FNaF but AU/Less people die

Chapter 7

"Now, before we go inside, we need to get names straightened out." William said. The four Aftons were sitting in a car, on their way back the Circus Baby's. "Naturally since I am your father, you will address me as such, but everyone else knows me as Dave Ragland. Given the absurd 'you're an attempted murder suspect and attempted murder is illegal' deal it's easier to go by an alias. Which means you three have shall be sharing the last name of Ragland as well."

The kids didn't have a chance to respond, they had already arrived. Evan immediately grabbed Michael's hand to help him, warning him of the step up onto the pavement. Michael appreciated it, at least he knew he was supposed to appreciate it, but it was greatly annoying to be treated as some sort of invalid.

Michael considered the fact that he sort of was temporarily as they walked in and felt the cool breeze of the AC. He dismissed the thought as quickly as it came, he didn't like the idea of that.

He leaned down towards Evan and whispered. "Tell Lizzie to hold my hand, I don't want her running off." Michael was unable to see Evan's nod, but did feel himself be tugged in Elizabeth's direction before Evan relayed his message and Elizabeth grabbed his other hand with only a few discontented mutters.

William decided to talk some more of the location. "Now, it won't be open today. It won't be open for a couple more days, actually. My trip was luckily shorter than I thought. But now the whole crew is out of the basement!"

"There's a basement?" Elizabeth asked.

"Yes of course, just some old storage. Lots of junk and spiders, you wouldn't enjoy it."

"I love spiders, remember?" Evan shuddered as Elizabeth mentioned her love of spiders. Two years ago she'd convinced Henry to get her a pet tarantula. It had escaped and went missing for a week before Evan had found it dead under his bed. It had joined the cast in his nightmares ever since then.

"There are also lots of cobwebs and so much junk. Terrible conditions down there, really. Needs more ventilation."

Elizabeth sighed heavily before yanking Michael forward to look at the animatronics. "Hey, Michael, that one looks like a giant version of Helpy!"

"Does it really? Hope the poor thing doesn't have to deal with lawsuits," Michael joked, trying to ignore the dread.

He had made a tiny animatronic named Helpy about seven years ago. Well, more of he slightly assisted while William and Henry did most of the work. It couldn't do much, mostly just walk a few steps and wave, but he had considered upgrading it. Michael had a small notebook with various ideas on different ways to modify Helpy, at one point he had shown his siblings and Elizabeth had joked that he should make Helpy into a lawyer. From there, the devolved until Helpy became an anxiety-riddled little robot bear who constantly had to deal with absurd lawsuits.

"Are there other animatronics, Lizzie?" Michael decided to ask. He was kindly curious and it seemed like Elizabeth enjoyed talking about them, so he figured he might as well humor her.

"Yeah! There's Foxy, except he doesn't have a hook or eyepatch and he's pick and white. The giant Helpy has a dark blue Bonnie puppet replacing one hand, there's Circus Baby, who looks exactly how I drew her, and there's a more human looking one. She looks like a ballerina."

That last one got Michael's attention the most, though the puppet hand was pretty weird as well. "A ballerina?"

"Uh-huh. Just like mom used to be!"

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"Alright, we need a plan," Henry said as Charlie buckled into the backseat.

She mourned the fact that she was just a year too young to be sitting in the front seat. "Of course, of course. That would be a given." Charlie wouldn't admit that the idea of needing a plan hadn't even occurred to her and she'd been fully prepared to bust through the door and demand the immediate and safe return of her siblings.

Yeah... she realized now that that would've gone terribly.

"So, what's your plan?" she asked.

"I'm surprised you didn't stay up all night thinking of one," Henry teased as he started the car. The minivan would be out of commission for a few days, thanks to Michael. Thankfully the insurance company had been able to get them a rental SUV. This one was a neon green, which Henry hated but Charlie secretly loved.

"I can be responsible occasionally. Besides, I didn't want to be stuck with trash duty as well!"

"I advise being responsible a bit more often than occasionally. Now, we have two options. Circus Baby's is closed for the next two days, so either we could visit the location anyway and hope to find them all, or we could stay in town a few days until it re-opens. Waiting until re-opening would be the safer option, more people around means less of a chance of an incident."

"While safety is important... kind of. We should try and get them out of there and away from William as soon as possible, right?"

"You're not wrong, but if we end up being too hasty, we could lose the chance to bring them home as well as risk something happening to you."

"We both ourselves in danger no matter what, besides, we owe it to them to at least see if we can rescue them."

Henry sighed. "Alright. Fine. We'll check Circus Baby's today as soon as we get there."

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William looked at the animatronics fondly. "They're all wonderful aren't they? Funtime Freddy with his puppet hand Bon-Bon, Funtime Foxy, Ballora, and Circus Baby. None of those clunky old animatronics."

Evan seemed concerned at the mention of Ballora's name. "Ballora? Like the Balor from Irish mythology?" Evan's class had studied mythology last years, he quickly became fascinated and spent many hours in the school library, reading every book on mythology and sharing some of the more absurd stories at the dinner table.

Henry had bought Evan some additional books on mythology for his birthday a couple months ago.

William side-eyed him. "It's nothing more than a simple play on the word ballerina."

"It's odd that she has her eyes closed. In the myths, whenever the Balor would open even a single eye it would cause destruction—" Evan caught off as he saw William staring at him. "N-never mind. It was a silly thing to think," he mumbled.

"Quite right. What use would I have for a destructive animatronic?"

Speaking of destructive, while William, Evan, and Michael were distracted by Ballora, Elizabeth had slipped away from Michael to get closer to Circus Baby.

"Elizabeth. Step away from Circus Baby this second."

"It's okay!" Elizabeth replied as Circus Baby deposited an ice cream cone, causing Elizabeth to giggle in delight.

The dread grew worse and Michael ran towards the sound of Elizabeth's voice as if on instinct. He heard the sound of metal scraping and shoved Elizabeth to the side without slowing down. He felt metal scrape his side and winced before tripping to the ground.

Michael felt his side. It was bleeding, that checked out. It was pretty painful.

It was at that moment that Henry and Charlie walked through the door.

AN: They're fine.