Author's Note: For whom does the bell toll?

"Here comes Michael, he's got that look like he's in too deep,
That's just like him, truth be told he needs a good night's sleep,"
-No More Kings

ACT III.
Chapter 16. All this Bad Blood Here…

"Twice now you've fudged the job, Puppet. I'm starting to think you aren't being as truthful with me as you were before." Henry leaned heavier on his cane, tone grim and warning.

'In what way would that be, old man?'

"You know which way. You're not as broken and brittle as you'd have us all believe. Appearances can be deceiving. Can't they, Lefty?"

'And you are not aiming me at the right targets. Neither of them will be the missing piece you're trying to force me to use. Michael is too broken. Max is too inexperienced. Try a third time, and trust me…I'll become precisely what you need."

"…very well. Let it never be said I'm not a man capable of taking risks. No more second chances, Puppet. Curtain call is soon, and I'm ready." Henry leaned forward, his smile all teeth and no kindness. "Is your night guard?"

'No. But he will be. He always is.'

Max was incredibly quiet on the way to the salvage room. He kept his head down and gaze hidden enough behind his uncut bangs that Mike couldn't see much of the kid's expression, aside from his thin lips and tightening jaw. This didn't bode well, but Mike tried not to let the silence reign supreme. Besides, maybe he was misreading the kid's signals?

"It's the only room that we can lock both doors and is big enough for all three of us." A pause. "Plus, it has the taser. I don't know if it will work on Lef—Mari, but it will work on the others…at least slow them down for a minute."

No reply.

"Listen, I know how scary he can be but I don't think Mari's in full control of himself anymore. And he always was, so this is new for all of us." Mike seemed wary and so he quickly tacked on, "But he's my best friend and he wouldn't want to hurt us over nothing. There's got to be a reason, or a pattern. Something."

Nothing.

"I, uh, I'm sure you got a lot of questions, about—about me, my past. About us." Mike licked his lips. "I can answer them, if there's, uh, a-anything…? You'd want to know?"

Zilch.

"I just want to tell you now, I wanted to tell you right off the bat Max. But I couldn't—"

This? This got a reaction. Mike was shoved, insistent and hard. He and Max staggered away from each other, the night guard's two toned (and rather looking back, rather obvious) eyes widening at the action that was too harsh to be mistaken for anything harmless, like an accident. Yet Mike's gaze held nothing more than honest shock and nothing close to negative, but his lips pressed flat when Max had to lean against the wall beside the Salvage Room. When Mike tried to reach for him again to help, Max growled and limped a decisive step away. Scraptrap lurched up to them, and though he eyed Mike warily he didn't glare at the man as much as his Suit was currently doing. If Max's look was any harder, Mike would start checking himself for a smoldering fire, that's how intense the kid's gaze was becoming.

Yeah. Max was pissed.

"You 'wanted to,' huh?! Then why didn't you? What stopped you!?" Max snarled, finally finding his voice. He groped blindly to his right for Scraptrap, so that he could lean heavily on the ragged bunny's shoulder as the walkman at his side continued to heal slowly.

It was Mike's turn for silence, and it was sheepish and accompanied with a downward flick of his odd eyes, this away from Max and even Scraptrap, who watched the man with gentle curiosity. Mike suddenly seemed submissive and nervous. Not typical head honcho mannerisms, but that's what Mike was, wasn't he? And Max was seeing it all now, with clear eyes. He fought a shiver, but only barely. He was sure Scraptrap felt it—hell, the animatronic must feel his fear. they shared just about everything, from body to mind. Max had no idea why the normally protective Bonnie model wasn't doing anything about it, but Max couldn't deal with that right now.

"I guess I just thought…" Mike started lamely, and winced when Max cut him off with a snarl.

"What, that I was some stupid kid? That I couldn't be trusted, or that I wasn't smart enough to figure it out?" Max challenged. "That I wouldn't believe you?!"

Mike fought a huff, and his hurt smoothed to calm sympathy.

"That you'd be afraid of me, Max." His honesty caught even the corpse by surprise. "I'm not here for the same reasons Mari and Henry are, kiddo. I'm not that type of night guard. We're not." Mike was holding his hands out at his sides, as if to make himself appear more trusting and less of a threat. But now, Max knew the truth, and he clearly saw all of Mike Schmidt was as a threat.

Max's purple lips curled.

The arrival of his nicknames, a tiny offering that seemed less like a gift and more like a warning now, ('Don't be Michael Afton around me.' Don't be the Loser, the Dead Kid, the Screw Up,) only made the corpse glower deeper and turn toward Scraptrap. Nope. He refused to look at or answer the man—least of which being because, yeah, Mike was right. He was scared. Terrified, even. Even if the first thing Mike had said after his name was that he was the Suit of Golden Freddy, Max would have been alarmed back then too. What would he have done? Max didn't know. And he'd never find out now, because Mike had taken away from him that ability to choose.

The animatronic that killed his brother.

It was still around. It was still functioning.

Worse? It was a Suit, and it was a strong one. Hiding in plain sight, right before him in this stupidly friendly and easy going man. And just like that, Max and Scraptrap were outclassed once more, nothing but a remainder of past failures and stupidly snatched at second chances. Empty hands and a broken heart.

And with the way the Puppet had reacted to Fredbear's appearance, that was almost as bad at learning the secret to Mike's success over the years. (Or rather, his survival.) It didn't wish to engage with Fredbear, didn't seem to hold as much ill will at old Gold as the Puppet always did to everyone else that came across the aggressive little Devil. Especially to Suits like Springtrap and Scraptrap.

'Or maybe it was just me. Because I'm an Afton. And that's all I'll ever be.'

It didn't matter how hard Max—Michael—or the night guard tried to strip away what he really was and make him into something new.

"No wonder you gave me a new name. Because to you, I'm always gunna be from bad blood," Max hissed softly. "Aren't I?"

"W-what!?" Mike looked too surprised to be faking it, too saddened. "Of course not, Max! I never meant to make it seem like—shit, you really think that I'd—" the concept seemed alien to Mike Schmidt, which was weird, sure, but Max couldn't find it in him to care. Not even when Scraptrap gave a soft 'rowl' sound and seemed to disagree with Max as well, almost as if siding with Mike.

"Save it." Max turned instead, feeling strong enough to storm out and intending to do so.

The bunny whined rustily and when Max pushed at him to move? Scraptrap planted himself instead, and grunted.

'Stay.' He gestured sharply. 'You-talk.' For good measure, he jabbed a silver, exposed pointer finger at Mike as well.

"I'm not sitting around giving him anything else. He lied to us." Max hissed at his other half, then pulled back and demanded with obvious alarm, fists at his sides: "Wait, did you know!?"

Scraptrap gave him a wounded, warning glare but Mike swiftly cut in, "Scrap only just found out. He saw Gold heal me before we came looking for you. I had him stay back when Marion attacked you and he couldn't move. I didn't want him getting hurt."

Max turned, his gaze icy and brittle as he pulled Salvage Room's door open.

"Thanks for that, by the way. But next time, maybe let the dead stay dead, night guard." And then Max went too far, spitting out a poisonous, "Learn a goddamn lesson for once."

Mike flinched visibly at the words, but he stayed in place. He didn't follow. Max didn't know whether to be relieved or not.

"I'm sorry." Mike tried, voice small. Max hesitated, mulling the man's apology over. He seemed so much smaller now, and Max couldn't tell if that was because Freddy wasn't behind him or because he now knew how big Mike could really become when pissed.

"You should be. We wouldn't be in half this mess if it weren't for you anyway." And with that, Max vanished over the threshold, his final look foreign and betrayed, paralleled by Scraptrap's low and apologetic glance even as he shadowed his Suit.

The door slammed, and Mike didn't need a Bonnie's hearing to know Max and Scraptrap had plans to leave the building entirely now. Mike growled to himself, ignored Gold, then ran a frustrated hand through his hair as he headed back to the Dining Hall.

"Well. Max knows." Mike mumbled, lifting his eyes to the stage, to the lead animatronic, the one he could always count on, and had for years. "And Lefty's got Marion trapped in him. No, Henry's got Marion trapped in Lefty."

Freddy said nothing.

Yet something nagged at the cobwebs of his mind and Mike turned to stare at the pirate fox standing resolute in his corner, frozen in the strange pose.

"And you knew that, didn't you, Foxy? You and Marion never got along. You weren't trying to show me a friend, you were trying to warn me." The night guard's shoulders dropped, his body aching in protest. Fuck, but he was tired.

"I should have known. Should have taken everyone's advice. Sure, I wanted Mari back…"

Never like this.

Mike frowned, and poked at Gold to bring up a recent memory.

Being haunted by a computer came in handy sometimes…

'COME NEAR HIM AGAIN, AND WE'LL BITE OFF YOUR HEAD, COPY.' Fredbear didn't so much command Respect as grab it round the throat and hold it high for all to see. There were only two animatronics around that were his equal in the FazEntertainment hierarchy, and it was most certainly not Lefty the bear. So Mike and Gold were confident that when they warned Lefty, it would only have to be once.

That was their first mistake.

Because Lefty went silent and still, and when he spoke, it was without speakers or working jaw. Reality shivered around them as something familiar forced its way into their mind, and replied curtly:

'…now how bad could that be, Fredbear? You and I both know from history that the dead can die more than once.'

The revelation was so strong even Mike felt dizzy, and his mind swam from the implications. That voice. They knew that voice. It lingered in his memories and haunted his dreams, echoing through time and one of the last things he had left of his friend to remember him by. Mike was instantly at attention. Gold kept him held back, kept him pinned and protected in their shared soul space, but allowed him to see and hear across the dim Parts and Services.

'…PUPPET?'Gold demanded, in his authoritative way, but even Gold sounded intrigued.

The black Freddy model staggered heavily in place but corrected himself, jaw creaking from the vicious deck Gold had delivered. Max shifted uneasily somewhere behind them, but Gold and Mike were focused heavily on Lefty and didn't pay much mind.

'In the flesh. Well—to use a term very loosely~' That blank, genderless voice was lilting a little, almost sounding musical. Light. Relieved.

'Your Suit's been speaking the dead's name too often, old friend. But he only woke up half of me. This wasn't the night guard's doing. He was not the one who dragged me from my grave and had me shove myself into a brand new box, and wound the key until the gears were too tight and…became suffocatinly crushing. Wound and wound until…I popped.' Marion trailed off with the last notes of 'All Around the Mulberry Bush,' and then lapsed into expectant silence.

'HENRY.' Gold growled, earning a careful nod from Lefty.

Mike didn't even have to think, and Gold agreed, always looking to keep his Suit happy.

'LET US HELP YOU.'

But Lefty, well, the Marionette that was, merely laughed, and it was cold and empty as when the winter wind blew.

'Oh, that heroic, noble nature of his. There it is. I think the worst part of all this….I've missed you, Michael. Just as much as you missed me. You still blame yourself. I'd wish you stop.'

Mike shrank into himself at the soft admonishment, letting Gold support him and be his voice when his own spirit and heart started to fail from grief and hurt.

'HE'S LOST, PUPPET. SCARED.' Gold explained. 'HE NEEDS YOU.'

'I know. He isn't the only one.' replied the Marionette.

Gold was quiet, but his surprise filtered over to Mike, who hummed thoughtfully as he mulled this over.

'Keep him safe, Goldy, won't you? The next time…I may not be able to justify keeping you two alive.' Lefty's mike rose, held there in place and Gold tensed, waiting for an attack that never came. 'Next time…I may not even be your Marionette anymore.'

It took everything he had, but Mike pushed, souls curling around each other to get to the forefront just a tiny bit, just a little—

'Please, night guard. All those doors you've opened…it's time to start closing them.'

And Mike lifted his—Gold's—huge paw, and tried to speak with his voice, trying to comfort Mari or get him to wait, just a second more, because Mike could figure this out, he just had to think—

That was their second mistake.

Lefty came alive then, pulling back as if stung and fled through the door and vanished before hitting the other side of the hall tile.

Gone, just like that.

"Like a ghost." Mike murmured to the polished stage floor. He curled his arms tighter around his legs and leaned back into Freddy's sturdier ones. He headed up to this safe spot while the memory replayed, and Mike tried to puzzle everything out all at once as he glared at the curtain as if too was keeping secrets. Burying his face in his arms didn't make the pain go away, and it didn't stop the hands of time, nor did anything wondrous happen like Freddy coming back to life and giving him a hug and some much needed advice…but just this, right here in the moment, was what was needed. So he let it.

"This whole time…and I didn't even see it."

Mike stayed like that for a while, hunched over and hiding in the shadow of his still and silent best friend, trying to imagine what comfort and assurances Freddy would have offered if he were here now. God, everything hurt. The wound from Circus Baby wasn't really the issue, it was all internal. Gold could heal everything, but not the spirit. They'd both learned that a long time ago. His heart ached, his soul moaned, his body wanting to cave in under the growing pressure. Mike wanted desperately to be curled up in his little bed in the back room of the old restaurant, sleeping under Mangle or reading and listening to the ambience as the gang moved and wandered around. Maybe while it rained, and thunder mumbled along, far above and sheltering.

His clock beeped to 12am, and then fell silent for a long while. Mike still couldn't find it in him to move. He heard SP peek out of her box, but also knew he wasn't at a vantage point she could see him, (though she didn't seem bothered) for he was still behind Freddy's legs.

Now what? Freddy and the gang were gone. He knew why, and now he certainly knew how, and though he didn't feel bad for initially blaming Afton, he was almost relieved it wasn't Afton that had done all this. That meant Mike could, for the moment anyway, focus on the Puppet.

Max was here for his father. Maybe the kid was right, and Mike needed to stop meddling. He had Scraptrap, didn't he?

'This is what he wants, Michael.' Gold, despite being tired himself, managed to project to the night guard.

"…who?" Mike asked his Other, face buried and muffled. "Mari?"

'Look past the strings. At the one pullin' on em.' Gold advised.

The solution seemed obvious when it was phrased like that. Marion was the only one who could Give Life—and take it away. If they wanted to take down Afton, he needed the Puppet back, or he needed to get Henry to loosen the reins. Mike would take either, but his patience was thin and brittle. He'd save the Marionette first, if it came down to it.

"…Henry." Mike looked up, eyes sinister.

'Man always was good at taking things apart.' Gold mused.

"Yeah?" Mike grunted, and his eyes flashed. "Well so am I."

He just had to think. And make a move before someone else did.

The Marionette had asked Fredbear how 'bad' having his head ripped off could be. And that was a clue, because it had to be. Because Marion wouldn't hurt Mike and if Mike asked, he wouldn't hurt Max either. But Marion didn't like being trapped. He liked the safe confines of his Present Box, but on his terms. Trapping the Puppet in something like an animatronic just seemed cruel. Mike knew that, just like he knew Max and Scraptrap weren't so far gone that they couldn't be reasoned with. And no, Mari wouldn't take away Mike's family unless someone made him, either.

Henry and Marion weren't a team. They were forced together, or something. Somehow.

'I'll bet my lucky token that Afton coming back to life down in Pizza World caused some ripples felt in the rest of the world.' Henry himself had said as much when they first met.

Mike didn't know how he knew that, only that he did. Maybe it was Gold, being certain about something he himself couldn't place yet. Maybe it was his gut, honed by years of practice and living along the edge of a very sharp, very preciously balanced knife.

Or maybe, like the Puppet would have said, Mike really had wisened up over the years.

That thing in Lefty was still the Marionette. Another fact. He was still Mike's, because Lefty had already had several chances to do him in and hadn't. Because Mari had never let him down, and even under Henry's control he didn't seem in the mind to start now. He'd given Mike everything he needed, but sneakily, under the cover of darkness. Typical Mari. Maybe Henry really did have a tight hold of the Puppet's strings and it's horrible, ghostly powers, but Marion had slipped one or two free. And he'd used them to help Mike.

Mike whistled sharply, grinning when a bow rustled and a tiny face popped out from her box with a chipper tinkle, alert as ever. Helpy waddled out from behind SP's box and tapped his face in his own display of curiosity, waiting for Mike.

"There's two active blue bands, SP. And I need you to find the other one, now." Mike held up his own blue band to remind her. The little puppet model chimed eagerly.

Her bright optics cycled through the colors, and landed on sky blue. Her bell plinked as she hovered out of her box, eager to seek and find.

"Helpy, I want you to turn on your cameras, and loop what you see through the computer in the Office. Can you do that?"

Helpy considered this, then nodded with a cheerful clap. Mike's grin turned dangerous.

"I had a feeling you could. Mari helped make you too, I'll bet Freddy's mike on it." The night guard chuckled, standing from his crouch. "You stick with Security, okay Little Bear? Both of you are small enough…but if anything or anyone tries to hurt you, you get the hell out of there and come right to me through the vents, okay? Knock twice so I know it's you." He already could feel Gold rising to a hair trigger, realizing what Mike was about to do.

'He knew I'd trust a Freddy model, but he knew Henry would try to even my playing field so Springtrap would come for me. He knew I'd test the games, and so he got into those too. He knew I'd get SP online. Maybe he even knew about Max and Scraptrap—that would explain why they're so similar to us and yet so different. Maybe…Mari made them too. If I get Mari free, he can wake the gang up.'

Mike knew his upcoming shift would be for all the chips. And it was a gamble he was willing to take. Maybe Freddy and the gang had been right, and Mike was going crazy. Maybe Henry and Max had been right, and he'd only end up making things worse.

But wouldn't you do anything to save your best friend, especially the one who'd saved you first? Even if it was the last thing you did?

Max wanted to take back what he'd said the second he'd hissed the words. He knew it was wrong, and he knew it was unfair, to a point. He was still hurt—and certainly still alarmed—but he shouldn't have come down on Mike that harshly. He knew that. He did.

And while he was unwilling to call himself out, thankfully Max had a best friend for that. That was sort of what best friends were known for, really.

'Stupid.' Scraptrap signed to him as Max picked up the taser rod and tried to find a way to hide it on himself. No dice. It was too long.

"Bite me," Max grunted, then deflated when he realized where it would fit. Asking for a favor when they weren't agreeing on something rarely went well. "Open up, man."

They worked together or not at all.

Scraptrap refused, standing there with a bored affect across his costume face. He set his jaw closed and let his eye plates droop to a perfect line, and feigned deafness.

"Dammit, open up! We don't have much time, let's go," Max didn't keep the whine from his voice.

'No.' Scraptrap's paws creaked. 'Hurt.'

"Of course I'm hurt, did you fucken see—no you didn't but trust me, it was, he was—I swear he's bigger than he used to be. How the hell is that fair!?" This wasn't about the haunted suit's height of course, and they both knew that. "He could make mince meat outta both of us!"

'Hurt.' Scraptrap jabbed his silver index fingers at each other twice and then he carefully and deliberately flexed, 'Night. Guard.'

Max blinked at the scold, almost incredulous.

"Yeah, this is about Mike now, is it? What do you want me to do, go back in and apologize? He's probably real pissed off now." Max retorted, trying and failing to get his friend to open up—even as Scraptrap, technically, attempted the very same thing. "You wanna be on the business end of Fredbear, you be my guest. Maybe I'll try a Foxy model next time, seems more my speed than a—ow!"

In fairness, he deserved the whap upside his head that his bunnybot delivered with a swift, single scolding paw, but it frankly didn't hurt so much as just startled him into stunned silence. Max glared at the floor between them.

Slowly, Max's hand stopped trying to pry open Scraptrap's chest cavity and the other remained simply a fist gripping the taser prod. Max stopped everything then, his actions and words, and glared in defiance up at the bunny. And then the long stare down tapered off as Max finally, finally allowed himself to sag. His brow smoothed and a hopeless look waned across his features. The old Bonnie model crooned then, rusty parts sliding together to make an estimate of what was supposed to be a comforting noise. It would have been chilling to anyone else, but to Max it was encouraging and familiar. Scrap even let Max lean forward, resting his forehead with a miserable slouch into the bunny's chest. He listened to the silence—for Scraptrap's inner workings made very little sound unless they were in Suit mode—and scrunched his eyes closed.

"…he kept shit from us. He let the Funtimes out from Pizza World. The Fazes like him way too much, and he got the Puppet to obey him, Scraptrap. When has that happened before?" Max heard the grunt. "Not since Dad. You see my fucken point?"

And even that wasn't true obedience. Not with the way the Puppet had gone behind William's back and reSuited him and Scraptrap.

That was different. This was different. Hell, Mike was different.

They'd never seen the Marionette change its pattern, its nature, simply because it was asked to.

Scraptrap hummed his agreement, granting Max that much.

"So how do we know he's not working with Henry? Mike's smart." He'd proved that plenty of times already. Smart could be deadly. "He could kill us, if he wanted."

At this, Scraptrap had no counsel. Max wasn't wrong there, either.

But he rubbed Max's shoulder like he did when the kid got overwhelmed anyway, and that did sort of help.

"Just…just give me time to think. I'm not saying no but I, I can't. I can't do this now." Max pleaded, and sighed in relief when his bunnybot stepped back to let his chest pop open. "I'm not writing him off, not after what he's done for us but…I need to know it's not fake." Max couldn't take it if it was. "That he's not fake."

He could not be wrong again.

"Here, just, just hold on to this for now? Okay? Just in case." It probably wouldn't do anything but piss the Marionette off, but Lefty had been damaged when he hauled ass away from Fredbear. And it any case, it would rattle or at least slow down Circus Baby, Molten or Springtrap. Mike had the right idea.

On instinct, desperate to survive himself, Max wondered vaguely what it would do to Mike if turned on him, but tried not to think about that too much. Fredbear was old but he clearly carried Mike's reflexes. Just switching Suits had blown the overhead bulbs in Parts and Services, like all that power and force was barely kept contained by that six foot eight scarecrow with a scarred face and hand, a relaxed grin, and way too big an appetite for one human. And the thunderstorms that kept wandering overhead now made horrible, unsettling sense too.

'That was how he survived so long. I knew there had to be something.' Max shivered, letting the quiver flee him liberally. 'No wonder Dad won't show his goddamn face. I mean, he was always a coward but Mike's the night guard. If anyone could keep us in submission, it'd be him.'

"Follow me." Max sighed finally, and he and his bunny exited the cheerful, almost too good to be true restaurant.

Max slid into the warehouse as silently as he could muster, flicked the light and was unsurprised to find that the crowded building remained near pitch black. He jimmied the switch a few more times, but gave up relatively quickly with an irked grunt.

"Course they cut the lights. This is the family that never comes out of the fucken' doom and gloom." Max muttered to Scraptrap as they entered, his bunny's eyes illuminating to help him see.

"Why should we?" answered a soft voice, somewhere ahead and to his right. "There's nothing left for us out there in the light."

Max hissed and froze, but turned to stare at his sister's green, bright optics boring at him from the gloom. They shined, watchful with interest and he tried not to feel like a fish in a bowl, or a hamster in a cage. Henrietta never took good care of her pets.

"Hey, sis." He greeted, tone curt and no nonsense.

"Done playing house with the little night guard?" She simpered, her tone far too candied to be anything close to sympathetic. "Finally figure out what he is? How dangerous and cruel? What he would have done to you the minute you stopped being of use?" Her hungry gaze flitted to just behind him.

"He probably sneeze and take you apart." She said rudely to Scraptrap, who exhaled an unimpressed whuff and ignored her.

"Oh, like Dad did? Really? That's your argument?" Max pointed out, but his lack of refusal meant he didn't…disagree. How could he? He'd seen what Fredbear could do. He'd taken on the Marionette and chased it off like it was nothing.

"Stupid. Daddy only punished you because you stopped listening. You caused that." Henrietta shrugged nonchalantly from her slumped spot. "I was only trying to help you, big brother. Trying to warn you."

'And I stopped listening because I'm not made like you and the Funtimes are.' Max kept that thought private, but he could feel Scraptrap's muted interest as he shuffled in after his kid. 'Besides, it wasn't Mike or Fredbear that tried to do me in, it was the fucken Puppet.'

"You faced them before? That how you got like this?" Max asked, pretending to have to hide a cold sneer. He could play this game too, kid. He invented this game.

Circus Baby hissed and her plates rattled a bit, but her lack of reply was another confirmation.

"Sucks to suck then. Take yer own advice next time. Fredbear's way to high fer you, sis." Max mocked, knowing it would only egg the competitive Circus Baby on.

That caused another string of questions. Did Dad know about the Marionette returning? His actions suggested he knew something, maybe not the whole story though. Awesome. Max could work with that. Setting up two apex predators to go up against each other wasn't just a fun movie plot like in Godzilla, it could work out for him and Scrap nicely. Especially if the remaining one was weakened from the first fight, and Max played their cards right.

He still didn't know what to do about Mike, though. He supposed he could save that for later, provided the man didn't get in his way.

'We both want to stop Dad, though. It's just a matter of how, or who gets to him first.'

Night guard or not, it should be Max who'd get the chance. Arthur and Alexander and even Henrietta, they couldn't save themselves and stop Dad. He was the oldest, so the task would go to him.

But first…

"Yeah, well, Mike's over there all by himself now." Time to test the waters. "And like I said before, with the Fazes locked on stage and dead to the world, he doesn't exactly have the biggest defense."

Circus' head canted as she listened, her wires for pigtails rustling ever so softly. He had her. But it wasn't just Circus Baby he wanted, either. No, Max was going after the big fish. He watched the suddenly quiet Scraptrap's ears and turned to the left corner of the warehouse, where it was impossible to see anything. When his normally calm and friendly bunny suddenly started to glare with poison in his optics, Max whipped his attention to that same spot.

Yep. There it was. Only one tall, Bonnie ear. The other was gone.

"You gunna send over the Funtimes, Dad?" His tone was causal, even as his lied through his teeth. "They could take the night guard, probably."

"The Funtimes have been decommissioned, Michael. And no, they couldn't." Springtrap stepped into Scraptrap's light, purple optics opening as the ragged animatronic smiled down at his eldest. Max tipped his chin up a bit, refusing to bow under the stare and waited for an explanation. "But you knew that already, didn't you?"

"They got too annoying. Wouldn't listen to me! So we put them somewhere else, but they didn't take." Circus Baby pouted, turning to lean around Max to stare deeper into the warehouse. Even if Dad wouldn't offer anything, he could always count on his baby sister to spill the beans.

"Stupid things…" sighed Circus Baby.

Max turned briefly from matching his dad's stare, to simply eyeing the pile of Rockstars just laying around like slain corpses, still and vacant eyed. He fought a shiver, tried not to compare them to the shut down Fazes in the restaurant, and refocused. Well. There was his answer for that.

'Me and Scraptrap woulda ended up like that if the Puppet hadn't shoved me back into Scrap that day in the 80's…'

Not to mention, said a sneaky voice in his mind, that he would look like that right now, if Mike hadn't stopped the Puppet.

"So the Rockstars are all just glitz and glam. No show, huh? Your tank running on empty?" Max demanded at his father, smiling rudely as he tested more of those shark infested waters. Springtrap's jaw worked, and his eye plates lowered. Behind Max, Scraptrap edged a little closer, no doubt matching Max's calm stare.

"After that restaurant opens I won't be. So many new experiments will be walking through that door for us. Ripe for the picking." William's voice was hungry, and Max fought a shudder. "We'll worry about that nonsense later, once we take over the restaurant, and your new friend finishes his last shift."

Springtrap spoke as he approached, his sway gone and his frame moving with more ease. Max's eyes studied the bunny's new legs, spotted Mike's work, and almost chipped a tooth keeping himself from breaking his image of dutiful, well-behaved son. This just got harder.

'Mike was fixing Springtrap, not Dad. It wasn't his fault.' That sneaky voice whispered again. 'He also kept the Fazes up and running until the Puppet nerfed them. He offered to fix Scraptrap within five minutes of meeting you. He's too nice to not help, isn't he?'

"He's not my—"

Springtrap's finger tapped harshly into the teenager's temple, silencing him. "Ah-ah. You're not the only one with good hearing, 'Max.'"

Behind him, Scraptrap shifted uneasily. Max swallowed, then nodded. He forced himself to shut down, to stay calm. He was surprisingly still good at it.

"Yes, sir." He forced his expression to remain composed. "…sorry, sir."

Springtrap grinned at him, his horrible glowing eyes mirrored into Michael Afton's. Like father like son.

The fact Mari had to stay hidden for as long as he possibly could, because he knew Mike would try to free him the second he found out. And he was right. Mike's a dumbass, sure, but he's got a heart of gold~

This chapter is slightly shorter than average—but I also plan to post chapter 17 this Friday ;)