Chapter 3

Why Insurance is a Double-Edged Sword

Mike's POV

Eve reported the bombing to her commanding officer immediately after she shook hands with me, and it was barely ten minutes afterwards that police officers were arriving at the scene… and with them, came my boss.

You'd expect him to get all angry and upset with me over the utter destruction of the establishment…

"SCHMIDT!" … and you'd be right. I could only stand there, in the middle of the parking lot, staring at the manager as he screamed at me, Ryan and the others standing off to the side, and Eve speaking with the police. I honestly wasn't paying that much attention to him; I couldn't help but worry about this cult that wants my head on a silver platter.

I vaguely noticed a car pull up nearby, the driver coming out and making his way over to the parking lot. I heard him gasp when he saw the wreckage.

"OH MY GOD, WHAT HAPPENED HERE!?" he screamed, attracting everyone's attention in the process.

"The building was just bombed, that's what happened, Scott!" the manager screamed back at him. The man, Scott, just stared at what was left of the pizzeria for several minutes.

"Oh, god…" I heard him mutter. Why did his voice sound so… familiar? "THIS IS THE BEST THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO THE FRANCHISE!" With that inappropriately happy outburst, everyone present was now staring at him, the manager especially.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!?" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "The building has been reduce to a pile of rubble, how can this be the best thing to ever happen to the franchise?"

"Did you seriously forget, sir?" Scott answered back excitedly. "This building is insured for $50,000! With that kind of money, we can completely modernize everything… even the animatronics." He grabbed the manager by his shirt collar, getting up in face. "Think about it, sir! Chuck E. Cheese's isn't scheduled to modernize their characters until 2014! We can beat them to the punch and give the band a completely new look!" At this point he leapt away from our boss, ran back to his car, pulled a massive sketchpad from the back seat, ran back, and started flipping through the pages. "Oh my, this is more exciting than that time I went to see 'Into the Woods' on Broadway! Or the time I baked a cake for a birthday party! Or the time I faked my own death to get out of working the night shift here! Or the time I…"

Wait a minute, what was that last one? Did he just say…?

Hey! Now I know where I heard that voice before! He's the Phone Guy!

"YOU FAKED YOUR DEATH!?" I was honestly outraged with him. This guy is the only friend I had on the job for the first week, and he FAKED HIS DEATH to get out of it. I thought he was dead for real! He had me even more scared for my own life… more scared of my own brother (not that he would know that), that lousy son of a bitch!

"What?" Scott seemed confused at my outburst. "Uh… yeah. It was my last week there, and they wanted me to make a bunch of recordings for the sorry sap they hired to take my place. So, I made all of the recordings on the first night of the week, when I would be the safest, and set them to play on different nights. For my epic death, I just banged on the doors a little, played the Toreador March on my cell phone, muffled the fan a bit to imitate that raspy breath, and…"

"YOU BASTARD!" I made a charge at him right then, and I honestly think I would have killed him if Eve and Ryan hadn't restrained me.

Eve's POV

If everything Adam told me about what he and the other victims did at night was true, I couldn't really blame Mike for getting angry with his predecessor. By faking his own death like that, he more than likely intensified Mike's own fears rather needlessly. To be frank, I wanted to give him a piece of my mind as much as the others did, but now really wasn't the time for that. I sprang into action as soon as I saw Mike get ready to charge him, grabbing his right arm while Ryan took the left.

Scott only stood there, staring stupidly at Mike as he screeched profanities at him. "What the heck is his problem?"

"He's the 'sorry sap' they hired to replace you as the night guard," I answered, giving Scott a deadpan stare. He visibly cringed, realizing what he had just let slip.

"Uh… okay, forget everything I said, it's not important. What is important is deciding what the band's new look should be. I have so many designs penned out, I don't know what to do with them!" Boy, he bounces back fast.

Seeing as Ryan can easily restrain his brother on his own, I let go of Mike's arm, only for Ryan to grab hold of it almost immediately, and walked over to where Scott was flipping through his sketchpad. I glanced over his shoulder at some of his designs.

The design he was currently gazing at was of a wolf character I didn't recognize. It was probably an original character of his design. The wolf was wearing a sports jacket, with carpenter jeans, and two drumsticks in his hands, suggesting he was meant to be a drummer for the main band. He wore a bandana around his head, with the letters MS, RS, SC, AK, and DF patterned around it. He had a somewhat bushy tail, and standard wolf ears poking through the bandana. At the top of the page, the character's name was written out in flowery cursive: Lucas Lupine.

I frowned as I looked over Lucas's design. I'm not sure what Scott was aiming for, but I could see several problems with this. I can't imagine a hard-core drummer wearing a formal sports jacket, which doesn't even go with carpenter jeans anyway. The biggest red flag, however, was the bandana. Those letters patterned around the surface were the initials of Daddy Dearest's victims, and the survivor who put him behind bars; Michael Schmidt, Ryan Schmidt, Sarah Cawthon, Adam Kohlman, Daniel Fitzgerald. He probably wanted to pay his respects to the departed by doing this, but all in all, this would only serve to remind older patrons of the incident… something the company clearly doesn't want.

"This isn't going to work," I muttered. I grabbed the sketchpad out of Scott's hands, and began flipping through the pages, looking for any other issues in the newer designs.

It was worse than I was expecting. Every design I found in there had some reference to a tragic event in the franchise's history. His redesign for Bonnie gave him a guitar with the numbers "0714" printed on the body; July 14th, the day of the missing children incident. Foxy was given a pirate coat decorated with bite mark-like patterns… referring to the Bite of '87. I cringed when I came across his modernized look for Chica… it was like something out of a horror movie. Freddy's design wasn't that bad, but there was a new song for him on the same page… and it was about this hallucination Mike told me about during the ten minutes we spent waiting for the police. The one involving the yellow Freddy suit my father used to lure him and the other victims to the back room. Scott titled the song "Just Gold"… This cannot be appropriate for children.

What the heck is wrong with this guy? Is he trying to run the company into the ground? It was at that moment that he snatched the sketchpad back from me, and attempted to hit me over the head with it.

"Are you done yet, you nosy detective?" he asked in this insulted tone of voice. He seemed about ready to say something more, but stopped suddenly, staring at something behind me with a surprised look on his face.

Curious at his sudden, explicit fear, I glanced over my shoulder… and found… nothing. I turned back to Scott with a skeptical look on my face, noticing that he was still staring at that spot behind me in terror. "Are you okay?" I asked him in concern. He seemed to snap out of his trance at the sound of my voice, looking at me in obvious shock.

"Huh!? You're still here!?"

"Yeah… what made you think I left?"

"Oh… nothing…" I raised an eyebrow disbelievingly. I couldn't help but think he was trying to hide something from me.

Before I could question him about it, my radio went off.

Adam's POV

I could stand off to the side, watching everything the police, Mike, and Eve did over the course of the meeting. No one seemed to have noticed us… apart from Ryan, who had to keep Mike from killing his predecessor, but that's beside the point.

When I heard Eve's police communicator go off, I suddenly got the feeling that something bad had just happened. I watched her pull the radio from her pocket, and flipping a switch on it, "Kohlman here," was her response as she answered. I couldn't hear what was said on the other end, but all of a sudden, Eve's facial expression went from calm professionalism to complete outrage. "WHAT!? HOW COULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN!?" Everyone was staring at her at this point, wondering what the issue was. She was silent for a while longer, listening to the officer on the other end. She took a few seconds to compose herself before responding. "What are your orders?" She listened. "Understood. Kohlman out." With that, she hung up.

"Well? What was that about?"

"Murderer Vincent Kohlman has just broken out of prison."

Wait… what? Wait… WHAT!?

"Police are in pursuit at this exact moment. Barricade the roads, we can't let him get away. Suspect is driving a red SUV with a broken headlight." The police were already scrambling back towards their cars, driving off to set up the barricades. Eve was making her way towards a large police van when she suddenly turned towards us, and Mike. "Well? You guys coming or what?"

Please Review, and sorry for the sudden cut.