FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

--1

"Is it anything like you expected?"

"I... don't exactly know yet." Desmond followed the sensitive bounces of his multimeter. The pathways in an animatronic's brain were incredibly resilient in many ways, but terribly fragile when exposed to the open air. Even in his makeshift white room, looking into the pirate vixen's opened skull felt taboo and dangerous. It wasn't the same as looking at the diagrams from the manufacturer. An errant eyelash could spell disaster. In a strange way, a way which would make him feel bad later on, he was glad it was Foxy he was examining and not Chica.

Everything he knew about their anatomy (now that's a funny word, don't only living things have anatomy?) told him that the minuscule voltage in Foxy's pathways was nominal. He had taken her through a little battery of tests of his own devising; the manufacturer understandably didn't have a cheat sheet when it came to their machines suddenly developing intelligence.

He'd had Foxy answer basic questions both in her pirate accent and the reserved tone she affected when it was just the two of them, or when she was alone with one of her kind. The questions were simple, consisting of either recollections (her name, his name, the name of the club, the number of bands on his tail) or simple logic and calculation. And through all of it, Foxy didn't break a proverbial sweat. Everything was in tolerance.

Just the fact that Desmond was having a conversation with her should have been spiking her voltage through the roof, shouldn't it? That was unexpected behavior if he'd ever seen any. None of them were supposed to talk or wonder or, god forbid, think - but they did. They did, and it was bad for their components. So where was the evidence?

"Foxy," Desmond said, his voice muffled by the surgeon's mask wrapped around his snout, "I think I might have made a mistake."

The pirate vixen rolled her yellow eyes up, trying and failing to look at Desmond, standing behind her prone self. "A mistake? About what?"

"About this," the fox sighed, touching two other points in her pathways and getting the same results. "About your problem. I'm not seeing it, I think I was wrong."

Foxy listened to the tired drone in his voice. She guessed he must have been feeling miserable, and she was right. Desmond had a cold knot in his belly. His heart felt heavy. "You tried," she said, trying to sound supportive, but it was hard to keep the disappointment out of her voice. "Do you want to put me back together, then?"

Though Desmond kept checking points, the gesture was arbitrary. Not even a thoughtful debate on the finer points of consciousness nor a nerdy discussion of the works and thoughts of Isaac Asimov had provoked the slightest surge in Foxy's brain. It reminded him of troubleshooting his mom's dilapidated laptop - trying to fix something so heinously old, still running Windows 2000, had very nearly been the end of his sanity. There had been no logic to fixing that: the problems were demonstrably there, but actually isolating them was impossible. The same trigger never worked twice, but something else would always cause the infamous blue screen to crop up again. Desmond swallowed hard. In the end, he'd just thrown out his mom's laptop and surprised her with a brand new one which she still used to this day. He whined.

"Oh, Desmond," Foxy crowed. "I know you've tried your best. Don't beat yourself up."

The foxcoon grunted and put away the multimeter. He chewed on his lip, leaning over Foxy, blotting out the sharp white light above. He gazed downward, meeting the vixen's eyes at a strange angle. Her face was hard to read upside-down, but he knew her eyes were nervous. Gently and smiling even though she couldn't see it, he touched her cheek. "I swear. I swear, Foxy, I'll figure it out. Just... not yet, all right?"

"I don't mean to be alarmist, Desmond, but," Foxy chuckled lamely, as Desmond performed the slow and careful work of reattaching her scalp, "this may not be an issue that afford us a lot of time. Are you sure you don't want to continue examining me now?"

It was slow work to re-affix her fake skin. Like real skin but at a much faster rate, it would re-affix itself once put into place; he had to take care to get it aligned correctly, however. Her ears twitched against his arm, a creepy feeling, but one he ignored. "There's isn't anything I can do right now," he plainly said. "I want you to just be careful. If you feel like something is going wrong, anything at all, you tell me. Or you tell one of the others, and they'll tell me. If you think you're going to keel over," he pulled off his mask with Foxy's scalp safely reattached, and he realized how sweaty he was now, "then at least do it somewhere secluded. If the boss sees you like that, I don't know what he'll do."

Except Desmond did know - and Foxy had to have known too. He was already so wary of the animatronics, and rightly so, Desmond thought sometimes. He didn't know his animatronics were actually alive and that that made him a peculiar kind of slave owner. But if he did know, well, something Desmond had read years ago sprang into mind: putting a critter on the endangered species list was basically signing its death warrant. A farmer finds a dodo on his property, he's going to kill it, burn it, bury it, whatever he has to do to get rid of it. He doesn't want his land becoming an endangered species habitat to be presently snapped up by the government.

If the boss were to learn that the animatronics he'd spent tens of thousands of dollars on had developed personalities and wants and dreams (and love Desmond numbly thought), he was more likely to scrap them and demand refunds on his defective purchases than he was to let them loose so they could grow. Desmond knew it. He clenched his jaws and gripped Foxy's shoulders, squeezing them tightly.

The vixen put her soft left paw over his. The other was a hook, and she rubbed his hip with the back of it. "Desmond," she cooed.

"What is it, Foxy?"

She pressed against his belly, tilting her head back to look up into his eyes. She forced a snaggletoothed smile. "Smile for me, cutie. Don't put me in the ground yet."

Desmond chuckled, but it was a lame noise. His eyes appeared puffy. Although this was incredibly subtle, Foxy's computer-controlled eyes were built to catch subtleties. She gently shrugged off his paws then stood up, and she wrapped her stout arms around him. A rumble rose in her chest, reverberating through her fat breasts. She smooched his lips and said, "Maybe I should go get back to work."

The foxcoon bristled, ears splaying and jowls tugging up to show teeth. "That could make it worse!"

Foxy shut him down with a firm, quick smooch on his lips and teeth. "And not working is going to make the boss wonder what his star moneymaker is up to. Sword of Damocles, isn't it?"

The vixen eased off of Desmond and stepped through the plastic sheets he'd hung up to make his white room. She held them apart and obligingly gestured with her hook. "Maybe you should work, too. On something else. Mangle says she needs help with something."

He turned off the light and followed her out of the white room, then pulled off the mask completely and let his hair out of the tacky shower cap he'd been hiding it in. It was curled and messy, but he seemed too perturbed to care about brushing it. "What does she need help with?" he blithely asked, even as he walked to the intercom.

"Find out for yourself," Foxy said, and shrugged. Her thick tits heaved and she was disappointed that Desmond didn't watch it happen. "Desmond?"

Just then, he was sitting in his chair. He swiveled around to face her, looking tired with his wrists on his knees, paws dangling limp between them.

Foxy smiled and winked. "I love you," she said calmly before she sashayed out the door. She glanced over her shoulder and said, "Maybe not like Chica does. And that disappoints me a bit. But I do care about you."

Desmond smiled, but his eyes were sad. "I love you too. Of course I do, I mean. You know that - right?"

She nodded. "Back to work now. I'll let you know if anything happens."

"Likewise."

When Foxy was out of sight around the bend, Desmond swiveled back to his desk and pushed down Mangle's call button. "Yeah? Foxy said you needed something?"

"I do, yes," Mangle evenly said. "Mind if I come now?"

"I'm not doing anything," the foxcoon muttered. He sat back with his fingers laced across his belly, letting out a long puff of air. "Not doing a fucking thing," he said to himself.

--2

"Seriously, this is what you wanted help with?"

The white and pink vixen smiled daintily. Without her clownish red lipstick on, her face looked remarkably more pretty. "I can do a lot of things. Needlework isn't one of them." She tilted her head, and her trendy tuft of hair flopped from one side to the other, dangling over her eye for a cute effect. "Are you saying you can't mend it?"

Desmond turned the frilly tutu end over end. The girlishness of it made him smirk, albeit in an endeared way. A noticeable rend gaped in the hip, just below the fluffy white waistband. "I actually don't know how to sew. Not presentably, I mean. I can fix a hole in a shirt--."

"That a certain scurvy, curvy pirate put there with her hook?" Mangle sardonically asked, tilting her head to the other side, the flop of her hair going with it.

The foxcoon sneered. "Something like that." He set it on the workbench, where it looked decidedly out of place next to a 3D printing of Foxy's skull, another one of an animatronic brain, and a plate with a half-eaten slice of pepperoni pizza on it. He clapped his paws onto his knees and said, "My mom's been wanting to visit me anyway. I'm sure she'd do it if I--, if we asked."

At this, Mangle's smile lit up. "Your mother? My goodness, but I'd love to meet the noble Naomi. I do wonder what she'd think of this little... place we call home, though," she murmured, rubbing her chin.

Desmond smiled wanly. "She knows the gist of the place. She doesn't know about your special properties, but she's always been a little on the odd side. She's quick to accept weird shit." He shrugged. "I guess you have to be cool to adopt someone who's almost an adult, right?"

"Well, doesn't that settle it, then?" asked Mangle, her smile as broad as it was pleased. She smooched Desmond on the cheek, but when he grabbed her hips, she paused and narrowed her smile into something more coy. "Oh, my. Yyye-e-es?"

A coy smile of his own on full display, Desmond caressed Mangle's naked behind and cupped her soft, round ass cheeks. They were not as impressive as Foxy's or even Chica's, but still a handful in their own right. "It's gonna take me some real effort to get her out here. I gotta sweet-talk her, then I have to help her find a hotel room, and I'm gonna be spending at least a weekend around town with her..."

Mangle began to grin. She dropped smoothly to her knees and pushed her palms into the foxcoon's groin. "Mmm, I see. A bit of tit for tat, is that it?"

Desmond relaxed in the chair, pushing out his hips slightly. He puffed a sigh and let his arms fall slack on the rests. Mangle noticed that he was already becoming hard. "You could call it that, but I have this feeling you like seeing my oh-face," he chuckled.

She rolled her eyes, still grinning. With virtually no effort she opened the fly of his gaudy black slacks. "Sadly true. I just can't resist watching you bite your bottom lip and roll back your eyes. No wonder Bonnie did it to you nine times in one night."

The foxcoon huffed. "It was like three or four, maybe five," he groused - but when Mangle exposed his small penis and teased its somewhat hidden glans with her thumb, he closed his eyes and shuddered. It was a shadow of the oh-face Mangle had described. "God..."

"You've been working very hard to fix Foxy," Mangle purred, grasping him in the loop of a thumb and forefinger. She pushed downward, tugging back the foreskin to fully bare the glans which tiredly oozed a wad of pre. Giggling, she licked it up then smooched the head of his penis. "Mmm. Let me reward you for that hard work. You deserve this."

"I haven't actually fixed anything yet," Desmond said, beginning to frown.

"You will. I know it." And with that firmly stated, the vixen took Desmond past her gentle, undecorated lips, beginning at once to suckle and squeeze with her mouth. Her skilled ministrations caused Desmond to croon. He rested back in his chair, making it creak on its shaft.

Mangle closed her yellow, luminescent eyes. A smile creased the corners of her mouth, and she worked the foxcoon carefully. She reached up, fondling his narrow chest. She found the topmost button of his gaudy shirt and skilfully popped it open, then slid his downy white fluff through her fingers, rubbing down, then up to his neck, seeming eager to feel him in general.

Desmond took Mangle's paw in his but didn't pull it away from his body, instead laying his fingers across hers. "You're re-e-eally trying to butter me up, huh?"

The look which flashed across Mangle's eyes, seen in but a glimpse, said guilty as charged. She fluttered her pretty eyelashes at him and pushed her short white snout further into his lap, making the remaining few inches of his penis simply vanish. She could have sucked him down to the balls (and even included those, really) right from the start, but she knew that didn't make a man feel big. To make them feel big, you had to act like it was a challenge to take it all. Desmond knew her ways, but seemed to appreciate the window dressing all the same. He rubbed softly through her hair and purred with only a hint of irony, "Pretty big, huh?"

She knew like Chica and the others that Desmond loved to have his chops busted for his small penis. To the chicken and the pirate, teasing came easily as part of their personas, Freddy had a massive cock to compare it to, and Bonnie was a playful size queen. Mangle, however, was just too much of a nice girl. When Desmond made that playful uttering, Mangle replied with absolute conviction, "Mmhmm!" It didn't matter that she was able to wrap her tongue around it twice with room to spare. She wanted him to feel big.

He gazed down at her, his eyes glassy with pleasure and affection. "This is nice," he gently said, his smile oozing sleaze. The tone had an implicit but... to it.

Mangle popped her soft lips off of Desmond's shaft, and with the broken suction came a twinge of pleasure which made Desmond groan and grip the armrests. When he opened his eyes again and peered at the vixen, he saw a cute sight: she was nosing gently where his shaft met his scrotum. Her paws were closed loosely around the sides of the seat, and her tail swished back and forth in a way he found both lewd and playful.

"Were you always this much of a tease?" Desmond asked her, trying to sound exasperated, but the dreamy smile on his face gave him away. "Or did you learn to act like this?"

She stood and bent over him in the chair, resting her paws over his on the armrests. She kissed his lips and answered with a purr, "A little of column A, and a little of column B. But suffice it to say that, coy and sweet and perfect though I may be, I can also be very forceful, as your lovely Chica can be." She saw the primal thrill on his face and chose to bite, though softly, upon his quivering lip. When he squealed, she clutched his penis and growled, nose to nose with him, "Remove your pants, Desmond. And lie on your belly. I don't particularly care where you do so."

The foxcoon nearly stumbled out of the chair. His slacks sagged when he stood and bunched around his knees. He clumsily pushed them down and off and kicked off his dress shoes without touching the laces. He had just begun to pull down his briefs when the pink and white vixen nudged him toward his cot and kept pushing him along. On the way, she shoved the door shut and pressed down the lock button. "On your stomach, dear boy," she lowly commanded of him.

The tone was not distinctly Foxy's, or Chica's, or Freddy's, forceful though those three could be; it was still clearly Mangle making demands. Desmond was compelled to be obedient simply because he liked her so much. The long-haired fox draped himself over his hanging cot, putting one knee up on it, the other foot staying on the floor with his briefs hooked about it. He knew exactly what was coming.

Mangle hadn't taken the time to appreciate Desmond's bottom until that particular moment. She clutched his orange and white cheeks in her soft paws and gave them a squeeze, then pulled them apart and observed the small, slightly swollen pink pucker between them. "It appears Freddy keeps you well-trained," she chuckled. "Or perhaps you train yourself?"

"Oh, a little of column A," Desmond laughed, and he let the echo stop there. "Let's just say I keep more than my extra shirts in the closet."

"And, so I've been told, you're familiar with Foxy's pegging leg, as she calls it," said Mangle, and then she hawked and spat on Desmond's anus. A shiver raced up his spine at the feeling of Mangle's cold, synthetic saliva, manifesting most obviously when his tail shot straight up like an exclamation point above his rear. "I know what an ass slut you can be," the vixen growled, kneading Desmond's cheeks in symmetrical rubs. His moistened pucker appeared and vanished, appeared and vanished, and she watched it with a close and thoughtful eye.

Desmond rocked back on his foot, trying to bump his butt into the vixen. Mangle shoved him firmly into the cot again and he squeaked, "Don't feel too proud of yourself, it's not like you need to be an animatronic to notice that."

She gave him a quick shock, although the action wasn't actually much of a surprise, when she slurped up through the crack of his ass. Desmond's soft cry made her laugh against the fluff of his tail. "Ah, so that's why the others like to rim you - you make cute noises!"

The foxcoon grumbled as if to say I'm not cute, dammit! He huffed, "Freddy's better at it than you are."

Mangle smiled. "Shall I call for him? I'm sure he'd be happy to drop whatever he's doing to come and show me how to pleasure you best."

"I swear to god, if you already called him--," Desmond groaned, splaying down his ears and gripping the edges of his cot.

With a coquettish giggle, Mangle began to stroke along Desmond's tail, flattening its fluff and watching with some amusement as it dramatically puffed up as soon as her fingers cleared it. "What if I did, hmm? Will you spank me? Oh, will I have been naughty?"

She listened to Desmond sputter and huff, finding it so very cute. Pushing her snout into the crack of his ass came easily to her; rimming him was exciting. It wasn't a pleasure she often experienced, and hearing Desmond's bitchy noises wind down into soft, pleasured huffs was a unique pleasure of its own.

Desmond stared at the featureless wall, chewing his bottom lip, making it a little swollen and raw. His small penis throbbed on the cot, staining its green cotton a dark emerald shade. "Fuck," he whispered, glancing over his shoulder. He could see only the top of Mangle's head, her cute and short hair. She was heard better than seen, luridly suckling and slobbering his behind. Desmond thought to compliment her later on; her showmanship was fantastic.

He put his head down on the bed and closed his eyes. "That feels good, sweetie," he sighed, sounding completely calm by then. "Thank you..."

Mangle often smiled, but did so now with a particular glow. She nibbled through the thin fur in his crack and then on the root of his tail. "You're more than welcome, dear little Desmond." Then she gave his pucker a wet kiss, really smacking her lips on it. To her pleasure, Desmond gasped.

"I think you might be better at that than Freddy," he tentatively said.

She chuckled, rubbing his buttocks. "For the well-being of your throat, I will keep that opinion between the two of us," said the vixen. Standing behind Desmond now, she nudged his hip and coaxed him to roll over. "Do you think your cot can hold both of us?" she wryly asked.

"I'd rather not try it," he giggled. "I don't exactly wanna sleep on the floor."

"No fun," Mangle pouted, but she implicitly acquiesced when she pulled him to his feet. She gave him a fond kiss on the forehead and another between his eyes, then spun gracefully on her heel - for ballet was her muse - and placed her paws on one of the wooden beams in the wall with dainty mildness. She pushed with her arms, sliding her toes along the tile, and thus bent her back and perked her bottom outward.

"I'm yours," she purred to him, her glowing eye seen in just a glint over her shoulder.

Desmond licked his lips. He almost felt like some defiler when he grabbed the vixen by her hips, and even dirtier than that as he pried apart the cheeks of her bottom, exposing pink fur and pinker flesh, all synthetic but terribly realistic. He slowly, reverently brought his groin nearer to her and pushed his aching meat against her pussylips. They gave with his nudge, parting easily but grasping like a damp flytrap. He slid in trembling, and rested his soft paws on her shoulders. "Goddamn," he whuffed, splaying his ears down. "You're perfect."

"So I am," Mangle cooed, speaking with no conceit. She swished her tail against his handsome, young face, and smiled when he wrapped his arm around it, nuzzled into its fluff. "Go on, dear. There's nothing sacred here. Fuck me."

For just a moment, Desmond wanted to argue that there was something sacred. She and the others were life forms that weren't supposed to exist, so wasn't that important and special? But maybe she was right - though whether she was or wasn't, Desmond suddenly understood the real reason he was hesitating: he was already painfully close. She had pressed all the right buttons by licking him, had built him up just right, and now he was poised to fall all over himself when he shot after a mere three or four pumps.

Desmond kept his loins flush to Mangle and stroked her lithe body. He cupped her small, but firm breasts and tweaked their nipples softly, making her coo and moan. "Oh, Desmond," she whispered to him. "You've such soft, gentle paws. I do love how they feel."

He rested on her, knowing she could take his weight, and nosed her ear, breathing across it as he nibbled its rim. He chuckled, "All this so I'll get your tutu fixed?"

"Oh, hush," she laughed. "Fu-u-uck me-e-e. Pretend I'm Foxy or Bonnie and just nail me."

The foxcoon started to move his hips mildly. Mangle was slick inside - as all of them were - and gripped him in soft, repetitive gulps with her vaginal muscles. Her cool faux flesh milked him, conforming deliberately to the small size of his penis. Her body exuded vulpine musk in considerable quantities, endearing her to him on the most basic levels. "Mmm, don't you love this?" she sighed.

"I do-o-o, gawd," Desmond breathed, putting his paws on the vixen's shoulders. Already slow and stunted, his movements became shaky as well. "Mango, I'm really--, ooh, gawd... I can't hold out."

"So don't try to," she said, tone low but encouraging. Nobody but us will know how quick you were, this tone said. "Cum for me. I'll trigger my own orgasm manually, and we'll share our afterglow." Over her shoulder, she smiled at him and winked. "Isn't it fun to fuck an animatronic? You don't even have to make me cum."

Desmond grinned, but his cheeks were rosy and his ears flat. He wanted to say something clever but couldn't, finding himself tongue-tied in the face of his climax. He clutched her breasts again, pressing his chest to her back, and he bucked into her supple muff two, three, four times... and then he came.

It was with a small, gentle cry that the foxcoon let loose. His spunk was in proportion with his size - of limited volume - but Mangle appreciated the enthusiasm behind it. The pleasure was mild, not enough to get her there, so she cheated just as she promised she would. It was a simple function of her anatomy to be able to trigger an orgasm of her own volition, but one she and the others tended not to use. She was so unused to such a 0-to-60 sensation that the jolt of pleasure made her squeal and grimace. She gripped the wall beam tightly, denting the wood with her digits; she clenched upon Desmond with considerable power, enough to milk him like nothing he'd ever felt before, but not enough to maim. He shuddered in what was plainly bliss and collapsed on her.

Mangle's cool honey oozed around Desmond's small shaft, wetting fur first, then the floor in a syrupy drip. It dribbled between their twitching feet. She let fly a long, shuddering moan and muttered in it, "Ooh, goodness, I wasn't ready for that..."

The two foxes rested there, Mangle stiff as a board save for her simulated breathing, and Desmond just slack against her. If not for his slow breaths, it would have been fair to think he was dead. "Mmmmm," he warmly droned.

Being a machine, Mangle could shake off her afterglow quickly. Generally she and the others preferred not to, but with the mannerisms of an excited child, she said clearly, "Now what of my skirt, hmm?"

"Give me a minute to stop shaking," Desmond feebly, but cutely bitched. He nipped the rim of one of Mangle's ears, making it twitch. She giggled. With jellied muscles in his legs, he straightened up and wobbled, grabbing her hips for support. His semi-hard penis slipped out of her but the stickiness of their loins kept them somewhat glued together. "I haven't had an orgasm like that since, umm..."

Mangle quickly went through the combined recollections of herself and her fellow animatronics. She smiled. "Since you came on Foxy's back? Don't worry," she winked, "I won't tell Chica."

Desmond frowned. He looked cute when he pouted. "Thanks," he grumbled. "Where're my pants at...?"

--3

"Well, sure, you know I'd love to see you, and I've been wanting to see where my boy works, anyway."

He glanced at Mangle's expectant eyes. Her fingers were steepled before her chin, tail swishing. The skirt lay in a heap on the workbench. "Hey. Mom. Before I let you go, I'm wondering if you can bring your sewing kit." Happy relief flushed Mangle's face. She silently pecked Desmond on the forehead and sauntered off, hips swaying alluringly. Desmond followed her with his eyes, all the way out of the room.

Naomi chuckled. "Now, I thought I showed you how to sew..."

"You did, you did," Desmond grumbled. "Just not presentably."

"Well, you need to work on that. I'm going to make you watch when I do it."

He toyed with his braid. "All right, all ri-i-ight. You don't have to treat me like I'm a little kid."

"I never got to know you as one," Naomi was quick to reply. "I have to get my licks in now."

Desmond was grinning, but he tried to sound curt when he said, "Anyway, I'll book you a room at the, uhhh, the Westin in town. We can meet up there, and--."

"Nope, no, sorry," Naomi said, and her own smile was obvious in her tone. "You aren't going to squirm out of it. I want to see where you work with my own two eyes, sweetie."

"You're really not gonna like it."

"You'd be surprised - your mom gets told now and then that she's pretty cool," Naomi modestly said. "See you in a few days, honey. I love you."

He smiled. His cheeks flushed. "I love you too."

--4

The crocodile owner of Freddy Pimpbear's Pussy pulled off his headset, putting it on the desk. Bugging Desmond's room had been morally dubious, and the thing tended to fail whenever one of them was in the room, but his son said he could correct that flaw by the end of the week.

He didn't appreciate his mechanic with his highfalutin robotics degree tinkering with his expensive animatronics. At first he thought it was just his imagination, but no, it was too consistent: they gave him dirty looks when he made his appearances outside of his office. Sex with them was the very definition of utilitarian, so either he was just amazingly jaded, or the guests were lying about their fantastic sexual encounters with the animatronic talent. He just knew that Desmond had reprogrammed them to dislike him.

In spite of it all, he sat back and smiled. When he had enough evidence, he'd confront the little bastard. If things went well, maybe he could even do it in front of his mom and show her what a rotten liar she'd raised. Now that would be good comeuppance for tampering with over $100,000 worth of kit, but payback for the thousands more he was looking at to have them re-flashed was going to involve him, his mechanic, and an imminent trip to the emergency room.

He stepped into the threshold of Desmond's workroom-slash-dorm, knocking on the open door. "Hello, Desmond. Mind if I come in?"

Desmond turned his head, looked at him, and somehow resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The boss looked like he was heading to a ranch with his second skin of Levi's, a button-down flannel, and shitkicker cowboy boots which he was pretty sure must have constituted a form of cannibalism on a crocodile. "Hello, Mr. Van Agteren," he said amicably, turning back to the 3D printing of Foxy's skull. "You own the place, come on in."

"Well, you know, I try to give you some privacy. This is, after all, where you kinda live, isn't it? Under my roof here?" the crocodile said in a musing tone, but also amicably. He put a scaly hand on Desmond's shoulder. The boy flinched. Mr. Van Agteren liked that.

"Yeah. That's how it is, sir."

He put on a little pressure. His long tail whipped at the air. "Doing a little work? Looks like the pirate one, if I remember the blueprints right."

"Just keeping brushed-up on the anatomy. Never know when I might have to do brain surgery, huh?" Desmond said, trying to sound jovial.

Mr. Van Agteren clapped Desmond on his bony shoulder and laughed. "Oh, come on. No need for that. You just need to lube up the moving parts. Leave the brain surgery to the eggheads who built it."

Desmond set down the plastic skull gingerly and clasped his paws in his lap. "Maybe you're right." Swiveling in his chair, he tried to meet the crocodile's eyes, but instead found himself staring into his belly. He craned his head back, which only made the boss seem larger. "Um. What can I do for you, sir?"

"I just came to say you're doing good work. Nice to have you on the payroll, son." He patted the fox's shoulder and smiled. It was entirely wooden and unconvincing. "Oh... what's the tutu for?"

"That's for Mangle," he chirped, and then his expression began to falter. "She--, you know. It looks good on her, people like--."

"The pink one? It's programmed to just be a stripper," Mr. Van Agteren quietly said. "To even make it wear a tutu, it'd need to be reprogrammed."

At that particular moment, Desmond had never wanted a distraction so badly in all his life. He tried to smile coolly, like Freddy had shown him, but it just appeared lopsided. He looked like a teenager whose parents had just found the weed he kept hidden in his sock drawer.

"You can--, you know. Suggest things to them," said the young mechanic.

"Oh, that's right. I forgot. So, did you suggest that to it, Desmond? That it should wear a tutu?" He tilted his head, and rested his palm on the workbench. It slightly creaked under the weight of his scaly body.

"I might have mentioned it," the fox answered in a low, guarded tone. "Patrons like it. I did a good thing, as far as I'm concerned."

Mr. Van Agteren studied the boy's face. The situation was that of a stern father giving his lying son enough rope to noose himself up with, and it was one Mr. Van Agteren was well-rehearsed in. "I see." He glanced at the tutu, considering ripping it apart just to see how the boy would react. He wanted to destroy something, and actually wanted it to be the boy's face, but that wouldn't do. Not yet. Now his voice became cold and tight, and Desmond found himself missing that fake jocularity, which at least cut the tension at times. "I hear the pirate one is having some issues. Something about a crash. You should have told me."

Desmond felt a pang of panic; adrenaline left the shitty taste of pennies in his mouth. "Well, I'm the--, the mechanic, you know," he murmured. A smile was forced. "You don't want to be bothered when one of them needs a nut tightened or a rip sutured, right? You have a business to run."

Suddenly the crocodile's voice was thunderous and savage, tearing through the open halls and spaces of the club like a tsunami. "I want to fucking know when one of them might cost me ten grand just for a fucking technician to come out here and take it apart, boy!" Spittle flew from his craggy lips, spattering into Desmond's fur, but the boy didn't dare break eye contact to wipe it off. His lip quivered, but he kept his back straight. "Do you fucking get that, boy?" he added in a moody hiss, and he thrust his snout so close to the fox's that his hard, rough nose met the black button of Desmond's. "Jesus fucking Christ! These aren't fucking Lego sets you can just take apart and put back together, you little half-breed jism stain! I invested more money in those robots than you'll make in fifty years! So if that fucking pirate," he snapped his arm and pointed out the door, "is not fixed and sucking dicks by tomorrow, I'm having it dismantled!"

"You can't do that!" Now Desmond started to cry, but the tears were spurred by something besides childlike fear of loud noises and reprimand by an elder: anger. But it was more than that; it was something bilious and black deep inside of him. It was an emotion he hadn't felt since Naomi's affection emboldened him to stand up to his biological mother and cast her off: he felt rage. He stood up, fingers balling into fists, and startled the crocodile into a brief backpedal. The balance of power had shifted, though only mildly. "I'll get her fixed! You don't need to scream at me!"

The crocodile's fury was close to boiling over, but his rapt audience was gone. He hadn't expected the boy to stand up to him. If I didn't want to catch this little shit with his pants down, I'd bust his lip and throw him out the fucking door right now, he thought, trying to cool himself down. His scheming mind was the voice of reason, dousing his red-hot temper with cold, hard facts. Let the little bastard keep tinkering. If he cares about these things so much, he'll really cry when you erase all that tampering he's done.

"I can scream at who I want," Mr. Van Agteren miserably hissed. He found it hard to meet Desmond's eyes now, because although the fox was crying, he had a strange presence in his gaze. He wasn't exactly afraid of the faggot... but he wondered if the robots would come to his aid if things turned physical. He backed away, letting out a huff. "No more suggestions. Nothing about them is to change without my approval. Get the pirate fixed or I'm sending it back to the manufacturer."

"I'll fix her," Desmond said with a deadly edge in his voice. "Mr. Van Agteren."

The crocodile actually winced. Desmond had said his name, but somehow said it to mean fuck you. He left with not another word, slamming the door at his back.

Desmond fell into his office chair, his limbs all giving out at once. He slumped over the workbench, rested his head on his folded arms and cried.

All of them had heard. Bonnie had been close enough to pick up the whole exchange clearly. He sent it to the others. Chica, Mangle, Bonnie, Freddy, all of them felt hideous anger and indignation. Foxy wished to commiserate but pragmatically chose to shut herself down, worrying the high emotions would trigger another crash.

(One of us needs to do something.) It was Mangle who said it. (He's hurt Desmond.)

Bonnie weighed in: (He only yelled at him. I'm going to check on him now. Hold him, comfort him. He needs one of us. I think we should keep our heads on straight.)

Chica was the most hostile... yet she acquiesced to the bunny's suggestion and stood down. Mangle did too. Freddy agreed, as well.

But Freddy was lying.