Chapter Text
Eclipse’s hands slapped on the carpeted floors of the bright orange hallway that led to Sun and Moons tower as he tripped, stumbling to stay upright while running.
The world shook beneath his feet as he zigzagged to avoid the white pentagram hands of Bloodmoon as they slammed down where’d he’d been inches before again and again. The red giant laughed maniacally behind them, clearly not taking this chase nearly as seriously as the now tiny Eclipse was. Their footsteps shook the floor and threw the now tiny bot off balance as he desperately searched for somewhere to hide.
This had been a mistake.
Everything about this had been a mistake!
Eclipse coughed through fans run ragged with fear and exertion and thanked whatever god was listening that the door that hid behind a poster in the theater was automatic if you had an animatronic signature big enough for it to recognize. The moment Bloodmoon was in range the door flew outward and the sun variant ran full tilt into the main theater, gunning it for the various seats.
Everything hurt.
Bloodmoon was right behind him.
Would hiding even work?
The red beast cackled.
“What’s wrong? Couldn’t resist the computer's siren song?” A pink shoe, completely different from the normal jester slippers, thumped down inches away from Eclipse's body. “As if our Sunshine's brother wouldn’t put security measures in place against you or any other? You know that computer is the Moon's shrine, a priority well above anyone's life, yours or mine.”
Another stomp.
“But it’s fine! For your stupidity on your parts we will dine!”
Eclipse, breathing hard without really needing to breathe, dove under one of the audience seats in the main theater.
He scrambled back as bright pink shoes slowly passed by his hiding spot, desperately trying to keep his fans from giving him away.
There was no way they didn't see him!
Under the seats he ran, twisting and sliding between the rows in an effort to lose himself to the shadows, desperate to escape the star-shaped pupils of the animatronic he once used as a tool.
Why did he ever try to mess with that damn computer?!
Somewhere below a white and red pentagram eye searched and found nothing.
Bloodmoon grumbled. There was a long, drawn out shhhsk ! sound as deadly sharp claws dragged across the theater carpet. A heavy but quiet shuffling signaled the more dangerous creatures' departure, though it was clear they weren't going far.
“You can't hide forever! We were made as a hunter!” The dual voices of Bloodmoon drawled in an almost sing-song tone.
God dammit this was a mistake!
He’d only wanted to know where Killcode had gone, or if he was still alive!
And, okay, maybe the plan to snoop around and see what all had been happening in his absence had also been thought of before, but still!
It had been a few weeks after all.
A month ago he’d defeated the celestial twins and had the star in his hands, poised to make the world in his image. Weeks ago there was no way anyone could beat him. Days ago October ended and everything changed.
Days ago Sun had expelled him from their body and sent his mind and code spiraling into the woods with magic, magic, that Eclipse didn’t even know he had let alone knew how to control!
Magic had been Moon's thing after all.
But somehow the formerly bright and bubbly animatronic had apparently not only learned to harness it, but had learned a spell that could banish his darker counterpart from the body they shared without risking a reset.
Eclipse had mocked him then. Sure as the day is bright that the goody-two-shoes wouldn't send him away. Wouldn’t be able to look into the eyes that were so similar to his own and send the angrier of them to his death.
But he had.
Sun spell, fumbled as it was, left Eclipse ragged and broken beyond repair in the woods somewhere. His life hanging only by the very end of his own stubborn threads. Alive because the only thing he knew how to do from the moment he woke up was fight.
He hadn’t wanted to die, but he was willing to let it happen.
Code can be backed up.
He could be backed up.
The only problem was that after dying in those woods his back-up had activated somewhere very dangerous. Somewhere he’d once intended to be but had completely forgotten all about in the nonsense leading up to his and Lunars takeover of the daycare.
His backup activated inside of Bloodmoons' head.
This was his very first (and not very smart) back-up.
He’d never intended for the combined maniacs to gain sentience so having a backup there was a good idea. A body he could possess if worse came to worst and his plans somehow failed. But they had gained awareness, they were alive, and they immediately rebelled and ran off after causing the bloody mess that was July sixteenth.
And there Eclipse was, stranded in their disgusting mindscape.
It was bad. He hated them and they hated him. They tortured him then, deep in their minds where his “body” couldn’t be torn apart but pain could be felt regardless. There was no escape. Bloodmoon is violent and unfocused, unable to do much besides tear things apart. Either Eclipse stayed in their mindscape until he could escape and use them as best he could or they would kill him.
So he improvised.
The pair, under Eclipse's begrudging guidance, had managed to drive Moon insane enough that his Killcode had activated, just as Eclipse had originally planned.
What wasn’t planned was the kill code gaining sentience as he and Bloodmoon had (probably should’ve expected that, looking back) and that Bloody would align far more with that violent, insane asshole's plan than Eclipse, since the twins already hated working with the orange sun model.
Eclipse had been put into a computer, trapped by the killer code he didn’t make and the ones he did to be their version of a supercomputer. Smart enough to do everything they wanted but with the added bonus of being able to be threatened with death if he refused to do as they commanded. Everything seemed to be falling in place for the quadruplet of violent codes. Or, at least three out of four of them.
Then Bloodmoon died.
Eclipse never bothered to look into how or why, but their animatronic signature just dropped off the face of the planet one day and the captured Sun look-alike, never a fan of them anyway, was unapologetically sarcastic when he told Killcode only to find the larger bot hadn’t given a single fuck either. Except for a mere moment of Killcode expressing how close he was to the twins, the mission had carried on quite quickly. Not a morsel of mourning for the twins.
The older code claimed they cared about the bleeding twins like family.
Like a father to children.
Yeah, some family.
Bloomoon was a tool. Yes they called each other brothers and technically they were alive, but they were tools to be used and that tool had been broken. Oh well, life goes on. They had never been that helpful for either celestial bot's plans anyway so there was no tears shed when they’d vanished nor any curiosity as to why. At least not from Eclipse. Killcode apparently wanted to know how they died but never really bothered to look into it.
Some father he is.
Life carried on and the older of them had gone “home,” ready to wait until Moon slept in order to continue working on whatever plan Eclipse came up with to end humanity.
But then Killcode didn’t show up one day.
Or the next.
Then weeks passed without a peep from the older code.
Then Eclipse was left all alone.
Already fed up with Killcode (the arrogant asshole he is) and not wanting to be abandoned again, the orange Sun model had crafted a body for himself over the next few weeks or so and escaped. The only problem was that he was actually terrified of Killcode coming back, finding him gone, and tracking him down as a traitor or something stupid. So he set out to find out where the older of them had gone off too.
Breaking into the daycare was easy.
Getting to Moon's computer was suspiciously easy.
Hacking into it should have been a piece of cake.
But the moment the violent sun had touched the arcade machine that housed the intelligent A.I. there was a bright light and pain laced through his entire body and then he was falling !
Thankfully he was in Moon's room and so there were pillows scattered everywhere from the naptime attendants' own erratic sleeping style. A quick look down showed that Eclipse had been shrunk down considerably, He was barely shorter than a barbie doll, maybe ten inches if he had to guess. Way too small to do anything with the computer.
Too small to do anything else anywhere, frankly.
So now not only did he not know where Killcode was, or if they were even alive, but moments later they’d heard a familiar and terrifying laugh as the Bloodmoon twins entered through the tube that led into the main room.
They were alive.
And still didn’t like him much.
And so here he was, cowering under a theater chair as the murderous code he’d created as a distraction for the Sun and Moon brothers hunted him down instead. He could see pink shoes they didn’t use to sport slowly trekking up and down the slanted aisle between the groups of seats. He could hear their teeth clicking together in anticipation. He could see how their body spiked wildly in different directions, barely containing their excitement for a hunt.
They were playing with him, he knew it. They could’ve caught him at any time from Moon's room to now so there was no question that the blood themed twins were just having their version of fun before they tore him apart.
The orange sun took a deep breath and crouched in his hiding spot, trying to think of a plan.
Somewhere above him one of the chairs creaked. Were they leaning on it? He couldn’t see from here.
He had to distract them, or juke them into thinking he’d gone elsewhere so he could escape and-
And what? How long would his battery last at this height? How was he supposed to charge? Or forget charging, how was he supposed to run fast enough to escape an animatronic hundreds of times his height and speed? Bloodmoon could hunt down fully grown animatronics with ease, his little body would be nothing to them. Even if he did manage to escape by some miracle, what would he do? Could this be fixed? Probably not at this height, at least not quickly. Bloodmmon was ruthless when they were given something to hunt so they weren’t just going to give up just because they lost track of him for a bit.
There was no way out of this, was there?
Eclipse shook his head.
Focus. Anything was better than being eaten by the murderous codes he once considered a tool for himself.
Who they were a tool for now was a question for later.
There was no other reason for them to still be at the pizzaplex, let alone anywhere near the daycare, if something wasn’t forcing them to be here.
Eclipse looked around for something to help him escape when his eyes landed on something. A bouncy ball. A child must have lost it the last time they were brought to the theater and never returned for it. It was slightly wedged between the seats so it didn’t go rolling down the slope toward the main stage below.
Perfect.
Slowly, quietly, Eclipse scurried under various chairs to the ball. It took some wiggling and falling on his back before he was able to get it free but once it was he heaved it into his arms to carry it to one of the edge seats. Fans screamed from the exertion. Endoskeleton joints cracked and creaked quietly as he hefted the rubber thing over the other chairs' supports back toward his spot. It wasn’t necessarily heavy, but everything already hurt from whatever blast did this to him in the first place so moving like this was agony.
He prayed Bloodmoon wasn’t close enough to just reach under and grab him.
The ball was about half the size of him and trying to carry it without making any noises of effort took every bit of self control he had, but he did it. Plopping the ball down he laid on it for a minute, wondering what his battery was at, before using every servo in his body to shove the thing forward.
God everything hurt so much.
Why hasn’t he shut down yet? Terror?
Probably terror.
The large ball skittered onto the ramp that led down into the lower seats and the main stage before picking up speed and rolling away. Eclipse waited, fans forced into silence as he held his breath, until in the distance a small thump! could be heard.
Pink shoes and white accented pants flew down the ramp toward the sound.
The solar model backed up quickly; the wind from the red beast ruffling his makeshift jester outfit, one so much darker than that of Sun or Moon. Bloodmoon could be heard panting at the anticipation of a kill. Sounds of cloth covered shaped blocks and other toys were thrown about in their excitement, the large objects making loud shushing noises as they landed strewn across the carpet of the theater.
Before he could think anymore about what was happening Eclipse threw himself out from under the chair and was turning to scramble up the ramp when something wrapped around his middle and lifted.
“NO!” He screamed. He kicked and clawed at the fingers raising him higher and higher to see-
Another Bloodmoon?
