"…and so we've been scaring guards for the past three months," Timmy finished. The three siblings were once again sitting together in the party room. The rest of the children were seated around them, listening to their story which was being recounted for Henry. Nate popped in and out of ghost form to volunteer details that the others could tell the man.

"Gosh, I never would have thought…" Henry shook his head, "I don't even know what to say… I'm sorry. I wish I could have helped you."

"We're together now at least," Katie tried to make her oldest brother feel better.

"Although," Timmy cut in, "I don't know how long we can stay that way. We have to stop the murderer and move on."

"But we just got back together! It isn't fair!" cried Katie. "I don't want to leave if we have to tear our family apart again!"

"But Katie, we're supposed to go!" Brian complained. "You said so yourself! And I'm tired of being stuck here!" The other children quietly nodded.

"It's not fair, though! We just got back together!" She pounded a fist on the table. "I won't leave my brother again!"

"Listen Katie!" the guard grabbed her golden paw and settled it. "Katie, it's ok. You aren't meant to stay here forever." Though he felt that his next blink would produce tears, Henry managed a small smile. "You need to go on. You can't stay in this," he glanced around the room, "rotting pizzeria forever. There isn't anything left for you here."

"But you're here," she protested. Her gaze hovered over each of her friends. "You all can leave if you want. Timmy, I want you to go, too. You've been waiting long enough. But I have to stay."

"You are certainly not going to stay here." Henry's command made it clear that he would take no defiance. His voice became softer as he gave a tearful smile. "You need to go. Don't worry about me. Timmy won't have anyone to keep him company if you don't stay with him." Timmy started to mutter some retort at the slight jab, but decided to let his brother continue since Henry was helping him. "Grandma and Grandpa will be there. And remember Swimmy?"

"He was the best pet fish in the world," Katie said quietly.

"Well, I'm sure he's waiting for you, too, wherever you're supposed to go. Don't worry about leaving me. I'll join you, someday." He squeezed her paw and gave another tearful smile. Never would he have imagined that he'd be talking to his lost brother and sister again, and even less would he have believed that he'd be letting them go a second time.

"Don't worry, ok?" he told her. "And Timmy?" The younger boy grunted to show that he was listening. "Timmy, I'm sorry. For everything. I never got a chance to tell you that, but I need to now. I was an awful big brother and I made your life hell. I know I can't ask you to forgive me for that, but I just want you to know that if we could do it all over again, I wouldn't dream of treating you that way again. I'm sorry."

Fredbear tilted his head up, aloof. Suddenly, he stood up and pulled Henry into a hug. "I'll miss you," Timmy whispered.

The breath nearly crushed out of him, Henry did his best to return the embrace. "Take good care of yourselves, ok? I'll help in whatever way I can with your murderer."

"We have to stop wasting the little time we have being sad," Katie choked out. "Please, can't we all just spend the rest of tonight being happy together?"

"Of course," both brothers quickly agreed. "Kids!" Henry called, bringing the left out children into the conversation. "Hey, would you by any chance happen to know if the front desk lady is usually super grouchy?"

Lucy giggled. "You saw her? I don't know how we get customers with her here!"

"Remember that one time that kid was eating pizza and the lady told him to go away because she said all the sauce on his face would stain her clothes if he came near her?" Brian grinned. "And then the kid asked why she was worried about him when all that lipstick on her face was more likely to get on her clothes than his sauce? Her face got so red! It was hilarious!"

"And there was also that time that that girl made that drawing of herself getting hugged by Freddy," said Joey, barely able to contain his excitement at getting to the punchline. "She was telling her friend that she would rather hug Freddy than that lady because she's way scarier than any bear!" At this point the boy burst into a fit of laughter that only stopped because Foxy's voice box asserted its clear dislike of any sort of strain.

"Well, I guess I'm lucky that she works the day shift and not with me," Henry chuckled. He frowned. "Speaking of shifts and jobs, I almost forgot that it's night five. I'm getting paid today!" His face brightened up for a moment before he realized his mistake. "Oh shoot oh shoot don't tell me…" He put a hand in his pocket and it came out the hole in the bottom. "I had to wear these tonight. Out of all the nights I could have worn them, I just had to pick tonight," he reddened with embarrassment. Getting up and checking the time, he felt about ready to hit his head against the wall in humiliation. "I've got twenty minutes until six," he began thinking up a plan. "I can't just walk around this neighborhood with $120 in my hand, but if I run home, I think I have enough time to change these out for pants with actual pockets."

"Ok," said Timmy, "but you better go quickly. None of us can really tell the manager that you've been here all night, so running in late is probably something you don't want to do."

"Don't I know it," Henry nodded. "I'll be back in a moment."

Jogging as fast as he could, the man took the chain with his key on it off his neck and unlocked his room. There was the bed in one corner, where he'd be headed once he officially came back from work for the day, and a desk with just about all his worldly possessions on the other side of the room. Miscellaneous little odds and ends in the top drawer, clothes in the middle, and of course the stack of pictures in the bottom. He opened the middle drawer and unfolded a pair of pants, checking to make sure they had functioning pockets. His task accomplished, Henry hovered for a moment over the bottom drawer for a moment, finally plucking two photos from the stack. A preschool-age Timmy was hugging his old Fredbear plushy in one and the other had captured a three-year-old Katie beaming in front of their old house. Henry smiled; it would be a pleasant surprise for his siblings if he brought them their old pictures. If he hurried to get back to the pizzeria, he might have a few minutes to show them.

"Hey Henry, shouldn't you be running away from Freddy's, not towards it?"

Henry slowed down. "Mike! I didn't expect to see you up this early," he greeted the other man.

"Oh, I like being out at this time," Mike shrugged. "It's quiet, not too hot, not too many people out to bother you." He ran a hand through his hair. "So, what brings you here? I thought you worked the night shift. Did ya finally quit?"

"No, I just had to run home to get something," the guard replied.

"You should really quit, though. That job's dangerous."

"Actually, it isn't as bad as people make it out to be," shrugged Henry. He smiled to himself, knowing that he was just about the only person alive who knew what was really happening at Freddy's.

"Oh, well, whatever you say." Mike unzipped his jacket and slipped it off. Underneath it, he was wearing a standard purple security guard uniform.

"I didn't know you're a watchman, too," Henry remarked with surprise.

"Well, you know," he shrugged, nonchalant. "I mean, there's an open position for the night shift at Freddy's. You know, after the last guard got murdered."

"What do you mean?" Henry frowned. "The animatronics never killed anybody."

"I know." The man gave an almost sympathetic smile. Henry's startled yelp was easily muffled by Mike's stronger hand. He tried to struggle even after the sharp pain of the stab in his back registered. Mike released him and the injured man staggered forward, falling against the front door of Freddy's. Suzy heard the knock and came up to let the guard in, only to scream when she saw the blood splattered against the pavement, the door, Henry's shirt. The rest of the children were at her side in an instant, staring with pure horror at the sight before them. All that planning, all that waiting for their final showdown with their murderer, all their confidence in getting back at the man who had taken their lives, all of it was nothing in comparison to the absolute terror of standing face to face with the killer and his latest reminder of what he was able to do. Timmy and Katie looked from their brother to the man standing in the parking lot. Timothy recovered first. With a scream of hatred, he pushed open the door and pulled Henry into the safety of the building. Katie relinquished her control of Fredbear and sat down on the ground next to her oldest brother, unable to think of a single thing to say. Timothy shifted his focus to a different person. Paws out and ready to snap a neck, he sprinted out of Freddy's and towards the man who waited, neither retreating nor advancing. Too late he remembered that the parking lot was out of the bear's range of places he could go. All ability to move ceased and the boy was left unable to even look up to see the murderer smash down on his defenseless form.

Nate was already halfway to his friend. The teen felt himself freeze up, not because he was out of the Marionette's range of movement, but because he seeing murder happen all over again. Images flashed through his mind in a ceaseless reel - coughing up blood outside the diner after the knife had come down, Timmy's limp form in Fredbear's bloody jaws, the children all torn up inside the costumes they had been ruthlessly stuffed inside of, the terrified faces of the second group of children who had almost died in the back room and were only spared by the slim luck that Nathaniel had decided to follow them, the manager of the old location as he was being rushed to the hospital with a chunk of his head missing, Henry lying on the floor just inside the diner, Timmy being smashed into scrap metal only a few feet away. Everything blurred into a red, nightmarish mess. He offered little resistance when the man finally completed his work on Fredbear and moved on to him. I'm supposed to be protecting everyone. I'm supposed to save everyone, he thought numbly as he was roughly thrown out of a broken body for the second time. Even as an unseen ghost, Nathaniel stared, motionless, as the murderer smashed up the puppet a little more to make sure he wouldn't come back. He couldn't do anything to face the man who had killed him and his friends. He couldn't save anybody. He had said that he wouldn't leave them to fend for themselves, he had promised it, but he had done nothing. He was just a useless existence, a puppet on broken strings, unable to do a thing to help anybody.

"Nate! Henry's really hurt! Nate! Please Nate, we have to do something!" Nathaniel jerked his head up as Timothy snapped him back to reality. "We've gotta help him!" the younger ghost cried. He pulled Nate to his feet and toward the building, the murderer behind them unmoving, silently daring the other children to come attack him. They didn't accept the challenge. "Get to the office!" Timothy ordered, knowing that the front door would do nothing to stop the killer should he decide to come after them. "Get to the office and lock both doors!" Shocked into action, Brian grabbed Henry's legs and Lucy lifted up his shoulders. Joey kept pace next to the trio, wishing that he could help them without causing more damage with his hook hand. Suzy trailed behind them, still in a daze as she struggled to make sense of how everything could have fallen apart so suddenly and easily.

"I'm sorry you kids have to see me like this," Henry muttered as they set him down on the floor of the office. Lucy slammed one door button while Joey took care of the other. Suzy stood over the injured man, nervously stroking a large, purple ear as she tried to think of a way to help. None of the children wanted to look at the trail of blood that snaked out the door and down the hall. Some carpets were definitely going to have to be replaced. "I'm sorry I failed everybody," he muttered.

The four animatronics looked down sadly. Suddenly, Brian turned to the side. "Nate, Timmy, and Katie say it wasn't your fault," he relayed the message that the three ghosts could not directly voice.

Henry smiled sadly. "I'm still sorry you all have to see me like this," he said. "If the, um, bleeding upsets you, you don't have to look."

"D-do you think Freddy's is going to shut down because of this?" asked Lucy.

"Probably not," the dying guard assured her. "There's a reason why a disowned, single guy like me got hired. No family, nobody to sue in case something happens. As long as nothing gets stolen, they probably won't even close this place up for the day."

"But that isn't fair! Why would they do something like that when they already know that you can't easily get a better job?"

"Life isn't always fair," Henry sighed. "A guy gets away with murder, desperate situations get taken advantage of, it's all just something you have to accept. It's sad, I know, but there isn't really much we can do about it except try to recover as much as possible from whatever life throws at us." The world began to swim and go fuzzy so he closed his eyes.

"Henry?" Brian asked. Henry's eyes fluttered open a bit to show that he was listening. And also, maybe, because he feared that if he didn't try to keep them open now, he wouldn't be able to later. "Henry, Katie says that it's ok if you want to move on." The injured man gave a pained look of confusion. "She says that she didn't mean to drag you into this fight so she wouldn't be upset if you wanted to move on now." He nodded at an invisible conversation partner. "Timmy and Nate say that, too. Nate wants you to know that he isn't going to do his glowey magic thing and bring you back if you don't want to come back. And Timmy says that you should go and we'll all be coming to follow you soon."

From his vantage point on the floor, Henry looked up and blinked a few times. "What to you mean, 'bring back?'"

"Nate has magic. He used it to make all of us ghosts and be able to control the robots," explained Lucy. "Oh, Nate's saying that you should remember what you said to Katie about not being meant to stay here forever. Nobody will be mad if you want to go like you're supposed to."

Eternal peace or staying with family for who knows how long in a run down pizzeria and having to face a murderer. "I'm staying," he declared, quiet but clearly. He gave a pained smile. "If it's your fight, it's my fight, too."

Joey's ears perked up. "Nate wants to know what you want to come back as. You know, for putting your soul into and stuff. He needs you to pick an object in this room."

Henry looked around slowly. There was a desk, some posters, several cobwebs, and the tape recorder. "That isn't much… to work with."

"Nate says he realizes that."

Henry once again assessed the objects on the desk. "I guess if I… have to pick something, I'll go with the fan?" he finally said. "I mean, I can't really do… anything useful with a tape recorder or poster, but maybe I can control how… much power the fan uses or something?"

"Nate says that's ok, but," he frowned slightly, hearing the next part of the ghost's message, "he says he can't do any magic until you're, um…"

"I'll… be dead soon," Henry sighed. There was no stopping the blood from flowing out, draining his life away a little more with every drop he lost. "Before… I go," he remembered, "here." He reached into his pocket and took out the two photos. "Just thought… you might want… to see these…" he smiled, closing his eyes. If he had tried, he would not have been able to open them again.

Timothy and Katie knelt over their brother and the photographs resting beside him. "He kept that picture of me," Timmy said quietly. Tears were in his eyes and Katie was weeping as well.

"I think it's time," Nate said solemnly. The two children didn't move, still lost in their trance of staring at their brother. Gently, Nate picked Katie up and sat her down out of the way. Timmy offered no resistance, either. His work ahead of him, Nathaniel started on his task. The purple glow gathered around the unresponsive man and the little fan, shone brightly for a moment, and then faded in due course. "I'm done," Nate said quietly.

Everybody waited, not wanting to look at the man bleeding on the floor. A minute passed. Nothing happened. Nate began to wonder if he should try again.

"This'll be a sight to meet the employees in the morning." Everybody spun around to see a fuzzy image of Henry coming into focus. "Walking sure is easier when your feet don't try to float off the ground," he stumbled forward as he tried to get to them, his attempt managing to get him to turn upside down and fall through the desk. Katie was instantly at her brother's side, helping him up. "So now we finally talk face to face," he smiled. All seven ghost kids came up to join in the embrace.

The bells chimed six o'clock and the outside was soon filled with shouts of people discovering the two smashed robots. "I guess it's safe to open the doors," remarked Nate. Lucy gratefully pressed the button and they all filed out of the room. When the people finally came into the pizzeria, all the animatronics were in their proper places and the guard was lying dead on the floor of his office. The list of murders that had taken place at Freddy's was one slot longer, and if justice could finally be served to the people on it, the end of the week would see it with one final name.

There we go, then. Mike was the murderer all along. Henry is the fan. Why do I come up with these ideas. I really have no idea.