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Dusk was crawling in to take control of the sky. The moon, full and bright, shone before you, the sun fall back behind with only a faint trace of its light on the horizon.

You stepped through the double glass doors and was hit with the putrid stench of death. It’s been hours since the discovery of James and they still never cleaned the place out fully of the smell.

Your face twisted up in disgust and you tried your hardest to keep your dinner down.

A loud hissing sound near your ear was enough to send you soaring through the roof. Immerging from the west hall was Chica with a can of air freshener.

“We may be robots, but that doesn’t mean we can’t smell.” She made a hacking noise while fanning her feathered arm in front of her face. “I’ve been waiting all day to do this.”

As your heartbeat was slowly going back to normal, you locked the door behind you. From the darkness, Freddy, Bonnie, and Foxy stepped out.

“Thanks a bunch for the scare there, Chica.” You grumbled while placing the keys in you uniform pocket.

She smiled in embarrassment. “Sorry, ____.”

You smirked playfully at her before turning to the whole group. “So, what’s up?”

“Turns out we get the whole restaurant to ourselves for a while.” Bonnie spoke up, shrugging.

You took a seat in a close-by booth. “So I’ve heard.”

Freddy came to stand beside you to where he was almost brushing your arm.

To put it simple, after the night James died, the two of you were conscious of your feelings toward each other, you both just tried to keep things simple in order to avoid provocation from the rest of the gang. As long as everyone else just saw you two as friends, that was all that mattered.

“That was a pretty good trick you guys did getting James to the basement in broad daylight. How’d you do it?”

They all tensed up immediately and shared worried glances among each other.

“Oh, you heard of that?” Bonnie ran a large, purple paw along the back of one of his twitching, mechanical ears. “Well……Foxy did it a while ago…..” he looked to the fox, hoping for him to add on.

“While we were doing one of our shows.”

“A-aye. I did. When these three were up on th’ stage, I snuck around the th’ back ‘n put ‘im in th’ basement.”

You stared at him in confusion. “I don’t understand. I don’t remember another side door leading from Pirate Cove to the storage room. So you would have to walk in the open without anyone noticing.” You looked down at the floor. “That would be physically impossible, if I’m not mistaken.”

Foxy’s lower jaw moved as if he wanted to speak but no voice came out, fake or not. He looked over to Bonnie and Chica for support.

“Hey, who wants pizza?” Chica blurted out. “I’m in the mood for making some. Come on, I can’t eat it by myself.” She urged.

“Sounds good.” Freddy jumping in. “I think I’ll help you out.” He followed the chicken into the kitchen who was closely followed by the purple rabbit and red fox.

You sat in silence, blinking in confusion as you stared after the four as they hurriedly scuttled into the kitchen. What just happened? It was quite obvious that there was something they were hiding from you. Freddy hated anything to do with Chica’s shenanigans in the kitchen, so why was he so quick to volunteer to help? Why were all of them so quick to change the subject?

You sighed in frustration as you looked down at your entwined hands and absentmindedly started twiddling your thumbs.

Then from the silence of the room, you could make out a noise. Not something you’ve ever really heard in the restaurant before that the animatronics ever made. It was a slight scratching noise, almost like nails on a chalkboard mixed with a rough gnawing on wood. You stopped and listened, straining your ears to hear more clearly.

The shrill bang and clashing of pots rang out from the kitchen, silencing the strange scratching momentarily and you could make out Freddy growling out an insult at one of his fellow robots. You giggled and patiently waited for the noise to continue.

Eventually it did, but slightly louder than before. Could it be rats? Do rats make noises like that? It did sound like something chewing on something, but at the same time it didn’t.

Your curiosity finally got the better of you and you stood from the booth. You pinpointed the noise to be coming from the direction of the storage area where all the spare costumes were kept. Slowly, you crept over across the large room over to the room where only months before a murder took place.

The scratching grew louder with each couple of steps you took toward it and as you stepped up to the door, you would have thought that whatever was creating that disturbing sound was right on the other side of the door. With a deep breath you cracked open the door to be met with…..nothing.

There were no rats scurrying along the wall, no possible people who might have broken in. There was nothing, save for the few spare limbs to the four robots that littered the shelves.

You stepped in and shut the door behind you, looking around timidly. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary and you were about to turn around and head back, when you caught sight of a tall, thin, wooden door back in the far corner. Why had you not noticed that before?

The scratching that you hadn’t realized stopped, had started up again, quite loud.

You walked up to the door and noticed there was no knob. Confused, you tried pushing it and it swung open with ease. Your breath got caught in your throat.

Before you, a large square tower-like room, lined with bricks led down what looked to be a few stories low. A long, spiral staircase lead down that looked about as safe as walking on chicken wire. Everything, was illuminated by a faint red glow, resonating from somewhere where ever the stairs lead to. The scratching echoed up to your ears from the bottom level and something was urging you to enter this room. It was like someone pulling you forcefully to the point where you had to grab a hold of the door frame.

“What are you doing!?”

You whipped your head around in a fearful panic. Freddy stood in the doorway to the storage room staring at you with wide, blue eyes.

You let the door swing to a shut behind you as Freddy stared at you accusingly, waiting for an explanation.

“I-I heard a noise. Came t-to investigate.” You stuttered out. God, how embarrassing! You felt like a little kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

He walked around the metal table in the middle of the room and stopped in front of you. “You shouldn’t be back here.” His gaze softened slightly, but remained stern.

“S-sorry.” You mumbled quickly before scrambling passed him and out of the room.

Freddy remained for moment longer and watched you leave but turned back and glared down at the floor, as if at whatever was sitting down in the darkness of the basement.