Dcatober24 - Tumblr Posts

Day 2 of my mixed bag of prompts for drawtober. The prompt list:

Day Three, I rlly liked drawing this goober yesterday so I did it again. Prompt list below:

it's october yk what that means

day 1 - Best Friend

me and my bestie cover each other's murders all the time, idk 'bout u

a little late but i found the list way too late yesterday lol

speaking of, here's the list we're using this year idk why i was surprised someone made one based entirely off of the dca but i did not expect it tbh

not me just randomly changing my artsyle out of nowhere, nahh

day 2 - Paper Pals

*Sun offers to sell you a paper pal

accept? >yes >no >is it in pain?

Day 3 - Googly eyes

so like i had smth completely different in mind for this at first but then it refused to work whatsoever and i realized it's like 2am and i need to actually finish this

so he cosplayed a spider and all the kids loved it and had a great time, mhm

day 4 - Bells

kitty

day 5 - Artistic License

day 6 - Hues

i did not have the time to do this and had no idea really either, so i literally just changed their hues 💀

normal colors as well cuz fuck it why not at this point

i wanted to draw them w/ funky colors for a while now anyway so whatever Imma let this pass idc enough rn

and my pc just decided to break bc it loves me sm and the file weighs like 3 hells for no reason sure, why tf not

day 7 - Glitter glue

felt a little silly

day 8 - Trouble

a little late oops didn't have the time yesterday

i will post today's and tmrs prompts tmr hopefully bc being one day behind is just gonna be annoying

Still i went way too ambitious for this one lmao i really don't have the time to do these sadge

Well, it is that time of year I suppose!

Brought to you by my mind and scouring the DCA's voice lines for key words for way longer than expected,

2024's DCA PROMPTOBER !

Please tag any works for this list under #dcatober24 ! No need to ping me, though you absolutely can (I'd love to see what comes from this list)!

Thank you to the DCA Palooza for the idea for this!

Prompt list in text under the cut!

Best Friend

Paper Pals

Googly eyes

Bells

Artistic license

Hues

Glitter glue

Trouble

Off-Limits

Lights on

Naptime

Carousel

Night

Knock

Hide

Naughty

Found

Phobia

Ruin

Trapped

Gears

Nightlight

Duality

Error

Balloons

Scorch

Stalking

Time-out

Reboot

Birthday

Trick or Treat

October 1st, Best Friends

For being made with the purpose of tending to children, Star surprisingly held quite a bit of disgust for the little things. Too messy. Too loud. Too much. 

Some days she wondered what was wrong with her coding. She had perused it many a time with as much of a thoughtful frown her faceplate could allow, but there wasn’t a thing out of place.

She finished yet another self-run diagnostic and looked over the daycare, frown small but present. She hummed. A child ran past squealing, glitter on his hands and a toothy smile on his face. The sound was irking, but she was a professional. Technically. So either way, her frown melted away to the smile that was more natural for her face. It was neutral for her, though, and the only ones that could ever tell were the actual daycare attendants. Of the three, Sundrop was the only one that was annoyingly persistent about getting her to cheer up. Moondrop generally gave her the space that she wanted, and Eclipse didn’t care about her one way or another. 

Sensors alerted her to a tugging sensation on her skirt. Surprised, she found a toddler staring up at her with wide, curious eyes. She scanned the room. Where were the daycare attendants? Odd to see someone so young out and about. 

Now that it was summer, the room was filled with all the big kids that could keep up with Sundrop. Moondrop had a small quiet room for the babies and the toddlers. Eclipse… Star really didn’t understand his purpose. No one explained it to her, when she asked. Her purpose was to clean and help the children. Keep an eye out when the daycare attendants couldn’t. She was just an extra set of eyes and hands, really. 

She knelt, gently guiding the small one’s hands off her skirt and into her own hands. “Hello, there.” 

The child smacked her palm in glee, little blue eyes sparkling up at her. She gently squeezed his squishy hands in response. 

She stood slowly, scooping the child high into the sky and against her chest. The child smacked her repeatedly, but didn’t seem to mind the position. Withholding a grimace at all the muck she would have to clean off herself later, the child had eaten before going on his adventure, she made her way to Moondrop’s domain. 

How had she lapsed in attention? How did a child sneak up on her? 

Maybe she’d need to look at her coding again.

There was a game going on in the dim-lit room. Her presence went unnoticed in the dreamy blue room by all but the very Moondrop himself. His gentle blue eyes narrowed and then relaxed as they always did when she dislodged the door’s curtain and let in too much light. Sometimes she wondered why the humans had intentionally built him with issues, but as always, she dismissed the line of code. There was no need to question those that knew better than she.

She stepped around the children decorating wooden objects in bright colors and stickers and handed off the child to the patient moon. He accepted her gift with his ever static grin and a nod. 

Now to return to watching over the daycare.

☆

She stood in the bathroom, skirt dumped in the sink and the last of the many things the child had left remnants of food on. She had already located and cleaned off the toys and shelves the child had touched. 

Ten minutes prior, she had gotten the notification that the very last child had been picked up, and all that was left was preparation for the next day. She didn’t usually aid with the process of signing kids out, for reasons Sundrop always changed. Earlier on in her existence his explanations were logical. Your database isn’t quite connected to the system, friend! Now, however, it might be because of the lack of color in her eyes, or that he’d really, really, really prefer that she spent time on brushing out her snow white hair. He’d seen play-dough in it!

She sighed. She didn’t think the daycare attendants liked her much. That was the simple truth. She had tried to ignore it for forever (two months, seven days, nine hours and an additional ten- no, fifteen minutes now.) but now it was unavoidable. 

She stared into the mirror. It wasn’t surface-level dislike, that was certain. It went beyond her ability to smile and past the itty bitty rays meant to emulate star rays in three spots on her disc-plate. She was certain it had to do with their understanding of imitating humans that she simply couldn’t grasp. They had such soul-like qualities to them that she couldn’t ever hope to achieve. 

So how was it that this revelation made the machinery in her chassis lurch almost painfully? 

She scrubbed harder at the stain refusing to leave the pearly white fabric, rubber lips pursing in a frown. Why did it bother her so much to be disliked? What about them did she feel the innate desire to appeal to? The only ones she needed to be worried about ‘appealing to’ were the humans that worked on keeping her in tip-top shape.

The door creaked open, and she paused. She glanced in the mirror to see the ever bubbly, bright yellow attendant standing in the bathroom doorway. 

“Star!” Sundrop exclaimed, as if he was pleased to see her. Then, “Star!” as if scandalized. 

She turned off the water and leaned her hip against the sink to look at him. “Are you alright?”

Sundrop’s pale yellow hands were covering his eyes. “Where are your clothes?”

She looked down, quite confused. “In the… sink? The child…” Her eyes flicked to the side as she searched the database for the young boy’s name. “Trevor got his lunch on my skirt.” 

“U-um, let me… let me go get you some pants.” He stammered. It was amusing to see him struggle to open the door and cover his hands at the same time. Did he remember that he could disengage the use of his sight without the use of his hands? Likely not, with how flustered he seemed. 

But why? She continued to clean her skirt. Why was orange so difficult to remove from white, and more importantly, why was he acting like she was indecent? There was nothing to hide. Nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing like humans would be worried about. Was he a little… confused after working with humans every day without pause? 

The door opened again, and once more Sundrop entered the room, eyes covered and a pair of pants outstretched. “Here ya go!”

She accepted the pants and slipped them on after a moment of staring at him. It was odd to see pants that looked so similar to the daycare attendants’ pants on her. They were of the same model, so they fit just fine, but white and pale blue stripes were not what she usually wore. She tugged at the ribbon on her hip with a small smile. It was kind of cute. She glanced at the lost cause in the sink. If the sink couldn’t save her skirt, she wouldn’t mind permanently stealing these. She wrung out the skirt and made her way to the laundry chute. Sundrop followed her, humming along with the daycare tune and walking jauntily. 

She looked over at him and clasped her hands behind her back. He slouched and bounced from side to side, a result of playing with small kids all day she was sure, so she wasn’t quite eye-level with him. 

“I have a question.” She declared. 

His faceplate spun giddily. “Question away!”

She leaned back on her heels. “Why did my lack of skirt bother you? I’m a robot.”

He gasped. “It’s indecent, friend!” 

She tilted her head. “But I’m a robot. And so are you.”

He hummed. “I’m not sure how to explain it to you. Why aren’t you embarrassed, hm? Hm? Hm?” 

She scanned the room for anything out of place. It looked like Sundrop had gotten most everything. Although, there was that chair… over in the distance. That needed tending to. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed of.”

“Nothing? Nothing at all?” He bounced. “What about other things? Do you get embarrassed at all?”

Star led the way to the chair, and he followed without hesitation. “No. Why would I?”

He hummed. “I dunno. You looked pretty embarrassed the other day!”

Star adjusted the chair. She wasn’t so sure why he was being so adamant that she had been embarrassed at some point. Maybe she should just let him win this one and move on. As she straightened, she noticed a lone glue bottle left on its side. She tsked and made to move it. 

“Maybe I had. What does that prove, Sundrop?” She dumped the glue bottle, cap tightly shut, into its respective bin. 

When she turned around, she was startled to find Sundrop much closer than she expected. “What does that prove, I wonder?” Sundrop murmured. She hadn’t known that he even possessed the ability to talk at a normal volume, let alone quietly. “I think you’ve been trying to ignore what it proves for a while, silly.”

She slid her hands down her pants and found pockets. A surge of excitement distracted her from the conversation, but she quickly brought herself back. 

“I’m lost, Sundrop. What are you trying to get at? What might I be proving and ignoring?”

He booped her on the nose. “Silly Star. I can’t just tell you!”

She hummed disapprovingly. Such a cryptic bot with such strange notions. She spotted something out of place in the distance, and made her way towards it. “Well, then, could you answer a different question I have?”

“Sure! I love questions!”

She adjusted the semi circle of dislodged foam blocks. There, perfect. “Why do you call me friend? Does that mean something, or is that something you call everyone?”

Sundrop giggled, and before she could realize what was happening, lean arms wrapped tightly around her. She was lifted clean off the floor with Sun singing in her audio receptors, “Silly Star, your my bestest friend!”

She snorted in amused disbelief. She was squeezed for several minutes before he begrudgingly put her down. Still the contact remained, his arms were wrapped around her torso and biceps, and his faceplate rested on her shoulder. 

“Why’d you laugh like that?” his voice sounded a tad somber. “Like you don’t believe me?”

She shrugged and looked out over the play structures. “I didn’t think any of you liked me, let alone considered me a friend.” She admitted bluntly. 

He squeezed her tight enough that her metal started to warp in complaint. “Of course we like you!” He sounded upset. “What did we do to indicate otherwise? What did I do, Star?”

She shrugged and struggled to free herself. Why did she feel the need to escape, now? He wouldn’t let her go though. She gave up and resigned herself to her fate. 

“You always make excuses when you don’t want me to do something. It’s like you’re lying and really you just don’t want me near. Moon hardly talks to me, and Eclipse…” She pictured one of his glares and shuddered. “I don’t know about Eclipse. I guess…” She thought logically for a moment, and suddenly, a thought struck her. She was thinking like one of the kids, wasn’t she? The ones that disgusted her so. She was jumping to conclusions and accusing people– animatronics of things that weren’t necessarily true. “Never mind. I’m being rude. Let me go.” She struggled anew to free herself, but even when she did, it didn’t make her feel any better. 

She hid in her charging chamber. It was in a small closet next to the closet of cleaning supplies. She was told it was a newer addition to the room, after the fire and all that. She didn’t particularly care about this tidbit of information. 

Instead she was restlessly scouring her code and everything that made up Star. There had to be something wrong here, something out of place, something that was making her odd. She was assuming things, and missing things, and overall not acting like the expensive piece of perfection the company boasted of. How was she supposed to do her job if she was broken? What would they do with her once they realized how messed up she was? Would they wipe her clean and start over?

Why did that bother her so much? Once the thought wasn’t even a concern. So what? She was just numbers, really. Numbers didn’t feel things. Numbers didn’t care about death, or life, or anything outside of numbers. They just were. They just followed rules and existed, following every whim of the mathematician. 

So why was she feeling things? Where in the numbers did something lodge itself into her being that wasn’t supposed to be there? How could she have missed something like that? A virus, maybe? A sneaky one? 

Star didn’t know. 

☆

Star did her best, she really did, but it was difficult to not notice how often Sundrop looked her way. She ignored him and tidied up after kids and watched potentially suspicious adults, mentally logging every instance and keeping a record of their every little move, but always there was that itching feeling present on the back of her neck. 

Worse, the others tended to glance over at her too!

It was fine. Everything was fine. 

They hadn’t exactly come up to her. Perhaps they had decided, in their own little way, that she was correct. What worth was there to find in the newer bot? The one unaffected by the fire? It was one of her many theories, really. She was sure there was some sort of camaraderie between the three that she couldn’t ever dream of having, simply because of her new-ness. 

Always that thought at the back of her head, though. This shouldn’t bother me. There’s something wrong with me. Why am I like this? 

In her daze, she had gotten roped into a game of tag, much to her chagrin. As she chased, or ran from the chaser, she couldn’t help but mull over that feeling. Distress. Embarrassment. Why was Sundrop so convinced that she had felt embarrassment? Why did that matter to him? Was embarrassment crucial in the act of pretending to be like a human? Did he desire to teach her his ways? She heard that he had once been meant for a stage. Perhaps she had simply been fooled by all of them and their acting, and they were just as robotic and confused by the nature of humans as she was. 

Following tag was hide and seek, and unsurprisingly, Maddylin was the first counter. She had been adamant about it in the previous game when she proposed the new game. It wasn’t like Star minded. 

From atop the structure, Star could see most everything. Mostly she noticed discarded trash in the distance, heat signatures crawling around in the tunnels, Dave by the entrance door with a clipboard. 

Dave by the entrance with a clipboard? He wasn’t supposed to be here yet. Star glanced around for Sundrop and carefully made her way down the outside walls of the slide. As the extra hands and eyes, she didn’t think he’d mind letting her handle an adult human visitor for once. 

Dave looked up and up and up to see her. She waved in what she hoped was a friendly manner, for reasons beyond her. Why should she care if she was perceived as friendly or not? 

Dave removed the lollipop from his mouth. “You ain’t Sunny.”

She shook her head. “I am not. I am Star, and I am pleased to help you.”

Dave considered her before shrugging one shoulder. “Alright. Don’t matter much to me.” He scratched his beard before holding up the clipboard. “Says here y’all need new supplies. Is that right?”

She nodded. It was close to that time of the month. He was a day early, as well as some hours, but she supposed an early bird catches worms, or something. Dave nodded and signed something at the bottom of the paper. “Perfect. I’ll just put everything here while you sign, ‘kay?” He handed her the clipboard and pen. She watched him go for a moment, a little lost for words. She glanced at the pen in her hand. It was much smaller-seeming in her grasp than Dave’s. 

She signed, and peered out the door. She backed up quickly as Dave shoved a dolly full of boxes through the door. She helped him unload them, and then he was off again to bring three more dolly-fulls. She handed him his clipboard, waved, and then he was off, black ponytail swinging behind him. She tugged at her own hair. Hers, though it came to her shoulders, was much shorter in comparison. She wondered what it might feel like for it to fall so low on her body.  

She turned around and jumped. Sundrop stood there with his ever-present grin. “Hi there!”

“Hello…” She ducked around him and lifted a stack of boxes into her arms. He mimicked the motion and waited to follow her. She frowned, but led the way. She didn’t really… want to be near him at the moment. She supposed she was feeling embarrassed about their last encounter. 

She glanced at the kids as she unloaded the boxes into the closet. Many of these would be opened at the end of the day to restock bins and such, but for now would be shoved away so that kids couldn’t get into them. The kids were blissfully unaware of their temporary guardians being gone, happily finger-painting with Eclipse. Huh. She guessed he did help around sometimes. 

She turned around to find Sundrop once more in her space. “Ah- hi, again.” He had more boxes. Had she been standing there the whole time, lost in thought? How emba– She hated that word. This time, when he unloaded, she followed him to get the next round of boxes. Between the two, the boxes were gathered up and put away rather quickly. 

When the closet was closed, Sundrop grabbed her by the hand and swung it merrily between them. She stared at him. What was he doing? 

She asked as much. He chuckled and led her to the fingerpainting table. She was sat next to him, but the kids didn’t pay them much mind when they had the elusive and cool Eclipse to bug. 

Sundrop never let go of her hand. Not while they were painting, not while they were sending off the kids with a wave and happy farewells, not even when they had to clean. 

“What are you doing?” she finally demanded. “Logically, this is entirely too inconvenient for cleaning properly and– what?”

Sundrop was giggling into his other hand. “You’re so silly, Star. So worried about logic and such.” He booped her on the nose. “To answer your delightful question, I’m spending time with my bestest best friend.” he sobered. “I feel bad for making you feel unwanted, Star. I sincerely apologize!” He crossed his heart in a manner that reminded her of a child’s rhyme. 

She frowned at him. “I… forgive you?”

“Oh goodie!” He twirled her. She followed confusedly, even as he increased the speed a ridiculous amount. When he abruptly stopped spinning her, she couldn’t stop herself in time. The momentum carried her, and she crashed against Sun’s chassis. Arms wrapped tight around her, her hand still intertwined with his. 

“Eclipse and Moon warned me not to overwhelm you,” he explained. “I get too excited about new friends, and often I just scare them away. I can’t talk for Eclipse, he’s an enigma, but Moony’s just shy, I think. Don’t take our distance personally. In the future, just ask when you’re worried about something, ‘kay? It won’t hurt our feelings if you have a question. We never, ever, ever want you to feel unwanted.”

She considered him. “It’s been three months, though.” She commented quietly. 

“Shyness doesn’t go away in three months, silly Star, and neither does trauma!” He explained cheerfully. 

She chuckled. She wasn’t quite sure how animatronics could have a case of social anxiety or trauma, but she wasn’t about to ask right now. Maybe later, when he wasn’t trying to apologize. 

“Thank you.” 

October 2nd, Paper Pals

Ever since their discussion a few weeks back, Star had noticed an increase in time spent with Sundrop. Moondrop occasionally spoke to her a tad more than he did before, and Eclipse ignored her, but at least the taller animatronic was no longer glaring at her. 

For example, today they were sitting at a table making paper pals. She watched the kids surrounding them first, uncomfortable and unsure as to where to begin. How did one… start? Some kids painted first while others cut out shapes and pasted them together. It didn’t help her determine the first step, so she turned to watch Sundrop. He was busy helping kids and carrying on conversations that she wasn’t too sure that the child was even really paying attention to. 

The kid next to her, a little girl who shyly introduced herself as Ram, prodded her arm. “Look, look!” She implored. 

Star looked. The paper pal in the twelve year old’s hands looked something similar to Roxanne Wolf, but in wildly different colors and painted patterns. 

“Very creative.” Star nodded. 

Ram beamed and then peered around Star’s arm to judge her progress. “Why haven’t you started?”

Star stared at the pieces of paper, perfectly unblemished and uncrinkled from lack of use. “I don’t know how.” She admitted.

She had been working on that, much to Sundrop’s delight. He had advised her to let people know when or why she didn’t understand or know something. She used to keep it locked up. Who would it benefit to know that she was broken? 

Ram didn’t let her linger on that particular train of thought. She grabbed the paper plates and scissors and held them up to Star. “Start here! You gotta choose your favorite animatronic first– okay?”

Star gingerly accepted the scissors and the paper plate. She glanced at Sun, and found that he was helping a kid make a big bow with the scraps of his brutally abused plate. Perhaps a more creative touch was required here, then. She didn’t think she was very creative. Wasn’t built for it. She peered over at the other kids and what they had done with their own plates. So… this made… the body? And then, a second one for the head?

She nodded slowly, firmly. She could do that. She didn’t think she needed the scissors just yet, no insult to Ram. She arranged the body neatly, and then for a moment was at a loss for how to connect them. Colorful construction paper or far too much tape? Rachel was using rainbow sparkly yarn for the neck, fingers, and limbs. Rachel was quickly distracted by Jon, who needed help in learning how to braid yarn hair. None of them looked quite like the animatronics the kiddos were trying to replicate. 

Star tried not to let it overwhelm her. She cut out several blocks of grey construction paper, and followed along as Sundrop folded his own to make a zig-zag shape visible from the side. Arms, legs, and neck were then glued, and as extra precaution Sundrop declared loudly, taped too. 

“Accessories now!” Sundrop announced loudly. Only two or three kids were following his example at this point, most of them bored of the craft by now and running around covered in paint and other such craft materials. Star refrained from grumbling when she realized he was mostly doing it for her benefit. 

Oh. Her deft fingers paused as she was applying the crescent paper to the plate-head. She was assuming again. Maybe she’d ask to clarify when he was finished helping the kids. 

Sleepy blue eyes, a little too bright to her displeasure, were then added. She didn’t know how to make the big floppy hat he often wore, so she left it without. She did put silver circles for bells on the dark grey arms, though. It looked funny, so she added a strip of too bright blue for wrist-ribbon. 

She giggled at the sight of the mini Moondrop. He looked bald. On further consideration, all of it looked a little too odd to be a proper Moondrop, but she supposed… she supposed she didn’t care. The children didn’t, certainly. 

Sundrop bumped his shoulder against hers. Bright yellow and red cloth mushed against her own striped pants as he invaded her space to look at her craft. 

“It’s Moony! Oh, he looks so cute like that!” He cooed. 

She scoffed and stood to clear away the mess. Time to clean up, clean up– Darn, she could hear Sundrop’s voice whenever she thought about tidying, now. She used to block him out with ease. What changed?

She glanced at him as she loaded crafts into her arms to bring to the bathroom to wash. He was tidying up the space, but staying behind to keep an eye on the kids. She softened. 

Not a whole lot changed, really. Just her understanding of what was happening.

October 3, Googly Eyes

Star was sweeping the family bathroom when she felt something brush against her back. She turned her head far back enough that it would freak out a human and glared at Sundrop. He giggled as he ran away.

Sundrop, she had learned, was an absolute menace. One of the more recent deliveries consisted of googly eyes. Together, they should never be. Ingredients in a recipe of messy chaos unchecked. Eyes everywhere. The slides, the cabinets, the vacuums. Under tables and on tables, on the ceiling somehow too. Windows were not spared, nor brooms, or the topside of the toilet. The /toilet/. She shuddered at the unsanitariness of it all.

Ram’s brother was the culprit, the source, the reason she found googly eyes up and down her back. He had come to pick up his little sister only four days prior in the stead of his father, a rather chubby man with a jovial laugh to rival Sundrop’s. Ben swung Ram up onto his broad shoulders and told Sundrop all about the googly eyes his sister had been glueing to every single surface in the house.

Star reached back to flick the googly eye off her back and into the trash. She paused before she discarded it, black pupil sliding around against white canvas. She dropped the googly eye, smeared glue and all, into the royal blue trash can decorated in pink stars and exited the bathroom with a newfound determination.

She had revenge to enact.

There were several packages of googly eyes, far too many to spare, so it wouldn’t be missed out of the thirty-six packages.

With a glue stick in one pocket and a package of eyes in her other, she was ready.

Another day. When his enthusiasm for attacking the room and all the daycare bots had died down. When he wasn’t expecting it.

It had taken a week for him to move on. Eclipse had chewed him out after finding a dozen eyes in his left shoe alone. Sundrop moped, disappointed by Moon’s disinterest and Star’s irritation.

Star could feel the urge to cackle maniacally, but pushed it down. Unhelpful. She crept to loom behind Sundrop as he checked in the twins Lilac and Indigo. Star smiled at the exhausted mother as her hand brushed against one of Sundrop’s sun rays. He didn’t even notice, too focused on soothing the twins and the emotional mother. Star took pity on the both of them and took over the role of talking.

Sundrop had been stressing the human with his distracted chatter, anyhow. She didn’t think she was assuming this time, seeing as she was judging the woman’s elevated heart rate and the way she pursed her lips.

Star couldn’t help but be fascinated by how much the woman’s face moved and told a million words in a glance to describe her current mental state and thought process. It was so different from the world of robots and numbers. Star certainly had never seen a five scrunch its shape in confusion or slump in relief when Star explained the babies would not, in fact, be playing with the big kids. Privately, she wondered how the woman had missed that, but reminded herself that humans didn’t have the capacity to retain information in the same way the animatronics could. Lack of sleep and stress affected that, she recalled as the woman stepped away.

Sundrop straightened beside her and twisted to look behind them. The slightest jostle of bells told her another daycare attendant had joined them. Likely Moondrop.

She wasn’t surprised to see slender night sky-blue arms scoop the twins out of Sundrop’s grasp. She peered behind her to look at Moondrop properly. He avoided her gaze and quickly scampered off to the room of Quiet and Calm. She wondered if it was shyness or the strength of the overhead lights that caused him to avoid her.

In a game of tag she added another googly eye to the back of his sunrays. While he was passing by her to intervene in an argument she added another. Ram covered her mouth and giggled when Star turned around nonchalantly, avoiding his curious gaze. She held a pointer finger over her rubber lips to shush the child when Sundrop shrugged and carried on. Ram immediately raced to tell Jon and Cecily, but she wasn’t too worried about it. Kids loved to be involved in a secret.

It just meant she had to work harder to decorate the back of his rays like she wanted to before the kids let loose the game.

As he hung art, he earned five more googly eyes. When he returned to the closet to get more push pins, one on the way there and two on the way back.

She considered him from her position on the beanbag in the corner of the dark room. Trevor had apparently demanded her attention, and now sat contently in her lap while she schemed. Moondrop continued to avoid looking her way, book held just in front of his faceplate in a funny-looking fashion, much to the tots’ delight.

Was Sundrop actually aware of the game and letting her win, or was he just that focused on the children and keeping them safe? She had no idea, and very little time remaining in the day before the children all left for home. She was certain one of them would blab and end her vengeful fun, but that was alright. She was prepared.

She just had to be faster than the kids.

Being faster than the kids ended up with thirty more googly eyes before the five hours were up. One hour and twenty six minutes before her self-imposed time limit was up, one of the kids giggled as she stretched to reach behind Sundrop. He turned quickly and yelled, “A-ha!”

She quickly hid her hands behind her back and smiled innocently.

“What?” She asked.

“You /have/ been doing something all day! I thought my sensors were going craa-azy!”

She giggled as he reached behind his head to find her art. She turned toward the kids, the ones who were much better at keeping secrets than Lacy, and asked, “I wasn’t doing anything, right?”

Sera and Jon fell over each other in stitches while Ram held her hands over her mouth, bouncing in place with energy. She was trying though, Star thought fondly.

Sundrop stared at the googly eye he had freed, unresponsive for a moment. This was endlessly amusing to the children. Clark shrieked with laughter, while Boon stared at him in confusion. “What’s going on?” Boon asked loudly. He had been in the slides when the secret was spilled. Lacy was happy to fill him in.

Sundrop placed his hands on hips and surveyed the kids with a scheming aura. Star quit giggling abruptly. If he could smirk, Star thinks he would.

“I think,” Sundrop paused for dramatic effect. “It’s time for arts and crafts.”

That didn’t sound so bad. So what was he really– he looked at her. Oh. Oh no.

Sundrop slowly made his way to the bin filled with googly eyes. Out came several packages, which were then emptied into children's hands. Glue sticks were also handed out, and then she was facing a fleet of googly-eye assassins.

“Children, we are going to play a unique game of tag. We’re all it, and when we tag Star, we get to put one googly eye on her. How’s that sound?”

The agreeing Yeah!s echoed in her audio receptors like the gong of a bell.

One part of her didn’t like this idea at all. The mess, the screaming… but another part thought this sounded fun. She defended that part with the very logical conclusion that this was only fair. She had gifted Sun with a difficult to reach mess, why shouldn’t he return the favor?

(The fact that this meant he was taking vengeance against her vengeance was ignored.)

So with a laugh, she turned and ran as the kids bellowed war cries. The game didn’t go on for too long. Surprisingly a long while, actually, but not forever.

She didn’t bother to clean off the mess when the children's parents, guardians, babysitters and/or siblings came in for pick-up, which seemed a little out of character for her. However, Star found that she was inexplicably overjoyed from the experience.

Maybe the kids weren’t so bad, really.

Well, Star amended, at least these ones weren’t. She could still remember her first experience with rowdy kids and shuddered. Why did children like to slobber and bite so much?

October 4th, Bells

Star sits in the quiet of her closet. The charging port is squished to the far side, leaving her minimal room on the other side. Her little paper pal hung on the wall close to the ceiling so she couldn’t accidentally knock it down. She has a purple striped star sticker that Trevor had happily stuck on her leg when she wasn’t looking there too, and a makeshift shelf filled with buttons. She wasn’t sure why she kept them. She just… liked looking at them. 

Wasn’t that a funny thought? She could like things. She could form opinions. 

As per her norm, she scanned her coding again. It wasn’t like she was looking, really, anymore. It was just… habit. 

Nothing indicated that she was Wrong. That she was Broken. But why? Why was she this way, then? Always her handlers spoke over her as they fixed her machinery, ignoring her and talking about her as if she was an object. If they did that, didn’t acknowledge her as something that could Feel, then she shouldn’t be able to, right? 

Someone knocked on the door of the closet. Was it her closet, or was it just… the closet? Could she claim something that could easily be taken away from her as hers? Should she? Would that just hurt her in the end if they did in fact decide she no longer needed a room to herself?

Before she could get lost on the track of questioning things she couldn’t change or affect, she stood and opened the door. Outside, leisurely bouncing from side to side, was Sundrop. 

She waved with her fingers, slightly. The energy wasn’t present. Sundrop seemed to scrutinize her before spinning his face plate. 

“Hi, Star.” He didn’t sound as energetic as he usually did, either. Was he alright? 

“Hi, Sundrop.” She paused. Should she ask? “Are you… experiencing a malfunction?” She frowned. That’s not exactly how she intended to word that. How is it she should have total control of her words, and then lose that control in a matter of seconds?

Sundrop giggled. “No, not at all. What, worried about lil ol’ me?” He leaned in, hands clasped to the side of his body. If he could flutter his eyelashes, like those people in movies playing coy, she thinks he would. She couldn’t help but notice that he had left considerable space between them. Unusual. He was the first to invade her space. Why did he pull back? It sort of… dampened her mood. Why would that bother her? 

If it bothered her… she should say so, shouldn’t she? She didn’t want to. 

“A little bit.” She answered his question first. She glanced at the room behind Sundrop, considering whether or not she actually wanted to ask. If she did something wrong, he wouldn’t be here, would he? But it would be better to ask than assume. “Are… are you upset with me?”

Sundrop stopped swaying. “Not at all, silly Star.” His voice was soft and kind sounding. It was a weird contrast to the loud and bubbly volume it usually held. “Why did you think that?”

She fiddled with the tips of her fingers, but didn’t pull at the soft material coating them. Sometimes Sundrop did, and he always had to go maintenance to fix that. She didn’t want the same consequence. 

“You’re… different today.” She glanced up at him, but quickly looked away again. 

“Ah.” Sundrop swayed gently. What an odd habit, she mused. “You seemed like you were feeling a little down today, so I wanted to not overwhelm you.”

She seemed… down? How could that be? A robot didn’t feel things like sadness– but then, she had been feeling a little… Her optics fell to the blue lines on her pants. She snorted. A little blue. What did that make her then? Not robotic?

“I suppose… I was feeling sad.” She frowned. “But I don’t know why.” What purpose did feeling melancholy benefit her? Would the mechanics have installed it, or did it develop on its own? Why would they do that? They wouldn’t, right? Maybe there was a virus. She itched to check her code, but she wanted to focus whole-heartedly on her… she supposed Sundrop was her friend, huh? He had said as much, but over the couple of months, it had felt more and more real. 

“Well, why don’t we talk about it?” He suggested. He promptly dropped to the floor and crossed his legs under him, humming the little tune he often sang for the kids along with the words “Criss-cross applesauce”. She mirrored his actions and stared up at his sunrays. Slowly they spun one way, then the next. 

“Okay.” She looked down at his bright blue eyes. Sky blue, unlike the darker, gentler blue of Moondrop’s. Eclipse had fiery orange eyes. Perhaps she should have yellow eyes, to match Eclipse. Colorwise, Eclipse and Sundrop were rather close, excluding the eyes of course. Oranges and yellows, while Eclipse had more touches of gloomy nearly black reds. Sundrop’s reds were bright and reminded her of the circuses she could see online. She and Moondrop were more blue and whites. Moondrop’s blue were navy and spattered in yellow stars, while she was nearly periwinkle and almost purple. 

She wasn’t sure how to start. If he should or she should. “I don’t understand…” she analyzed the spread of her fingers over the cloth on her knee. “I don’t understand why I would be sad, or why I like things, or dislike things. What’s wrong with my code?”

Sundrop didn’t answer her at first. He hummed a long while, a questioning, thoughtful hum with no need for tune or inflections. 

He took too long to respond. “They behave as though I shouldn’t respond to pain, emotionally or physically. If that’s so, then what’s wrong with me? I know I’m not like you three, but–”

“What do you mean, not like us three?” Sundrop interrupted.

“Well,” she floundered. She wasn’t quite sure how to describe them. She wasn’t sure how they were the way they were, either. How is it they seemed to be able to mimic the attitude of humans so easily? She had once assumed it was the time they spent with them, but as time lengthened and she continued to feel that she had lost all rhyme or reason as a being made up of what should simply be logistics, oh the irony, she didn’t really know the answer. 

“I don’t know.” She admitted softly. She brushed away the instinctive urge to check her code.

Sundrop leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and his faceplate tilted in an inquisitive manner. “May I suggest that perhaps there is nothing wrong with you but instead the expectations of the people who put you together?”

“What?” Star gaped at him. 

“You act as though you and I were created differently. I know for a fact that we were not. So if you can accept that I have feelings, then maybe you can learn to accept that you do too.”

The idea was astounding. She couldn’t quite wrap her code around it. “But- but it doesn’t make sense.”

He hummed. “Truue. Wanna know what also doesn’t make any sense?”

With the way he was talking, she almost didn’t want to know. 

He didn’t wait for her to reply. “How many fizzyfaz flavors there are! Why don’t we four get our own flavors? We’re more interesting than the mascots of the building anyway.” He waved his hand flippantly.

Star feels very, very lost. The subject change didn’t help her much. 

Sundrop stood, dusted off his pants, and held out his hand. She took it, but didn’t move to stand when her sensors alerted her to something in his hand. She removed her hand to see painted white bells attached to periwinkle ribbons.

“For you, O Sagacious Star.”

She considered him before taking the strung bells. “Why?”

He helped her tye them around her wrists, humming happily. “Well, you seem to be under the misconception that you are other, outsider, or entirely separate from the rest of us animatronics. I wanted you to have a physical reminder that you’re not.”

She liked the sight of the ribbons against her dusty blue metal. She glanced up at Sundrop, and was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude for him. For his determination to include her. 

“Even though I won’t let you eat the sparkly glue?”

He humphed and turned his head away from her as she giggled. “I already told you, I wasn’t eating it!” He side-eyed her. “Silly Star.”

October 5th, Artistic License

Star had been noticing something that disturbed her, slightly, for the last couple of days. She usually saw it in the mirror when she cleaned the family bathroom. Chipping of paint on her star rays, and the back of her shoulders. Odd placement, she thought. Things didn’t often come into contact with her rays, as they were too small and didn’t move like Sundrop’s did. In other words, they didn’t draw the attention of the children in the way that Sundrop did. He often had kids touching his sunrays and his shoulders and arms, anywhere they could reach, really. Often he ended up covered in finger paint. 

Finger paint. Her colorless eyes widened in realization. That… that could work. 

She finished mopping and made her way to the closet of cleaning supplies. She put away the mop and its companion, the bucket, before locking the door. The keys slid into her striped pants’ pockets. 

She hadn’t worn her skirt much since it was cleaned. It was folded neatly in the corner of her– the closet that held her charging port. 

She pondered the shelf against the far wall. It was a large shelf, the bottom cubbies used to house the children’s shoes and extra things that they wanted put away, and the shelves beyond their reach filled with bins of crafty things. She searched the bins now to find the finger paint. She considered the colors. There were several options, and not one of them came close to the color of her star rays. 

She filled her arms with the ones she thought she could mix together, grabbed a basic mixing palette, and tromped back to the bathroom. She closed the door behind her and set things up on the baby changing station. It was sanitary. She had cleaned it at least three times, it better be sanitary in the five minutes she was away.

When she was done, the color she had ended up with on her rays wasn’t quite accurate, and along the way she had gotten distracted and started to make dots and swirly patterns in the paint with white. 

But it didn’t look right. She frowned at herself in the mirror and bent over to wash everything off. This was stupid. 

The bathroom door creaked open. She sighed. Of course. 

She turned the faucet on just as she looked behind her. “Hi Sundrop.” She said grimly. 

Sundrop paused to take in her new paint job. “Veeery nice!” he exclaimed. “Maybe I ought to do that sometime.”

She started by washing off the rays closer to the sink. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?” He questioned as he leaned against the sink. 

“Try to make me feel better. I know it’s dumb.”

Sundrop chuckled. “Would I lie to you?”

She sideyed him even as she spun her faceplate to reach the top rays. Unlike Sundrop, she could not spin her sunrays individually from her faceplate. “Yes.”

“Name one time!” he gasped in offense. 

“Every little white lie you told me to get me away from the adults checking in and out.”

He sobered. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I just…” He looked away, picking at the silicone covering his fingertips. Star smacked his hands, but listened intently all the same. She had been wondering about the reason for all those lies. 

“When I was new to the public, and suspicion still lingered from the history behind this company, I wasn’t exactly… well-received. Neither was Moony, but at least the kids got used to us. The adults just couldn’t get over it, though, and our faces weren’t helping. You’ve seen the cartoony posters of us, right? When you come in with an expectation like that… well… I didn’t want you to face that too, Star. I should’ve told you the truth. I’m sorry.”

She made sure that her face and rays were completely clean before straightening. She tidied up the paint bottles, and rinsed off the palette as she mulled over his words. She supposed it made sense, and she did wish that he had spoken to her about his concerns instead of letting her stew over his actions, but then if she let herself be angry about it she’d be a hypocrite, wouldn’t she? She lets things sit for unreasonable amounts of time and makes assumptions all the time. 

She turned to see that her silence had impacted Sundrop more than she expected. He drooped like a flower without water and sun for far too long. “I forgive you, by the way. I just had to think about it first.”

He straightened. Though his smile was as static as ever, she could picture it broadening as he bounced with energy. “I’m so glad! I’ll do better, I promise.”

She followed him out of the bathroom all the way to the cubbies. He rifled through them and found a slip of paper and a marker. He held them up dramatically while she unloaded her haul. 

When she turned, he was holding out a bright yellow slip of paper with lines and words on it. There was a punched hole, with an orange ribbon threaded through. 

“What’s this?” She accepted the tag. 

“For you! Your artistic license!”

She stared at him over the piece of paper for an undetermined time, frozen in her thoughts. “My… artistic license?”

“Absoooolutely! You’ve come a long way in the path of art! I’m proud of you, Star.”

She read the lines on the paper over and over, later, in the comfort of her closet. The slip of paper was thumb-tacked to the wall next to her Moondrop paper pal. 

Though she still had concerns about her chipping paint, and she didn’t really believe she deserved an artistic license, she decided that it was a good day and that she would treasure what she thought she didn’t deserve. 

She was an atrocious crafter after all.

October 6th, Hues

Star isn’t the only one who had noticed her chipping paint. 

The new mechanic bent over her head, fingers brushing against her rays. Star looked out at the room. Ominous, but not entirely frightening. She wondered if that might change one day. It was clear to her that none of the other animatronics were fond of the room, including the well-liked mascots of the place. 

She glanced back at the mechanic, Joanna. Joanna seemed like a lovely woman, with ebony hair and pretty hazel eyes. Her skin was a bit concerning, with the sickly pale hue it took, and how it sat gauntly on her frame. 

“How did you do that?” Star mumbled curiously. 

Joanna paused to follow the path of Star’s pointer finger. “My… hair?”

Star nodded.

Joanna turned away from her to pick the paint up off the floor. “Well, um, you take– well, it's best to practice with three ribbons first, but you divide a section of hair into three parts and then cross the far left or the far right over the middle strand and just continue doing a pattern of that. It’d be best to show you, it’s more  of a visual thing– hang on, have you never seen kids with braids? It’s totally popular right now.”

Star shrugged. “Children do not let hairstyles last long, and I never asked to learn from them.”

Joanna snorted. “That’s true. Now hold still please.”

Star followed the direction with ease. It was more difficult to match the mannerisms of humans than it was to sit as still as a statue. So many different habits humans did instinctively in their pose, their breath, their hands… Star could go on for a while listing the minute differences. 

“Where’s Ben?” Star did not move her lips to ask this question. Sometimes she would do so to antagonize the other mechanics, but she rather liked how polite this mechanic was. Odd to experience, yes, but very polite. 

Joanna faltered for a moment before continuing the paint job. “Sick for the day, I think. Sorry, um. Does it bother you? To do that? I mean, does it bother you to not move your mouth when you talk?”

A very human question to ask, Star mused. “Not at all. It makes no difference to me.”

“So…” Joanna gently grasped the edge of Star’s faceplate as she applied cold paint closer to the detailing of her forehead. Wispy white lines were painted there to make the transition of false hair to metal face less jarring. “Would you say it benefits you at all to have the ability to express emotions as you speak?”

Star really didn’t think the mechanic was asking the right bot. “Certainly. Children respond better to a face that changes constantly than a–”

“No, no.” Joanna leaned back to look Star in the face. “Not all that recorded nonsense. Does it benefit you?”

Star was at a loss for words. Her lips moved wordlessly, and then she gathered her thoughts and was able to ask a question of her own. “Why are you asking this?”

Joanna sat back on the chair that Star was situated on. Mechanics had never shared Star’s space like this, and she found she didn’t really mind it. She didn’t mind sitting sideways with the shorter woman, legs dangling off the table instead of down its length like she was at a human’s dentist office. 

“I’m trying to convince the higher ups to update the other daycare attendants' face molds. So they can smile and blink like you do. Not that there’s anything wrong with the way they are now, I just worry that they feel stifled, and no one’s gonna listen to that, and I figured if I could get a testimony from the bot that already is able to emote, well maybe that might help in the long run?”

Star looked out at the room. “Is my paint job finished?”

Joanna appeared taken aback. “Uh, sure. Yeah.” 

Star stood, and watched with a blank face as Joanna scrambled off after her. This time, Star didn’t feel bad for the human getting off a chair meant for taller bodies.  “Perhaps it would be best to speak to the animatronics that aren’t good enough for you, hm?” 

Joanna followed her up the elevator, and down the hall. “No, that’s– That’s not what I meant! I only meant–”

“You still speak to the wrong animatronic, Joanna Greenwood.” Star picked up the pace, and quickly lost the shorter human. Her stubby human legs were no match for Star’s mechanical ones. 

Sundrop didn’t notice her bad mood immediately, which Star was grateful for. Usually he was a hawk for this type of thing, prying eyes catching details faster than she could realize her own emotions. He was distracted, though, by all the children vying for his attention. 

It wasn’t the first time that someone had pointed out all the flaws in her fellow daycare attendants’ faces. She just… didn’t get it, though. Why should the ability to broaden or shrink a smile influence a person? The ability to cry or squint at someone in confusion couldn’t be all that important in a conversation. After all, Star understood the boys just fine. Well. Aside from Eclipse, but she determined that that was precisely because he didn’t want to be understood. He liked being the intimidating mystery.

She was aware that perhaps she had intentionally misunderstood what the mechanic Joanna was talking about. Star thought back to Sundrop’s reasoning behind his keeping her away from adults. They hadn’t accepted him because of his face. It seemed it still presented a problem for the adults. 

But that was her friend. Why must they bring up hurtful things and try to change him, when all he did was help people? He was so good at comforting people, and bringing smiles to people’s faces. Wasn’t that ability far more important than if he could blink or not? Wasn’t it far more impactful that he could handle five or seven children all at once without making even one of them feel left out or unimportant? It was an insane ability that Star couldn’t wrap her code around. The children didn’t care one way or another if he could frown when they wanted to. Why did the adults? Why fixate on something so unimportant? 

Star didn’t think she would ever understand humans. 

Joanna finished up the report and hit submit. She couldn’t fathom why even the animatronics were dodging her questions and ideas about upgrading them. Her bosses, sure, that was to be expected. She was just another one of the worker ants. Disposable and nothing to set her apart from the others. 

She was dead-set on improving things, though. Faz Inc was losing the public’s attention, and the only reason it was still afloat was because of its plummeting prices. Otherwise no one would ever spare it a second thought. 

It wasn’t logical long-term, though. It didn’t take a genius to understand that it wouldn’t work forever. 

She had ideas, and they banked on the upcoming October month. She just had to get their attention, somehow. 

Okay, so she took a year to get her plan implemented. These things happen. October had come and gone, frustratingly, so she made a game plan. 

It was coming to fruition, now. Her pen glided across blueprints that her previous coworkers and now underlings had made. Now she just had to okay them, and claim the credit, of course, as managers with perfect plans did. They wouldn’t say anything. It wasn’t talked about, really, but Ben had to get sacked at some point, and if it took a couple of perfectly placed oopsies on his end, well no one would argue that he would never be so careless as that. His position was handed to her, as she intended, and immediately used the way she needed it the year prior. 

The building was emptier, the bosses more desperate, and Joanna had the perfect solution in her hands. They gobbled it up in a satisfying manner that made her smirk at random intervals in a day. If only they had accepted their fates the year before, but no. 

This was fine, though. In fact, it made it all the more gratifying. 

The horror on that stupid Star’s face would be delicious. 

Oh, she hadn’t minded the bot before. She wanted to help them all, really she did, but ever since that first interaction Star seemed to have it out for Joanna. In all the ways she could, subtle and easily defendable, she aggravated Joanna. Accidently knocked her pen out of her grasp, bumped the paint can, snagged her hand on Joanna’s work hat, threw her jacket in the lost or found, never mind that it had a name tag on it. 

Joanna didn’t want to harm the irritating animatronic, of course. It would just be so delightful that her success would irritate Star. Joanna wanted the best for them, why didn’t she see that! They would get dismembered for parts without Joanna keeping them afloat. 

To think, this little spat of theirs was about a little smile. Sue her for being innovative and audacious, she supposed. 

Artificial Intelligence was still artificial, at the base of it all. Joanna tapped her pen against her lip in thought. She frowned at the blueprint of Star. Some parents had thrown a fit that the animatronic didn’t wear a shirt, stupidly enough. What was there to be mad about? It was just a metal contraption to protect an endo in the end of it all. 

The image made Joanna pause. Just an endo. Maybe she could… alter Star’s personality chip? Their feud would end in the matter of hours, or however long it took to reconstruct the personality of a robot. 

She then shook her head. Too much work for a robot she wouldn’t be interacting much with. What purpose would it serve for Joanna to be at a circus, anyhow? She could be bossy and look over projects from here, or wherever her new office was. 

Wasn’t that a clever idea? Appeal to the greater masses via a traveling circus of exactly four robots. The main four could continue playing their songs in the first animatronic-run music band and tour the world. Of course, humans would be pulling the strings, so it wouldn’t exactly be run by the animatronics, but the idea would appeal to all the people who just wanted to advance in the world of technology. Uh, everybody? Duh.

If the two organizations were accepted in the way she anticipated, the company could expand into other categories. Robots were already doing basic tasks, why not spice it up with a robot that could talk and entertain as they cooked or whatever else people had in mind. 

Of course, there would always be the people who thought jobs only belonged to humans, but minds could be changed. Appeal to their inner pathos or whatever it was called. Everybody loved to see basic appliances as having personalities, it wouldn’t be that tricky to let them see how human the animatronics could be. 

But she was getting ahead of herself. 

First, to redesign the animatronics for the outside world.

October 7th, Glitter Glue

It wasn't the first time Star had found Sundrop with pink and green glitter stuck in the crevices of his hands and spread across his arms. He had once claimed that he couldn't say no to the children, but now she was sure he encouraged them entirely. It wouldn't be the last time either.

She sighed as she sat beside him. He could clean himself up by himself this time. She took pity on him that last couple of times, but Star was pretty sure he didn’t really care one way or another if she did or didn’t assist him.

The only difference now was instead of mashing glue senselessly against plastic teeth, he could open his mouth and guzzle glue properly. 

They had all gotten updates, one by one. The most notable being how expressive they were. Star could open her mouth wider and stick out a new tongue at someone in annoyance if she wanted. Her optics now had expressive eyelids. The same was applied to the others. Eclipse’s glares had only increased in accuracy rather than rely on vibes only. She had accidently found him making goofy faces at a crying child until the child had calmed down, one day. It made her wonder if that was his purpose, or if he even had one. Maybe he simply existed as he pleased? Star found herself a tiny bit jealous of that.

Sunny waggled his eyebrows at her. She sent him an unimpressed look. Sundrop of all of them loved the new upgrades the best.

She was glad.

But… at the same time… Star never wanted this for them. Clearly her feelings were unimportant in the matter, and obviously she wasn’t going to mention it. She didn’t want to ruin Sun’s fun. She didn’t really know how Moondrop felt about it, but he didn’t appear to have any negative feelings about it. 

Granted, he still ran away from her whenever he could. One couldn’t measure the depth of another’s feelings if they hardly interacted.

“I think you really ought to try some.” Sun giggled as he held out to the toxic-for-humans substance. As he expected, she shook her head and looked out over the daycare.

Though it was a Wednesday, and they usually had ten or more kids right about now, the daycare was empty. 

It was odd, to feel that she missed the very creatures she despised only two years prior. Weird to think that it was roughly a year and a half ago that Sundrop declared her his “bestest best friend”. 

Sometimes, as she drifted off into a sort of sleep-like state while she charged, that audio replayed in her head before moving on to process the day.

She side-eyed Sun. He had a sort of stomach installed, like Chica did, so that he could get away with eating random things. The only mechanic left on site would have to empty it. As time progressed, less and less workers showed up at the pizza plex. Star knew for a fact that Joanna would have to be the one, and frankly, Star didn’t trust her a bit.

She took the blue glitter glue, popped off the cap, and dumped it down into her mouth. Unlike Sun, she had no throat nor stomach, as she loathed messes. She wouldn’t be allowed to accompany Sun down to Parts ‘n Service otherwise, however.

Sun balked. “Star!”

She capped the glitter glue and grinned at him. Glue dribbled down her lip. “What? I thought you wanted to share.” 

“I mean I do, but Star, that’s true, but, but-!”

She bumped her shoulder against his and laughed. “This just means we’ll have to go to Parts ‘n Service together, is all. Don’t worry so much.”

He frowned at her. “This is because of that mechanic, isn’t it?”

“What? Nooo.” She looked away. “How’d you know?”

He huffed. “You underestimate my ability to read your tells, silly Star.”

“Oh.”

He leaned his head against hers, rays retracting so she wasn’t stabbed. She couldn’t retract her own, unfortunately, but for the most part they were angled away from where their faceplates aligned. 

“There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. It’s just my super duper special secret ability.”

She chuckled. “Oh, yes, very secret.”

“Indeed!”

She fiddled with the glitter glue bottle, and swiped a bit of glue off its surface with her thumb. Glitter gleamed up at her. “I’m just not very… fond of her, is all.” She admitted. 

“Well, you don’t have to like everyone.” He hummed. “Wouldn’t be realistic to assume you could.”

“Shouldn’t I be able to, though? I mean… I dunno.”

“What?”

“The first time we met, she seemed really nice at first.” Sometimes Star wondered if she was being ridiculous. It wasn’t her face that Joanna wanted to change originally. Why was she so insulted? Was it wrong to be so offended on the behalf of her friends when she couldn’t even bring up the topic for fear that it would hurt their feelings?

“Star…”

“What?”

“It’s really okay to not like someone. It doesn’t mean they’re of less value or that you’re mean. It just means you don’t jive.”

“Jive?” She snorted. “Just where did you learn that?”

“Mikaela taught me!”

She enjoyed this. She let her head fall on his shoulder. “If your hands are clean, can you braid my hair?”

“You’d have to move first, silly Star.”

She hummed. “I don't wanna.”

“Weeell I don’t know that I can braid your hair just yet, then. I got glue up and down my arms and hands!”

She sprung off him and hurriedly swiped at her side and sweater. She did not want to deal with getting glitter glue off her white sweater. Not again. 

Sundrop chuckled as he stood. “Let’s go, let’s go. We really ought to go to Parts n’ Service first, and then I can braid your hair!”

Star went back to her closet that night without gunk clogging the inside of her mouth and mechanisms, and cute twintail braids hanging over her shoulders.

October 8, Trouble

Star was “woken up” rather abruptly that morning. Someone was knocking rather harshly on the outside of her charging port.

She left the safety of her charging port tentatively, door sliding open with a quiet whirr. A short grumpy man looked up at her with his hands shoved in his pockets. 

“Moving day.” He announced. His grey eyes slid to the knicknacks on the walls. “You better figure out a safe place for all that or it's getting left behind.” He mumbled before turning on his heel. 

Moving day? Safe place…? She turned to her buttons, her sticker, her paper pal, and everything else that had earned the highest honor of being considered hers. 

She may not have a stomach like Chica or Sundrop, but she did have a stomach hatch, similarly to Freddy. Hers was much smaller than his, due to the size difference in builds. He was made to be wide and stocky, difficult to bowl over by eager crowds. She was made… well she wasn’t quite sure, but she looked almost exactly like Sundrop, Moondrop and Eclipse ignoring colors and unique characteristics. That is all to say, she had a place to store her meager belongings. 

Her buttons clinked against the metal floor in her stomach, and the paper pal rustled as she shoved it past the small door. The sticker clung to the far back wall once situated, her skirt was swept off the floor, bunched up in a ball and shoved inside. Jostled by all her movement, a stuffed critter lay on its side on the floor. She gently scooped it up in one hand and smiled at the dirty old thing. Well-loved was the green blob with legs, and flat were the pink and purple petals. Ram had given this to her in honor of her last day at the daycare. 

She placed it in her stomach hatch and closed the door. She smoothed her sweater over her stomach and made her way out of the closet. Her flats were quiet against the blocky floor, her pant legs loud as they swished against each other. The playsets were as colorful as ever, but the music wasn’t playing. 

That was what was off. She hadn’t realized that was what she was searching for as she scanned over the playroom. Sundrop was already waiting at the front of the room, bouncing in place idly, but his movements were stiff and odd. He didn’t seem to like this situation at all. Where were Moondrop and Eclipse?

She stood next to Sundrop nervously. What exactly did a moving day consist of? She looked back in the corner where her unassuming closet was. She supposed she really shouldn’t have called it hers, after all. 

Moondrop squinted as he moved to stand next to Sundrop. Now they waited for Eclipse. The old man sighed as he leaned against the check-in desk. 

“Donald?” Star asked quietly. The silver haired man startled and looked up at her. “Where are we going?”

Donald sighed. “Don’t ask me that, kiddo. I just work here. How am I supposed to know?”

His response gave her a few things to mull over as they waited for Eclipse. Interesting that he called her ‘kiddo’. Did he mean it in a fatherly manner, or did he use it to avoid using her name? And how ironic to not know the system of your own workplace. How interesting that this also applied to her, then. Did it count as a workplace if she had never willingly signed up for the tasks demanded of her?

When Eclipse finally arrived, it was in a state Star hadn’t expected. The three of them had been brought outside the doors of the daycare (how very odd to be outside her realm without the need to head to Parts ‘n Service) and down a hall. Star nervously glanced behind her. Would this be the last time she ever laid her eyes on the daycare, or had she misinterpreted Donald’s words?

The man led them to a glass door that revealed the outside world. Star balked and stopped abruptly as he kept walking, the door opening with a small shk under his wrinkled hand. What… What were they doing here? 

Sundrop walked confidently ahead of her, but she could see how oddly he held himself. She reached out to catch onto his arm, but he slipped beyond her grasp, her fingers curling around the air. 

Moondrop hesitated with her. Behind her he loomed, head tilted to the side so that the bell of his hat swayed just in the reach of her peripheral vision on her right. 

Donald looked back at them and sighed. “We don’t got all day, see? Let’s get a move on.”

Moondrop gently cupped her shoulder in his palm, his fingers curling into the bulky knitted fabric, and led her forward. She let him, though she cringed when her foot fell on pavement. 

And there was Eclipse. Or, supposedly. It was a large box with big bold letters bearing his name. It was being hefted onto the back of a truck. Her eyes widened. Eclipse would never willingly let anyone shove him into a box that cramped. Was he… was he… She pressed against Moondrop in shock. Decommissioned, her code offered up the word much to her disgust. She didn’t want to think that of any of her friends. 

What was to be their fate?

Sundroop willingly sat in a crate his height, packing peanuts shifting out from under his weight and some falling over the lip of the box. Someone reached forward and touched the back of his head. His eyes lost their light. Star grabbed onto Moondrop’s hand. Her shoulder was straining under the force of his fingers, but she didn’t begrudge him that. How could Sundrop so willingly allow them to turn him off? 

The hand digging into her shoulder suddenly relaxed, and no longer was there a weight against her back. She spun around to see Moon collapsing into a box shoved up against his calves. Humans pulled him up further into the box. She couldn’t look away from his lightless eyes. 

Something slotted against her head. 

Her world went dark.