"Sure you're ready for this?" Mike asked, resting against the wall of the security office with one boot resting on the spare plastic chair he had dragged in from the dining area. Still regretting the vicious assault tactics he had been forced to use against Clyde while he'd been imprisoned in the Golden Freddy suit, he had graciously offered him the use of the desk chair. "I'm sorta surprised Faz wanted us both back on the job this soon after all that went down last night, but I guess he figured we can look out for each other if one of us nods off on the job or something."
"Heh, if you doze off, count on getting this cup of soda emptied over your head. It would be fair payback," said Clyde, taking a sip from a striped drink cup and staring down at the ice packs resting over his bruised and swollen kneecaps. He tugged the brim of his ball cap slightly lower over his face, hoping to hide the copious beads of sweat he could feel forming across his brow, some of them already trickling toward his eyes.
"You bet I'm ready for this," he sighed. "I can't stay scared; I've got to get right back on the horse, as they say. And besides, we fixed those guys good. This should be a cinch, right?"
"I thought you said we were adjusting their artificial intelligence, not their aggression levels!" Mike shouted mere moments later after their shift had started. The characters' movement toward the security office had been almost immediate, and he stood in the center of the room drenched in an absolute cold sweat and feeling like a fish in a bowl while Bonnie leered through one window at him while Freddy and Chica vied for space at the other. He had been forced to close both doors, which had left the numbers on the power meter spiraling downward at a dizzying tilt. "So what gives?"
"I have no idea!" Clyde wailed, hunched over the desk with his face buried in his hands, the icepacks forgotten where they had fallen by his feet. When he dared to open his eyes, he was greeted by a field of vision full of static, as well as the nightmarish, glaring visions of the animatronics' facemasks. Recognizing the old tactic Derrick had used in an attempt to make him lose his grip on his resolve and lower his defenses, Clyde knew that this was not the evil specter's doing but his own mind reliving the feverish visions of the past, and that somehow made the flashbacks far more real. Trying to imagine himself back in the blissful and warm embrace he and Cindy had shared hours earlier did little to end the horrific sights in front of him.
"Hey, you don't even have to tell me what you're seeing right now, because I'm sure I saw all that and worse," Mike said gently, placing a hand on his mentor's trembling shoulder and fixing him with a reassuring but firm look. "But you've got to snap out of this if either one of us are going to have a ghost of a chance of making it through the night. Now, what was that career you told me you would have considered if you hadn't become a lifer at Freddy's?"
Clyde blinked at him in surprise, shaking his head as his vision cleared until only Mike was present. "I wanted to be an air traffic controller, but what's that got to do with this? Besides, I was aiming way too high with that dream; to do that kind of work you have to be whip-smart, have lightning-fast reflexes, work well under pressure-"
Mike cut him off. "Gee, that almost sounds like the kind of skills a guy would need to have to survive thirty years at a job like this," he said curtly, gesturing around the security office.
Clyde's eyes stung as he saw the monitoring equipment and the large observation windows as if for the first time. Maybe his life's work hadn't been so different from his long-deferred plans after all.
"You're going to live your dream tonight, and I'll be your wingman," the rookie officer said as he clapped his hesitant coworker across the back, "just tell me what to do and when to do it." Without waiting for confirmation, Mike delivered a high kick to the controls for the nearest door, sending it flying open.
"Ground control to Officer Schmidt," Clyde began, genuinely grinning as he began the most frantic night he was certain to endure in his long career. "We have a Foxy on the run, ETA seven seconds. In three, close the left door. Then until I pinpoint Chica's whereabouts, zap the right hallway's light on just a sec and slam the door accordingly if you get a visual on her."
"Roger that!" Mike was already sprinting for the door where the pirate was due to make his appearance, a maniacal smile of his own plastered on his face. His mentor's newfound enthusiasm had proven infectious, and even if the next several hours saw Clyde giving him terse instructions that left him in near-constant motion and drenched in sweat, he was running on pure exhilaration and adrenaline. Maybe they both were, for their own reasons.
"Okay, so just for the record, which one is it, 'play dead' or 'run like Hell?'" Mike asked in dismay as the power cut out with a loud hum and the room plunged into near-total darkness. He grit his teeth together as he heard the characteristic chuckle of the pizzeria's namesake; with the office left open and undefended, Freddy had lost no time shuffling toward it, presumably in pursuit of the wayward "endoskeletons" inside.
"Beats me, to be honest, seeing as this has been a total free-for-all," Clyde admitted, stealing a glance at his wristwatch, which was equipped with a small light. "We have ten minutes to go, but if we made a run for it we'd never last long out there with them this incredibly active tonight." His shoulders slumped as he fretted over the few options remaining, none of which promised them much of a chance of survival.
"Aw, c'mon, Mike, this is a weird time to redecorate the security office," he sighed despondently, watching the silhouette of the rookie guard hefting a monitor from the desk. Oddly fascinated, he suddenly realized that Mike was using the utmost in care moving the equipment because he actually believed they would both make it through the night and he would be held accountable if he rashly swept the contents of the desktop to the floor and broke the expensive monitors.
"Shut up and help me clear this off, would you?" Mike snapped, still grinning to confirm that, despite his brusque ways, he held no animosity. "I've always thought this big steel monster of a desk would make a perfect block for that doorway, but I couldn't begin to muscle it over there myself to test my idea. Maybe we two noodles can swing it, and it's at least worth a shot."
Snatching up the desk fan and another monitor, Clyde cautiously set them on the ground and helped Mike heave the hefty behemoth onto its side, the office supplies inside the drawers spilling with a loud clatter. With some difficulty due to sprained muscles and broken ribs, the two guards wedged the piece of furniture backward into the open doorway that Freddy Fazbear favored, with Mike dropping to the floor, his back against the underside of the desk and his boots braced against the floor to provide additional leverage.
Clyde remained frozen in place, practically spellbound as the bear appeared just behind the desk, his backlit eyes glowing and the cheerful little tune from his music box beginning to play. His memories fresh from his last ill-fated encounter with the bear and his companions, he felt his heart pounding in his chest at the unexpected showdown.
"Not today," he said unsteadily, giving Freddy Fazbear one last defiant glare before sinking down next to Mike. Despite their dire situation, his fellow guard was still grinning widely, his gleaming teeth visible in the gloom. "Alright, what's so funny?" Clyde demanded, the desk shuddering behind them as the character tried to force his way in. He only hoped Freddy wouldn't think to approach the remaining open doorway, looming before them as a constant reminder of their predicament.
"Nothing much," Mike chuckled, sounding slightly delirious. "It's just that now that the kids' spirits are gone, this job is more stupid than ever, and yet so far it's the only thing I've proven to be any good at. We're more or less just live bait to distract the animatronics from escaping the building, which they'd probably be able to do sooner or later if we weren't here."
Clyde's immediate smirk was halted by a cry of surprise as Freddy's oversized paw swiped in through the thin space between the side of the desk and the doorframe, grazing his shoulder.
"You really think I didn't realize that years ago?" he asked, sneaking another peek at his watch. "I know what you mean, though," he added, wincing from the pain of his injured knees as he braced his back even more firmly against the desk. "We have two minutes left, by the way, but I'm just grateful you took my training calls seriously when all that information I threw at you must have sounded so surreal." He shrugged. "Since you're planning to stay for the long haul, you might as well come up with an alibi for what you do at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza overnight, because believe you me, there's no way to make our job responsibilities not sound ridiculous to anyone who hasn't been there himself. For all my family knows, I've worked as the overnight janitor all these years. Cindy's the only one I ever told otherwise."
Mike flashed his coworker a rueful grin. "As long as I'm gainfully employed, I doubt anyone else would care to know what I actually do for a living. I've sort of set the standards pretty low as of late." Met with a sympathetic look from Clyde, he rose from the floor and retrieved a manila folder from the desk, pulling a stapled document from the papers within.
"Here," he said, passing it to Clyde before he hastily resumed his position helping brace the desk against Freddy's aggression. "Just in case we don't pull through, I thought you ought to see this; I found it in our boss's desk. Even if you didn't believe in yourself, Faz sure believed in you."
"This is a last will and testament," Clyde said slowly, his words interrupted by the sound of the animatronic's paws pounding at the metal desk. Illuminating the paper with the tiny light from his wristwatch, he pored over the document. "He really would have...?" Passing the document back to Mike as if it pained him to hold it another moment, he tilted his head skyward, staring at the dark light bulb suspended from the ceiling. "I had no idea," Clyde said flatly.
While his fellow guard processed what he had read, Mike listened to the sounds of the bear padding off to the show stage, signaling the end of their shift. "Wow, we actually made it," he said, sprawling on the cool tiles of the floor in a flood of exhaustion and relief. "Gimme five minutes to convince myself we somehow pulled this off and then we'd better straighten this place up."
"Tampering with the animatronics?" Mike cried indignantly, reading off the pink slip Nathan Faz had just handed to him. "General unprofessionalism? Odor?" Folding the note in half sharply and tucking it in his shirt pocket, he glared at his employer.
"Sorry, it's nothing personal, just in keeping with the long-standing family tradition of off-color humor in this business," Faz said, looking down at the pad of blank slips on his desk. "Besides, they're not effective immediately, but just my way of letting you both know that sadly this place can't stay afloat much longer and we'll soon all be out of a job." With a pang of guilt he saw Clyde bow his head, visibly crushed. "I'm truly sorry; I should have been more forthcoming about this enterprise's financial problems. But at any rate, I'm determined to at least fulfill the promise we made to the families who have booked their children's birthday parties for the next two weeks." He pushed the pad of slips forward to Mike. "You're welcome to write one out for me, if you'd like."
"You'd better believe it I'd like to!" Roughly tearing the top sheet off the rest, the rookie guard seized a gilded pen from his boss's executive desk set and began scribbling furiously on the piece of paper, concentrating so hard he held his tongue in the corner of his mouth like a small child learning how to print. Although the sight was amusing, Faz found some relief in Mike's annoyance. After a sleepless night spent debating how forthcoming he should be with his two night-shift workers, he had come to the decision that after all they had been through, they at least deserved his honesty over an outright betrayal.
"Failure to report for work and general insubordination," Clyde read from the slip he had been handed, then shrugged. He was not remotely about to admit he had seen the will his employer had drafted. "Guilty as charged, I guess, but what really kills me is the way this place is closing." This was all I ever knew... Staring at the floor, he inexplicably felt a pang of guilt for ever having requested another job outside the pizzeria, which had felt like a second home for most of his life.
"We might not have to go that route," Mike said sharply, snapping to attention. Clicking the pen tip inside the barrel and tossing it back irreverently onto Faz's desk, he sat back with a smug expression, reading the long list he had scrawled onto the pink slip enumerating his boss's shortcomings. "Heh, that was therapeutic, but I'd be fired on the spot if you ever read this," the officer said, crumpling the note into a tight ball and jamming it deep in the pocket of his uniform slacks. Leaving Faz and Clyde to stare in disbelief at his tenacity, he dismissed himself from the office, only to return with the hefty manila folder full of documents.
"So I'll admit it, I betrayed your trust and rifled through your desk drawers," he frankly told a startled Faz, who was already rising from his seat in protest. "If that's not 'general unprofessionalism,' I don't know what is. Only I might have a plan here, if you'll hear me out." Sliding the folder to his boss, he bit his lower lip while the business owner scrutinized the papers he had labored over, written out neatly in ball-point pen ink. Completely blindsided, Clyde could only sit nearby, absentmindedly folding his pink slip in his hands until it began to look quite frayed.
"The group of local investors who backed you when you transformed this enterprise from a roller rink to a children's party venue, are they still around?" Mike asked once Faz looked up from the work that had taken him the better part of the day, his expression incredulous.
"Well, yes, they took quite a leap of faith believing in me back then when many other rinks were simply closing for lack of business, but it all worked out and we still occasionally meet for lunch," came the manager's guarded answer.
"That's good to hear. Think you could have them here for an 'investment luncheon' two weeks from now? I'll need time to polish these plans up and make them look a little more professional, and I'm definitely going to need some help learning how to make a business presentation."
Clyde moved behind Faz's shoulder, his eyes widening at the figures, diagrams and charts filling the sheets of paper, and he eventually broke into a hesitant smile.
"This is so crazy it just might work! It's at least worth a shot. But...you maniac! If you had time to write all of this, I'll bet you didn't sleep at all during the day, did you?" He sighed with exasperation at the feigned innocence in Mike's weary shrug.
Faz's stern gaze met his rookie guard's eyes, bloodshot and yet sparkling with a genuine zest for his ambitious plans, and suddenly the two men were shaking hands across the desk.
"You never owed me this, but son, if this crazy plan of yours actually does work, it would be a complete turnaround for Fazbear Entertainment." Turning to his long-time employee, he was secretly thrilled to see him beaming like the enthusiastic young man he had once been, enamored with every aspect of the restaurant. "Clyde's entirely right, it's at least worth a shot."