The Emily house was dark and quiet, the majority of its inhabitants having long fallen asleep. One of the few awake stood in a doorway, watching Gregory and Evan sleep peacefully as well as he could with what little moonlight came in through the window. Glancing away from the two just for a moment, Michael checked the nearest clock for the countless time in the past few minutes alone. Slowly the seconds ticked by until it finally showed a minute past midnight. Michael looked back at the sleeping children and immediately sagged in relief at seeing their chests still peacefully rising and slowly.

Evan had officially lived past his birthday.

Michael now had true hope that things could really change for the better.

Gazing at the two for a second longer, Michael forced himself to leave the doorway and head back to the living room so he wouldn't risk waking the children. Michael knew he should probably try and get some sleep himself, but he doubted he'd be able to.

"Rough night?" Mike's voice came from the kitchen as Michael passed by it. Michael barely managed to stifle a startled yelp at suddenly being addressed, especially as the glow in Mike's eyes was far more prominent in the darkness. Mike, realizing that sitting in complete darkness was making him seem ominous and sinister, said, "Ah... Right… let me just…"

A moment later the flashlight feature on Mike's phone turned on, not strong enough to fully illuminate him, let alone the entire kitchen, but bright enough that Mike no longer seemed like a jump scare waiting to happen. Michael blinked rapidly for a few moments as his eyes adjusted to the light, before walking over to one of the empty chairs.

"I wasn't prepared for how visible your eyes would be at night," Michael commented as he sat down, leaving out the part about how it was kind of terrifying as he was sure Mike already knew.

"I get that a lot," Mike snorted. His whole family had gotten startled at least once by him during the night, especially at the beginning. Heck, Mike had managed to scare himself a few times when he passed by something more reflective than he was expecting. They had all gotten used to it over the years, but every now and then Mike would still accidentally startle someone that wasn't expecting to find someone else up in the middle of the night.

"And as you're here, I'm guessing you've been having trouble sleeping as well," Michael said as rested his arms on the table.

"I didn't even try to," Mike replied with a bitter chuckle. Between the memories his injury brought and what the last day was, Mike was guaranteed to have nightmares. (This dimension's Evan might have escaped his fate now, but Mike's never would because of the stupid choices Mike had made.) "Want a hot chocolate? I've become a bit of an addict ever since regaining my ability to eat."

"…Sure..?" Michael said, noticing the mug in Mike's hand for the first time. Mike filled another mug for his counterpart as well as topped off his own mug, sliding Michael's mug to him across the table. Michael caught the mug but didn't try drinking it yet, just letting the warmth seep into his hands.

"I know there was a lot of storytelling and revelations yesterday, most of which apparently happened while I was unconscious," Mike began, watching Michael over his mug as he sipped. "But I have the feeling you haven't told the others what you really are."

"And what do you think I am?" Michael asked, honestly curious about his counterpart's answer.

"It took me a while to figure out, but you're a lot like me, other than just being a different version of each other," Mike replied with a small smirk. The only reason it had taken Mike so long was that he couldn't sense himself to make the comparison. "You're a former ghost that through some sort of supernatural bullshit has somehow been nearly perfectly reunited with your living body, though with a dash of time travel thrown in as well."

"That's one way to sum it up I suppose," Michael agreed, feeling a little relieved that there was someone that understood to some extent what had happened to him and what he was going through. "And I guess this means you hadn't actually survived the encounter with Ennard…"

Michael trailed off, gesturing to Mike's cybernetic and indicating that he had originally thought that's how Mike had become half animatronic. He had started to doubt that conclusion though when Mike started making casual comments about regaining things like the ability to eat.

"That would probably have been more believable and logical than what actually happened," Mike said with a snort. "But no… I didn't escape becoming a skin suit and then a walking corpse. Where I'm sure my corner of the multiverse diverges from others didn't come until decades after that. You've had Henry's final fire right?"

Michael nodded.

"So about a year before that, I caught wind of animatronics going crazy and attacking people in this middle of nowhere town in Oregon, so, of course, I went to investigate it," Mike continued, eyes drifting to the side and a fond smile coming to his face as he thought back. "It turned out to be something completely unrelated to anything we've dealt with, but while in that strange little town, I came across the one family in the entire world that would look at a purple rotting walking corpse and think to themselves, 'Hey, that guy looks lonely and could use a family. Let's make him a part of ours.' Before I was even willing to even think of the possibility, I had pretty much been adopted by them."

There still isn't a day that Mike doesn't consider himself extremely lucky for coming across the Pines family, so it wasn't hard for him to believe that's where his dimension branched off from others.

"They sound… interesting…" Michael said, trying and failing to imagine what sort of family would want to adopt a zombie.

"That's an understatement," Mike quietly laughed, nearly spraying hot chocolate out his nose. "You'll probably get to meet some of them as soon as they figure out to reopen the portal between our dimensions."

Michael hummed in acknowledgment, unsure whether or not to look forward to the possibility, before asking, "So how did you go from being a zombie to a cyborg?"

"Well, when I said Gravity Falls was a strange little town, I meant it was filled to the brim with all sorts of supernatural creatures and where magic is very much real," Mike replied, enjoying Michael's shocked expression. "Ghosts, faeries, unicorns, gnomes…"

"Gnomes?"

"Looking like they've walked straight off some old lady's yard. As long as they stay in the forest they're fine, but they tend to steal food from people in the town, especially fresh-backed pies."

It had gotten better once Pacifica started trying to negotiate trade deals, but there were still a lot of kinks they were working out.

"So I'm guessing magic or something was responsible for the way you are now," Michael asked, looking like he couldn't believe this was the discussion they were having.

"Yep," Mike confirmed expression darkening as he got to this part of the story. "There was a demon that was attempting to take over the world and didn't like the way the Pines family had taken an interest in me as I would not have fallen for his usual tricks and manipulative tactics. So he went to Molten Freddy instead and made a deal to get the animatronic his favorite meat puppet back, only this time without having to worry about things like my human body rotting away."

"No…" Michael paled, looking at Mike's cybernetics in a new light and now recognizing the color scheme as Funtime Freddy's. It had been horrifying to go through being trapped in his own body once that Michael couldn't even comprehend having to go through it again.

"Yeah," Mike acknowledged. "In a lot of ways I'm grateful I wasn't conscious of being a puppet the second time around. I-I don't think I would have been able to handle it very well…"

Sure, waking up and realizing you had no idea what the animatronic had been doing with your body for the past three days had been its own brand of traumatizing, but at least Mike hadn't been helplessly watching while the evil AI had run rampant.

"Luckily through more supernatural bullshit, my new family was able to get rid of the animatronics' AI for good," Mike assured, shaking off the dark feelings of that time. "And we were able to banish that demon from our dimension for good. I've been with my adoptive family ever since, going on lots of adventures, many just as crazy if not crazier than this one I'm currently on."

"Glad to know this is a normal occurrence to you," Michael replied in exasperation.

"The dimension-hopping is new to me personally, but most of my family has already done it," Mike added with a smirk, finishing off his hot chocolate as Michael just sighed in defeat. "How about you kid? How much does your life differ from mine?"