//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: They're a little quirky, but overall nice // by Questionable Brony //------------------------------// “Rainbow Dash?” The voice snapped Rainbow out of her panic and even the animatronics turned their heads towards the source of the voice. The “body” under the purple jacket began moving. A hand was raised and the jacket removed, revealing none other than Sunset Shimmer. “S-SUNSET?!” Rainbow exclaimed in confusion and fright. Sunset for her part, jumped out of Bonny’s arms and threw the jacket over a nearby chair. “You can let go of her now. She’s a friend of mine.” Without question, Foxy let go of the sport captain’s wrist, who instinctively rubbed it, in order to get the blood flowing again. She frantically looked around the animatronics in a slight panic, awaiting for any of them to try and get her again. “Rainbow Dash, calm down!” Sunset Shimmer quickly walked up to her friend and wrapped her arms around the rainbow haired girl. “Calm down.” she said a little more toned down. “Nothing is going to happen to you, I promise.” In addition she gently rubbed the back of her friend, like Fluttershy would do with her animals. This may have been a little bit of violating the personal space of her friend, but after what Rainbow had just gone through, she might need every help she could get. After 10 minutes of just staying there and hugging each other, Rainbow finally said, with a strained voice: “I’m fine.” Sunset knew her friend was anything but fine, yet she also knew that there was no arguing with Rainbow, once she felt like her pride was at stake. “Would you guys mind, giving us a few minutes? I’ll call you back later.” The animatronics looked at each other and then left the the main room. Once they were outside, Sunset led her friend to one of the tables and both sat down next to each other. “Sunset” Rainbow looked over to her friend, her face showing distress and no short amount of ‘I’m ready to kick your ass!’ “What the hell is going on?” she asked in a dangerous low tone. The fiery haired girl flinched, but began explaining. “I saw a shadow on the cameras. You might have guessed, I’m working part-time as a security guard here. I couldn’t really make you out, if I had, none of this would have happened. I’m sorry, Rainbow.” “Sorry? SORRY?! YOU ALMOST KILLED ME!” Rainbow grabbed Sunset by the shirt and readied her fist. “Give me ONE good reason NOT to beat you up!” “Nnghg! We were never going to kill you! I thought you were a burglar, so I played the phone tape on the boxes on stage and told the animatronics to give you the scare of your life, before we would call the cops!” The girl, dearly hoped she hadn’t spoken too quickly. She could have easily given Pinkie Pie a run for her money. Rainbow for her part stared at the Equestrian for a seemingly endless minute, before she dropped the unicorn back onto her chair. “Alright.” Rainbow Dash took a deep breath. She was no Applejack, but Sunset didn’t look like she was lying. That didn’t mean that Rainbow understood one thing her friend had told her. “Mind telling me from the beginning again?” the sports girl asked. Sunset nodded, readjusting her clothes already. “Okay, but, bear in mind, this story will sound pretty unbelievable.” “Unbelievable?” Rainbow echoed. “You’re a fucking unicorn, for fuck’s sake.” Sunset rolled her eyes. “Uh huh. You already know that the animatronics here need to run around at night, else they won’t work properly.” “Yes?” “Well, the phone tape I played was from one of the previous night guards, you see.” “Wait.” Rainbow interjected. “So the previous guy tried to play a prank on you.” Sunset looked down to the ground. “...No. He tried to warn everyone that came after him. He died on his last week. I heard it on the phone.” Rainbow’s face became whiter than Rarity’s skin. “He’s not the only one.” Sunset continued. “I did a little researched. There were a couple of missing guards reported over the years. Not too many. Most quit after the first night or stay a week, if they’re desperate for money.” She sighed. “Initially when I found out about the missing guards and the company trying to cover everything up, I wanted to go to the police. I didn’t really care what would happen to me. With me having no ID, the worst they could have done is to put me in an orphanage.” “Wait, wait, wait! That doesn’t make any sense! I mean, those anima...robots. They’re...I mean, they didn’t try to kill you. Heck, they even listened to you! What kind of A.I. is that?” The other girl couldn’t help but chuckle. “Here’s where the story goes really crazy. You see, the first night was for me like for any other nightguard. They did try to kill me.” she explained. Rainbow leaned forward, as if she was hearing a good story. “However, something weird happened. You see, I was ready to quit after surviving the first night, however, I forgot some pretty important stuff here. I thought I could go and grab it, before midnight. As it turned out my watched had stopped ticking and I didn’t bother to check my cell phone. Imagine my surprise, when I saw Foxy running down the hallway.” Sunset took a sip from her soda. “You want something too?” “No. So what happened? You’re obviously alive!” Rainbow pointed out. “Yeah. So I managed to get into my office and slammed the door button. However, I was a second too late and Foxy was with me in the office. Did one of the animatroncis ever scream to you?” “Yeah…? What’s up with that anyway.” “Later.” Sunset waved off. “I thought I was a goner, when he suddenly cut off his scream and stared at me with wide eyes. I was just cowering in front of him, while he inspected me from the top to the bottom. I’m not kidding, if I say that he looked like he had seen a ghost.” “Really? But they’re robots. They don’t have emotions.” “Later Rainbow, I’m getting to that, don’t worry.” Sunset growled a little. “Foxy called the other animatronics, Freddy, that’s the bear, Chica, the chicken and Bonny, the bunny. They all looked at me the same way Foxy did. I was scared shitless, I admit that much. But then all of the sudden, they walked away. They just left me there at the office, scared and confused. After what seemed like an eternity, I grabbed my stuff and tailed out of the building. The next day, I confronted the manager about it, but he waved me off, saying I could either stay or go. He didn’t care, though he was surprised, when I told him about how the animatronics reacted to me. And against my better judgment, I went back here. After some time watching the animatronics on the cameras, I went to the main room, where most of them were lurking at the time. They were equally surprised to see me coming out of the office. We must have been staring at each other for hours, until I asked the dreaded question: ‘Why didn’t you put me into a costume?’ The animatronics looked at each other, as if they were debating who was going to answer. In the end, Foxy came to me with a pen and paper he got from somewhere. He wrote something on the paper and gave it to me: ‘You’re not him’ was written on it. ‘Him?’ I asked, but they didn’t answer. And I didn’t dare to ask more questions. The next morning, the manager was surprised to find me being still there. He asked me what I was doing here, but I just gave him the keys and said, I would finish my week at least. That’s when I began doing my research. I spend hours upon hours in the city library and the internet, but it was pretty easy to find what I was looking for. But the story I found, is disturbing to say the least.” Sunset took in a deep breath. “Years ago, 4 children went missing from a Freddy Fazebear restaurant. A suspect was apprehended, but the police found no evidence to convict him. Months later, customers of Freddy Fazber’s Pizza complained about the robots smelling like rotten flesh, blood and ooze coming out of the animatronics.” Rainbow’s face became green. “You’re not going with this, where I think you’re going.” Sunset’s face remained stoic. “Then one day, there was the so called “Bite of 87”. One of the robots bit off the frontal lobe of someone. Since then, the animatronics are only allowed to walk during the night. Later I would find out that the disappearing of night guards started even before the bite.” Rainbow gulped. “On Friday, on my first week, I confronted them. I straight up asked them: ‘You’re dead, aren’t you? You’re the 4 children that went missing all those years ago, aren’t you?’ The reaction was instantaneous. They looked at me mouth agape, some of them looking like they wanted to say something, but all that came out were either moans of someone who sounded like he was desperately holding onto his dear life, or a few lines from their voice boxes.” Sunset leaned forwards, giving Rainbow Dash a very serious face. “They’re dead children, Rainbow. Someone murdered them and put them into the robots. What little I could gather is that they were most likely murdered by a security guard, wearing this uniform.” She pointed at the jacket with the ketchup-stain. That would be a pain to get out. “Since they’re children, every time they see someone in the uniform, they think it is their murderer. I don’t know why they stopped attacking me, maybe it’s because I’m the first girl working here and they can make out the difference. But everyone else? Heck, if I wouldn’t have been here, I don’t know if they would have been able to hold themselves back.” Rainbow Dash’s mind went into overdrive. This story was not crazy, it was insane. Normally she would call it a fraud, the thing was, she had experienced some insane stuff herself the past year. The girl in front of her after all was actually a unicorn. “I managed to befriend with the kids. They won’t tell me their names, but I can talk to them, be there for them and have fun with them. We play board games or hide and seek all the time. By now, they know that not every adult is a bad person, but they still jump the gun rather easily. I didn’t tell any of you girls, because, I promised them to keep this to myself. But with you here today, well, you wouldn’t have stopped asking, without a proper explanation, would you?” A proper explanation? Rainbow Dash didn’t know what she was supposed to say to that. The only logical thing that came to her mind was to slam her head against the desk pretty hard. Repeatedly.