A/N: Mike and his volunteer teams have been doing a hell of a good job so far, taking down about half of the animatronics that have been corrupted by Vanny. But that still leaves about half of them remaining, and just because the first few animatronics went down pretty easily, doesn't mean that the others will.
Humanbeing: Thank you for all the reviews you've posted on the chapters in the past few months! It sounds like you're really enjoying the fic, which I'm glad to see!
MothraRanger: Good to have you back, my friend! Take as much time as you need to review, I completely understand how real-life issues can interfere with how we want to spend our free time.
ThePencilDude: If there wasn't a major story arc going on right now, I'd probably do a Thanksgiving episode as a filler episode or something. The timing is rather unfortunate, unless I can pull off weekly chapters for the next few (a prospect which is not guaranteed in the slightest). You do raise some pretty good points about what the kids would be thankful for, though.
Chapter 171 – Fight Against the Machine, Part 3
"To put it simply, they're audio lures," the volunteer researcher explained. "How they work is that they emit a concentrated signal towards an animatronic. The moment an animatronic picks up that signal, their AI processes are overwhelmed with the singular urge to move towards the signal's origin and locate the source. Each lure that we've developed only works on a specific type of animatronic, like a Toy Chica or a Freddy, which is the one of the biggest reasons why the signal is so concentrated and effective. It was a device that we developed to help regular people relocate animatronics without having to move them personally, much less of a hassle that way."
"Damn," Mike whistled. "That might be the first halfway-decent idea I've heard Fazbear Entertainment come up with. Or at least it would be if the animatronics weren't externally and maliciously hacked to kill the people they were supposed to be entertaining. So they only work on one type of animatronic at a time?"
"Yeah," the technician confirmed, "only one. Otherwise, if there was anybody who bought more than one type of animatronic, having all the animatronics respond to the same signal would cause them all to move to the same spot and make things needlessly complicated."
"That is possibly the best possible thing I could have heard," Mike commented with a delighted grin. "It means that if we need to lure an animatronic and they're in groups, we'll only lure away one type of animatronic at a time instead of getting bumrushed by all of them at the same time. Where are you guys keeping them?"
"We have a few scattered about the factory," a volunteer answered. "I think there's some in a secondary storage room not too far away from here."
"Okay, then let's go there and pick some of them up," Mike decided. He was about to get up, when Liz suddenly floated back into the room, looking a bit nervous.
"Uh, dad?" the former Baby inhabitant called out to him, and the worried expression on her face was enough to immediately put her father on alert. "You might want to check on the main factory area first. There's a lot of animatronics there."
And just like that, any good feelings essentially vanished. "Actually, on second thought, let's do a quit scouting of the main factory area first," Mike changed his mind. "I want to see what exactly we're dealing with, and what lures we're gonna have to bring out to deal with the problems. Intel is half the battle, after all."
It was a good suggestion, and one that nobody had any reason to argue against. The group of volunteers carefully navigated through the halls towards the main manufacturing area, the ghosts resuming their scouting duties to make sure no animatronics caught them off-guard. There weren't any more animatronics waiting to ambush them in the hallways, which was both relieving and disturbing with how silent and empty they were. As they approached the doors leading to the main room, Mike suddenly and wordlessly gestured with his hand for everyone to duck down out of sight. As they did so, he carefully approached the window with his head below the threshold, slowly lifting his head up until the tip of his eyes could see through the window and into the area beyond.
It took every bit of self-control he had not to violently curse at what he saw.
The first problem was that there were even more active animatronics than what he had estimated. Instead of only 10 animatronics still on the loose, there were actually fifteen gathered in the manufacturing area, a 50% increase compared to what he had expected. This would have been bad enough on its own, but that was only the beginning of their problems.
The second, and much more pressing concern, was the fact that the animatronics had all gathered in the largest space possible as a singular group. None of them were making any move to leave the manufacturing area, though it was impossible to tell if this was a conscious decision by the animatronics to remained group in greater numbers after others of their kind had been isolated and destroyed, or if that was just what they had naturally decided to do following whatever passed for logic in their mechanical kinds. It honestly didn't matter, because it was just as problematic either way. Fighting even two animatronics at the same time increased the risks and danger significantly, although with a group as large as theirs they could probably do it. Their odds against fifteen animatronics at the same time, however, were so disproportionately stacked against them it wasn't even worth considering.
And all of this was without taking into account the third, and arguably biggest problem. Specifically, the two Mangles that were included in the group of animatronics that had gathered in the manufacturing area. Mangles who, as some of their group had reported, could severely cripple the effectiveness of their shocker devices, and possibly even disable them completely if multiples of them were present. The shocker devices were their only weapon that could blast multiple animatronics at once with its electricity, and without it they had no area-of-effect attack capabilities whatsoever.
With all these factors stacked against them, a direct confrontation between Mike's volunteers and the animatronics would end in a one-sided bloodbath, with them maybe only taking one or two animatronics down if they were lucky. An outcome that was completely unacceptable to him.
Liz summarized what everyone was thinking in one singular word. "Fuck," she breathed.
"Please don't tell me you're going to try and fight all of them at the same time," Jeremy mumbled nervously.
"Oh, hell to the FUCK, no!" Mike retorted. "I don't feel like putting myself on the Top 10 Stupidest Ways to Die list!" Out loud, he spoke to the other employees. "We're retreating. I need you to take me to the areas where you've been holding the animatronic lures."
One man offered to guide Mike to the area, and as one they retreated from the walls separating them from the main manufacturing area and back through the hallways. The silver lining to their unfortunate discovery was that, since all of the animatronics were seemingly gathered in one place, there wasn't a single enemy in between them and their destination. Without anything to fight, it didn't take long for them to arrive where they needed to be.
"Right here, Mr. Schmidt," the man declared as he opened up the doors to what looked like an empty office that had been haphazardly converted into a storage room. We've kept several audio lures here. There's more of them if we need to keep looking, but hopefully the ones you'll need are here."
"There's only one in particular that I need," Mike answered as his eyes fell upon the lures. Fortunately, Fazbear Entertainment had had the good sense (for once) to make the lures easily identifiable by the head of the animatronic that had been crafted onto them. And it looked like God was smiling on them this time around, for there were two lures with the white and pink head of Toy Foxy on them, a clear indicator that these would the tools they would need to lure away the most important animatronics.
"Oh sweet, those are Mangle lures!" Fritz exclaimed with a huge grin on his face. "Now you can go bait those Mangles away from the rest of the animatronics and beat the shit out of them!"
Gabe was a bit more cautious. "If those Mangles come chasing after Dad and his volunteer group, wouldn't the rest of the animatronics see us and chase after us too?" the former Freddy inhabitant pointed out. "Then we'd still be fighting fifteen animatronics at the same time, except in the hallways instead of an open area. I don't know if that would be better or worse, but it'd still be pretty terrible!"
"Then Dad should make sure he stays out of sight!" Susie suggested. "Have him hide behind the balcony or something, then point the lure at the Mangles and fire it! The Mangles will wander over without actually seeing anything, and then we can bait them further into the hallways where everyone can safely take them down. If we can get the Mangles out of sight of the other animatronics, then they shouldn't follow us and lead to a bloody mess!"
Mike smiled at this last suggestion. "You know, Susie, I was just thinking the exact same thing," he mentally praised. Susie beamed at her father's comments as Mike vocalized his ghostly daughter's plan to the rest of the team. Pretty much everyone agreed that the Mangles were the biggest obstacle they had to actually taking down the whole group of animatronics, and they were equally in agreement with the former Chica inhabitant's plan.
The group quickly maneuvered up a flight of stairs and into the second floor hallways, where the ghosts scouted the surrounding areas and confirmed that there were still no animatronics in the immediate vicinity. "Keep an eye out," Charlie warned. "If something tries to attack us now while we're trying to pull off Dad's plan, he could be in BIG trouble!"
"No kidding," Jeremy muttered. "I'm pretty sure I checked the same place three times in a row and I'm still scared as hell that there's gonna be something coming up from behind."
Fortunately for everyone, the former Bonnie inhabitant's words were, for the most part, unfounded, as they didn't encounter any enemies as they made their way back to the main manufacturing area. This time, however, they had returned via the second floor, where there was a balcony with a low wall behind which they could hide out of sight while still having full and open access to the animatronics. Gesturing for the rest of the team to stay back, Colm crouched low and crawled until he was right behind the balcony, slowly raising his head until his eyes were just above the level of the balcony wall and he could see the group of animatronics far below him.
Raising the Mangle lure, Colm pointed it at the two Mangles and clicked on it. Immediately, both of the Mangles swiveled their heads around until they were looking in his direction and began to break from the group, crawling towards his direction with their many limbs. Colm quickly backed away from the wall and gestured towards his team. "Okay guys, here's how we're gonna do this," Mike whispered as the Mangles started moving. "Divide into two groups and hide in two of the groups, you'll each take care of one animatronic when they get here. Make sure one of you has a Freddy mask on so you can stun the Mangles when they get in. Go, go, go!"
The volunteers quickly dispersed into two teams again, each of them hiding behind the door to one of the rooms. Colm opened the door to the balcony ever so slightly so that the Mangles could access the hallway, then quickly retreated to rejoin one of the teams just as the ghosts flew back to report. "The Mangles are crawling up the stairs!" Cassidy reported. "They're gonna be here soon!"
"Thanks," Mike replied mentally, before addressing the two groups. "When the Mangles get here, make sure to hit both lures together," he instructed. "Otherwise, they might only try to go into one of our rooms."
"You got it," Hector reported as they waited tensely for the Mangles to arrive." After a few more seconds, the door to the hallway swung open and both Mangles crawled in, behaving for all intents and purposes like dogs seeking to hunt down their prey. As soon as they made it into the hallway, the two teams hidden in different rooms each activated a Mangle lure, drawing the canine-like animatronics' attention to them both once again.
To be honest, Mike couldn't truly control what happened next 100%. It was entirely possible that both of the Mangles might choose to enter the same room, in which case the other team would need to quickly come in to rescue them from a double animatronic fight. Still, he had no choice but to wait and see what would happen as the Mangles drew closer and closer, with both of them having crawled up the walls and up to the ceiling similarly to the Mangle of FNaF 2.
The Mangles approached the set of doors that the groups were hiding behind…and then slowly separated, each one going into a different room, just as Mike had hoped. The moment a Mangle entered his room, a volunteer threw the Freddy mask on his face in front of her, causing her eyes to blank as her sensors were forced to fully process the Freddy mask. This gave Mike and his teammates more than enough time to activate their electric rods and start hitting the Mangle who had invaded their room with a few vicious blows to its exposed body. Mangle was violently forced out of her stupor and shrieked, trying to extend her jaw to bite down on Colm's head.
Colm, having already seen this coming, expertly dodged out of the way as Mangle's metal fangs chomped down on the empty air where Mike's head had been seconds earlier. This action only ended up exposing yet another vulnerable spot in Mangle's fragile body, which Colm whacked with his electric rod.
Combined with all the damage that Mangle had already taken, this was simply too much for the animatronic to handle. With an enraged and agonized howl, Mangle lost her grasp on the ceiling and fell to the floor in a crumpled heap, only narrowly missing the worker who had used the Freddy Fazbear mask to distract her. "Get her!" Mike shouted, and the employees wasted no time in ruthlessly assaulting the crippled and weakened animatronic. The beatdown was brutal but mercifully quick, and within seconds there was nothing left of the Mangle that had tried to attack them except for a broken and charred metal skeleton.
"Good job, guys!" Mike praised. "That was clean as hell. Now we should…"
His praise was interrupted by shouts coming from the other room. Abandoning his inspiratory speech, Mike and his volunteers quickly rushed over to the other room as fast as possible. There, they were treated to the sight of Hector actually grabbing the Mangle's mouth with his hands, forcing it open as the animatronic frustratedly tried to snap her jaws shut over the bodyguard's head. Next to him, the volunteer who had been wearing the Freddy mask for their group was hyperventilating like crazy, clearly struggling not to panic but otherwise physically unharmed.
"Urrgghhh…" Hector groaned with exertion as he moved his head backward to keep it out of harm's way, "…a little help here!" Everyone could see that the jaws were getting closer and closer, making it abundantly clear to everyone that Hector's strength was seconds away from failing.
"…you know what, fuck this!" Fritz exclaimed. Before anyone could stop him or even question his actions, the former Foxy inhabitant flew over to Mangle's body and used his spectral power to pull down on Mangle's body, forcing her to let go of her already tenuous grip on the ceiling. Mangle let out a surprised shriek and collapsed to the ground, with Hector stumbling backward in surprise as the pressure forcing his hands together unexpectedly loosened. As Mangle crashed to the ground, the other volunteers who had been waiting for a moment of weakness seized the opportunity, subjecting the animatronic to a beatdown that was equally as brutal as the last with their electric rods. As they tore the animatronic apart and ended her existence before she even got a chance to say the word, Mike walked over to Hector and helped the man up on his feet.
"You all right?" he asked, clearly concerned.
"Yeah," Hector answered, brushing the dust off his pants. "The guy who was supposed to put the Freddy mask on his face did it too quickly, and it slipped off while that Mangle thing was processing it. She snapped out of it and tried to attack him, but I shoved the guy away and I barely had enough time to pry the thing's jaws open to keep her from chomping on my head." He frowned. "Kinda surprised I was even able to do it to begin with, if I'm being honest. These things are machines, after all."
"Maybe it's because Mangles are crappily made compared to other animatronics?" Gabe suggested.
Mike vocalized his son's thought. "I wouldn't try that against most of the other animatronics, unless you want to get your head or hands crushed," he warned. "Sounds like you got lucky this time."
Hector snorted. "No kidding."
As Mike went to check on the volunteer who had tried and failed to put the Freddy mask on, Charlie turned to Fritz. "What you did was reckless and risky…" she began.
"That thing was gonna crush Hector's hands if I didn't do anything," Fritz interrupted, not in the mood for being chewed out given the intensity of the situation they were all in.
"I know, and that's why I think you made the right call," Charlie continued. "I'm not gonna criticize you for it, and I'm not going to tell you not to do it again. Cause you might need to. I'm just asking that you be more careful when you do things like that, cause an animatronic falling on someone can hurt them just as badly as an animatronic beating the crap out of them."
Fritz closed his mouth as he processed Charlie's warning. "Yeah, that's a good point," he admitted. "I'll keep that in mind." And Charlie knew that despite his rambunctious and hot-headed nature, she could trust Fritz when the chips were down and they needed to take things seriously.
"So that's the two Mangles down, right?" a worker asked once they had regrouped. "Our shocker devices should start working again."
"Yeah," Mike replied, "but that doesn't mean we can go in to the manufacturing area, guns blazing. We might have area-of-effect weapons again, but do you really want to fight 13 animatronics in a head-to-head fight when we were having some problems taking down only 2 of them?"
The ensuing silence pretty much answered Mike's question for him. "When it comes to getting shit done, sometimes the boring but practical way is the right way to go. We're going to pick up more of those lures, splitting into the same two groups again so that we cover more ground, and we're going to draw out a certain type of animatronic each time and neutralize them with more ambushes when out in this hallway. Just like we did for the Mangles, only it should be much easier since our shocker devices are working again."
"After seeing what that thing almost did to Fred here, I'm not complaining!" a worker called out, earning a few chuckles from the group. They began to search the factory's rooms, first returning to the room where they had picked up the Mangle lures and then separating to see where they could find more lures for the animatronics that they remembered had been part of the group in the main manufacturing area. Even after the destruction of the Mangles, they didn't find a single animatronic waiting to ambush them or searching for them, which only solidified the suspicion that the animatronics were deliberately waiting for them to make their move in a group of large numbers where their advantage in a straight fight would be essentially insurmountable.
Unfortunately for them, Mike had no intention of playing fair. As soon as they had collected as many lures as possible, the team of volunteers regrouped and retraced their steps back to just outside the main manufacturing area on the first floor where they had first realized just how dangerous the situation actually was.
"You know, if people were watching this, they'd probably be bored more than anything else," Jeremy commented as Mike activated the Foxy lure, drawing away two of the animatronic that was arguably the most dangerous one apart from Mangle away from their group. "If this was a movie, they'd be expecting an epic battle between human and machine with the two beating the shit out of and trying to destroy each other with everything they had. Nobody would watch a movie where we only lure out the animatronics one at a time and then beat the shit out of them a lot easier."
"Goes to show just how different reality is from movies," Gabe agreed. "But this is the right way to do things. Everything Dad said was right. If they try to fight those animatronics like an action movie, they're gonna get murdered. Hard."
Susie shuddered. "Can you imagine just how much harder this would be if we didn't have those lures?" she mumbled. "I don't know how they'd even be able to do this if those Mangles were still there."
Fritz snorted. "I'd call the police and get a fucking SWAT team over here at that point," he deadpanned.
The ghosts didn't have time to say more as the door to the hallway suddenly slammed open and two Foxies rushed into the room, mouths open in snarls and their heads looking around frenziedly like predators searching for their prey. Seeing two open doors, and feeling the signal of the Foxy lure pulse through their mechanical minds, the two Foxies split up and rushed into the rooms, ready to leap at any hapless individual that they found…
…only to clumsily and gracelessly trip over a pile of debris that had been laid across the floor behind the threshold of the doors.
Mike didn't bother hiding a satisfied smirk as he watched the Foxies fall to the ground. Having already been attacked by one and having recognized their behavior through game and real life experience alike, Mike had decided that for once, he was going to try and use Foxies agility and reckless nature against him. After he had lured the Foxies over, he had ordered both teams to scatter as much debris across the doorways as possible, distorting the terrain so that Foxy would stumble over the now-irregular terrain and lose his balance. His plan had worked exactly as he had hoped, and now both Foxies were sprawled onto the ground, completely helpless.
"You know the drill!" Mike called out.
Coordinating like seasoned veterans and soldiers, the teams of workers shocked the helpless Foxy animatronics with the devices to destroy what little resistance they could possibly put up while sprawled on the ground, and then viciously bludgeoned their vulnerable spots with the electric rods to finish the job. The experience they had gained from their ordeal throughout the day really began to shine through, as it only took a few seconds for the workers to completely neutralize and demolish the animatronics as they had done so many times before.
Hector grinned. "This shit's a hell of a lot easier when they're already on the ground," he commented with a laugh as they cleaned up the mess they had left behind and moved the animatronic corpses out of the way.
"Normally this would be when I say that taking down the rest of the animatronics should be easier now," Gabe commented, before sighing, "but by now I know that saying that is pretty much asking for us to get screwed over."
Liz scowled. "You're still gonna jinx it if you say that!" she retorted more than a little peevishly. Which was only fair enough, considering how the day had gone.
"Don't get ahead of yourselves," Mike warned his volunteers as they prepared to set out to lure more animatronics over to the ambush rooms. "If you fuck up even once, you've got an extremely dangerous animatronic in an enclosed space that can severely injure or kill one or even several of you before we finally take him down. Just take things slowly and carefully, and we can wrap all of this up before nighttime."
"Amen to that," a volunteer muttered as Colm approached the outside of the door leading to the main manufacturing area, this time holding a Toy Chica lure. This time, there was only one Toy Chica in the animatronics, and unlike with the Foxies, they had more than enough time to retreat to the ambush rooms and set their trap up as the questionably designed animatronic walked towards one of the rooms.
"Yoo-hoo…where are you?"Toy Chica called out in a sing-song voice as she turned around to enter one of the rooms.
"Right here!" Mike mocked as he blasted her with electricity from the shocker device. Toy Chica shrieked and fell to the ground, not even having a second to respond with a taunt of her own as Hector smashed her exposed areas with his electric rod and reduced her to a smoking and ruined husk.
"Man, those lures make things so much easier for everyone!" Cassidy commented with a giggle.
"If only we knew about those earlier," Susie agreed wistfully. "We wouldn't have had to go chasing down all those animatronics that were running around in the hallways earlier."
There was no doubt that the lures simplified matters greatly. For the next several minutes, the volunteers repeated the protocol they had established for how to deal with the animatronics. Each time, Colm or another volunteer would sneak up to the door leading to the main manufacturing area, activating a different lure to bring back a specific type of animatronic. With this method, they were able to lure back a Freddy, a Toy Bonnie, and a Balloon Boy, all of whom they quickly dismantled in short order.
The process was monotonous but successful…at least at first. As Colm approached the door to the manufacturing area, ready to lure the next animatronic to its doom, he was shocked to discover that the animatronics were turning around and retreating through a series of doors that he hadn't paid attention to until now, leaving the wide, open space completely deserted. "What the heck?" he exclaimed, his shouts attracting the attention of the other members of the animatronic strike force. "Where the hell are they going now?"
"Those doors lead to our main storage area. It's where we keep several of the animatronics we've completed stored in large shipping crates," a volunteer explained. "There aren't too many of them right now since we had to stop production when the higher-ups learned about your accident."
"I think I see where this is going," Gabe mumbled. "They're going to the main storage area to hide there, waiting for you to walk in so that they can try and attack when you can't see them coming. It's basically what you've been doing to the animatronics for the last couple of minutes, except the other way around."
"Can you go scout the area out and confirm this?" Mike asked.
"Sure thing, Dad," Fritz replied as he and the other ghosts flew out into the storage area. This part of the factory was similar to the manufacturing area in that it was a large, open space, but that was where those similarities ended. Instead of conveyer belts and complex machinery, there were shelves and crates stacked on top of each other, as well as a few inactive animatronics scattered here and there, their minds closed in what could pass for sleep. It reminded the ghosts a bit like the warehouse in the IKEA that they had once visited while accompanying Mike while he was doing his shopping.
But unlike the IKEA warehouse, the only signs of life in the warehouse that they could find…were the five remaining animatronics. Two Toy Freddies, a Bonnie, and two Chicas. All of whom were hiding behind the crates and shelves, waiting for the right moment to strike at any unsuspecting fool who walked through the door to the storage area unprepared. Findings that more or less confirmed the theory Gabe had suggested earlier.
The ghosts flew back over to Mike and reported their findings. To their surprise, Mike didn't all that concerned about what they had discovered. "Aren't you worried about this?" Susie asked, clearly confused by her father's seeming lack of a response.
"This doesn't change anything about our strategy," Mike declared, addressing both subordinates and his children at the same time. "Yeah, okay, so the animatronics are trying to hide and ambush us. But guess what? We still know what room we're in, and more importantly…" he held up the lures corresponding to the animatronics trying to ambush them, "we know how to draw them out. We'll just make sure that we retreat to the manufacturing area before we ambush them. As far as the fundamentals go, I'm not changing a thing."
"Then let's smash these asshats to pieces and finish the job," Hector proclaimed, earning nods and words of approval from his colleagues. Mike activated the Bonnie lure, drawing out the lone rabbit animatronic still remaining. The demolition of the animatronic went seamlessly, and Colm went back to lure out the two Toy Freddies.
"Did someone order a new friend?" one of the Toy Freddies asked as the two pudgy bear animatronics stepped into the main manufacturing area.
Mike didn't even bother to respond. Instead, he and several other volunteers began blasting the animatronics right away with their shocker devices. The two bear animatronics let out garbled yells as they stumbled backward, falling onto one knee as they struggled to resist the vicious electricity coursing through their bodies.
Hector was about to rush in and strike at the animatronics with his electric rod, when suddenly his eye caught movement. With a gasp, he realized that the two Chicas had left their hiding spots and were advancing towards the doorway, coming to reinforce their Toy Freddy allies who were still struggling under the onslaught of electricity from the shocker devices. "Hey, Mike!" he called out. "There's backup coming!"
"Shit!" Mike swore under his breath. He briefly considered his options, wondering if it would be possible to fight all four animatronics at once, or quickly kill the two of them already downed before the other two showed up. After a few seconds, he decided against it as the risk was just too great. "Everyone, the Chicas are coming too! Retreat into the hallways and split into 2 teams! Make sure you all have a lure, a Freddy mask, a shocker device, and an electric rod! If you're missing even one, keep retreating through the hallways until you have the tools you need to fight back! Go, go, go!"
Mike turned off the shocker device and the employees quickly retreated, Hector grabbing his wheelchair and pushing him away from the animatronics as quickly as possible (with a little speed boost assistance from the ghost kids). To their fortune, the numbers of the animatronics had briefly turned against them, as the two Chicas couldn't properly navigate through a doorway that could only fit one of them at a time, especially when there were two immobilized Toy Freddies already blocking the area. By the time the Toy Freddies had recovered and all of them had crossed the threshold back to the manufacturing area, Mike and his employees had already made it back to the door leading to the office hallways. Mike spent a few seconds to activate the lures for the animatronics, making sure that they wouldn't go back to hide in the storage area, before departing for the hallways and setting up their ambushes in the rooms.
For a few terrible seconds, Mike wondered if the animatronics wouldn't try to find them in the hallways, and if they'd have no choice but to fight the last four animatronics under unfavorable and unfamiliar conditions. Then, the tell-tale sign of heavy metal footsteps started marching down the hallway, and he breathed a sign of relief as he realized that things were going according to plan after all.
"Maybe I should activate one of the lures again," Mike thought as the footsteps grew closer and louder, before shaking his head. "Actually, never mind. If I do that, we might end up biting more than we can chew."
After a few nail-biting seconds, a Toy Freddy and a Chica both entered the room. "There you are!" Toy Freddy cheerfully called out to them, his polite and friendly manner contrasting to the murderous intentions that had been programmed into him. "Now we can start the party!"
"Well, here's a Deathday surprise!" Mike retorted as he and another volunteer started blasting them both with their shocker devices. Toy Freddy screeched and stumbled backward, colliding into Chica as they were both assaulted with arcs of lightning bolts. Once again, the numbers of the animatronics had turned against them, as it was impossible for both Toy Freddy and Chica to get through the doorway at the same time due to their hulking frames.
On the other hand, finishing off the animatronics with their electric rods was also much more problematic as well, since Chica would be free to attack them while Toy Freddy was down.
"Dad! You don't have to kill them with the electric rods all the time! You can just fry them with the shockers until they blow up!" Cassidy suddenly reminded him through a telepathic message.
"Oh, right!" Mike realized. "Everyone, forget the electric rods! Just blast them until they're dead!" he sharply ordered.
Colm and another volunteer took out their own shocker devices and, looking distinctly relieved that they wouldn't have to get up-close-and-personal to Toy Freddy with Chica so closely behind him, blasted the two animatronics with their own bolts of electricity. Sounds of crackling electricity and shrieks of mechanical agony and outrage echoed throughout the entire room, the combined power of four shocker devices frying the animatronics' inner mechanisms far more thoroughly and far more devastatingly than one or even two of them could have possibly managed alone.
Sparks and smoke flew out of the Toy Freddy's body as he toppled forward onto the ground, his entire body roasted and burned beyond any hope of recovery. Chica hadn't been as badly affected since Toy Freddy had taken the brunt of the onslaught, but she hadn't fully escaped being part of the collateral either, and now there was nothing defending her from the incoming attacks.
Still, Mike hadn't dismissed the possibility that the other animatronics they had seen might be close enough to reinforce her if they were careless with their attack. "Colm, Jax? Keep blasting that chicken with your shocker devices," he ordered, before adding a mental command to the ghost kids, "and one of you check to make sure that the other animatronics aren't close enough to cause problems."
Susie flew into the hallway, where she could see the other Toy Freddy and Chica in two rooms a few doors down. Unlike their Toy Freddy and Chica, the other pair had separated, a grave mistake that gave the volunteer teams a much easier time fighting them individually. They were busy being attacked by shocker devices, and were clearly too preoccupied to help their allies. She flew back over to the room. "Coast is clear!" she reported.
Mike grinned. "Kick her ass, Hector," he declared. Hector was only too happy to oblige, rushing towards the downed and weakened chicken animatronic with a battle roar as he slammed his electric rod onto her exposed joints and body parts, reducing her to a broken metal corpse. He glanced over to where Susie had seen the other animatronics, and was just in time to see both of them fall to the ground in an equally broken and ruined state.
The burly man let out a large breath, the adrenaline finally starting to leave his body with exhaustion starting to creep in. "Have we done it?" Hector asked. "Did we win? Is it over?"
"There's only one way to find out," Mike answered solemnly. He guided the volunteers back across the manufacturing area and to the storage warehouse, sending the ghost kids to scout it out again. It only took a few seconds for the relieved and satisfied ghost kids to report that there were no animatronics left in the storage area to ambush them, but Mike took the extra time to take out each and every lure and activate it right outside the storage area so that he would have a plausible explanation to declare victory. When several seconds passed, and not a single animatronic showed its face, only then did he allow a tired but triumphant grin to spread across his face.
"Gentlemen," he declared, "I think we got them all."
The volunteers all cheered, reveling in their victory and sharing congratulations with each other. The ghost kids were equally as delighted with the declaration, knowing that they had helped in making sure that not a single volunteer in the animatronic strike teams had died or even suffered serious injury.
"We did it!" Cassidy cheered. "It's finally over!"
"We kicked those animatronics' asses!" Fritz whooped. "Hell yeah!"
"And nobody died!" Jeremy died. "Everyone got through it all unharmed! That's the REAL win tonight!"
"Indeed it was," Mike thought. Facing off against 25 rampaging, maliciously programmed animatronics had been a challenge in and of itself, but that challenge had been amplified even further by the mission that he had set for himself to make sure that not a single person died or suffered serious injury throughout the course of their hunt. More than anything else, he was relieved that the strategies that he had developed had proven their effectiveness when it had mattered the most, despite the dangers that the animatronics had presented.
Of course, the problems they were facing were far from fully resolved. The animatronics that had been activated by Glitchtrap's possession victim might have been neutralized and destroyed, but it was almost certain that more were hidden among the animatronics already created, waiting to be triggered as lethal traps to anyone unfortunate to be close to them without being prepared to fend them off. And he also needed to find ways to make sure that Glitchtrap's possession victim wouldn't be able to corrupt more animatronics in the future, for their work today would be rendered meaningless if she could simply hack more animatronics to replace the ones that they had already destroyed.
Mike knew that his work tonight was far from done. There were many things that still needed to be done, including a call to the police and a report to Fazbear Entertainment. It was entirely possible that he might not get home until very late tonight, or even stay at the factory overnight to take care of all this business.
But those were tasks that could afford to wait for an hour or two. For now, he would celebrate a job well done with the bodyguards and employees who had served him well, and the ghost kids who had scouted out the crucial information needed to make the bloodless night possible.
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A/N: And there we go, everyone! Mike, his two bodyguards, and his team of volunteers have achieved the seemingly impossible, and taken down 25 animatronics without losing a single casualty or even suffering a significant injury. Mike's strategies and teachings obviously played a huge role in everyone's survival, but if the ghost kids hadn't been scouting out the area and subtly interfering in and manipulating events if needed, I can guarantee that a zero-casualty, bloodless night would not have been possible. Mike has certainly proved himself in the eyes of the employees, and has most certainly earned their respect if he hadn't already earned it before this whole mess happened.
Gonna be honest, for some reason this chapter was just a massive pain in the ass to write. I had a really busy week last week during my hospital rotation, and I was really forcing the gears and inner workings of my mind to churn out this chapter. I'm reasonably satisfied with the result overall, but damn did it take a lot of energy and effort to get here.
Some of you might criticize this chapter, complaining that Mike's strategies to deal with the animatronics lurking in the factory were boring, repetitive, and lacked any sort of flare or excitement. To which I say…that's exactly the point. As Gabe himself stated, if Mike and his team tried to engage in an epic all-out battle between themselves and the animatronics, they would get completely massacred. Mike's methodology and tactics might have been monotonous, but they are practical, and I have long established Mike as being a pragmatist first and foremost when it comes to dealing with enemies. There is absolutely no reason for him to suddenly change what works and invite an unnecessary failure, especially when that failure could get him or his workers all killed for basically no good reason.
Next chapter will address the aftermath of the raid on the animatronics, and the steps that Mike will take to counter any of Vanny's future attempts to corrupt and maliciously program more animatronics into trying to kill either the employees of the factory or potential customers.
Please let me know what you think, and I hope you guys enjoyed!
