How do you change a players character without using startercharacter?

Let's start with some context as it might be easier to follow along. I'm making a game where you spawn as either the nightguard or a random animatronic. The nightguard works fine. The issue is the animatronic. At first it works fine, the player posseses the custom character and it all runs pretty smooth. But after about 5 seconds the custom character dissapears and the player resets returning to the base character.

Here is the code: Some context v is the player. v.Character:destroy() local freddy = game.ReplicatedStorage.Animatronics:WaitForChild("Freddy"):Clone() freddy.Parent = workspace freddy.Name = v.Name v.Character = freddy