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Roxanne is the best. She knows her place, don't get her wrong, but at the end of the day, she's the best. Or, maybe just the most put together of her little crew.
It's funny, she thinks one night, sitting idly in her room, listening to Monty's dead silence, Chica's practice, Freddy's quiet pacing, how much they've grown on me.
Because they have. Monty wasn't there for those early days, but it's clear in her hard memory.
Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica were a set no matter the type, one that had made the core of the company. One meant to be paired with a Foxy, which she wasn't. She still remembers their hesitance and odd cheer, the slight stutter in her name in their voice boxes. She didn't have enough up-time to loathe them for it. She'd been frightened, frightened of what the children would think when seeing her instead of the Fox. Frightened of how the others would treat the replacement.
And then Bonnie was gone, and suddenly there was only Freddy, heartbroken and still so childlike, and Chica, forever unsure of what to do, and Roxanne. Unaware of where she was supposed to be in the grieving process. What was Foxy supposed to do, she'd desperately think, scrambling for anything within her drives to tell her what to do, because if she's supposed to be the Foxy to their trio, what would he do in that situation?
She thinks maybe he'd crack a joke. Or be supportive, in that distant, better-than-you way. But a joke would be out of place, so she doesn't.
Instead, she puts on her face and goes out onto the stage with her sweetest, toothiest grin. She sings where Freddy falters and plays all of Bonnie's harmonies in time with Chica.
It becomes easier, over time. It becomes routine, covering for them, and healing becomes repetitive. She becomes the backbone and--
You're the best, Roxanne, Chica tells her, her voice soft and quiet in her sensors. Thank you for everything. You're sweet. Or, you're a true friend, Roxanne. I'm glad I was able to meet you, Freddy whispers into the dark. You're one of my best friends, you know?
Monty is a kindred spirit, in an odd way. Trying to pave his own way however he can, break out of the bounds he's been placed within. The difference is that he gives up, desperate and lashing out, trying to make any mark of his own that he can either with his claws or his attitude and bass playing. But in the silence of night, he links his system with hers and they sit together, walls between them, and bask in the silence and the facade they get a short reprieve from.
She isn't Freddy or Chica, trying to live up to a preexisting product line of their past iterations. She isn't Monty, destroying himself and everything around him to become something he isn't, anything other than Bonnie's replacement.
She's Roxanne. She's the first and maybe only of her kind. She's unique. She's beloved by children and adults alike. She's an investment.
She's Roxanne and she's the best. She has to be. For them and... and for herself. Because if she isn't the best, she's just the Foxy clone and she isn't.
She isn't. She's Roxanne and Roxanne is the best.
So why can't she just catch the damn brat already?
It's decidedly infuriating. She's no daycare attendant, but she's had her fair share of sprinting across the atrium to grab a fork or otherwise sharp objects from children. She likes to think she knows nearly all their tricks, so how does he keep getting away?
Her enhancement is the best suited for this task, her eyes nearly overloading her processors as she takes in nearly more than she can handle, so why can't she see him?
At first, it's just a job. It's not even her first time hunting a lost brat down after dark, sometimes they think if they hide from their parents they could stay after dark with their animatronic friends, but Gregory... Gregory's making this personal with every badge he seems to snatch and every employee-only area he invades.
Invade is a good way to word it. He's invading her home after dark, in the only time of day she can be herself. The only time she can be more than not-Foxy. The only time her friends have to themselves.
He invades Freddy, her Freddy. She isn't sure how, exactly, not when she watches him run towards Freddy and suddenly vanish in a burst of static and visual disruption, but Freddy is just as baffled as she is when it's usually second only to herself when it comes to being keen-eyed. It becomes truly personal, then.
It's almost worse because, with each new location he reaches, the guard gets more and more riled. She asks to be alerted each time he moves somewhere new and gets sharper and sharper with them as they report.
It's not their fault. It never is. They're just doing what they were asked, doing their best. It doesn't hurt her, she's used to the far-away look of people who look through her and not at her, but she knows it stings Chica and Monty. They're softer than her in their own ways, no matter how much they feign or hand-wave. It's not their fault they're limited in their ability to track and hunt the kid.
It's Roxy's because she promised she'd find him within an hour and now it's been three.
Roxanne won't let them take the fall for something that's obviously her fault, no matter how much they argue, so when he breaks into her Raceway, she pushes herself to the limit to meet him and this is fine, she's the best and she can do this, she can prove it because she's had to plant her legs and stop her cars at full speed before and--
Gregory leaps from the car, sending it drifting and then flipping, too close for her to move, and on impact, she can hear her own exoskeleton creak and scream, plastic rock and metal structuring shattering as she goes crashing through and into the service area below.
As her protocols send her into emergency shut down, sparks crackling in her ears, pinned unforgivingly beneath her own ride, she sees Gregory creep cautiously towards her, eyes locked with her own, her eyes, he wants her eyes, stay away stay away, get away from me, you can't have them, you can't--
And when she boots up again, she cannot see.
He won once-- no, he didn't win. She didn't lose. She didn't. If he'd just stopped hiding, this never would've happened. Her eyes, they'd made her worth something and he's stolen them, stole them, stole her eyes, give them back, give them back, give them back!
That's not entirely true, though. She can 'see' red, a dull red background and bright neon red text, NO SIGNAL. Red. Red. People associate red with anger, don't they? As she slowly leverages the car off of her chest with a mangled hiss, it's all she can feel.
Red in her eyes. Red in all her readings. Red in every internal scan.
When she searches with her hands, sensors abused and raw from a night of pouncing on hardwood floors, she can feel a gaping hole in her chest, fiber-enforced plastic chipped and broken, shards still falling out as her claws accidentally tap them free. Her arms are just as broken, edges clicking as her nails trace them.
Lubricant, dark and oil-like her memory tells her, likely stains her face. Her beautiful face, broken open. Her exoskeleton cooled by the A/C of the building, her internal fans clicking incessantly in her ears where the fins are bent; her hearing turned up as high as her damaged tech can handle as she stumbles through the reboot of her internal balance modulation on the way to the rendezvous.
You still look beautiful to me, Chica's text whispers through the comms to her in their brief meet-up as they join forces in the gut of the 'Plex. Chica has done her best to fix what she can, but there's little she can do besides tucking the worse of it back into her face and removing any other loose pieces from where her eyes used to be.
When Roxy cups Chica's face, there is a gaping void where the soft curve of her cheeks and chin once were. Chica attempts to speak aloud again, but only discordant chirping and shrieking errupt out of her from somewhere within her chest before she remembers to switch to the comms within their systems.
They're both hollow without their upgrades. Monty is silent, but she can hear his tail thrashing across the carpet. "He won't get the jump on me," is all he says, and Roxanne feels her self-loathing rocket in time with her fury at the child.
"He'd better not," she tells him, both a warning threat and a plea. He has always been the more expressive of their little group, and that loathing is painful, now, when she can only hear the shifting of his weight, unable to read his displayed emotions.
Through their system connections, he gives her the equivalent of a firm, brief embrace before she hears his footsteps depart. Eventually, still chirping to herself, Chica leaves too, to patrol the halls around the child's last known location.
And Freddy is still nowhere to be found, silent over the comms. Not that she'd see him. But the night is still young enough, and she's still got her other senses. She'll pounce on that boy, take him by the scruff, and deliver him to the guard. She'll prove she's the best yet. She has time.
She has time. She can be patient. She'll retrieve her eyes back from that horrible demon of a child, tear them right from his grubby, lubricant-stained hands, and then go down to parts and service and fix them herself somehow.
She'll be the best. If she isn't, they might not think her worth the repair costs. There might not even be another iteration of her after herself if she's not enough. If she isn't, her friends could be scrapped with her. If she isn't...
She'll be the best. She has to be.