Of Fazbears and Vaporwave Part 4 (1/?)

Having met with his former self, reconciling for the harm inflicted on his self and for not making better
choices, Freddy finally took the bus back to Syd's. The rather squalid place Jeremy ended up in for a
retirement home was something Freddy had hoped to improve at some point, but there were more pressing
issues as the droid's head began to swim. In an attempt to distract himself, he started streaming some
James Ferraro music as he stared out the window listlessly, all three psyches trying to sort out the whole
situation. The protests and grumbling of the other passengers blurred with the rumble of the bus' engine,
several augmented reality ads tried to stay within Freddy's hundred mile stare to no avail.

Foxy, Bonnie, and Chica were back at Syd's, and while Syd was working on an assignment, the animatronics
were under surveillance with Steve soundly asleep on the sofa. The interns were taking naps in shifts when
Freddy finally came home. Those awake looked to him as he took off the coat and sombrero, stowing them in
the closet, dropping the change from his trip on the table by Syd before taking up the recliner and
slouching forward in it. Almost all at once, everyone was asking how he was and where he was and what
happened.

"Ehehe... I really don't want to talk about it just yet," Freddy replied a bit meekly.

"You gonna be alright after that, Fredderoo?" Syd inquired.

Disarmed by the nickname not to mention the 'after that', Freddy looked to Syd a bit confused, an eyebrow
raised. "Ah, sorry to snoop. Pardon, but I'm kinda responsible for your actions at the moment, I had to
check up to make sure you weren't getting into trouble," Syd tried to explain.

"Isn't there some sort of privacy laws regarding that?" Chica piped up, a slight tone of annoyance in her
synthesized voice. "Well, as droids and being made mostly of property of the company, there's not much
legal provisions to cover you as actual living, thinking beings," Syd looked off to her left as the
situation became a bit akward, the droids trying to grasp exactly what was being said, save Freddy who gave
a grunt before burying his face in his palms.

"I feel like I need therapy with all this insanity going on!" Freddy tossed his head back with eyes closed
in a wince, his robotic, fuzzy hands pressing their knuckles into either side of his head where temples
would normally go.

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Syd had made some calls to her higher ups and with Steve's help, a few strings were pulled. A therapist was
scheduled for a few days from then. In the time, Syd had help from the droids keeping her place in
functional order, Freddy was watching the others and looking for work with his old social security number
while Syd attended classes. The droids were having a hard time adjusting to having an extra 8 hours in the
day they weren't sleeping, and not having a lot to talk about and instead wandering the various corners of
the net when they were stuck in place charging up.

Chica had wandered into the world of blogs, just reading up on peoples' life experiences, Foxy looking
through art sites and crisis management sites, Bonnie was studying and practicing singing and getting basic
pitch and timbre down. Freddy was a bit frustrated that he seemed to feel nothing looking at pornography,
but instead was looking up parenting tips and some legal cases, as well as news. Collectively, the droids
were getting pensive as the memories of the decades were becoming less and less hazy, details becoming much
clearer.

To help kill time, and keep the droids from needing her too much while she worked on the big assignment,
Syd gave the animatronics an online game to play together. All of her visitors who came and go throughout
the week regretted it as the four would usually be sitting with eyes wide open, mouths agape in a rather
unsettling scene, as their consciousnesses would be lost in the game of knights and sorcery.

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"Whoa now, you didn't say I'd be working with splicers," Maria protested, reluctant to go inside any
further.

"Ugh. Do they really look that much like splicers? Should really rework their faces then. Anyway, Miss
Lopez, we have some nondisclosure forms to sign? You do groups, right?" Syd gave a sheepish smile.

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The six sat in uncomfortable silence at first, exchanging looks and forced smiles and waves, the occasional
cough, real or synthetic. After a while, Maria tried to blurt out jokingly, "So I was told I'd be having a
unique case here, I think machines were the last thing I was expecting," she gave a nervous laugh.

Chica forced a smile while biting her lower beak piece, Foxy seemed conflicted in how to sit, Freddy
grimacing with a distant stare. Bonnie was the first to respond, in a rather innocent tone, "You're not
going to stick a thermometer up my butt and give me shots, are you?" which caused the group to collectively
laugh.

"Ihihihihi, no, Bonnie was it? I'm not that kind of doctor, we're just going to be talking our issues out is
all."

The tension around Bonnie melted away almost instantly, the bunny droid nearly falling out of its seat as
Bonnie gave a loud sound of relief. Foxy helped Bonnie back up and lifted up the eye patch, the whirring of
the optical sensors audible enough to make Maria wince ever so slightly. "Well, why don't we start with
introductions then, tell me about yourselves?" Maria took a deep breath and brushed a black bang out of her
vision before adjusting her hairband to push all of her hair back.

"I'm Ch... Chica. I don't recall too much before the incident, but I suppose I'll take the name of this
character? I wasn't particularly old, went to Freddy Fazbear's and after some pretty horrible pain, I ended
up seeing through the animatronic's eyes," Chica had started, tapping her cheekbone analogue with a
slightly hollow thup noise. Maria went to work taking notes on her AR-based computer, using her mind to
type out the notes as she highlighted Chica, taking a moment to adjust the horn-rimmed AR glasses.

"Every night, we kept seeing the man in purple. We kept trying to stop him, and... well we succeded a few
times, and hoped it'd end there, but..." Bonnie added.

"B-but we couldn't move on, we couldn't leave. We were stuck in the amaminanimatronics," Foxy struggled a
bit, "And the man in purple would just keep returning. It felt like we were stuck reliving the same week
over and over and over, but it turned out a little different each time," the fox's shoulders sunk.

"I'd like to go on record, I was on the receiving end and the kid sharing this space with me kinda bit my
brain out, they were pretty effective at making guards soil pants. I kinda was stuck hitchhiking as well as
I watched them go after other guards," Freddy volunteered. Maria looked rather worried as she wrote this in
her notes, her eyes shifted to Syd, silently screaming for help.

"Well, I kinda bit off more than I was prepared to chew when I got the animatronics, didn't know they were
tied to the incidents of THAT Freddy Fazbear's, but after changing out most of the parts and replacing
almost all the components, I thought I'd try and fix what seemed like broken computer brains. Seems like
they're a bit more human than I thought, which is why we're here, Miss Lopez," Syd explained her side.

It took every erg of her patience and understanding to remain in place, Maria took a deep breath shook her
head for a moment as she took it all in. "So... You four have erm... severely harmed other people,
correct?" Maria asked.

The four droids all sank a bit in their seats, ears splayed on those who had them. "Yeah," Chica replied a
bit flatly, staring at the ground.

"Do you regret what you've done?" Maria inquired further.

"Regre-?" Foxy started, Freddy chimed in, "Do you feel bad for what you did, and of course, but it was
kinda more the kid than me."

Maria looked to Bonnie. "Sorta, though the man in purple actually died in prison..." the rabbit replied.

"I do, though I kinda did teach the others how to bypass the rules the robots were following to actually do
that stuff," Chica offered apologetically.

Foxy was shrinking a bit in his seat, pulling his legs up and wrapping his arms around them. "Well, ta be
honest lass... Shhhh, quiet computer brain!" Maria was now entirely focused on Foxy. "Ffffffine, I'll say
it. I'm not sorry at all. I'm glad we hurt them," the fox blurted out. Maria tried her best to keep her
composure as the others were looking to Foxy a bit aghast.

"Well, erm. Do you think it was right to hurt them? And why?" Maria asked after a rather long pause.

"I'm sure a lot of them would've done the s-same thing as the first one," Foxy was starting to shake and
heave a bit as sobbing sounds came from the fox animatronic. "Lad, ya cannaugh know fer sure, there's not
bad in allovem. I mean, Jerem-err, Freddy here's not so bad a guy, is he?" The fox robot looked to Freddy,
looking as though he was about to cry. "Well... I guess not?"

"Foxy, perhaps we should discuss it in a one-on-one session another time?" Maria pleaded, her brows a bit
furrowed as she fervently took down notes. "We're not here to judge or shame one another, just get some
understanding," she looked up and to the others. Foxy looked ready to drop the subject while the others
were positioned to press further.

"Ahem. Well, um. How would you describe your experience so far, leading up to and including when the power
on these bodies was turned on?" Maria read a note from Syd a bit stilted and hesitant. But it did get the
machines thinking and off of Foxy's case as they leaned back and seemed to search the rather plain ceiling
for answers, a few noticed an old knotted balloon-style string tied around part of a vent's cover. As
something uninteresting in a sea of uninteresting features that made up the ceiling, any form of
significance was lost on the animatronics as they gathered their thoughts.

"Well, I think we mentioned it before? It was like reliving the same week over and over, with slightly
different changes," Bonnie started. "Burning with vengeance and all that, looping over and over like a
broken record, and it was like being completely and hopelessly lost for... decades I guess? Eventually it
grew quiet when we got decomissioned and stuffed in storage, we were searching for the purple man and for
the first time in a long time, we couldn't find him. Uhhhh, hard to describe when we got here. Like someone
hit the record player with a bat and it made the record start playing normal again instead of skipping?"

Bonnie continued.

"Like when you just suddenly wake up from a nightmare, all sweaty and gross!" Chica tried to add.

"Yeah, and and and... We found the purple man, but suddenly we had new rules we had to obey. We couldn't
hurt the purple man, then things became more clear, and it was Syd," Foxy tried to get the words out.

"I think they were expecting rules a bit more flexible like the core rules of robots from Aasimov's stuff,"
Freddy added at the next pause.

"And how about from then until now?" Maria sat up, paying close attention to the four robotic animal beings
and Syd.

"Hard to describe, boring kinda, since we really haven't been able to leave. Kinda like watching boring
videos in class, only if they actually worked, also really confusing as the umm... AI, computer brain
thing? As that's been getting smarter, feels like I'm acting a lot less normal than I normally would, doing
something different instead. Like if someone smacked you, you'd normally want to hit them back and shout at
them, but instead you decide to stay calm and ask why they hit you?" Chica explained as best she could.

Maria nodded and took notes. "Ah, so sounds like you're learning to work with those AIs?"

Freddy gave a simulated grunt over his voicebox. "It's getting really hard to tell what actions are
normally ours and which aren't, miss. I'm guessing that's good and what you want to hear?"

"Freddy, tha-" Maria was cut off by Freddy.

"Listen, it's been maybe a few weeks? No, we're not alright. We need time to sort things out still.

Probably not the safest states of mind, honestly can't say if you should bear with us or lock us up. It's
also really jarring not requiring normal biological functions like restroom use and sleep, on top of
everything there's the future shock," Freddy pulled his tophat down far enough to cover his eyes. "We've
lost family, friends, not to mention pretty much everything about our lives from before. I'm shocked we
haven't gone completely mental yet to be honest, I figure that's either we've been kicked around so long
we've learned to accept it, or maybe there's something more to the AI programming stuff that we haven't
been told about? I can tell you're not telling us the whole story here," Freddy grumbled, the other
animatronics looking a bit confused.

"I, uh... I guess I should probably share a bit more with you guys then, as you know, you're a bunch of
experiments, but with what I know about programming and with the help of some neuroscientists and such, we
should be able to consider you as mental equals or superiors in the coming weeks. I hadn't anticipated for
hitchhikers on the first wave of droids, I'll admit I was indulging in a guilty pleasure bringing back
something iconic from my childhood, but I'll be by your sides to try and get us all through this. There's a
lot of stuff going on that corporate wants to know, like HOW you guys hitchhiked, as they aren't buying the
whole 'ghosts of dead kids' stuff. Right now, we just want to make sure you guys are doing okay and not
going to hurt yourselves or others," Syd responded a bit hurriedly, as if trying to avoid letting someone
interrupt her.

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Later on in the day, the redesigned heads were completed, with much more cartoony faces and motors and flex
points to let them emote at a rather animated, exaggerated level, to try and make them seem less
biological, some form of 'tell' that would set them apart from someone who crammed cat genes in their
spine.

Freddy Fazbear and his crew complied with the face changes, a bit annoyed at their predicament, but not
against finding some small comforts in it.