As different as day and night

Helium Snorter

"Listen to me, Jeremy. You do not want this job." Mike hissed, pulling the newest nightshift member by the shirt up to their face.

"What? Of course I wanted this job! I've worked overtime trying to convince the manager to promote me to the nightshift!" He put his hands up in a playful surrender.

Mike scoffed and dropped the young adult, who stumbled a bit.

"Look, I don't really see why the nightshift is so bad! I mean, I've practically grown up here! I've worked for the dayshift ever since I was sixteen!" Jeremy protested.

"You know, Jeremy has worked really hard! If anything you should be happy for him!" Kris, one of the dayshift members, interjected. The rest of the dayshift cast dirty looks at their night time counterparts.

"Gimme a second-" Mike grabbed Jeremy and pulled him over to a corner. It wasn't like he disliked the young worker, he were just reluctant to let him take this job. Once they were out of earshot, Mike began.

"Listen to me, Jeremy. Things go on at night. Bad things... People get hurt and the animatronics malfunction and-" He cut off when he noticed the dayshift leaning in. They beckoned Jeremy to follow them, and brought him to the far end of the room.

"If I can't stop you, I can warn you. Hoard the batteries." They hissed.

"Wh-What?"

"Hoard the batteries. Hoard them. Do not let the obese plastic helium sniffer near them." Mike hissed, glaring at the posters of the animatronics that adorned the walls.

"I- Balloon Boy?" The nightguard nodded.

"Yes. That fucker. Listen, if you get the chance, give him a good kick for me. You'll know it's him when you hear the laugher. And the vents. Watch the vents. I don't know what asshat made them the size of a human body and the perfect size for the animatronics to crawl through, but if I had the chance I would feed them to Mangle, and Mangle's teeth are very sharp. Believe me, I know. Oh! Your flashlight. DO NOT LET THE BATTERY DIE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY! And the Freddy head-"

"Freddy head? This entire time I thought Sandra was a furry." A very confused Jeremy joked.

"FOCUS! The Freddy head messes with the toy animatronic's scanners. Hell, even Freddy gets confused by them. And Withered Bonnie, the one that looks like it got put in a cheese shredder, the mask works on them as well. Foxy and the Puppet can't be fooled-" Mike was cut off by the tell-tale sound of the bells signaling the start of the nightshift.

"Good luck. And don't die." Mike dropped the purple uniform into the newest member of the night guard's arms.

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Jeremy plopped himself in the spinning chair behind the desk, still thinking about what Mike had said. He was jolted out of his thoughts by the ring of a phone.

"Uh, hello? Hello, hello? Uh, hello and welcome to your new summer job at the new and improved Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Uh, I'm here to talk you through some of the things you can expect to see during your first week here and to help you get started down this new and exciting career path." The voice of an anxious worker came out of the phone.

"Well, hello to you too... Phone... Guy..." He mumbled, pulling out his flashlight and flicking it on and off a few times.

"Uh, now, I want you to forget anything you may have heard about the old location, you know. Uh, some people still have a somewhat negative impression of the company." Jeremy's curiosity rose. He flipped up the screen, checking in on the stage.

"Uh... that old restaurant was kind of left to rot for quite a while, but I want to reassure you, Fazbear Entertainment is committed to family fun and above all, safety. They've spent a small fortune on these new animatronics, uh, facial recognition, advanced mobility, they even let them walk around during the day. Isn't that neat?" Jeremy began winding up the music box.

"Sure is, pal." He mumbled, absentmindedly flicking through the screens. A flash of color caught his eye. A broken pink and white animatronic was lying on the floor, endoskeleton poking out. That was one part of the dayshift he wouldn't miss. Reassembling Mangle was one of the worst jobs, second only to cleanup duty.

"But most importantly, they're all tied into some kind of criminal database, so they can detect a predator a mile away. Heck, we should be paying them to guard you, hehe!" Phone Guy sounded nervous, as if he was trying to hide something, but Jeremy didn't see the problem. They were only animatronics, after all. But he couldn't shake the feeling of dread that hung through the air.

"Uh, now that being said, no new system's without its... kinks." Jeremy snickered.

"Uh... you're only the second guard to work at that location. Uh, the first guy finished his week, but complained about... conditions. Uh, we switched him over to the day shift, so hey, lucky you, right?" Jeremy frowned when he checked the camera only to find that the Toy Bonnie animatronic had moved. He wasn't aware they did that at night. The lingering whisper of Mike's warning echoed through his head.

"Uh, mainly he expressed concern that certain characters seemed to move around at night, and even attempted to get into his office." Jeremy's blood went cold the second he heard those words.

"Now, from what we know, that should be impossible." He pulled up the camera, horrified to find that Toy Chica had left her spot on the stage.

"Uh, that restaurant should be the safest place on earth. So while our engineers don't really have an explanation for this, the working theory is that... the robots were never given a proper "night mode". So when it gets quiet, they think they're in the wrong room, so then they go try to find where the people are, and in this case, that's your office."

"Ok, ok, ok, it's fine. It's fine. They are just hunks of metal. They can't hurt you." But for the first time on the shift, he recalled Mike's words. Things go on at night. Bad things... People get hurt and the animatronics malfunction- Jeremy turned on his flashlight, the beam cutting through the inky darkness.

"So our temporary solution is this: there's a music box over by the Prize Counter, and it's rigged to be wound up remotely. So just, every once in a while, switch over to the Prize Counter video feed and wind it up for a few seconds. It doesn't seem to affect all of the animatronics, but it does affect... one of them." Jeremy didn't care. The less the better.

"Uh, and as for the rest of them, we have an even easier solution. You see, there may be a minor glitch in the system, something about robots seeing you as an exoskeleton without his costume on, and wanting to stuff you in a suit, so hey, we've given you an empty Freddy Fazbear head, problem solved!"

Jeremy laughed at the irony of it. Just this evening he had been joking about Sandra being a furry, and now he was jamming the empty bear head on himself.

"You can put it on anytime, and leave it on for as long as you want. Eventually anything that wandered in, will wander back out."

"I sincerely doubt that." He chuckled.

"Uh, something else worth mentioning is the modern design of the building. You may have noticed there are no doors for you to close, heh. But hey, you have a light! And even though your flashlight can run out of power, the building cannot. So, don't worry about the place going dark." Jeremy had stopped laughing. So why could he still hear it?

"Well, I think that's it. Uh, you should be golden. Uh, check the lights, put on the Freddy head if you need to, uh, keep the music box wound up, piece of cake. Have a good night, and I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"You'll know it's him when you hear the laughter..." Jeremy realized with horror.

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A very disheveled Jeremy sprinted out of the hell-that-was-his-office and tripped into the day shift.

"Oh, hey Jeremy! How was the-" He ignored them and grabbed Regina, a fellow member of the nightshift, by the shoulders.

"What. The. FUCK."