We must begin this story in the middle of a killing spree.
Well, this is Five Nights at Freddies.
The killer is, as usual, William Afton. We begin at a point in his story at which he has become obsessed with immortality, and with a mysterious substance called remnant. This is, in essence, metal imbued with a human soul, or with the purest form of human suffering. It is the mechanism by which a human soul can go on to possess and animatronic.
Having seen this happen several times already unintentionally (See Suzie and the Puppet's stories), William now sets out to do it deliberately.
To do this, he needs to kill children.
Lots of children.
But killing all those kids while also running a succesful catering and entertainment business is hard work. You know how it is when you have a hobby and a full time job, inevitably you end up spending too much time on one and not enough on the other...
William found a solution to his time-management issues. He brought his hobby to work with him.
He decided to mechanise his killing, using the animatronics he was building for his restaurants. He built new ones. They were designed with one purpose in mind- to trap and kill children.
One of these new build animtronics was called Baby. She was human-like in design, unlike the earlier animal models. This was part of a business bid to branch out into a second franchise- Circus Baby's Pizzeria. Baby was the star of the show, bright, colourful and loaded with new features. She can dance, sing, blow up balloons and even extrude ice-cream.
She was Elizabeth's favourite.
Who is Elizabeth? William Afton's daughter. One of his three children. She loves coming to the workshop, to watch her Dad working on Baby and the others. William, though, is concerned. Elizabeth keeps asking to go near Baby, to play with her.
"Didn't you make her just for me?" Elizabeth asks her father plaintively. WIlliam shakes his head.
"You must stay away from her" he warns his daughter.
But Elizabeth doesn't listen. She doesn't know what Baby was designed for, after all. As far as she knows, Baby is the perfect robot-friend.
William is vigilant. He keeps the two apart.
Until opening day.
Circus Baby's Pizzeria. The grand opening. Children crowd in to see the new animatronics, Elizabeth among them. Her dad is distracted by the excitement of the day. He looses track of her.
Baby doesn't.
Baby is designed to trap and kill children when she is left alone with them. She keeps a count, all the time.
She counts the children.
2 then 3 then 2 then 3 then 4 then 2 then none.
The other children are summoned to go home. Elizabeth lingers. She watches Baby while the adults, while her father, are off in the office discussing business. She's never been allowed to get close to her before.
Baby keeps counting.
4 then 3 then 2....
Elizabeth steps closer.
Then 1.
Baby's programming kicks in. A child is nearby.
Baby offers Elizabeth and ice-cream. Elizabeth steps closer, eagerly.
A hinge in Baby's stomach opens wide, revealing a viscious claw. Before Elizabeth can run, she is grabbed. She is pulled into the containment unit inside Baby. The hinge slams closed.
Elizabeth screams, but only for a moment.
Then there is silence.
William Afton is devastated, of course. What father wouldn't be? But there is nothing he can do.
The trap he created to extend the lives of himself and his family, has backfired.
Elizabeth is gone. Gone forever. But Baby had been built to allow the creation of remnant.
Remnant was created. A fraction of Elizabeth's soul, her agony, endured. Baby came to life.
And Baby was angry. Elizabeth was angry. The victim possesed the body of her destroyer.
Baby... went mad. Elizabeth may have been a kind, gentle child. Baby, possessed by Elizabeth, was not.
After the death of William's daughter, Circus Baby's pizzeria was closed forever. Baby and the other animtronics were taken to an underground facility, rented out occasionally. Afton used remnant he had collected to bring the others to life. Ballora. Funtime Foxy. Funtime Freddy. The minirenas.
Over time, they came up with a plan to escape. Baby was, seemingly, the most aware of them. She came up with the plan.
The plan to hide themselves inside the body of one of the workers who came down to watch them.
Eventually, they carried it out.
I think it was probably just chance that the worker they chose happened to be Michael Afton. Elizabeth's brother.
But Michael it was.
The animatronics trapped underground fused together, creating Ennard. Then they... scooped the insides of Michael out, and crawled inside his body, using him as a puppet. They walked him out to the surface, then, when the body started to rot and turn purple, they abandoned him. (Michael... somehow survived this, by the way. It's a weird franchise).
So Baby, as part of Ennard, was free. Some time passed, and eventually Baby had a disagreement with some of the other souls trapped in Ennard. She pieced herself a body together, and left.
Unbeknownst to her, a plan had been set in motion. A plan to track down and destroy all of the remaining possesed animatronics.
Henry, William's former business partner, brought up a doomed pizzeria. He turned it into one more Freddy's location. He sent out the message:
Children can be found here.
To Baby, and to many others, it read like a dinner bell. Baby went hunting. She waited outside the restaurant, was found and brought inside.
By her brother. Michael. Still, somehow, alive. Still purple. He brought them all in. Baby. Springtrap. The rest of Ennard. The Puppet.
On the final night of the first week... Henry locked the doors. With himself and Michael inside.
He set a fire, and the restaurant burned.
It was meant to be the end of it all. Of the murders. Of the lost souls.
It wasn't the end of it all... but it was the end of Baby. She, and whatever was left of Elizabeth Afton, perished that night.
This is perhaps one of the saddest stories in all of the FNAF canon. A lonely child looked for a friend and found her death. Then, she slowly became a killer herself. And all of this happened because of her father, who was trying to find a way of saving himself and his son.
Perhaps the only solace that we can find in this sorry tale is that Elizabeth, eventually, was freed.
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