When the lights shut off Sunrise had made it to the counter where Gregory was hidden while you were still catching up. The jester animatronic leaped onto the counter clawing at himself in a panic and went into some sort of frenzy screeching about his rule being broken, "NO. No. NO! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?! The lights are GONE!" His yelling was clear for you to hear even while you lagged behind.
You were confused why the lights being off would be a problem since he had a nighttime personality to take control... Maybe switching over to his other side was scary or uncomfortable to him... Either way, this was too sketchy for you and the kid to stick around, so you kept moving forward to the desk cautiously.
Suddenly, Sunrise fell out of your field of vision while clutching his face seemingly in pain, only to pull himself up while still facing Gregory who stood petrified in his spot clutching the security badge. Sun's spikes on his head retracted, and his whole outfits color scheme had changed and now faintly glowed with stars. You wanted to marvel at the new personality and change of the robot into its counterpart, but instead felt a bad feeling rise up in your chest when you heard the bot who you thought was friendly take on a sinister tone towards the child. "BAD CHILDREN MUST BE PUNISHED. Punished. PUNISHED!" 'Shit.' His eyes now flowed a menacing red and his head twisted around unnaturally, definitely more unnerving than whenever the Sun did it. You glanced to the exit, but with the power out, it seemed like the lockdown was activated, meaning the only way out was to activate the generators. Looking back the animatronic had vanished, now hiding in shadows you were sure.
Your supervisor's description of the daycare's layout rang in your head, instructions blurred together in your mind, but you managed to remember the strange placement of the generators in the play structures and relayed the information to Gregory as precise as possible. He grabbed two flashlights from behind the counter and tossed the second to you. "I'll distract him, you go find the generators and be careful." You tried to sound reassuring to the boy, but he looked stressed beyond his years and only managed to nod his head.
"Little boyyyyy. You've been naughty, so very naughty..." the animatronic taunted from the shadows somehow sounding like he was all around you at once. 'He's treating this like a game. The little shit is messing with us.' You shivered at the rasping voice while feeling a spike of annoyance. This thing was meant to be a daycare attendant, he shouldn't be behaving like this. Not wanting to waste any more time, you and the kid split ways at the same time hopefully throwing off the bot.
Remembering how Gregory had knocked over a tower of toys earlier and preoccupied the sun, you tried to do the same with any you found while running around the room opposite of where you had last seen the animatronic. "Hey!! Over here you lousy clown! Don't you need to clean up this mess?" You yelled as loud as possible to draw attention while smashing into another tower of blocks. The sound of bells jingling grew closer, no longer sounding silly and cute, but now warning of a new danger. Red eye-lights grew closer on your left and you made the mistake of flashing him with your light. What you saw was utterly terrifying.
The jester moved toward you while his head spun around unnaturally making a complete rotation before cocking to the side when he locked onto your figure. 'Whirl-Snap'
"It's bedtime girlie! Are you a rule breaker too? Will you be good and stop making a [me]-mess and go to bed?" He finished his question with his voice growling out the last part.
Your clammy hands gripped the flashlight tighter while you gathered your courage to respond. "D-don't call me girlie. I'm part of the staff- an adult, so treat me like one." The stuttering definitely didn't make you sound very convincing, but he paused scanning you. "Missss (Y/N)... maintenance 1-B; you aren't supposed to be on duty right now. Are you trespassing ?" He sounded analytical at first scanning the staff logs, but with that last bit of information his voice had a mischievous glint to it. It was creepy how he had enough access into the system to look into when you worked, but you faintly remember being told that Moondrop had more of a security protocol than his counterpart, allowing him more access to certain actions and information.
"Rule breaker.. Law breaker.. Should I break you then?" He giggled out.
While speaking he had started to stack up the tower of toys discreetly, never breaking eye contact, and you had almost not noticed. 'Sneaky moon. But I'm not as blind as you think.'
"I have overtime! It must be somewhere on the employee logs for you to confirm, Moondrop. Also, you still need to listen to me according to the chain of command. The child here with me was locked in by mistake and I'm trying to help him get home." You tried to reason with the moon, hoping his software wasn't glitching like the other bots supposedly were. But, he only hummed and tapped his chin before placing the last block on the tower. You started backing away again when the rest of his body spun to face you and he began to slowly lumber towards you again doing some sort of weird dance that reminded you of Pennywise. 'I guess he just doesn't care?!'
Spinning around, you continued to run around the daycare knocking down everything in your path. The jingling bells in the background only compelling you to keep moving forward.
Originally, Moondrop was moving slowly to mess with you, but the longer you stayed out of his reach, the faster he seemed to become. The shuttering of generators being activated kept your hope up, but only seemed to distress the moon. When the fourth generator activates, you loose sight of him. Deciding to scope him out for Gregory's sake you backtrack to find the last few stacks of toys still knocked over, increasing your anxiety. 'F*ck, shit, f*ck, where are you moony?!'
Looking to the play structure of the last generator activated, you spot the animatronic crawling on the roof like a spider, it's blood red optics flashing before it disappears from your sight again. Not wasting another second, you sprint to the bottom of the structure, pausing only momentarily before squeezing into the structure. Thankfully the people who built the tunnels made them wide enough for you as an adult to squeeze through, though you knew it probably helped you weren't very tall either.
By the time you reached the closed tunnels you begin to regret your decision of squeezing inside here. You were still sweating from your earlier chase and felt trapped the longer you traversed the tunnels. Maybe you should've tried to gain the bots attention from the outside some more before rushing in here without thinking. The stuffy air didn't help with your panicking, but thinking of the kid potentially in trouble kept you motivated. Suddenly, you heard a large thud nearby and a weird scratching sound that slowly grew louder.
You were sweating bullets at this point and tried to crawl as fast as your sweaty palms allowed you. 'Thunk' 'Thunk' 'Jingle'
The sounds grew closer, punctuated by a lone jingle before it went quiet. You held your breath hoping maybe the bot wouldn't be able to hear you.
Holding the back of your hand to your mouth to keep quiet, 'because ewww your palm was likely covered in billions of little kid germs from crawling', you glanced around the dark cramped tunnels surrounding you.
"Found you." Yelping loudly, you scramble away from the voice that sounded like it was whispering directly in your ear. The air in the tunnels seemed to drop a couple degrees, yet still stayed suffocating as you looked directly into the face of Moondrop crouching only a foot away from your position. Your heart leapt into your throat as he quickly closed the distance between you. Frozen in fear, you watched him crawl over your prone form, hovering above you and effectively caging you in. He giggled darkly, voice slightly reminding you of Sunrise, yet starkly different, deeper and raspier than his counterpart.
He leaned into your face locking eyes with you and leaving you no space to look elsewhere. "You were very bad. Naughty. Making such a mess for me to clean up. But that'sss okay, because I just needed to lure you somewhere less... open." One of his hands trailed up to your face moving a piece of hair aside. Your breath hitched at the action. "Wha- why did-" "Ah! Shhh, be quiet now Miss (Y/N). I'll forgive you for sneaking in the daycare, but if you don't behave yourself, I'll have to hold you accountable for that terrible mess outside." he interrupted you quick, but the way he addressed you sounded mocking. His finger moved to your mouth as if to silence you further while he stared at your face.
Growing annoyed, you moved to swat his hand away provoking him, and his other hand shot down gripping your wrist pinning it to the ground while the other trailed down from your mouth. Panicking once again you try to move his hand away with your free limb, but he gets angry at your struggling. 'Whirl' 'CHK-chk' "Stop. MOVING! If you be good then I won't need to punish you... Otherwise.." to emphasize his statement, his hand encircled your neck threateningly.
Freezing up, you allow him to do as he pleased. Thankfully, he seemed just curious of you and didn't seem to harbor some other.. ulterior motives. His hand that had previously been pinning your other hand down trailed across your face mapping your jaw and even cupping your cheek with a cold yet gentle grip. The way he was examining you wasn't clinical or aggressive, he was being pretty careful and seemed curious for the most part. 'He probably never gets to spend much time this up close with adults you tried to reason,' however the butterfly's in your stomach at the idea of someone [a scary animatronic meant to care for kids], being intrigued by just you was a little worrying for your psyche.
'Seems like Moondrop is all bark and no bite. Well, almost no bite- his grip can hurt pretty bad.' Relaxing slightly in the tunnel, you let the daycare attendant continue his exploration.
He was cautious at first when you relaxed thinking you were going to try and pull something again, but after a moment he slowly released the wrist he had been pinning to the ground in a iron grip. Carefully, he examined one of your hands with an innocent curiosity. Testing the joints of your fingers gently to see how far they bent in different directions and tracing the lines in your palm. His own fingers were soft but firm, and cool to the touch. Suddenly he seemed to come up with a new idea. Holding one of your hands up posed for a high five, he brought his own up to mirror it, pressing your palms together. Realizing he was comparing hand sizes, your face heated up and your heart beat harder. 'His hand was huge compared to yours.'
Your stomach felt funny and your eyes were locked on your hand against his. 'Oh no! Your weakness! Big hands.. probably the largest hands you'd ever seen. The Glamrock's were pretty big, but Moondrops' were somehow even larger.' You missed moon looking at you and analyzing your reaction to his actions. "I didn't know you could change colors." His voice was gentler now, and calmly observant. The deep timber combined with what he said only served to make your face even hotter while your heart thumped. Your eyes danced with his for a moment before breaking contact and bashfully looking to the side. 'Of course he has night vision! He must've seen every emotion on your face this whole time. God, I want the earth to swallow me whole; that's so embarrassing.' You thought squeezing your eyes shut.
The moment ended suddenly when the rumbling of the final generator came to life and light flooded the tunnels of the play structure. Your eyes met with Moondrops one final time and he released your hand carefully before shifting into Sunrise before your eyes. The bright animatronic seemed a little woozy at first before waking up fully and staring down at you.
Oh right, the moon had been hovering over you like some kind of predator with barely any space between you, and now that's the first thing Sunny sees when he comes back. "OH- no! I'm SO. so. So sorry! I-I don't know what he did, but please don't be mad! I have one rule for a reason, I can't control Moony and he just hates rule breakers!" He scrambles away, reaching for you before drawing back and looking regretful. "I've never had an adult friend, and I really like you. You're so, so nice! I should have been quicker to stop your little buddy from turning the lights off.." Sun is wringing his hands at this point and not even looking you in the face anymore. Your heart hurts at the sight, slightly confusing you, but you know your caring nature is the culprit no matter how hard you try to seem nonchalant and uninterested.
"Look buddy-Sunny, I don't blame you for anything. It's okay! I'm okay. I met Moondrop and he wasn't so bad. A little creepy, but he didn't hurt me or anything." Deciding 'screw it, I gotta cheer him up somehow,' you reach out and pat his knee hoping to calm him down. It helps you think, and Sunny somehow looks hopeful again, though you know that's impossible since his faceplate doesn't emote as far as you know. The sun animatronic looks at you for a minute and you realize he's scanning you for something, injuries? Does he really not trust his counterpart that much? His gaze zeros on your quickly bruising wrist and he slowly reaches out, giving you a chance to pull away you realize, and he carefully examines your hurt appendage. "That was an accident, don't worry Sunny." You try to convince him, but you get the feeling he sees through the lie.
He hums, his voice box uncharacteristically quiet while he cradles your wrist. "I'll take you to the first aid station, it's my job to make sure nobody gets hurt at the daycare, and it's my responsibility to take care of all my guests, even if you're an adult!" He leaves no room for argument and you can see how he is able to command around the tykes of the daycare.
What you don't expect is him unceremoniously lifting you up and cradling you to his chest while he crawled out of the tunnels. Feeling weightless again is a frightening moment, but the warm embrace of Sunrise makes you relax into his gentle hold. Listening to the soft clicking of gears in his chest and his metal joints shifting lull you into a state of almost sleep, but not quite there. It had been a rough night and you tried with all your power not to conk out on the bot. After all, you still needed to get Gregory home.
(A/N) Hey everyone! I can't believe how much attention this fic got! Thank you so much for reading and leaving comments! I've read them all btw and it makes me so happy that y'all like my work that originally was just gonna be for my own pleasure at first. I tried to tie up this one shot with a bigger final chapter, (2,610 words! My largest chapter yet!), and I hope you all enjoyed it. I realized I made Sunny come off a little mechanical in the first few chaps, but hopefully I was able to give more depth to the characters this time. Let me know if you find any grammar or spelling mistakes! xoxo