was navigating the damn Pizzaplex. The Faz-map on the FazWatch was Faz-awful. Terribly low resolution. This company was worth billions of dollars, but it couldn’t spare ten bucks for the map. And the paper map you’d been handed only showed areas customers were allowed to be in, it was no help for the employee-only parts. But once you figured out where you were going, it was just a bunch of manual labor. Even the broken STAFF bot only had its wheels jammed. Jabbing about with a screwdriver fixed it right away.

Sooner than you thought, six o’clock approached, and with it, your fifteen-minute break. You were pleasantly surprised to see that you’d already completed all your assigned tasks. Maybe you could take a longer-than-mandated break. If you were really lucky, you might even be able to just chill for the rest of your shift.

You looked around. Your last task had been fixing a machine in customer service. Apparently a teenager stuck a magnet on it and completely broke it. Honestly, you hadn’t been sure what to do, so you just turned the machine off and on again. Surprisingly, it worked. Hopefully. You’d hate to make some other human worker—of which you had seen none the whole day—fix it. Now, you were standing near the elevators in the lobby, staring up at the massive golden Freddy statue. Customers were standing around, waiting for the elevators to arrive. A few little kids were looking at you, probably wondering why this strange person was wearing sunglasses indoors.

Alright. Logically, you should take your break in the break room. That would be great...if you knew where one was. In the three hours you’d been wandering around the Pizzaplex doing menial tasks, you hadn’t seen anything even like a break room in any of the employee-only areas. So...that left you at a loss.

A loud noise pierced the sound barrier you’d set up with your headphones. You jumped and glanced around. One of the kids waiting for the elevator was screaming and pulling against his mom, apparently scared of getting in the moving metal box. A few other customers were watching the scene. Some of them noticed you staring and stared right back. You quickly looked away, feeling irrationally guilty.

Ah, screw the break room. You just needed a place that was quiet and empty of customers so you could eat your lunch (dinner?) without any unexpected noises or staring families.

You looked around for an area without any people. Obviously, the lobby and main atrium were a no-go. What else was there? Gift shop, lost and found, daycare—daycare?

Partly out of curiosity, partly out of noticing nobody was heading that direction, you walked over to the big garage door. It opened on its own, doing that thing where the doors recognize your security level and let you in accordingly. You ducked under before it fully opened.

You found yourself in a long, wide hallway. The floor was a pattern of purple colors, while the ceiling resembled a night sky full of stars. There was a series of planters with palm trees—probably fake—and various decals on the brick walls. One was a rainbow logo with an arrow pointing further down the hall, reading “Superstar Daycare Pick-Up.”

While you could have sat on one of the planters to eat your lunch, you headed further down the long, wide hallway, wanting to see if there’s a better place at the end. You glanced around at the wall decals. They seemed to be advertisements for some sort of...candy? Sunnydrop Energizing Candy and Moondrop Sleepy-Time Candy, each featuring cartoon mascots styled after the sun and moon respectively. It was pretty cute, actually, but you couldn’t help but wonder what made this candy “energizing” and “sleepy.”

Drugs?

No, probably not.

But honestly given the rumors surrounding Fazbear Entertainment and child endangerment, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear they were putting something weird in the candies. Maybe too much of something that’s regulated for good reason.

The hallway ended in another one of those garage doors, decorated with a sun and moon motif. This also opened automatically, and you were immediately greeted by a pair of golden statues. Kind of like the one in the lobby, but much smaller. And instead of depicting any of the headlining Glamrock animatronics, these are replicas of some sort of...sun and moon...things. With puffy pants. Oh, wait. They were probably the same characters on the candy advertisements. Duh.

You stepped further into the room. There were a few tables and chairs here, and you took off your backpack in anticipation of sitting down for what must have been the first time in three hours. But before you did, you looked around some more. The area overlooked a larger playplace, walled in and with netting covering the top. You stared down at it. Looked pretty nice, honestly. You would have loved something like this as a little kid. But where was the entrance? There was a slide up here that leads down into the playplace (labelled “Slide Into Fun!”) but that doesn’t help with getting out.

Still holding your backpack, you pushed through the turnstiles and walk down the stairs to what must be the ground floor. More tables down here, sweet. And an oversized pair of wooden double doors. Good. That solved that mystery. With your curiosity satisfied, you sat down at one of the tables and pulled out your lunch.

You ate peacefully, unbothered by any customers or tasks, completely content to sit here and avoid the possibility of being stared at. Your music blared in your ears, so you turned it down a bit, since it didn’t need to be as loud in this quieter area.

While you sat there, you wondered if you’d ever get to meet any of those famous animatronics Fazbear was known for. They’d been completely absent so far; you hadn’t even seen them in their rooms when you cleaned the glass on Rockstar Row. Strange. You knew the Pizzaplex had closed for a while about a month ago—something that was heavily complained about on social media. The official excuse was “maintenance” and “upgrading systems,” but it had all been very vague. Even the email you got upon hiring hadn’t said much. It was very mysterious. Maybe something happened during that time it was closed, something that put the animatronics out of commission, but Fazbear decided to reopen without the animatronics anyway. You wouldn’t be surprised.

Once you were finished, you checked the time on your phone—surprisingly, the FazWatch didn’t have a space for the time. 6:08. Huh. Speed-eating, hell yeah. Now, with some time to kill before your break ended, you put your lunch bag away and stood up.

Movement flickered in the corner of your eyes.

Your head whipped towards it. Where did that come from? Was it...inside the playplace?

You approached the wall cautiously, peering through the glass at the play area. At some point during your break, someone had shown up inside there. Or...maybe it would be more accurate to say something. Your wondering about the animatronics must have called to the universe, because now there was one only twenty feet away from you.

The animatronic had its back turned to you, but you recognized the design immediately. It was the same as the golden statue on the floor above. Tall, with long limbs and a circular disc of a head, triangular metal bits jotting out from the side to imitate sunrays. Puffy striped pants and frills around the waist and neck made it look like a clown or jester. Currently, the animatronic was fussing with a stack of toy barrels, bent over and carefully nudging them. Which was a little strange. The barrels were already perfectly stacked.

For a moment, you just watched, intrigued. This wasn’t like any other Fazbear animatronics you’d seen pictures of. It was much thinner and lacked an animal theme, but also...well, its colors were a bit duller than you were expecting. Especially for something themed around the sun. You would have expected bright colors, like the candy advertisements, but instead it was all pale yellows and grays, with darker reds and oranges in the pants and frills. Maybe all the animatronics weren’t quite as colorful as their ads depicted.

As you continued to stare, the animatronic stood up straight, putting its hands on its hips and nodding. It spun around...and immediately stopped when it caught sight of you through the glass wall.

“Oh. Uh...” You were once again surprised by the inaccuracy of the decals on the walls. Yes, the animatronic had a sun for a face, divided in half with one half looking like a crescent moon. But unlike the ads, the animatronic’s eyes were just blank white. No pupils to be seen. It was a little unsettling, but you got over it. Slowly, you raised a hand and waved. “Hi,” you say, feeling awkward.

To your surprise, the sun animatronic immediately jumped into the air and began waving back enthusiastically. It followed this up with several excited gestures, even doing a little dance where it hopped back and forth on its feet. You couldn’t help but smile; something about this was endearing. But as the animatronic continued to gesture, you realized it was probably talking to you.

“Oh! Hang on.” You dug into your pocket, pausing your music on your phone and taking off your headphones. Now you could hear ambient music playing from overhead speakers: a catchy, bouncy tune that was fitting for a daycare. “What were you saying?” you asked.

The animatronic had paused for a bit while you rooted around in your pockets, but once it had your attention again it instantly resumed its excitement, waving its hands back and forth and rotating its face—rotating its face?! Yep, surprisingly, that circular plate of a head could rotate all the way around. That was kind of cool. You wondered how it worked. But, sadly, you still couldn’t hear anything. Was this glass soundproof?

You glanced at the big wooden double doors, but then hesitated. Pulling out your phone again, you watched the time change from 6:11 to 6:12. Then you checked the FazWatch on your wrist. No new tasks had shown up...You wouldn’t have any work to do until one appeared. And that might be a while. You considered it...and then muttered “Why not?” under your breath and walked over to the doors.

Unlike the garage doors leading to the daycare area, these wooden ones didn’t open automatically upon your approach. For a moment, you worried that your security level wasn’t high enough. But then you grab the handle of one of the doors and pull, and it opened without resistance. Well...without much resistance, at least. It was still a very big door, and you grunted with exertion as you gradually pulled it open.

The moment there was enough space, you slipped through, letting the door slowly shut behind you. You coughed, waving your hand in front of your face as dust floated through the air, and then pulled on your emergency face mask. Good thing you’d thought to bring that. The overhead music was even louder inside the playplace, looping along, echoing through the completely empty area.

Well. Almost completely empty.

“Hello new friend!” The sun animatronic from earlier appeared in front of you, grabbing your upper arms and lifting you off your feet. “It’s so good to meet you!”

“Holy shit!” you yelped.

“Sorry!” The animatronic instantly let go, and you fell to the floor, jolting at the one-foot drop. It backed up a bit. “It’s just so exciting to see someone new!” Even as it continued to talk, it couldn’t stay still, bouncing on its feet and fidgeting with its hands. “We can color, play hide and seek, order pizza and eat until we can’t anymore! It’ll be so much fun!”

“I—okay, uh, yeah.” You reached up and massaged the spot on your arm where the animatronic grabbed you. Its grip hadn’t been too tight, but the metal hands made it feel much worse. “Uh...Who are you, by the way?”

“My name is Sun!” The animatronic said cheerfully. “But you can call me Sunny or Sunshine or whatever else you want! And what’s your name, new friend?”

You gave it—him?—you’re going to go with him—your name, and then moved on. “Yeah, I, uh...I’m glad to meet you, too, dude. I-I just started working here. I, uh...haven’t seen any other animatronics yet.”

“Oh, it’s your first day?” Sun gasped, despite not having the breath to do it properly. “And I’m the first one you’ve met? I’m so honored! A-are you here to help reopen the daycare?!”

“Um...nnno.” Sun instantly deflated. Guilt curled around your stomach. "S-sorry. I didn’t even know we had a daycare until now. I just kinda wandered in ‘cause I didn’t see anyone else heading over here. Uh...but! It’s really cool that we have one!” You put a happy spin in your voice, trying to cheer Sun up. Though you weren’t sure if it’ll work on an animatronic...

It worked. Sun perked up. “It is really cool! The Superstar Daycare is the bestest place for all the little ones to play and have fun!”

“Yeah, it looks nice.” Though, now that you were actually in the daycare...you noticed just how empty it is. There was quite a bit of dust in the air, and a visible layer of it over on a nearby desk. And besides the occasional stack of toy barrels, there was nothing on the ground. You gave Sun another look. Close up, you realized that his colors aren’t naturally dull. Instead, the paint on his body was chipped and faded, covered in a layer of grime. What did he say? ‘Are you here to help reopen the daycare’? How long has this place been closed?

“Of course it looks nice! I keep everything nice and orderly!” Sun stood to the side, holding his arms out in a ‘Look at this!’ gesture, indicating the entire playplace. “See?”

“Yeah, I saw you messing with some of these barrels through the glass,” you said.

“Yep! It’s important that everything’s just right! Very important, ho ho ho!” Sun laughed. “Oh, but where are my manners? What would you like to do, new friend? I-I have puppets, and paints, and all sorts of supplies!”

“Well...” You checked your FazWatch. No new tasks had shown up, but... “Um. Sun. You know I’m...on the clock right now, right? That means I might have to leave to do something at any moment, and eventually I need to clock out and go home...”

“Oh.” Again, Sun’s posture slumped a little. “No, I...I know, new friend. I-I just thought I’d offer.” He tapped his fingertips together, looking down at the ground. “You don’t have to stay, but if you want to, we can do anything you want! I-I promise it’ll be fun! But it’s up to you.”

Even though his expression didn’t change from a smile the whole time he talked, he looked and sounded so dejected that you immediately felt bad. Could an animatronic feel sadness or was it just a programmed response? Well, either way, your heart was too soft to just ignore him. “Hey, I didn’t say I was going to go right now,” you said, giving him a smile. “I have some free time to hang out.”

“Really?!” Sun looked up. “Oh wow! That’s great news, friend!” He jumped into the air, arms outstretched towards the sky in excitement, and landed with a solid thump! “We’re going to have so much fun! What do you want to do? I can go get some toys—oh, you’re probably a little old for them, though. I also have arts and crafts supplies, like fingerpaint and glitter glue! Or we can play games! I know a lot of different ones!”

“Um...yeah, sure, I’m down for some arts and crafts,” you said. “But nothing too messy. Do you have, like, markers or colored pencils or something?”

“Hmm, I don’t know. I’ll go check!” With that, Sun spun around—quite literally, his torso and head rotating 180 degrees before his legs caught up with the spin—and skipped off. He was gone before you could even say anything.

You blinked in surprise. What? Where did he even go? “Uhh...okay, then. I guess that’s how superheroes do it.”

With nothing to do but wait, you give the playplace another look, walking around some of the play structures. There was a ball pit. Sweet. Part of you was tempted to jump right in, but there could be anything hidden in there, bugs or worse. If you were a kid, though, you wouldn’t have hesitated. The play structures themselves were pretty sturdy, despite the daycare being closed for god knows how long. It would probably be a bit cramped for an adult like you, but again, as a kid you would be all over them. Stacks of toy barrels were all over, which you avoided touching due to how concerned Sun was over keeping things orderly.

Other than all that, the only thing of note in the daycare was the big desk by the wooden door. You wandered back over, stepping behind it. The dust on the surface looked even thicker up close, though there were areas that weren’t as dusty. Most notably around a small Freddy Fazbear head that looked like it was supposed to hold something. That was a little weird...why that specifically? And not something like the computers or drawers?

“Oh, new friend? I-I don’t think you’re supposed to be behind there.”

You looked up. Sun had returned, carrying a big plastic box and a stack of plain white paper in his arms. He was standing some distance away from the desk, bouncing in a more...anxious way than before. “I’m not? Why not?” you asked. “I’m staff.” You pointed at your shirt for emphasis.

“W-well, um...” Sun paused. “It’s...just for security! And I don’t think you’re security, you would have a different uniform if you were.” He laughed, but it sounded a bit strained.

You raised an eyebrow. “For security? Really?”

“Yep.” Sun’s bouncing grew faster, his mechanical joints making a clacking—and jingling?—sound. “And we don’t really need the desk, anyway! We can just sit on the floor and draw!”

“The floor’s soft,” you pointed out, glancing down at the mats that covered every surface.

“We can use the box!” He shook the box he was holding. Something inside clattered against the plastic sides. “If we just...stay out here.”

You stepped out from behind the desk, noticing the way Sun stopped bouncing the moment you did. Something behind there was making him nervous. There was no doubt about it. “Are...you okay?” you ask slowly.

“What do you mean, friend?”

“I mean, like, do you have deskophobia or something?” You raised your hands. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not gonna go back there if you don’t want. I just want to...be sure. That everything’s good here.”

“Oh!” Sun sounded pleasantly surprised. “Thank you for your concern, friend! No, I’m not afraid of the desk. I’m just...not allowed to go back there. A-and we can’t spend time together if you’re hiding behind the desk!”

“Huh. Okay, then.” You nodded, but there was clearly something more going on. Sun was scared of you being behind the desk. Was there something back there that he didn’t like? Well...this wasn’t the time to bring it up. You didn’t want to give a robot a panic attack. “Alright, we’ll just sit down here then.” You lowered yourself to the floor, sitting on the soft mats.

“Alrighty!” Sun sat down across from you, folding his long legs and setting the plastic box and paper in between the two of you. He took the lid off the box, revealing its contents: a mismatched assortment of markers, pencils, and crayons, colors and brands all mixed together.

“We’ll have to dump these out if we’re going to use the box as a table,” you said.

“That’s okay, as long as we clean it all up after!” Sun didn’t hesitate to tip the box over, spilling coloring supplies all over the floor. “Here, you can use this! I’ll use the lid.”

“Okay, if you insist.” You laughed a little, doing your best to keep the various supplies from rolling too far away.

Silence fell for a while as you’re quickly sucked into drawing. It had been a while since you’d drawn for fun, outside of an art class. It was nice to doodle whatever you wanted. Sun was quiet as well, except for a slight jingling sound that you soon realized came from bells tied on ribbons around his wrists. He went through a lot more paper than you did, only spending five or ten minutes on each page.

Eventually, you noticed he wasn’t coloring anymore. You looked up and saw his face leaning over you, looking at your own drawing. “Oh fuck!” you gasped, surprised. “When did you get here?!”

“Um, friend, I-I was nice about it before but language like that really shouldn’t be used in the daycare,” Sun said.

“Even when there’s nobody else here?” you muttered under your breath.

“Even then!”

“Oh. I-I didn’t realize you could hear that.” Great, now you’re embarrassed about sassing the daycare animatronic. “Anyway, uh. Sorry. You just surprised me, leaning so close.”

Sun immediately leaned back, quick enough that you were mildly surprised he didn’t fall over backwards. “Oh I’m so sorry! I should have realized. I just wanted to get a better look at your art. You’re a very good artist, friend! That’s a wonderful drawing!”

“Haha. Thanks, dude.” Your face grew a little warm. That sounded like the sort of compliment someone would give a little kid during crafts time in school. But hey, Sun was probably programmed for interacting with small children, so you didn’t pay it much mind. It sounded genuine coming from him, not condescending like it might coming from another adult. “It’s just doodling.”

“If that’s just doodling than your other art must be amazing!” Sun leaned a bit forward again. “I really like this one.” He pointed at a drawing of a flower you’d done in one corner of the paper. “And this one!” Now he pointed at a sketch of a person, smiling and waving in another corner.

“Daw, stop it, Sun. You’re so sweet.” You laughed a little bit. “I’m just practicing poses and colors and stuff.”

Before Sun could say anything else, an intercom overhead crackled to life. “It is now seven o’clock. The Superstar Daycare is officially closed,” said the familiar voice of the announcer. “The Daycare lights will be turning off in five hours. Have a wonderful day here at the Freddy Fazbear Mega Pizzaplex.”

“Seven o’clock? Really?” Surprised, you checked the time. Seven o’clock indeed. You’d been sitting here for forty-five minutes. It hadn’t felt like that long at all. More importantly... “Wait, isn’t the daycare already closed? I mean, hadn’t it been closed for a while? What’s up with the announcer?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, friend,” Sun said. “That always happens at this time! It’s just a scheduled thing! Yes, the daycare has been...closed for a while...but it might open again soon! You have to be prepared. A-and don’t worry about the lights going off! They don’t turn off anymore.”

“I...wasn’t really all that worried about the lights turning off, but thanks,” you said slowly. “My shift ends in two hours, anyway, so I wouldn’t be here long enough even if they did.”

“Good!” Sun sounded oddly...relieved? “The lights have to stay on.” His peppy voice suddenly became very serious. “On. On.”

“Okay, okay. You’re really serious about that, aren’t you?”

“It’s very important,” Sun added, still in that grim tone.

You blinked, confused. You’re about to ask him why it was important when you’re interrupted by a quiet ping! sound, followed by a voice coming from your wrist that said, “New task added!”

“Huh?” You lifted up your arm, looking at the FazWatch. Indeed, a new task had just appeared. A few machines in the East Arcade had run out of tickets and needed refilling. “Oh shi—shoot.” You stand up, only now realizing the pins and needles in your legs. “I have to go.”

“Already?” Sun stood up as well, much more fluidly than you did. “But you haven’t been here that long!”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry.” You bent over and started putting the coloring supplies back into their box. “But you know what they day. Duty calls, and all that. Call of duty. Call of Duty Shooter Man.”

Sun’s face rotates a bit to the side, perhaps confused by your last remark. “Well, do you have to go right now? We can keep coloring! Or if you want, we can do something else!”

“It’s tempting, but I really shouldn’t.” You sighed.

Suddenly, Sun reached forward and grabbed your arm. “A-are you sure? I have more crafts supplies! I-I can go find them!”

“Jeez, dude, be careful with the grabbing!” You pulled your arm away, discreetly looking down at the spot where he grabbed you to check if it left a mark. Luckily, it didn’t.

“I’m sorry!” Sun retracted his arm, stepping backwards. “I-I’m really sorry.” He put his hands behind his back, as if to show that he wasn’t going to try again. “Heh. O-of course, you probably have...very important technician things to do. Go ahead. Sorry.”

“...wait, what?” You weren’t sure if you heard him right. “What do you mean ‘technician things’?”

“Well...because you’re an animatronic technician,” Sun said.

“I’m a what?!”

Your shout echoed in the empty daycare, but you didn’t care much about your volume at the moment. You weren’t supposed to be a technician! You weren’t remotely qualified for that! That wasn’t even the job you’d applied for! How in the Fazfuck were you a technician?!

“Did you...not know that, friend?” Sun asked hesitantly. “I-I mean, it’s possible that you were incorrectly entered as one in the database! Or that my scan was wrong!”

“Your scan?” you asked absentmindedly, more concerned with the whole technician thing.

“We automatically scan any face we see!” Sun said proudly. “That way we can identify a child’s registered guardian and also any staff members with their information in the company database!”

“Right. Okay, that makes sense.” You looked down at the FazWatch again. “Oh my god, is that why my security level is so high? Because it thinks I’m supposed to work on the animatronics? Ffffffrick. Frick, man.”

“Friend, are you...alright?” Sun asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No. Thanks for offering, though.” You rubbed your eyes, suddenly feeling tired, and pulled off your face mask. “I’m just...going to go.”

Sun said nothing. When you looked up again, he was staring at you, perfectly still with his shoulders hunched. He seemed tense.

“I’ll come back,” you reassured him. “If not after I take care of this, then tomorrow. I have another shift at the same time, I can stop by to visit.”

“Promise?” Sun asked.

“Promise,” you said, smiling.

“Oh that’s great, friend!” Sun clapped his hands together, the motion accompanied by jingling bells and metallic clanking sounds. “I’ll be prepared next time! Oh! Do you want to take your drawings with you?” He bent over, carefully picking up your arts projects from the floor and holding them out for you.

“Sure.” You took the offered pieces of paper. “Thanks, Sun.” After a moment’s pause, you turn around and head back to the big wooden doors. “Well. I’ll see you later, then.”

“See you later, friend!” Sun waved cheerfully as you pushed the door open and headed out.

Unfortunately, you were not able to return to the daycare before the end of your shift. After you’d refilled the arcade machines with tickets, two more tasks had appeared, instructing you to fix the lights in El Chip’s and clean a whole crowd of STAFF bots that had been attacked with cake at a kid’s birthday party. And after that, the tasks kept coming. You barely managed to finish them all before it was time to clock out at nine o’clock.

You wanted to stop by the daycare before heading home—which surprised you. Sun had really made a strong impression, for you to already be attached. But it was going to be a long drive back, and to be honest, walking around late at night made you pretty anxious. Even if it was just a short way from your car to your apartment. You didn’t want it to be any later than it already was.

Still, you felt bad just leaving. So you quickly ran back to the daycare area, stopping by just long enough to peer through the glass walls into the playplace. Sure enough, Sun was there, fussing with the stack of toy barrels again. He quickly caught sight of you and waved. You waved back, then pointed to the side, indicating you were leaving. It was hard to tell from this height, up by the “Slide Into Fun!” slide, but it almost looked like Sun’s shoulders slumped. Was he disappointed? Well shit, now you just felt worse. You waved harder, then slowly backed away and disappeared.

You’d make it up to him tomorrow.

[celestial-robots]

Finding Equinox

Chapter Two: Red-Eyed Lunatic

Previous (first) | Next

Word Count: 5700

Summary: Your second day at the Pizzaplex proves to be a lot busier than your first. But halfway through your shift, there’s a sudden blackout, and management tells you to turn on some generators in the Daycare playplace. Surely this will go smoothly. After all, you and the Daycare Attendant are cool. Right?

Author’s Note: The moon man cometh >:)c He’s not exactly friendly yet, but don’t worry, he’ll warm up to you in later chapters! You just have to suffer being hunted through some play structures first XD

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Before you went to bed, you sent an email to the Fazbear Entertainment management, questioning why, exactly, your permissions were that of an animatronic technician when you applied for a general staff position. You didn’t expect to hear back from them anytime soon, so you went to sleep dreading the next day at work. What if they wanted you to repair one of the animatronics? What if there was no one around to help you? What if you broke an animatronic?! That last thought kept you up for a while. After meeting Sun and seeing how...alive he was, the idea of breaking an animatronic was just as bad as injuring a human. You didn’t want to hurt anyone, even if they were robotic instead of organic.

Try as you might, you couldn’t get the swirl of thoughts to shut off for a good three hours, not until you finally gave in and took a second melatonin tablet to help knock you out. But on the bright side, when you woke up the next morning, management had replied to your email! So all that worrying was for nothing! Greeeaaat.

The email response explained that, as you had prior qualifications in this line of work, management decided to upgrade your position. The Pizzaplex needed more technicians, as all the most-experienced ones were currently busy repairing the Glamrock animatronics after an “incident.” So, you were just someone who could do everyday maintenance on the robots until the real technicians were done with their repairs. You can always ask to be put back in the general staff position, the email concluded. But bear in mind that this will mean an increase in your hours, and a decrease in your pay and benefits.

“Well, fuck you too,” you said out loud upon reading that. So they were basically forcing you to stay as a technician. A major reason for you taking the job was the high pay and relatively light 30-hour work week (divided into five shifts of six.) Sure, you could always pick up more hours for less pay, but...well, you didn’t want to.

Turned out that all that worrying last night had been justified. Because here you were, still stuck in a position you were not at all prepared for. What “prior qualifications” had Fazbear noticed?! Were they making that up?

Then you remembered. Back in high school, you had a summer job working at an arcade. It was small, but busy, and you did know how to operate game cabinets because of it. You’d put it on your resume. Fazbear must have seen that you worked at an arcade, decided “well the Pizzaplex has arcades, so working there must be the same as working here!” and then hired you with the expectation that you knew how to operate and repair multiple massive metal machines.

God, no wonder this place had a high turnover rate.

You thought about what to do while you took a shower and ate breakfast. And as you got ready to go to work. And on the drive to the Pizzaplex. As you walked into the building, you decided to roll with it until you couldn’t. This position had really good benefits—suspiciously good, in fact—and you couldn’t afford to lose those. Besides, apparently most of the animatronics were being repaired. You probably wouldn’t have to actually do anything. Probably.

Why were the Glamrocks being repaired anyway? Did it have anything to do with the Pizzaplex closing a month back?

Ping! “Two new tasks added!”

You groaned. You’d barely clocked in. This was going to be a busy day, wasn’t it? You checked the FazWatch. Clean up some mess in Fazer Blast and turn on the power in the kitchens after a sudden blackout. Both easy enough, but the problem was getting to those places. The map still sucked.

As you headed towards where you thought those two locations were, you passed by a large garage-style door decorated with a sun and moon motif. You recognized the design as also being on the door to the daycare. Did they go to the same place? You stopped, hesitating. You didn’t have time for a conversation or anything, but maybe you could say hi?

After a moment of awkwardly standing in the way of passing families, you headed towards the door, ducking underneath it before it fully opened.

This door didn’t lead to the same place as the other one. After taking some turns—including stumbling into a theater of some kind?—you arrived at the Superstar Daycare, right by the big wooden doors. Before going into the play area, you pressed your face to the glass wall, looking to see if Sun was inside. Which...it didn’t look like he was.

You were about to head back, disappointed, when you saw something moving near the ceiling. You glanced towards it, and saw a small balcony on the wall of the daycare, decorated to look like a castle floating in the sky. Sitting on the edge of the balcony was a familiar yellow animatronic, who was waving furiously at you.

“Hi!” you said, despite knowing that he couldn’t hear you from this distance. You backed up a bit, getting a better look at how high the balcony was from the ground. That didn’t seem safe. “Are you, uh...?” You pointed at the balcony, then down at the floor, then tried to indicate the distance between them.

Luckily, Sun understood your vague gestures. He waved away the distance, giving you a thumbs up.

“...you sure?” You repeated the “distance” gesture, more slowly, and copied his thumbs up with visible reluctance.

Sun’s face rotated to the side, thinking. Then he stood up, put his hands above his head, and swan-dived from the balcony towards the floor.

“What the shit?!” Were you about to witness an animatronic death?!

Nope. Instead of crashing into the floor, Sun landed in the daycare’s ball pit, sending balls flying. He immediately surfaced and held his arms out in a “ta-da!” pose.

You couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t worry me like that, dude.”

Ping! “Two new tasks added!”

“God damn it.” You looked down at your FazWatch and frowned. Now you had to empty out trash cans all over the Pizzaplex and transport some repaired STAFF bots from Parts and Service up to the third floor. Why the STAFF couldn’t do that last one themselves, you weren’t sure.

In the short time you were scowling at the FazWatch, Sun had climbed out of the ball pit and walked over to the glass wall. Now he was looking down at you—god, he was really tall, wasn’t he?—with his hands pressed against the glass.

“Sorry, bud.” You held up your wrist with the FazWatch and pointed at it. “I have things to do.”

Sun’s shoulders slumped. He reached up to his face and traced imaginary tears from his eyes down his sun-shaped face. The message was clear.

“I know, I know, it sucks.” You sighed. “But hey, my break is in three hours.” You held up three fingers for emphasis. “Uh...did you get that?”

Sun nodded, giving you another thumbs up.

“Great.” You backed up, saluting jokingly as you did. “See you at six!” Then you turned and headed out.

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Ping! “New task added!”

Ping! “New task added!”

Ping! “Three new tasks added!”

You were really starting to hate that little ping! sound and the voice that would follow. Luckily, you’d brought your Pizzaplex Survival Pack with you, just like yesterday, so you had your headphones and music. But it seemed like every time there was a lull in the volume, your watch would pipe up with a little ping! “New task added!” You would expect to be familiar with the Pizzaplex layout by now, but nope! Even though you were running around all over the place, you still got lost when going anywhere other than the atrium.

On the bright side, you finally met another human employee. While emptying out the trash in one of the many pizza restaurants, you saw another person in the employee “uniform” (*cough* T-shirt) fiddling with a cash register. Looked like a high school kid, with curly blonde hair and a tan. He seemed really stumped by whatever was wrong with the register. A few customers were waiting in line. They weren’t grumbling or anything, but you knew that just having them there was still a lot of pressure.

“What’s wrong with it?” you asked, wandering over.

The kid jumped, then relaxed when he saw your outfit and nametag. “Um...it’s not printing any receipts.”

You leaned over the counter, looking at the register. “It looks like it’s out of paper. Are there any rolls of them under there?”

“Uh...” the kid ducked under the counter, reemerging with a roll of white paper. “Yeah. H-how do I put it in?”

“If you open this part here—” You pointed at the part in question. “Then you should be able to pull out the little, uh, stick thing with the old receipt roll. Just slide the new one on. Like toilet paper. Make sure you put it in so the flappy end goes over, not under.”

The kid carefully opened up the register, removed the used roll, and put in the new one. “Like this?”

“Perfect.”

The kid laughed a little, immediately stepping away from the register and letting a STAFF bot take over the transactions. “Uh...thanks,” he said, going around the counter. “I’m Jeremy.”

You respond with your own name. “Is it your first day?”

“Yeah. H-how long have you worked here?”

“A day.” Jeremy looked confused, so you laughed a little to clear the tension and explained, “I started yesterday. I’ve just had to work registers at other jobs. They’re all the same, really. I think.”

“Well, thanks again.” Jeremy smiled shyly. “I’ll, uh...be seeing you around, then.”

“See you.”

So it wasn’t much of a conversation. But you were happy to finally see another human face instead of these lifeless big-eyed STAFF bots. Hopefully you would meet others eventually.

It was around 5:50. You’d just finished cleaning up a second mess in Fazer Blast (someone had brought drinks into the laser tag game and spilled them all over the walls and carpet) and were stepping back into the atrium when everything went dark. For a split second you worried that you’d suddenly gone blind. Then you heard the sudden shouts of confusion, punctuated by the occasional excited child screaming at the unexpected darkness. The lights all over the Pizzaplex had turned off all at once. Even the neon signs. You remove your headphones and glasses and look around in confusion.

The intercom started up. “It seems the Mega Pizzaplex is experiencing an unexpected blackout. We please ask that you remain calm. Remember to keep track of small children, and stay exactly where you are. There is nothing to worry about. If you hear anything moving in the darkness, rest assured it is just our amazing staff working hard to fix this problem.”

Ping! “New task added!”

Of course you would get a new task ten minutes before your break. No doubt you were going to have to fix this blackout, something you had no idea how to do. Groaning, you looked at the FazWatch, its screen glowing in the darkness.

Restart the generators in the Superstar Daycare. There are five, located in the play structures. Do not allow the Daycare Attendant to get close to the generators. If the daycare is too dark, use one of the company flashlights located behind the security desk.

Well...that was more information than you usually got from these tasks. But honestly, it didn’t sound that bad. You knew where the daycare was, and you could ask Sun for help with this.

Wait. No. You couldn’t. “The Daycare Attendant” obviously meant Sun. Why wasn’t he supposed to touch the generators? Were they afraid he would damage them? He didn’t seem the type to do that. Maybe you could ask him about it while you were there.

You used your phone flashlight to navigate your way through the atrium and towards the daycare, taking a similar route to the one you used to stop by at the start of your shift. Soon, you were opening the big wooden doors and slipping into the playplace. “Hello?” you called. “Sun? Are you here?”

No response.

This place was a lot creepier with the lights out. The whole Pizzaplex was, but the large, looming, irregular structures made the daycare especially eerie. Your eyes were already darting all around, lingering on the strange shapes caused by the slides and climbing gyms.

“Uhhh I don’t know if you’re here and just not answering,” you called. “But I’m here to restart the generators. You know, the ones in the jungle gyms? Because that’s safe for kids.” You slowly stepped into the dark area, edging across the wall towards the desk. “I mean, sure, I know it’s closed and all, but if they’re gonna reopen it eventually they’re going to need to get rid of those. Why are they even here, anyway?” At this point you were just rambling. It was comforting to imagine Sun was there, listening to your inane comments.

Your phone flashlight wasn’t doing much to illuminate the area. So once you made your way towards the desk you immediately started rummaging around until you find the company flashlights mentioned. There was a whole shelf of them, though it looked like one was missing. You grabbed one, turning it on and off a few times to make sure it worked, and then looked at the play structures.

You were going to have to go inside those. Standing there and staring wasn’t going to help. Yet you couldn’t get your feet to move. It was going to be fine. Fine. Fine.

Slowly, you took off your backpack—it would be harder to move around those plastic tubes with its extra bulk—and half-ran towards the nearest play structure. You swung your flashlight wildly, circling the foot of it. You noticed the cables in the structures yesterday but hadn’t paid much attention to where they were going. But it would be fine! You just needed to follow one...

There! A cable lead to a generator right on the floor. You get down and crawl through into the small passage, reaching out and pulling the obvious red lever. The small red light on the generator turned green, and you let out a sigh of relief.

It’s then that you heard the noise.

You froze. What was that? It sounded mechanical. Maybe it was Sun? You almost called out...until you saw the pair of glowing red dots in the darkness. Your mouth immediately snapped shut, eyes locked onto the distant glow. Something was crawling across the daycare floor. You couldn’t make out the details from this distance in the dark, but it was making that mechanical sound. The dots were its eyes, glowing blood red.

Laughter. Coming from the red-eyed thing, a low and raspy chuckle. You watched, paralyzed, as it crawled away, turning around the corner of one of the play structures.

What the actual Fazshit?!

For a moment, you considered just staying where you were and waiting until the Pizzaplex lights came back on. It was really tempting. Surely it couldn’t find you here. Maybe you could hide behind the generator.

But what if it came back? You were sitting in a dead-end part of the play structure. There would be nowhere to run. No, you had to get out of here. Carefully, trying to make as little noise as possible, you crawled out of the play structure and back out into the wide-open space of the daycare.

It was still there. You could see the way its red eyes reflected off parts of the play structures. But judging from the angle of the light, it was looking away from you. It was still hard to make out what it was, as it was crouching in one of the long, looming shadows of the structures. A shadow that was a bit more pronounced than it was a few minutes ago, as turning on the generator had activated a floodlight, now shining down on the colorful mats of the daycare floor. It was a dim light...but as you watched, the red-eyed thing scuttled around the edge of the lit circle on the ground. Maybe...it didn’t like the light. Wait, was that why you were told to turn on the generators? To keep this thing at bay?!

Before you could think about this any further, the thing turned around. Not in the usual way. Its head twisted around without the shadowy form of its body moving, a full, unnatural 180 degrees. The glow of its eyes locked onto you. And the thing laughed again.

You instantly bolted. The mechanical sounds behind you were gaining quickly. In just seconds, the thing was right behind you. Your mind raced as you looked for—there! You dove into the bottom of one of the play structure slides, scrambling up the slope as quickly as you possibly could. Behind you, a scraping sound echoed up the hollow tube: metal against plastic. “Hidey hide, hide away...” whispered a harsh voice.

Great, the thing could talk and it was taunting you as it hunted you down! Perfect! Fantastic! When you accepted the job for a company that inspired horror games, you weren’t expecting to end up in a real-life version of one!

You were now in the jungle gym structure, your flashlight providing a small circle of light to see by. For a moment, you stopped to breathe, listening for those mechanical sounds. They sounded distant. For whatever reason, the thing hadn’t followed you up the slide. That should have been relieving. It wasn’t. Even if it couldn’t crawl inside the structures—which you highly doubted—it was still waiting for you down there. You couldn’t stay up here the whole time! You had to leave eventually!

Then you remembered the generators. Your train of thought had been derailed for a moment, but it quickly found the tracks again. Maybe you were supposed to turn them on because this thing didn’t like the light. If that was the case...maybe if you turned them all on...then that thing would retreat? Or maybe you could at least get out of here?!

Well, it was better than hiding and running and waiting for something to happen. The generators were in these play structures, weren’t they? Better get crawling.

Unfortunately, your FazWatch hadn’t told you where in the play structures the generators were. So you had to inch through the colored boxes and tubes, taking turns at random, hoping that you’d eventually find one. It might have been easier to find your way around in the light, but you only had the company-issued flashlight. It was fairly bright, but didn’t cover a large area. A couple times you realized you were going in circles because you hadn’t seen a branching path in the dark.

And all the while, those mechanical sounds and laughter faded in and out as the thing moved around, searching for you. Several times you heard thumping sounds below you...like something moving through the play structure’s tubes. Every time that happened you could feel your heart about to burst out of your chest.

“Knock, knock...” called that voice. And it laughed again. This thing was really enjoying itself, wasn’t it? Delighting in the search for its prey. You shuddered, and tried not to think about what it would do if it caught you.

After what felt like ages, you found a cord weaving through the play structure. Following it lead you to a second generator. You let out a sigh of relief as you pulled the lever and turned it on. Another floodlight was up. Now just...three more to go.

The mechanical sounds were coming from outside now. Good, it wasn’t looking for you in the structure. But...strangely, the sounds were getting closer.

A red light shone through the bars of the play structure. Instinctively your head whipped towards it—and saw the thing hanging on the outside of the structure, looking right at you. “Holy shit!” You immediately scrambled backwards. The light from your flashlight darted across the shadowy figure for a moment, just long enough for you to see four limbs and the color blue, and then you turned around and crawled in the other direction as fast as you could. “Found you...” the voice said. “Naughty, naughty. Come back here.”

“Nooo thank you!” You climbed down an incline and vanished from the gaze of those red eyes. But the mechanical sounds began to follow you, the shadow of the thing climbing along the outside of the play structure on skittering limbs. You had to duck into a tube to finally lose it. Your heavy breathing echoed in the tiny space. Where the hell were the other generators?! Were they in the other structure? The one you’d have to cross the daycare floor to get to? Yeah, you weren’t about to go out into the open right now.

Wasn’t there a bridge connecting the two structures? You remembered seeing it earlier. It wasn’t a tube; it was a proper bridge with rope handrails. You weren’t entirely sure about crawling across something like that—it must be rickety even for a kid. But what choice did you have?

Luckily, you were on the right level of the play structure. As long as you didn’t move up or down, you should be able to reach the bridge. You paused for a moment to take stock, listening for those mechanical sounds. They seemed distant again...in fact, you almost couldn’t hear them. But that wouldn’t last long. You had to hurry.

It only took a minute or two of crawling before you found it: the bridge. It looked even less sturdy when it stretched across the dark abyss that was the daycare floor. For a moment, your hand shook, the flashlight beam wavering. If you just went quick...it would be alright. It would be alright. You took a deep breath and crawled out onto the bridge, feeling the plastic dip beneath your hands and knees.

You moved fast at first, but the bridge swayed uncertainly and you couldn’t help but freeze. You were right in the middle of the bridge, halfway to the second play structure. It was so close. Just...just go. Just go! But despite your mental urging, your body wouldn’t move faster than a snail’s pace.

And then you heard the mechanical sounds again. Coming from...above you?

Something grabbed you and pulled, hoisting you into the air. You screamed, the flashlight falling from your hand down to the daycare floor below. Metal dug into your armpits where the thing held you. “Caught you...” the voice said, right by your ear, and laughed that low, threatening laugh.

“Put me down!” you shouted, kicking your feet uselessly. “Put me down put me down put me down!”

“Alright.”

And then you were thrown to the side into empty air.

Later, you would be happy that you were thrown and not just dropped. You would have landed on your feet, and at this height, that would mean a fractured ankle at best and shattered bones at worst. But in the moment, you landed hard on your back and couldn’t think about any alternatives as pain bursts along your torso.

For a moment, you just laid there, looking up at the very distant ceiling. You couldn’t breathe. You couldn’t breathe. Your mouth opened and closed uselessly as it tries to get air. Sheer, primal panic filled your brain.

And then something gave and you sucked in a big gulp of air. Suddenly you were breathing very hard and feeling the ache deep inside your bones.

It was a good two minutes before you found it in yourself to move. You twisted your head to the side, seeing...your flashlight. It wasn’t too far away from your extended right hand, so you slowly inch across the ground, moving as little as possible, until you can grab it. You lifted it up slightly, the beam raising up, up, up along the play structure until it was pointed at the very top. And at the very top...something was crouching, looking down at you.

You stared up at the red-eyed thing that had been hunting you through the play structures. It was...the other daycare animatronic. Of course. Of course! There were two gold statues in the overlooking area! Sun wasn’t the only Daycare Attendant! There was a second one...this one. You recognized it from the candy ads all over the Pizzaplex. The moon-themed one. Unlike Sun, who was yellow and other warm colors, the moon one was white, blue, and black. The crescent moon part of its face was white while the rest was black, and it wore a blue nightcap decorated with stars. The nightcap matched the pattern on the pants, also blue with stars.

“...it’s you?” you whispered. “What the...why...the fuck did you do that?!” The moon is still very creepy, sitting there with its—his—red eyes. But knowing what the thing hunting you actually was leeched the immediate fear from you and turned it into anger. Especially when you knew that animatronics like this acted like any other person and could be reasoned with.

The moon animatronic stared down at you. “It’s past your bedtime,” he said.

“What? It’s like...six in the afternoon. Or maybe six-thirty by now.” You slowly sat up, your whole back screaming as you did. You made sure to keep the flashlight pointed at the moon. “First of all, that’s not nearly time for bed. Second of all, who are you to tell me when I can go to sleep? Bitch, I am an adult. I work here.”

“It’s past your bedtime,” the moon repeated, leaning forward. “Good night.”

“Good night? Good—” You stopped, eyes widening as a possibility occurred to you. “Did you—did you drop me from the bridge because you were trying to get me to sleep? Were you trying to knock me out?!”

The moon laughed. It sounded more...smug than the previous laughs. Or maybe that was your rising anger wanting to frame this robot as a supreme asshole.

“Oh my god, are you fucking kidding me?!” You shouted. “Did you want me to land on my head?! News flash, if I landed on my head, I’d be fucking dead right now! And even if I somehow didn’t die, I’d definitely have brain damage! You know, I thought the rumors about terrible accidents at Fazbear places were exaggerated, but apparently not! Freaking...complete fabrications...indie developer...discredit the brand my ass!” You growled in frustration. “Not to mention, does your programming not distinguish between unconscious and asleep? One is natural, the other is a future medical bill! Knocking someone unconscious by hitting their head would definitely lead to a concussion, and contrary to popular media, that’s not something you can just walk off! Did they not give you medical knowledge?! That seems like a major oversight, especially for a robot that works with little kids!”

While you went off on this rant, the moon animatronic stared at you from his perch on top of the play structure. And once you stopped, he continued to stare. His face rotated sideways, almost like he was confused or curious. Or maybe he was just surprised you weren’t running in fear anymore.

You watched him for a while. Your eyes glanced to the left and right, noticing a new circle of light from a floodlight. Oh. Right. The generators. You should probably—

Suddenly, the moon animatronic bolted forward, scurrying down the side of the play structure in a face-first spider crawl. “Whoa, wait, what the fuck?!” You scootched backwards but had no time to stand up and run before the moon was right in front of you. His hands grabbed your shoulders, digging into your skin—

And then light flooded the area as the Pizzaplex lit up again.

The moon immediately let go of you and fell backwards. “No!” he screamed. “No! Lights off, lights off!” He began to writhe on the ground, clawing at his face and shrieking. You scrambled farther back, starting to get to your feet but stopping halfway through. “Lights off, lights off!” the moon repeated. He pressed his hands to the side of his face...where yellow triangles were starting to appear, growing out from a gap in his disc-shaped head.

You watched, unable to tear your eyes away as the animatronic’s coloring began to change, shifting from blue and white to gray and yellow. The pants lost their stars and gained stripes. The nightcap disappeared, replaced by triangular metal resembling sunrays. Soon, all traces of the moon had disappeared entirely. Now Sun was lying on the ground in front of you.

What...the absolute...fuck.

Sun lifted his head up to look at you. You looked at him in turn. The two of you stared at each other for a solid ten seconds. Then you cleared your throat. “Um—”

“Oh no, friend, you’re hurt!” Sun quickly got to his feet, leaning over and picking you up. You winced a bit as his hands dug into your armpits, the same place the moon had grabbed you when he picked you up from the bridge. “Oh no. No no no. Y-you have to leave! Now! You need first aid!”

He was right, and you knew it, but at the same time you were a lot more concerned with the werewolf-esque transformation you just witnessed. “Sun, did you—are you—?”

“No buts!” Sun put you back down on the ground and spun you around. He then began pushing you towards the wooden doors. “There are first aid stations all over the Pizzaplex! You can fix yourself up there!”

‘Whoa, whoa, hey!” You tried to dig in your heels, but Sun was stronger than you expected, and you had to keep walking or risk him pushing you over. “Sun! Dude! Can you just explain—”

“I said no buts, friend! You really need medical care.” Sun was not deterred by your attempts to stop him. Nor did he seem eager to talk about what just happened with that...moon mode. “I’ve scanned your condition and your ribs are bruised! Possibly even cracked! You’re lucky your spine is intact. You need to go to first aid right now! And go see the doctor later.”

“Are you going to walk me all the way to the nearest first aid?” You said, exasperated.

“I’m sorry, friend, but I can’t,” Sun replied. “I’m restricted to staying within the daycare area. You’ll have to go by yourself. If you don’t think you can walk that far, you should call someone to come help.”

An idea began to form in your mind. “So...if you can’t leave the daycare...” you said slowly. “Then you don’t know if I’m going to actually go to first aid once I leave.”

Sun suddenly stopped pushing. You turned around to face him, seeing how he’d frozen in place. “But...friend, you’re hurt,” he said weakly. “Y-you need to put something cold on the injury. Ideally for about twenty minutes every hour. And—and you should also wrap some compression bandages around the area. But not too tight, because that can restrict your breathing. And you need rest. L-lots and lots of rest.”

Oh, so the daycare attendants—or just attendant?—did have medical information programmed. That made dropping you even worse in retrospect. “You’re right, but you don’t know that I’m going to do any of that. You can’t make me, can you?”

Sun said nothing. He didn’t move at all, and you weren’t sure if he was scared or disbelieving or something else altogether.

“But,” you continued. “If you promise to tell me what the hel—heck that was all about, with that moon-face mode and the transformation, then I’ll promise to go to first aid and go see a doctor as soon as I can.”

Sun began fidgeting with the ribbons around his wrists, causing the bells to jingle. “But...how will I know if you do that? You pointed out that I can’t leave.”

“Well, I’ll be here tomorrow night. I’ll show up at the daycare, and if I’m all bandaged up and stuff, you’ll know I actually got medical help. But if I’m not...” You trailed off. Honestly, this trick made you feel scummy. You were blackmailing this poor animatronic with your own wellbeing. Sure, Sun could call your bluff (you weren’t actually going to deny yourself medical help for something like this), but for whatever reason, he was really concerned about your health. He probably wouldn’t take that chance.

Indeed, after a long silence, Sun sighed—perfectly mimicking the sound despite not having lungs—and said, “Okay. I-I promise I’ll tell you what...that was. But tomorrow! After you’ve gotten fixed.”

“That’s fair,” you said. By now, you’re next to the security desk, where you left your backpack. You slowly pick it up, trying not to move your back more than necessary, and hold it in your hands. “My shift tomorrow starts at 9pm and ends at 3am. I’ll come see you some time in that time frame, okay?”

“Okay.” Sun nodded. “And you’re going to go to the doctor’s before that, right?”

“Well, I don’t know if I’ll be able to,” you admitted. “Scheduling an appointment takes forever and you can’t just walk in. Not here, anyway. But I promise you, I will do some first aid and schedule an appointment by the next time you see me.”

“Alright then, friend.” Sun laughed nervously. “I’ll...see you tomorrow then!”

“See you then.” You headed to the big wooden door and started to push it open, but Sun hurried over and opened it for you. “Oh. Thanks.” You walked through the gap in the door, then turned back to look at him. “Bye, Sun.”

“Goodbye, friend. Be very careful...especially in dark places.” Those last four words were said in a low, warning voice. Before you could process that statement and ask what he meant, he closed the doors and shut you out.

[celestial-robots]

Another excerpt from the first chapter, this time actually featuring Sun:

Tumblr messed up the image quality again, so click/tap for better quality!

[celestial-robots]

Alright. I’m going to post the first chapter of the Sun & Moon X Reader on Saturday. Title is “Finding Equinox.” It’s about 6000 words long, and that’s just the first chapter, haha. I don’t know how long the whole thing will end up being, but I’m known for writing long fics so probably pretty long ^-^ Looking forward to sharing :D

[celestial-robots]

Fragment from the first chapter:

I figured if I kept talking about the X Reader I might as well show you guys as well, haha. The post I made wondering if people would read it got a higher-than-my-followers number of likes, so it seems like people are at least a bit interested. Not sure when I’ll be ready to post it, but I will! ^-^

Tumblr messed up the image quality, so click/tap on it if it’s too hard to read!