This one's a little more serious than the past chapters. I hope you like it.

After Hours

Teeth

Even from in the dining hall, Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica could hear Mike shouting from inside the security booth. It was a shock to all three of them; they'd never known Mike to be the kind of person to raise his voice so suddenly. Whatever was happening in that booth must have been quite out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, it was too far away for them to pick up anything distinct.

"What do you think's going on in there?" Chica asked the other two animatronics. They both shrugged, at a loss for words. "Maybe we should go check on Mike. He sounds kinda freaked out."

"Nah, that's not it," Bonnie shook his head. "Listen closer. He keeps yelling, and then pausing for a bit. I think he's talking to somebody. Sounds kinda angry, too."

"Of course you'd know that," Chica scoffed. "Big-eared show-off."

Bonnie whipped to face the chick. "What did you just call me?!"

"Cool yer heads, both o' ya," Freddy snapped. Chica and Bonnie both opened their mouths, but at Freddy's disapproving glare immediately closed them again. The bear then turned back toward the security booth, from where the noises were emanating. They'd actually been going on for a while now, almost fifteen minutes by Freddy's estimate. He was starting to become a little concerned, and while he knew that Bonnie and Chica probably wouldn't admit it, they probably felt similarly. So of course he had no choice but to investigate.

"Ah'm headin' over t' check up on th' boy. You two stay here and do some cleanin' up fer a change. And don' jus' start yellin' at each other, cause ah'll hear ya." With that, Freddy made for the East Hall, the same place he always tried to enter the security booth from, at least until Mike came along.

As he drew closer Freddy could hear Mike's voice becoming clearer and more legible. Just as Bonnie had predicted, Mike was yelling, and quite angrily at that. The bear peered into the booth as far as he could without drawing too much attention to himself, but Mike wasn't focused on him at all. He was on the restaurant phone, apparently in a remarkably heated discussion with whoever was on the other line.

"I know the history, but I need this job!" Mike paused for a moment as the other person shouted back – Freddy could almost hear them even from outside the booth. "Well I'm liking it here just fine!" Another pause. "I know that! But I don't exactly have a lot of options right now!... Oh, I'm so sorry! I'm only trying to hold down a job here!... I told you, I got fired!... I don't know why, they didn't tell me anything!... I could make a few guesses!... I'm sorry, but for the last time, that's not HAPPENING! Goodnight!"

The guard slammed the phone back down onto the receiver, then threw the phone down on the floor before getting up and stalking around the cramped room, muttering some rather unfriendly and borderline obscene things at not inconsiderable length. Freddy was more than a little surprised at Mike's current state but remained silent and unseen. After a while the human seemed to tire of wandering around and settled back into his chair with a deeply unnerving growl.

It was then that Freddy finally decided to show himself. "Wha's grindin' yer gears, boy?"

Mike leaped up from his seat a bit in surprise, but quickly recovered and turned to glower at Freddy. "How long have you been standing there?" He grumbled.

"Couple a' minutes, not long nuff t' figure anythin' out," Freddy shrugged. "Care t' throw ol' Freddy a bone?"

Mike opened his mouth to fire back at the bear, but managed to catch the words in his throat before they could be spoken. It was tempting, he admitted, to be snarky or rude to Freddy. After all, Mike was in a pretty rough mood. But it wouldn't have been right. Freddy had been kind enough to let Mike hang out with him and the other three robots a couple of nights ago, and Mike intended to repay that kindness however he could. Yelling at Freddy, no matter what his feelings were, could only damage things between them.

But Mike was pretty angry, and he didn't fully trust himself to avoid saying something he'd regret later. So he took a long, deep breath and replied as calmly as he could. "Freddy, I'm sorry but... could you please just leave me alone for a while? I'm too pissed to talk to anyone now."

Freddy was surprised but simply nodded. "A'ight. You know where t' find me."

And then he left, leaving the guard alone with his thoughts.

About twenty minutes later...

"...Hey...can we talk?"

The three animatronics turned to face the voice (Chica, who was in the kitchen, popped her head out through the doors), and were at least mildly surprised to see Mike. The guard's face was a composed mask, but he had an agitated air about him as though the slightest trigger would make him explode.

"Somethin' on yer mind?" Freddy spoke up.

"Uh...yeah, actually," Mike sighed. "Sorry about what happened back there. You couldn't have caught me at a worse time."

In response, the bear reached down and pulled a chair from its rightful place under the table. "You wanna sit?"

Mike nodded and swiftly slid into the plastic chair, settling down nicely. Freddy pulled out the next chair and sat down on it. The chair groaned under the bear's weight, but ultimately held. "That was my mom," Mike began. "She's never exactly been okay with me working here. I think at first she was expecting me to quit pretty fast, but now that I've been here for a while she's trying to be a little more forceful."

"And what exactly is 'forceful?'" Bonnie asked.

Mike sighed. "She's been... telling me that if I don't quit she'll make me move out of the house... I mean, it's not really gonna happen," he added quickly upon the shocked gazes of the animals around him. "She's just bluffing, and even if she isn't Dad would never let her go through with it. But that's not exactly stopping her."

A silence prevailed for a while after that. The animatronics silently pondered the thought of Mike having to leave his job. He'd been the first real human guard that they could remember. The rest had all been endos, and for some reason they always either disappeared after a night or two or broke down when they were put back into their suits. It really was frustrating, that quashed feeling of joy at getting a new friend. Maybe that was why the pizza place hired a human guard, to keep themselves from losing more endos. If that was the case, then it was a damn good thing that Mike had managed to convince them that he was human.

Eventually Mike continued speaking. "I mean, I do understand her point. It's not like this place has had any shortage of bad publicity, what with the missing people and the Bite of '87 and... other things," Mike finished after a slight pause.

But something that he had said registered in the animatronics' memories. "Oh, you know about the Bite?" Chica asked forlornly.

"Not a whole lot, but I know enough," Mike nodded. A couple of days into his first week on the job he'd done a little research on Freddy Fazbear's, and even knowing about the animatronics'... quirks, he'd been more than a little freaked out by what he'd found. Apparently there'd been years of unsolved missing persons reports, all of whom had worked as night guards at the pizzeria when they'd vanished.

The place chewed through guards like there was no tomorrow, and almost all the surviving ones had been reported making calls to the police, news, and pretty much anyone who would listen about killer animatronics. They were almost entirely ignored, and a few people were even institutionalized.

Yet accurate information about the Bite of '87 had turned out to be surprisingly scarce. At least, important accurate information was; there were plenty of eyewitness testimonies but they all either said the same unhelpful details, or too many versions of the really important details. What Mike had been able to decipher was that the day had been July 25, 1987 (Culinarian's Day, appropriately enough), the time had been around midday, a fairly large-scale party had been in full swing at Freddy's, and that the victim had been a kid, specifically the birthday kid.

And from there the details varied, sometimes wildly. Apparently the shock of the incident had done a number on the memories of the bystanders, because very few accounts had been identical. All four animatronics had been fingered separately as the culprit, and according to some accounts they'd actually been working together. Mike was smart enough to weed out the particularly ridiculous theories, but that still left a lot of plausible testimonies that he just couldn't work through. Personally Mike had decided long ago that the attacker was probably Foxy – the pirate had uniquely sharp teeth, and it would certainly explain the closed down Pirate Cove, as well as his unusual state of disrepair.

Regardless, the Bite of '87 had been an enigma for some time, and all Mike had been able to go on so far were some unreliable stories about the incident and Phone Guy's message from day one. As much as Mike hated to admit, he was curious, and the fact that at the moment he was speaking to three unknown witnesses who might have been able to divulge some new truths on the matter was... tempting. But at the same time he was aware that it was probably a painful memory for the animatronics, so it was a conflicted kind of curiosity. Should he take the risk and ask some questions? Or should he remain silent until they told him themselves?

As it turned out, he didn't need to decide. "You're curious, aren't you?" A voice pierced through Mike's thoughts, snapping him back into reality. That was... Bonnie's voice, right? Mike turned to the rabbit, and apparently he had guessed correctly because Bonnie continued speaking. "I can see it written all over your face. You wanna ask some questions, don't you?" His tone was a little edgy, but otherwise hard to discern.

Mike paused in thought for a bit before nodding his head. "I'm sorry. I know I have no right to ask this, but I've been trying to figure it out myself for weeks now and I'm at a loss here. And now the answer could be right in front of me and I just..." The guard paused, struggling to find the right words. "Look, if the answer's no, then I swear I'll understand. I'll never ask again if that's what you want, but right here, right now, all I want is to know, even if you can only tell me a little."

The animatronics all stared at Mike for a while once he finished. For a moment Mike considered apologizing and taking back what he'd said, but he was pretty sure that it wouldn't erase the act. Finally, after an agonizing wait, Freddy slowly turned and walked away, gesturing for Bonnie and Chica to follow him. The other two were confused, but tailed their boss as they wandered backstage, leaving Mike alone once more.

The guard didn't know what to think anymore, but as the minutes passed he could feel a strange mix of guilt and dread bubbling up inside of him. Had he just nuked his friendship with Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica? Is that why they'd all wandered backstage? Damn it... he should have just kept his mouth shut. He should have just explained about his mom and then dropped the subject entirely. There hadn't been any need to go further, and yet he did, and here he was. What an idiot...

Blinking back tears, Mike got up to return to the guard room and stay there for the rest of the night. Maybe tomorrow he'd get to fix things with the others.

At least, that was the plan...

"Mike?"

Mike turned at the sound of the voice and saw, much to his surprise, that both Chica and Bonnie had returned and were walking toward him. What were they up to?

"Freddy wants to see you backstage," Chica spoke up. "He said he wants to talk."

Mike raised an eyebrow. "About?"

"Not our place to answer that," Bonnie piped up. "Just go. Don't worry, he's not mad or anything."

The guard took a deep breath and hesitantly walked toward the backstage door. Was Freddy really planning on explaining anything to him?

Or did he have... other intentions in mind?

Surprisingly, Mike's first reaction to being backstage for the first time was less unimaginable terror, as he'd expected, and more "I wonder if Phone Guy's in one of those suits." For a moment he thought about checking the suits just to see, but decided against it. Management probably cleaned him out long ago.

Then the terror set in.

It was logical to be terrified – after all, this was where the older guards were dragged to and shoved into an empty suit. Mike had spent a fair amount of time thinking about what kind of death that would be like. If Phone Guy had been right, and if Mike's mechanical engineering degree wasn't failing him now, the inside of those suits were all stuffed with so many crossbeams and wires, and while it was certainly necessary to make them work it left no room in any of them for the body of a good-sized adult.

And that part about his eyes and teeth being all that would be left... He wouldn't just be cut up, he'd be juiced. The metal crossbeams and wires were in such a tight space that his blood would just be squeezed out of him like juice from a fruit. And his body? Crushed into a bloody pulp.

Mike shivered. What kind of death would that be? He couldn't imagine it would be fast. Did the guards suffer for long? What was it like, having your blood just drained out of you like that? Mike could feel himself trembling, his knees weakening. Would that happen to him tonight?

Wait, where was Freddy? Oh God, where was-

"'Ello, Mike."

"PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!"

The next thing Mike knew, he had gone from standing to flat on the floor in no time flat, hands over his head and sobbing like a baby. He didn't even care how pathetic it looked, he was terrified.

"Please don' kill me?"

The words broke through Mike's terror-induced catatonia, and the man looked up through tear-stained eyes to see a pair of white-and-blue disks floating in the air above him. Freddy's eyes, Mike realized.

"Please don' kill me?" Freddy repeated, every bit as incredulously as before. "Did you really think I was gonna kill ya? Why the Sam Hill would you think that?" The bear's face darkened suddenly. "Did Bonnie and Chica say somethin' ta screw wit' yer head? I'll give 'em a right talkin'-to, I swear it..."

"N-no, no, that's not it," Mike stammered quickly, his voice still thick with tears. Drying his eyes as best he could, the young man stood to face Freddy eye-to-eye. "I just... I remembered something the guard before me said. This place is where all the guards were brought and killed." At the end of his explanation Mike tensed up, half-expecting Freddy to freak out upon being told about the fates of the animatronics' previous victims.

However, Freddy instead raised a bushy eyebrow and stared at him oddly. "Killed? Nobody was killed here, boy. We just bring th' endos in here to put 'em back in their suits. Fat lot o' good it does us, o' course. They just keep breakin'. Maybe we're tryin' to shove 'em in wrong..." As Freddy drifted off into his musings, Mike was forced to deal with the frightening realization that none of the animatronics were aware that they'd been killing real live people. Honestly, he'd figured that glitch got ironed out when he'd modified their programming, but apparently it only meant that they saw him as human, not the earlier dead guards.

For a moment Mike debated telling Freddy the truth head-on, but chose against it. He was nervous enough being back here, he didn't need Freddy freaking out on him. "So, why did you bring me back here anyway, Freddy?"

"Hm?" Freddy looked over as if he'd forgotten Mike had stood there. "Ah, right. Forgot about that." The bear suddenly strode forward and gently placed a massive paw on Mike's shoulder. The human was startled, but Freddy's haunted gaze made any attempt to question him die in his throat.

"You have to understand, m'boy, that this ain't exactly easy to talk about. I don' mind tellin' ya that Bonnie n' Chica were dead against it, but if yer gonna be one o' us... Well, y' gotta right to know th' truth."

With a chill, Mike understood immediately what the bear was speaking of. "The Bite, right?"

Freddy nodded. "It was, ah... some twenty-seven years ago, I reckon," the bear began. "Middle o' July, hot enough t' cook a whole carton o' eggs... or so I heard. Anyway, there was a party goin' on – not just some two-bit gatherin', naw. This was a jamboree. A real biggun.

"Now before I continue, somethin' you should prolly know 'bout Foxy," Freddy digressed for a moment. "See, when Bonnie, Chica and I were up there on th' stage, singin' th' blues, Foxy liked to get on out o' his cove n' stroll around the place a bit. Kids didn' mind, o' course. They loved 'im, no lie. So th' people in charge o' this establishment never really tried to keep 'im in his cove. Give the kids what they want, y'know.

"Anyhoo, it was a big ol' fiesta and kids, y'know, they get rowdy. Yellin', throwin' stuff, 's just how they are. Foxy was takin' quite th' beatin' out there, kids yankin' on him and spillin' stuff all over him. I mean, I felt bad, but I couldn' exactly get off th' stage n' help. Th' show was goin' on.

"Lookin' back, I..." Freddy paused. Mike wasn't sure, but he could guess that the bear was having trouble going on. He was just about to open his mouth, to tell Freddy not to continue, but Freddy raised a paw. "Not a word, Mike. You said y' wanted t' know and I ain't about to leave ya hangin', no matter how hard it is." Properly chastised, Mike closed his mouth, allowing Freddy to continue. "Now where were we...

"Yup, got it. Right around th' end o' th' show, Foxy started actin' kinda nutty. Got all slow and jerky, started talkin' nonsense, kids prolly got somethin' in his gears they shouldn' have. Anyway, th' restaurant wheeled out a big ol' cake for th' birthday boy n' Foxy was hangin' out nearby. Th' kids started chantin' for a big "Happy Birthday" from Foxy, but..." Freddy drew to a stop and hung his head. Mike made no attempt to speak this time, however. Freddy had held onto this for, what, twenty-seven years now? That was three years longer than Mike had even been alive, and he certainly couldn't imagine how painful it had been for Freddy to have to keep in inside all these years. So he stayed quiet, just waiting for the bear to find the strength to finish.

And eventually, Freddy did. "People stopped comin' fer a good while after that, so I got t' spend some time havin' a chat with Foxy – more like interrogatin' him, actually. Claimed he didn' remember anythin'. Still does t' this day. I mean, I believe him, but it don' make anything easier," Freddy sighed. "And I'm sure ya know th' rest."

Mike was stunned. He didn't know what he'd been expecting... but this was just horrible. He was right – it had been Foxy who committed the Bite, and yet that knowledge gave him no sense of joy or relief. To live for twenty-seven years in total isolation like Foxy had to... Mike would have gone mad, of that he was sure. And the others didn't even have anyone else to talk to about it, so they had to bury it however they could.

They had to forget the memory of their lost friend. Mike couldn't stand the thought of that either. The Bite hadn't just hurt Foxy, it had hurt everyone. And that kid... was he even still alive? Mike knew little about medicine or biology, but he knew enough to know that it was very, very unlikely.

He felt like he had to say something, but what? What was he supposed to say to something like that? I'm sorry? Thank you for telling me? Everything felt wrong. He was starting to wish that he'd never asked Freddy anything.

"...I don't... I don't know what to say," Mike whispered at last, fully aware of just how pathetic it must have sounded.

But if Freddy thought the same, he didn't show it. Instead he pulled the young man into a sudden hug, gripping him gently against his chest. "You don' gotta say anythin'," Freddy reassured him. "I'm jus' glad you were willin' to listen, to be th' person I could finally talk to about everythin'. Thank ya, Mike."

Mike was shocked, but hugged Freddy back wordlessly. It had been no problem at all.

Freddy finally let go some time later, but he didn't let Mike leave right away. "Mike, I got one more thing to ask ya, a favor o' sorts. Hear m' out, 'kay?"

Mike nodded.

"Good boy," Freddy smiled, cleared his throat and continued. "I know that ev'rythin' I jus' told ya prolly changes things between us. I'm fine wit' that, and I'll work howev'r long it takes t' earn yer trust back. But I need ya t' promise me one thing, Mike.

"Promise me... that ya won' treat Foxy any different."

Mike raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Alright, but why would you make me promise that?"

"'Cause howev'r Bonnie, Chica and I feel 'bout him, he's been alone for too long," Freddy answered solemnly. "I know he puts on a brave face, but I'll be darned if it hasn' gotten t' him, even a little. He loved th' kids, Mike, and 's been some twenty-odd years since he's been out o' his cove to see any of 'em. He likes ya, boy, and believe it or not yer the kind o' guy he needs. Someone who'll put up with 'im and his tomfoolery and jus', well, be his friend. 'Cause Lord knows he needs a friend." And Freddy ended his speech, waiting patiently for Mike's answer.

But he didn't have to wait long. "Of course I won't treat him any different," Mike spoke quickly and resolutely, a look of passion on his features. "If he's really been through all that B.S., then of course he'll need someone to talk to. I'll admit I'm kinda shaken by what you've told me, but I know Foxy's not a murderer. He's a great guy, and I'm glad to have him as a friend. Maybe it won't be so easy, but I can make myself put up with it. If it's for Foxy, I think I really can."

Freddy grinned massively and let out a deep laugh. "Yer a good man, Schmidt. You really are. Now let's get on back to th' others. Kept 'em waitin' for a while now."

And with their fears alleviated, the two left the dark backstage room at last.