Chapter Text
“This is bad. This is really bad!” Vanessa thought. While she was able to contain the strange rabbit anomaly hidden within the game she was beta testing for Fazbear Entertainment, he still managed to get into her head. Some referred to him as Malhare, while most referred to him as Glitchtrap. She shivered as she pictured him.
Creepy slasher smile, dirty gold colored mascot suit, purple vest decorated with silver stars, bow tie, and glowing purple eyes. She could hear a voice whispering sweet nothings about becoming someone who matters.
Someone who will be remembered. Becoming powerful and immortal. However, she was worried that to accomplish that goal, she would have to commit atrocities. The murder of children being chief among them.
She has already had a couple nightmares about it already, just like what happened to him. To Jeremy. The reason why she thinks this is because she has a good guess who that rabbit anomaly actually was.
While Vanessa had been able to contain him, she could still remember the way he brought his finger to his mouth making a mocking shushing gesture once he was locked behind a windowed door.
Like he knew that he could not be held back forever. Even now, she could hear the voice in her head whispering those sweet nothings. That is where she realized with horror that containing him was only a temporary solution.
Even then, she could hear the voice, meaning that he still managed to get in and plant the seed, albeit the seed is extremely weak. But still noticeable.
Vanessa had a sickening feeling that she had an idea of who it was because she had read the history of Fazbear Entertainment before she took this position. William Afton. Part of the reason she took it was because of this history.
It was the stuff of legends. Scary stories that you would tell around a campfire or in a dark room preferably while pointing a flashlight up at your face to scare your friends.
It should not be real, but it very much is. The coverups, corruption, frequent cost cutting, animatronics being haunted, night guards being hunted and stuffed into suits if caught.
While the company was trying to move on from it and have said that the stories were exaggerations cooked up by a crackpot disgruntled indie developer named Scott who they hired to produce games about their history.
This was actually a joke, as Scott still helped them produce the current game and he decided to throw that in there to make fun of himself. On the other hand, what they did not do was deny that the stories were all indeed very true.
The history that had really fascinated and disgusted her at the same time was the history of one William Afton, the cofounder of the company.
Sociopathy and tragedy are two words that could used to describe him and his family name. The former definitely describes William himself while the latter describes his family.
This is who she suspected was the anomaly. William had three children. All of them had long since died.
He first lost his younger son Evan to an accident involving an animatronic named Fredbear, the predecessor to Freddy Fazbear, after a cruel prank played on him by his older brother Michael had gone terribly awry.
His daughter, Elizabeth, was killed by one of his own creations that he had specifically designed with the purpose of harming children in mind.
A clown girl animatronic named Circus Baby who was the star animatronic for Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rentals.
It is even rumored that he had murdered his wife Clara and stuffed her into one of those same creations which many believe to be a ballerina animatronic named Ballora (she shares the same animatronic line with Baby) after she had divorced him.
In fact, all of the Funtime animatronics were designed to kidnap, kill, and dispose of children.
Blueprints that showed how they operated were even included in the game Five Nights at Freddy’s Sister Location.
However, that was not what he was most known for. He is more infamously known for murdering at least eleven known children, including Charlotte “Charlie” Emily, the daughter of his best friend Henry Emily who was the second cofounder of the company. She was his first victim.
Other known victims included Cassidy and Gabriel Brookes, Jeremy Fitzgerald, Fritz Smith, and Susan “Susie” Collins.
He did all this to pursue immortality through the study of a substance known as remnant. Remnant apparently being a substance that allows a person’s soul to be infused with and later possess an inanimate object.
Legend has it that he was killed in a springlock animatronic suit known as Spring Bonnie, the rabbit partner of Fredbear and predecessor to Bonnie the rabbit when he was cornered by the spirits of the children that he murdered and later set free on accident when he destroyed the animatronics to cover up his crimes.
Only to come back to life as an animatronic known as Springtrap once his soul became infused with it.
When the horror attraction he was going to be a part of burned down (rather it was because of an electrical fire due to the dangerously substandard wiring or arson remains unknown), he escaped.
He was later found and salvaged by Henry Emily and a man supposedly named Eggs Benedict who was actually his son Michael.
It is said that Eggs Benedict was a name assigned to him by a malfunctioning computer system known as HandUnit when he was working for Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rentals, the sister location to Fazbear Entertainment, as a technician.
He was sent there by William to find and free Elizabeth. Michael is said to have been the black sheep of the family compared to his father.
He was likely changed by the accidental death of his brother, which he had caused.
He used the names Jeremy Fitzgerald and Fritz Smith to work for the pizzeria in 1987. The two boys fell victim to his father’s hand in 1985. He also used the last name Schmidt in 1993 (keeping his first name).
These were his aliases in order to prevent him from being identified as he tried to stop his father from hurting more children.
The whole thing that William had walked into when he was salvaged while on his quest for more remnant turned out to be a ruse cooked up by Henry, who was still alive, to lay the souls of his daughter Charlie and Elizabeth to rest while sending William to Hell. The pizzeria that was used was fake.
It was designed with a maze of bare metal walls lined with flame shooting nozzles that essentially made it an oversized oven allowing for the animatronics to be safely contained.
Henry then set the whole thing on fire, destroying the animatronics in the process. Yet, William has been rumored to say “I always come back.”
It certainly seems like he is again about to do just that, one way or another. The only problem for him is that he does not have a physical body to work with.
Vanessa had a sinking feeling that he was planning on having one put together using her to perform the deed.
Now, what disgusted her the most is who he usually targeted. It struck a cord with her because Vanessa loved children.
She had volunteered at a children’s hospital during the spring, summer, and winter break while she was in high school.
She had seen a wide variety of unfortunate children. Several of them had chronic illnesses while others were disabled. This included physical disabilities, mental disabilities, and those that had a mixture of both.
She would happily bake treats for them to boost morale and make them laugh by styling and coloring her hair with increasingly goofy results.
For Easter, she would wear a bunny costume, skip around with an Easter basket around her arm containing presents for the little patients.
Later, she started wearing rabbit ears along with fake buck teeth and whiskers painted on her face.
She would skip around the hospital greeting the children. She smiles fondly at the affectionate nickname the kids and staff gave her thanks to her delightfully silly rabbit themed shenanigans.
Miss Vanny. It sounded similar to Vanessa, even using the first three letters of her name, and also bunny. It was not a coincidence that they started calling her that.
She had thought about becoming a pediatrician but later decided to switch to video game development as she was not sure if she would be able to handle the stress.
Plus she had discovered that she was good at learning how to program. Vanessa was also horrified about the fact that William was more than willing to not just hurt others, but actually kill them to get what he wanted.
She certainly does not consider herself a murderer nor does she ever want to become one, let alone think of becoming one. “There must be a solution to this somewhere… I hope. If there is one, I have to find it before it is too late.” She said out loud.
Vanessa remembered all too well what had happened to poor Jeremy when he discovered the anomaly. Jeremy was a previous beta tester who had been declared crazy when he mentioned the anomaly.
He had committed suicide with a guillotine paper cutter after the anomaly successfully possessed him.
She did not want to go out the same way he did. Not only would it not solve anything, it means that someone else may eventually fall victim to it while actually playing the game.
Vanessa was certainly not going to allow that to happen. She had replayed the tapes left behind in the game by one of the previous beta testers named Gabriella Antoinette to see if she missed anything.
While Gabriella mentions the anomaly, unfortunately the solution that she comes up with does not quite erase him.
The idea she gave turned out to not be a true rock solid solution as her plan only sealed him in a tighter can of evil rather than purge him. Even then, containing the anomaly did not stop him from successfully getting into Vanessa’s head.
That does not mean a bad temporary solution. After all, it did its job in containing the anomaly, with him having a very weak grip on her mentally (to be fair, Gabriella was not entirely sure herself if her strategy was going to truly get rid of him), but it certainly was not going to be enough.
She was concerned that if she did not do something soon, the toehold of a grip that it currently had would become stronger overtime and like a fire that grows or a crack that widens, she will inevitably have no way to fight it. Vanessa felt like she was doing a good job at resisting, but she was worried that she could not do it forever.
Even worse, she did not know how much time she truly had to find a solution. Since she started having nightmares, some had even been about what might happen, she feared the clock was truly beginning to tick. After exhausting the tape route with Gabriella, Vanessa began going through the notes that were left behind by the team.
At first she did not find anything useful, but she continued digging nonetheless, deciding that if she did not find anything in the development documents, she will turn the game back on and try to find her solution there.
Her persistence payed off when she stumbled across a note stating that there apparently is a second anomaly hidden within the game. The note even includes a drawing of what it looks like.
The description of the anomaly is that it takes the form of a woman wearing a bluish purple and gold ball gown decorated with bright glowing gold stars. She has long flowing purple and gold hair, bow shaped hair ribbon that matches her dress, bright glowing blue eyes, appears to wear a mask of some kind, and glitches wildly. Her mask is described as having a sad looking smile. It is noted that she dances in a somber manner with a soft music box tune playing in the background.
Apparently, no one has bothered looking further into it as she seemed to have disappeared, meaning she likely lacks the power Glitchtrap has.
While holding on to the thought that it may very well be a fluke, a dead end road that leads nowhere, it does give Vanessa a ray of hope. She furrows her brows in determination. “There may just be a solution to this problem after all.” She said as she grabbed a VR headset and turned on the game.