A/N: Now that the animatronics have finally been taken down by Mike and his team of volunteers, all that's left is to address the aftermath. For the sake of simplicity, I'm just going to call this Part 4 of this arc, even though it's more of a wrap-up than anything else.

MothraRanger: There were I think 2 animatronics that Mike destroyed at the very beginning in the lobby, luring them over as a demonstration on how to destroy them for the other volunteers. Did you include those? Cause otherwise I might have miscounted.

Chapter 172 – Fight Against the Machine, Part 4

It would have been wonderful, not to mention both fitting and poetic, if Mike could stop all work for the rest of the day and take a well-deserved rest after his and his volunteers' hard-earned and complete victory over the animatronics.

Unfortunately, reality wasn't so kind, and there was still so much that needed to be done even after the immediate threat of the animatronics had passed.

The first thing that needed to be done was to type up a contract to formalize the agreement that Mike had made with the volunteers. There hadn't been any opportunity to create such a contract when Mike had first made his offer, both because of the general urgency of the situation and also because trying to type up a multi-page document with dangerous and aggressive animatronics running around the facility was an excellent way to die a very stupid, pointless, and violent death. But now that the danger had passed and they had all spent several minutes resting and recuperating, Mike lead his volunteers over to the computer in his office and began typing up a contract that delineated the offer that he had made to the workers.

"I'm not interested in screwing you guys over with random legalese bullshit," Mike declared once he had finished typing the contract up and printed it out. "You can read over it if you want, the terms that we already talked about are short, sweet, and to the point."

One of the volunteers looked over the contract and raised an eyebrow. "Huh," he commented. "Yeah, that's…pretty much exactly what we agreed on. 2500 dollars for all of us in exchange for us helping you beat the shit out of those animatronics, plus any medical bills for serious injuries."

"Yeah," Mike agreed. "I added an addendum at the end of the contract confirming that nobody was seriously injured after we took care of the problem, so nobody will be needing any money beyond what I originally promised you guys."

"Fair enough," another worker agreed. "I'm not gonna complain about a free 2.5 grand."

"Just sign your names here, and I'll add mine at the very end," Mike instructed. "And you don't have to worry about me secretly stabbing you in the back, my plan is to get the checkbook and write out all of the checks either tomorrow or the day after."

"When you lay out a timeline that specific, I can't help but believe you," someone commented with a sigh of relief. "The guy who got fired before you would've probably tried to cheat us out of our reward for helping you out."

"Well, then the fucker got what he deserved," Mike retorted as they signed the contract. Once everyone had signed, he copied it several times and gave each worker present a copy. "Nothing like hard evidence to prove that something actually exists, right?"

"Damn right," everyone agreed as they each took a copy.

"Like I said before, you guys can expect the checks either tomorrow or the day after. Now go home and get some rest, you guys deserved it," Mike declared as he gestured towards the door. He gestured toward Charlie to invisibly escort them just to make 100% sure that they would be safe, which the ghostly teen didn't even need telepathy to understand his instructions. The moment they were gone, and he was left with just Hector and Colm by his side, he took out his phone and dialed Stacy's number. "Stacy?"

"Mr. Schmidt?" the receptionist was clearly surprised to finally hear from him. "Did you actually manage to deal with the crisis?"

"I did indeed," Mike confirmed. "All of the animatronics that went rogue have been destroyed. And miraculously, nobody was hurt."

"Oh, thank God!" Stacy exclaimed. "We were all worried about you guys!"

"We're fine, Stacy," Mike reassured him, "but my work here isn't done. I'm still keeping the factory under lockdown for now. My orders still stand – NOBODY is to enter the building under any circumstances until the police get here. Anyone who does is going to be considered a high-priority suspect for the malicious hacker who sent these animatronics on a killing rampage in the first place."

"Understood, Mr. Schmidt," Stacy reassured him. "We've all stayed together as a group while you were busy taking care of the animatronics. Not a single person has tried to go into the factory by themselves."

"That's good to hear, Stacy," Mike answered. "Keep up the good work," he praised, before hanging up.

"That's good news, right?" Cassidy asked. "That means Glitchtrap's victim couldn't have snuck it and messed around with more animatronics to send after Dad and the teams earlier."

"For the most part yeah," Gabe agreed, "although that also means we missed out on an opportunity to catch her in the act if we saw her trying to sneak around the factory."

Jeremy frowned. "This is a big factory, and she's only one person," he countered. "I don't think there's a big chance we would've caught her even if she did try to sneak around."

"Probably not worth the risk of them sending even more animatronics after Dad," Liz commented, a statement that nobody, not even Fritz, disagreed with.

"You gonna contact the police now?" Hector wondered.

"Yeah," Mike confirmed. "The sooner I have this place under the protection of the police, the more confident I'll be that things are under lockdown and that our mystery saboteur won't sneak in and fuck everything up."

He opened up his phone again and dialed 9-1-1. Almost immediately, a woman's voice greeted him. "9-1-1, what is the nature of your emergency?"

"This is Mike Schmidt, new head of Fazbear Entertainment's Special Delivery project," Mike answered, his voice curt and to the point. "I would like to speak with the police department, as I have a major incident that I need to report as soon as possible. This is a matter of the utmost importance."

"One moment, Mr. Schmidt," the woman answered, before redirecting the call. Mike waited for a few seconds before another voice greeted him, this time a stern man's voice. "This is the police department. Police Chief Sanders speaking. How may I help you, Mr. Schmidt?"

Mike was honestly surprised that the police chief himself was taking the call directly, but he wasn't going to complain about his good fortune. "Hello, Chief Sanders. There has been a breach of security at the Fazbear Entertainment Special Deliveryproject in the Fazbear Factory. About 25 animatronics were maliciously hacked by a mysterious intruder and saboteur who I previously spoke about earlier in my news interview, when I first publicly announced my new role as the head of the Fazbear Entertainment Special Delivery project. I was forced to evacuate everyone from the factory, and once I did so I organized a team of volunteers to assist me in hunting down and destroying each rogue animatronic until they were all neutralized."

"…I think I'm going to have to hear the full story, Mr. Schmidt. Please start from the beginning, and include as many relevant details as possible," Chief Sanders instructed.

Mike proceeded to do as the police chief requested. He started with how he had gathered the volunteers and equipped them with tools that had been specifically designed to counter and destroy the corrupted animatronics, before training them on how to lure, defend themselves against, and then afterwards attack and destroy the animatronics with minimal injury. He described the tactics that they had used to first hunt down wandering animatronics in the hallways, and then lured the animatronics that had grouped together in the main factory area out in the open to be destroyed one at a time. Mike concluded by announcing that he had managed to handle the situation without a single casualty or serious injury, and that he had a signed and written contract that could verify his story along with the untouched, unmoved mangled corpses of the animatronics that they had destroyed.

"Well, assuming that your story is indeed true, I must congratulate you on your success," Chief Sanders acknowledged. "That being said, I do have a concern. There are some who would argue that involving your workers as impromptu soldiers against these dangerous, out-of-control animatronics would be criminally negligent and an abuse of your authority as head of the project."

"Are you accusing me of that, Chief Sanders?" Mike asked, his voice carefully neutral.

"I'm not accusing you of anything, Mr. Schmidt," the police chief replied. "But I would like to know your rationale for why you simply didn't contact the police to begin with."

"I can understand your concerns," Mike answered calmly, "and I do have my reasons. But before I get into those, I would like to remind you that every worker who participated as part of my strike teams did so as volunteers, volunteers who were thoroughly educated and warned in advance about the potential dangers of going up against the animatronics. Despite these risks, they chose to do so anyway, and will be rewarded for their efforts today with 2500 dollars each out of my own personal pocket. There's even a contract signed by all of us confirming this. If I had simply ordered some workers to face off against the animatronics for no additional reward, then it would have been a completely different story."

"A fair point, Mr. Schmidt," the police chief acknowledged. "Although I still think calling the police immediately and letting us take care of the issue would have been the smarter option."

"I respectfully disagree, Chief Sanders," Mike replied. "One of the biggest issues with getting the police involved pre-emptively is that you simply don't have the right tools necessary to deal with the animatronics. I had brought multiple copies of the proper equipment, and I only had enough to distribute to a limited number of volunteers. I certainly wouldn't have had enough to equip an entire police force, and I wasn't going to risk your men going in and trying to fight the animatronics without the equipment in question when they don't even have a basic understanding of how the animatronics work. If your officers tried to brute-force their way against the animatronics, without the proper tools or even a proper strategy, the animatronics would have slaughtered them. It was much better for me to instruct a group of Fazbear Entertainment workers, who were already familiar with how the animatronics and tools worked, to take care of the animatronics once I taught them how to destroy the animatronics."

"I see," Chief Sanders mulled over Mike's answer. "But wouldn't it have been better to find more tools in the factory for us to work with?"

"This is my first day as the new head of Fazbear Entertainment's project, Chief Sanders," Mike answered. "I still wasn't familiar with where everything is, and the crisis happened before I could fully figure everything out. And besides, even if I did know where all of the extra tools were, trying to find them blindly in a factory full of rampaging animatronics would have been extremely foolish."

"I can't disagree with that logic," the police chief admitted.

"The other concern is that I didn't know if there was a time limit on how long we would have to destroy the animatronics," Mike continued. "Part of me was worried that, if we left the animatronics alone for too long, they could possibly spread their malicious programming to other animatronics that hadn't yet been affected, making the danger more and more widespread and therefore significantly harder if not impossible to control. Fortunately, this didn't turn out to be the case, but I didn't know that for certain. Calling the police and waiting for them to get here would have cost valuable time if the doomsday scenario I talked about WAS real, and I didn't want to lose so much time and take that risk."

"…I've seen enough robot apocalypse movies to know that this is a reality I can't just completely dismiss as impossible," Chief Sanders sighed. "Are you sure destroyed all the animatronics that were hacked with the bad programming?"

"All the ones that are active," Mike confirmed. "We did another scouting of the facility to make absolutely sure we weren't missing any." Technically, it was the ghost kids who had done most of the investigation, but he certainly wasn't going to tell an unfamiliar stranger to their family about their existence. "However, there are still many animatronics within the facility that have not been activated, and it's entirely possible or even likely that several of them might have been maliciously hacked by the intruder and simply weren't detected because they were never turned on."

"I see," Chief Sanders acknowledged. "While I'm still not necessarily convinced that calling for police backup wasn't the right course of action, I can at least understand and respect the fact that your actions were carefully thought-out and well-reasoned. I can't fault you for choosing what you believed to be the best plan of action to deal with the situation, and I appreciate the fact that your workers were willing volunteers who were fully aware of the danger to themselves and will be rewarded properly for their success. The only question I have now is why you are requesting police assistance if the problem seems to have resolved itself?"

"I'm calling you because I need the factory placed under police security for the next couple of days," Mike responded. "Around-the-clock would be ideal, but at least for the nighttime. It turns out that this factory doesn't have any security cameras at all, and without some guards present, the chances of the mysterious saboteur coming back to fuck up more animatronics with murderous programming is dangerously high. I think I accomplished something incredible today by destroying 25 rampaging animatronics with 0 deaths or serious injuries, but that accomplishment means absolutely nothing if whoever hacked them in the first place can sneak in and hack 25 more to take their place the next day."

"I see what you're saying, and I completely agree with this assessment," Chief Sanders agreed. "That being said, I don't have enough officers available by myself to provide the kind of security you're asking for. I'll need to call in some backup from other police departments and coordinate with them before I can provide you with the kind of task force necessary for this kind of job. It might be an hour or two before they arrive."

"That's perfectly fine," Mike reassured him, "so long as I have SOMEONE here to make sure that the factory is well-guarded overnight."

"Rest assured, Mr. Schmidt, I fully understand the gravity of the situation," Chief Sanders declared. "I'm very familiar with the tragedies surrounding Fazbear Entertainment, as well as the disturbing levels of incompetence the company has demonstrated. You have no idea how pleasantly surprised I am to speak to someone who is taking both the crisis and the welfare of his subordinates, and I'll do everything that I can to assist you."

"Thank you very much, Chief Sanders," Mike gratefully replied, before both of them hung up.

"That went pretty well, I think," Fritz commented.

"Yeah, I didn't realize we still needed a way to make sure Glitchtrap's possession victim couldn't come back and mess up with more of the animatronics," Susie admitted. "I mean, WE can do it, but we wouldn't be able to do anything to actually stop her without doing spooky haunting stuff."

"Dad also wouldn't have any evidence to prove it was her unless he stumbled upon her personally," Cassidy added. "And without anyone around to watch her, she could take out a weapon and hurt Dad!"

"Oh, shit…that's not gonna be a problem, is it, Dad?" Fritz asked, worry clear in his eyes.

"The police chief told me that he's gathering officers from around Utah and gonna be here with a security force to watch over the factory overnight," Mike announced, openly speaking to Colm and Hector but secretly reassuring his still-invisible ghost kids at the same time. I'll need you guys to stay here until the police arrive but once they're here and set up you can go home for the evening. Just ask one of the cops to escort you home or something, cause I'm gonna still be sticking around for a while."

"Thank God for that, I need a nap!" Hector declared, earning looks of understanding from both Mike and Colm, as well as a few snickers from the ghost kids. "By the way, I know you're already paying us some good money for doing this whole bodyguard thing to begin with, but are you going to be giving us the same kind of deal you gave to your workers for what we did today? I don't really mind if you do or you don't, I'm just a bit curious, is all."

"You bet I am," Mike answered with a grin. "You guys were easily the best out of all of them. I'm giving you an extra thousand on your paychecks for the work you did today, you definitely deserve it."

Hector returned the grin with one of his own. "Aww, hell yeah!" he cheered. "You're the best, Schmidt!"

Colm let out a sigh of relief. "That might calm Neimi down," he mumbled. "She's not gonna react well when she learns that I put my life at risk trying to take down a bunch of killer robots. I mean, she knew that this was a possibility, but I don't think any of us were expecting to do this on literally the first day on the job!"

"I don't think any of us were expecting things to escalate that quickly," Mike replied solemnly. "I'm just glad everything turned out all right in the end."

"As long as the cops don't do something stupid like turn the hacked animatronics on by themselves for literally no good reason," Susie deadpanned.

"If they do, they get what they fucking deserved," Fritz retorted. A harsh statement, but nobody could disagree with it.

"Was what you actually said earlier true?" Jeremy suddenly remembered something their father had mentioned in his phone call to the police chief earlier. "That there's no security cameras in this factory?"

"Nope," Mike telepathically confirmed. "There are no security cameras at all. That was one of the first things I tried to look for when I got here."

"But…but…they had a security camera system in their restaurants!" Cassidy spluttered. "Literally more than thirty years ago!"

"That's right!" Mike replied with false cheer.

"That's so FUCKING STUPID!" Liz exploded furiously, her green eyes flashing crazily with agitation, and Mike was suddenly very grateful that Charlie's magic was so effective at keeping them undetected even during his children's more emotional moments. "How the FUCK did they manage to fuck THAT up! You even TOLD them that there was an intruder hacking the animatronics, and yet they STILL didn't bother to set up a BASIC FUCKING SECURITY SYSTEM?"

"Calm down, Liz…" Fritz mumbled nervously, trying desperately to ease up his sister's rage. "Calm down…"

"We were REALLY lucky in hindsight that Glitchtrap's possession victim didn't try to sneak in to the factory while we were dealing with the animatronics," Charlie commented, having returned from escorting the workers out of the factory. "With how bad security truly is, it's entirely possible that they might have successfully taken advantage of the distraction to make things worse, and nobody except maybe us would've been able to catch it."

"Once the police get here, I think we'll be safe from any attempts to sneak into the factory and wreak more havoc," Mike commented, once again talking out loud. "The problem is, I need to come up with a solid plan to make sure that whoever hacked these animatronics can't get another opportunity to set up a round 2."

"The two of us can go and find where they made those tools you gave us," Hector offered, gesturing to himself and Colm. "If we find wherever they're storing them and there's a lot of them around, then a lot more people will have a better chance to fight off an animatronic in case one of them starts going haywire while they're working on them."

"…I think we might be better off waiting until the police get here," Mike countered. Secretly, however, he sent an instruction telepathically to Charlie. "Charlie, can you go searching through the factory and find where they're keeping all those weapons that we used to deal with the animatronics?"

"I'm on it, Dad!" the former Marionette inhabitant replied as she flew out of the room.

Once she was gone, Mike let out a long sigh that truly highlighted just how tired he was after everything they had been through during the day. Although his next words would highlight another reason why he had let out the sigh. "Now I have to write my report to fucking Fazbear Entertainment about all this," he grumbled. "As much as I hate those selfish and greedy jackasses, there's no way I can justify putting off a report about a major incident like this."

"You should make them buy a fully functioning security camera system throughout the factory!" Jeremy suggested. "That's probably one of the best things you can do to make sure we can catch anybody who tries to fuck around with the animatronics again!"

"Oh, you bet I'm going to do exactly that," Mike reassured him, his eyes hardening. "And I'm going to strongly encourage that they buy a properly functioning, high quality security system. With unfortunate consequences that may or may not happen if they don't follow through with that recommendation."

The ghost kids smirked, knowing full well that the "polite request" that Mike was about to make would in practice be anything but.

As Mike got to work writing his email to Fazbear Entertainment, an idea suddenly popped up in Gabe's head. "Hey, Dad?"

"Yeah?" Mike raised his head from the computer, stopping his typing momentarily to listen to his son.

"I think I have an idea on how we can make sure that Glitchtrap's possession victim doesn't get a chance to mess up the animatronics again," the former Freddy inhabitant explained. "I got this idea from how you split up those workers into teams, and I really think this is going to help a lot!"

"Oh?" By now, the computer was mostly forgotten, with Mike giving his son his full attention. He was getting an odd look from Hector, who was completely oblivious to the ghost boy's existence, but Colm and the other ghost kids were just as curious as Mike was. "I'm listening."

/

Vanny waited outside of the factory along with the rest of the workers, impatiently waiting for the new head of the project to let them all back in. She had been shocked to discover that the volunteers who had offered to help Mr. Schmidt take care of the animatronics had not only emerged from the factory largely unscathed, but had managed to successfully dismantle every single animatronic that she had activated and hacked to attack the workers in the facility.

"I must admit, I am impressed," Glitchtrap's voice echoed through her head, along with a light chuckle. "Nobody could successfully destroy all of the animatronics we had reprogrammed through luck alone. Clearly, this Schmidt person has both the skill and experience to accomplish such a feat with no casualties."

"I don't understand how," Vanny thought back. "We even sent out two Mangles to interfere with the shocker devices! And yet they still managed to deal with all of our animatronics with seemingly no difficulty at all!"

She never got to hear a reply, for at that moment the sound of blaring sirens suddenly started echoing around them. Several workers let out shouts of surprise as several police cars arrived in the parking lot of the hospital, with many policemen and policewomen climbing out of them. At the same time, Schmidt finally stepped out of the front doors and into the parking lot, greeting them all for the first time since the incident had started with his two associates flanking him on each side.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" he announced. "As I'm sure you've already heard by now, the rogue animatronics that were rampaging through the factory have been destroyed. And I'm pleased to announce that there has not been a single casualty among the brave volunteers who put their lives at risk to help me deal with this dangerous threat!"

Cheers broke out from the workers, with Vanny joining them to avoid drawing suspicion onto herself. "That being said," Mike continued, "the mysterious intruder who corrupted these animatronics in the first place is still at large, and I refuse to allow them the opportunity to get another shot. I am officially ending the work day for today, and putting the entire building under police lockdown for the night. If you have any belongings you might need to collect, a police officer will escort you to collect your belongings and only collect your belongings. Any other actions, including so much as touching an animatronic or trying to sneak away from your police escort, will immediately mark you as a suspect for being the saboteur and you will be detained by the police on the spot. Once again," Mike's eyes narrowed as he emphasized the warning, "if you do anything even remotely suspicious, you WILL be detained on the spot. This is your first and only warning."

"…Clever, Schmidt," Glitchtrap grumbled with grudging respect. "Very clever indeed. By summoning the police, you have effectively made it impossible for us to activate and unleash more of the animatronics that we have…graced…with our gifts. By this action alone you've proved yourself much more competent than the imbeciles who run Fazbear Entertainment…and I suspect that your intelligence won't end its course here."

"He is dangerous…" Vanny thought back, "a major threat to our plans. Should we…try to eliminate him?"

"A tempting idea, but no," Glitchtrap rebuffed. "Far too high of a risk, and not worth the reward. You see those men who stand at Schmidt's side? I did not realize it at first, but they are almost certainly Schmidt's bodyguards. Bodyguards who have proven at least competent enough to survive a fight against multiple animatronics. If they see you try to assassinate Schmidt, and sound the alarm, then everything will be lost. Not only that, but you do not have access to a gun or any weapon that can attack Schmidt from long range, and even if you did you do not have the skill to properly wield such a weapon while keeping it concealed from your colleagues."

"If Schmidt dies, then the reforms he plans will die as well…" Vanny replied, but even she was skeptical of just how probable a successful attack on Schmidt would actually be.

"Unfortunately, my sweet, you would only have one chance at such an attack," Glitchtrap countered. "And this attack, if failed, will lead to your exposure, your capture, and the complete destruction of our plans, all for nothing. Even a successful attack will more than likely lead to the exact same outcome in the end, given how Schmidt is constantly surrounded by his bodyguards. He would have to commit a monumental act of stupidity to expose himself so blatantly that we could attempt a successful attack…and given his behavior and actions so far, I doubt that he will prove so foolish."

"Then what do we do?" the servant asked her master. "Our plans for the Special Delivery project may be ruined regardless!"

"We can certainly take advantage of any opportunities that present themselves to us," Glitchtrap replied after a few seconds of thought, even as Vanny started to turn and walk towards her car (having already collected all of her necessary things before setting off the "incident"). "However, it may be wise for us to shift our priorities and cut our losses. There is a much greater Fazbear Entertainment project that I have plans for, one where I can realize my noble work to its fullest potential."

"So for now, we should do nothing."

"For now, dear Vanny, you will do everything in your power to avoid suspicion and evade capture," Glitchtrap coldly instructed. "No matter what, Schmidt should not be given any reason to suspect your involvement in the malignant behavior of our animatronics." She could see the sinister grin widen across his face. "After all…if we cannot hope to win this round…then all we need to do is make sure we do not lose, either."

/

A/N: And there you have it, everyone. The battle against the animatronics has reached its conclusion. Mike has accomplished a major victory against Glitchtrap by destroying his animatronics without a single casualty…but Vanny is still at large.

Both Mike and Glitchtrap are actually demonstrating some cunning strategy here. Mike realizes that actually catching Glitchtrap's possession victim might not be possible, so he's also doing everything in his power to make damn sure that she won't get a second chance to unleash chaos through maliciously programmed animatronics (either at the factory or in the hands of unsuspecting customers once they are finally delivered). And Glitchtrap is also intelligent enough to recognize that trying to create a disaster on the level of canon Special Delivery may be a lost cause with a competent overseer, so he also has a backup plan in making sure Vanny doesn't get detected. Even if that means he can't satisfy his bloodlust by killing Mike, since the risk is just too high. Ironic how a glitchy soul fragment of William Afton is more calculated and intelligent than William Afton himself (although to be fair, being tortured in Hell for eternity probably doesn't have a positive impact on your critical thinking and intelligence).

There may be a filler chapter or two before the next main plot chapter, but the next plot chapter will reveal what Gabe's plan is and how it'll make sure Vanny won't get another chance to corrupt more animatronics.

Please let me know what you guys think, and I hope you guys enjoyed!