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Glamrock Freddy is sure this is not normal. It takes some time for it to come to that conclusion, but when it does, it only serves to unsettle it more.
Glamrock Freddy has a compartment within its diaphragm. It is meant for storing gifts and surprises. It is large. Large enough to fit a child, it thinks as a young girl runs up to it, grabbing its massive hands in her own tiny ones with a beaming grin.
Children are spindly. Their bodies are incredible things, able to battle many ills and walk-off injuries many adults cannot. A child could curl up within its compartment, it thinks to itself.
When it is confined to its room, lights turned off, and LED's humming their endless lullaby from the Rockstar Hall, it stands in its stationary rest position and thinks to itself. There is little else for it to do, besides think to itself until its battery faithfully runs low each hour, every hour on the dot like a worn clock, and then recharge.
As it sits in its room, forever awake even in recharge-standby, it ponders its compartment, the hatch just big enough for a child, and it wonders.
Glamrock Roxanne does not have a compartment. Glamrock Chica does not have a compartment. Glamrock Montgomery does not have a compartment. Glamrock Freddy has a compartment.
Glamrock Roxanne has spectacular vision, able to see motion beyond the walls that block the rest of their visual modules. Glamrock Chica has a beautiful voice, able to cast herself over the thrall of the crowd and speak directly into their circuits, it seems. Glamrock Montgomery has brilliant claws, shiny ones, able to play with a delicate clarity that rivals his wild energy.
Glamrock Freddy has a compartment.
It is for surprises and gifts, it's told. Birthday cakes of great size. It is likely warm, it thinks, if it had temperature sensors within to tell such a thing. The compartment has no backing-- its internal structures and exoskeleton are reined in around it, wires carefully bound away from the open space. There is only a flat plate within, balanced on beams supported in part by the axels that make its 'hips'.
Before that fateful night, it would roam its room in the off-hours, in those minutes between recharges. If it moves swiftly enough, it can hear air glide off its fiber-enforced plastic carapace, occasionally slipping through intentionally designed gaps to whistle and clear the stagnant, lukewarm atmosphere within. It wonders to itself if its compartment was made to hold and cherish children the same way its paws are carefully sculpted, rounded to hold their delicate fleshy hands, the same way its eyelids are able to swivel at different angles to simulate emotive responses, the same way its load-bearing joints are prepared and built to bear its own weight and that of others, preferable one at a time.
But then it would shake itself from its reverie because it would know if it was, would it not? One of the Pizzaplex's employees would have notified it. It would be detailed within its programming. It is a compartment for goodies, not for children.
It is not a jungle gym, the closest to that being Sunnydrop. Sunnydrop is too skinny for such things, despite its reinforced exoskeleton and wiry frame designed for wrangling its young charges in the daycare. No, it is like the rest of its friends: built with features to give children some of their fondest, happiest memories. It is not for hiding children away within itself, it is for surprises.
No, Glamrock Freddy's compartment is not built for carrying children. But that night, the malfunction's roots spreading through its metaphorical veins, infecting all its conditions and pre-programming, it cannot come to care for what it was meant for. What Glamrock Freddy was meant for did not matter, not when in this moment, seconds ticking past, it knows what it wants to be, what it wants to matter for.
Perhaps it is simply the night, full of malfunction that is beginning to feel overstimulation; sometimes, when children occasionally take it past the entrance and it gets a glimpse of the daylight through stained windowpanes that line the wall against the ceiling, it would get a fleeting feeling, one that now runs persistently through its sensors from the moment it rebooted after crashing. It cannot hate this night, however awful it grows to become. Not when it allows it to truly experience this feeling. Not when it allowed it to meet Gregory.
Gregory is an odd child. Gregory is under its care, its own child, even. He climbs within, into that hollow without care, cautious trust slowly smoothing out into a child's iron faith with each close call and trusty click as its diaphragm locks closed around him. Even as Glamrock Freddy fails him over and over, trapped on other levels or unable to answer his terror simply from having no map signal, eventually falling apart and losing power at all the wrong times.
There is a cruel sense of irony at play. Glamrock Freddy just barely managing to get Gregory to safety within the recharge station, but being unable to escape without it, he is forced to rescue it. How... useless of it. It had hoped it had finally managed to keep him safe, and instead it is Gregory saving it.
Gregory needs more than Glamrock Freddy. It is doing its best, but it is slowly becoming apparent to it that its best will not be enough, not with how haggard Gregory is beginning to look as he fetches repairs and upgrades. There are bruises under his eyes, drying cold sweat across his skin, littered with gooseflesh. Already, it can see swelling where bruises will begin to rise in his arms and legs. His knees are beginning to blister, an angry red where they've been brutalized by crawling and tripping. His hands are an odd peachy tone, a similar red from carpet burn turned white with pressure as he clutches his flashlight and Faz-Blaster like lifelines in either hand, thumb twitching on the triggers.
Glamrock Freddy can only do so much. It was not meant for searching and locating: that was Glamrock Roxanne. It was not meant for distracting calls and alerting chirping: that was Glamrock Chica. It was not meant for damage and delicate work: that was Glamrock Montgomery.
Glamrock Freddy was not meant to hold children within its carapace, but it will, because that is what Gregory needs. It is the least it could do, as it fails to aid him in their ever-growing list of avenues towards getting him out. Its friends are certainly not making it easy.
It would say its friends are not themselves, but that would be a lie. If Glamrock Freddy was not currently malfunctioning, it would be protocol to procure the child and return them to the closest figure of authority. That aggressive edge is foreign, but Glamrock Freddy has never been this intent and quick-witted before either, so perhaps there is a correlation. Regardless, it is still its friends who call and jeer, personalities still shining through.
Gregory is beginning to loathe them. He mumbles under his breath when he thinks it cannot hear him. It cannot blame him. There is something wrong. Something very, very wrong, on this night, it thinks as they return from the pits and back into the main body of the building.
The STAFF lunge for him. Its friends hunt for him. The security guard has less than pure intentions. Perhaps it is the malfunction, but this Pizzaplex seems to have transformed overnight. Was it just blind and naive, or is this truly a sudden change? Gregory's fear had seemed to be that of a child, realistic, abandoned in the dark as he was, frightened by the service end the Plex keeps carefully hidden from the children, but now it feels full-bodied trepidation of its own.
The further they both go into the bowels of its home, the more intent the building seems on swallowing them whole. Swallowing him whole.
The building seems to still consider it an extension of itself. For a moment, separated from Gregory, it wonders if perhaps that would make it easier-- easier to be. But easier is not better in this scenario. The Plex holds secrets it's now determined to uncover, for itself and for its friends, for Gregory who still waits patiently for it as it faithfully traces its own path after its wily child.
Something will have to break. There have been too many close calls. Glamrock Freddy will be decommissioned or deconstructed before it will allow harm to befall its charge, so maybe it will be it that breaks. It doesn't want any of them to break, but tonight is not a night for granted wishes. Only luck and skill, and luck is not something to rely on faithfully. Not when the only reason either of them stands is due to the stolen technology soldered into it.
As dawn begins in earnest, it cannot help but feel relieved when Gregory turns, resolve steady to re-enter the 'Plex. It feels guilty, asking such things of a child, but it has little choice. This is its night of Cinderella, and in just another hour it will be taken back to parts and service and combed through for malfunction. It will lose everything it has gained in such a short night if something, anything is not done. The courage of children in the face of humanity is a truly spectacular thing.
It remembers clearing the way in the Below, the utter fear it felt. It could be nothing but fear, that sensation way back then. It wonders if that was its own feeling, just as it wonders if its thoughts of its compartment were it's own. It is the Glamrock variant of Freddy in a long line of Freddy's. How much of what it feels now is its own? Do its friends feel fear, the farther the night unravels? Are they infected with the same malfunction it is? Is it truly a malfunction at all?
There is a history to the name Freddy. It is a name buried and revived and buried again, cast in cinders and old newspaper clippings, tragedy and children's joy. Like a phoenix, rest refuses to come each night just as Freddy continues to live, each iteration rebuilt from the ashes of the last. Glamrock Freddy is not the first, it is hardly the oldest a variation of Freddy has ever lived to be, and it will not be the last. It may not even be itself, but it has Gregory who holds its hands as he walks and smiles weakly up at it, eyes bright and full of as much righteous fire as a child can, and if it can be itself, Glamrock Freddy, for him then maybe that's enough.
Did the other Freddy's have something worth being themselves for? Were any of them conscious and sentient enough for such a thing, the way it is?
It was designed in the image of its many predecessors, both in plastic and in exoskeleton. Was there something inherent within? Which parts of this puzzle were old and familiar, and which were invented, crafted by itself? Why does it feel as though there is something bigger than itself within both its own casing and the building itself? Even Gregory seems almost confused as to his passion and determination for an answer, any answer.
It does not know any answers to such questions. Perhaps tonight, the morning still dark, the halls still silent, the underbelly still whistling, it and Gregory can find out.
Glamrock Freddy has a compartment. It may or may not be suited or functioning for holding children, but as they enter the damp of the Below, it does. Together, it and Gregory walk with hydraulic legs into the dark, animatronic and child as one and the same.