A/N: Here's our favorite zombie! Poor guy...

It was only two hours into his first night, and Michael would have been soaked with perspiration if he had been able to sweat. The animatronics had gone from the mindless roaming of before to coordinated strikes and purposeful waiting. It was almost like they were holding themselves back on purpose. In fact, they didn't even wait until twelve like usual. As soon as he got into the office around eight-twenty, Bonnie left the stage and Foxy became active. He barely had any time to get settled in.

He didn't know where the extra souls for the wolf and that creepy crying Slenderman thing came from, but at this point he was just struggling to not get caught. The strange thing about the two new souls was they each had abilities Michael had never seen before. He swore the wolf was teleporting, and the Slenderman was hovering and was far faster than Foxy when it wanted to be. "When it wanted to be" was defined as whenever Michael didn't fidget with the useless scroll wheel on his mouse, for whatever reason. He had discovered that through some nerve-wracking experimentation.

But had the souls worked around the Pain somehow? They couldn't be so intelligent otherwise, but they also probably wouldn't be trying to kill him. He would, ideally, need to know that before four AM, when he would light the place up and make a break for it, but it might just tick them off more to try and ask them. He would wait a bit and see if he could get the answer by observing him.

Checking the Parts and Service room for that wolf, as he didn't know where it was and it liked to hang out there, he didn't find it. He did, however, see an eerie poster that hadn't been there before. He had only seen a poster like it twice before, and he suddenly knew where the wolf's soul came from.

Quickly glancing behind him, he was almost unsurprised to find the wolf sitting against the far wall, jaw slack but eyes focused directly on him. It suddenly became active to activate it's holograms, wink, and then disappear after a second. For the first time since his second job, a chill ran up Michael's spine.

He had been creeped out for the first time in thirty years.

—

To be honest, Michael didn't know what expect from his lapse in concentration. The accursed wolf had distracted him long enough for Chica to slip in the left door. He knew she had been coming, but had wanted to hold out as long as possible to preserve his "system stability". At this point, he was convinced that whatever stupid engineers built the security system had a vendetta against night guards.

But that Fredbear wolf, the animatronic he used to think was a hallucination, was real and just might have caused his death.

But, he wasn't going down without a fight. Chica was looking at him blankly, just standing there, so he took the opportunity to run. Oh yeah, did he say he was going to fight? Desperately trying to remember where he had seen all the animatronics before, he took a turn to the leftmost hall. He was pretty sure that no animatronics had been down there the last time he checked. Except for…

"Skreee!"

He was tackled by Foxy, who had been rushing the office again. A weight pushed him into the ground, and a clawed hand pulled off the ski-mask that he used to cover his bare muscles. He watched Foxy as he paid no interest to his face and instead inspected the limp mask.

"I caught ye! But why are ye out of ta office?"

The heavy metal fox pushed off of him and stood up, looking down at Michael.

"Shiver me timbers… Ye look like tat thing from Health class…"

Not really caring that the possessed animatronic was talking coherently, Michael pulled out his handgun from pure survival instinct, shot the fox several times as he stood, and started running again. He couldn't hurt the Remnant, he knew, but he could stun him.

"Argh! Blast ye!"

Foxy, after being briefly confused, caught up with Michael quickly and grabbed him by the back of his shirt.

"Avast! Why ye be lookin' like ta muscle man?"

Michael slipped out of the shirt from the bottom, but Foxy grabbed his shoulder. His claws pressed into Michael's flesh, but they felt rubbery and bendy, like they were meant to be there for looks but also safe to touch.

As he was thinking about how to try and escape again, he heard a slight whooshing sound and saw the hovering Slenderman come around the corner. It looked directly at him, saw the massive gaping hole in his abdomen, and its smile straightened as its eyes narrowed. He hadn't even known it could change its creepy glowing face, but it appeared to be a digital screen of some sort.

"You don't have any Remnant on you," it said in a female voice.

That confirmed, along with the general shape of its unnaturally slim body, that it was female.

Feeling strange talking to the animatronic but knowing that he probably couldn't get anywhere with the possessed Flash wannabe onto him, he responded.

"Yeah, not anymore. It dipped when it saw that my body was dying. But I didn't end up dying, and that was more than thirty years ago, sooo. Yeah."

The thing's creepy head tilted.

"Your soul is trapped in your body? Were you killed by Remnant?"

Michael almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. He was discussing the technicalities of Remnant with the animatronic that had just been trying to kill him because he didn't fidget enough?

"Uhh, not really. I was killed by a giant mechanical ice-cream scoop and then used as a meat-suit by an amalgamation of insane children's souls to escape an underground murder pizzeria that was my psychopath father's passion project."

The thin animatronic looked like the gears were turning in her head furiously.

"Did you die before or after the Remnant touched you?"

"After. Well, I didn't really die, per se, but my skin started rotting a month or so later. I found out after far too long that my bones and muscles were pretty much indestructible and I didn't need my skin, and that's when I started looking like this."

Her straight face went into frown.

"You are the purple man that the four saw through the windows and Mangle saw up close. Why do you keep coming back?"

"Yeah, I was purple, and the Mangle did get up in my face on the third night of that job. The answer as to why I'm coming back? Well, that's a long story."

"We both have eternity, so I'm sure that we have time enough."

"Uh, okay. Fair enough. But I need some assurances first. Do you promise that none of you will kill me?"

There was a slight hesitation before she responded.

"We will do nothing that you have not done to us."

Foxy took his paw off of Michael's shoulder, now that things were 'settled'.

"Okay… and one more thing. My name is Michael, what's yours?"

"I am the Marionette. You may call me Mari."

"And I be Fritz!" Foxy said behind him, apparently still there.

Internally, Michael gave a small celebration at that information. He had always wondered which souls inhabited which animatronics, and it was nice to get one piece of the puzzle.

"The Security Puppet from the second location, is that what you possessed? I've heard of it, but never seen it."

The Marionette's face shifted, and she appeared impatient.

"Yes. Tell me your story now."

"Right, right. Well, a long time ago, my father killed a girl after getting into a fight with her dad, her name was Charlotte Emily. That was really the first hint of him being insane, other than the fact that he was abusive to me and my mother. He always had liked Elizabeth though… never laid a finger on her. Anyways, after that-"

"Your father is William Afton, so you are Michael Afton. Pause."

The animatronic suddenly stopped hovering and slumped sideways against a wall, her face flickering off into darkness.

"Um…"

After several awkward seconds in which Michael considered running off again, the Marionette flickered back to life and returned to her previous hovering position, towering over him by a full foot.

"Continue."

Slightly offended by being treated like a TV by Ms. Touchscreen, but mostly confused as to what just happened, Michael continued his story.

"Anyway, he then went on to kill more kids at the first Pizzeria, Fritz, Cassidy, Gabriel, Jeremy, and Suzie, and stuffed their bodies into the four main animatronic mascots, as well as, I think, the Fredbear suit. I have no clue what his twisted reasoning behind that was, but it resulted in most of you guys," he continued, assuming that Foxy was still behind him.

"Aye! But Mari put 's in ta suits, not ta Purple Guy!" Foxy said, confirming his location.

"Wait, she was around then? Are you Charlotte?"

The Marionette nodded. "Continue."

"Sorry, sorry, but Foxy called my father the Purple Guy, and I used to be purple. Why is that?"

"Ta bilge-sucker had ta purple on 'im, we remember. We think it be 'cause of ta guard suit, but ta purple skin man we saw in ta office was an unsolved mystery 'til now. Ye both Purple Guys!"

Michael didn't appreciate being called similar to his father in any way, but he let it slide.

"Thank you for telling me. Continuing now, my father figured out that the animatronics became possessed when they started lashing out at adults, so he decided to research the ghost thing. He made a sister location to the Pizzeria, Circus Baby's Pizza World, to do this. Two of the animatronics were meant to stuff kids inside of themselves, and the others were meant to lure the kids to those two. He wanted to see if they started glitching too, I think. When they did, he ran some tests on them and discovered Remnant. He made the S.C.U.P., the ice-cream scoop that made me like this, to farm the Remnant from the robots. The Remnant pile, mixed together, became conscious as one entity and started plotting to escape the warehouse, but I'll expand on that later. My sister Elizabeth, even though I think I remember my father telling her to stay away from the animatronics he made, got too close to the main animatronic, Circus Baby, and she was killed and possessed the robot. My father put Circus Baby out of order to try and build her a new 'human' body and bring his daughter back, but he never finished that before he went on the run. After Elizabeth died, I took a job there under a stupid name I came up with, Eggs Benedict, because I was suspicious of what my father was doing with the company. I didn't know that he had killed those missing kids yet, but I had my suspicions. I had to avoid the crazy animatronics there that were being controlled by the sentient pile of wires, and I thought my sister was guiding me through the intercom, but that ended up also being said pile of wires just using her voice. Spent five nights there trying to learn more about the place before the wires tricked me into getting S.C.U. and inserted themselves into me. Them and my sister's soul used me as a meat-suit, tried to live a human life through me before I started rotting, and then left to go into the sewers. My sister told me a lot of what I know from before, like him killing the missing children, because he would confess while trying to fix her and building the new body. I stayed alive after the wires left me- oh, yeah, I just remembered they called themselves Ennard. So I stayed alive and decided to go try and release the souls at the first location, I tinkered with the Remnant after six came around, but I couldn't do anything to free them. I was trying to fix my father's mistakes, I didn't know you lot were, you know, fully sapient. My sister and Ennard were cuckoo for Coco Puffs, barely alive in any meaningful way when I interacted with them, so I assumed that you all were the same."

"We used to be. My father fixed us," the Marionette interjected.

They were fixed? Could his sister be fixed too?

"Ah, okay. Anyway, that's what I tried to do the first two times I took the job, the second time I was spurred on by the fact that I thought the original animatronics would be available and deactivated in a back room, but boy, was I wrong. I gave up on the animatronics and hunted my father for the next thirty years, but never found any traces of him that led anywhere. Two years ago, however, I came back to this town after following a dead lead and, out of ideas, went to Circus Baby's Pizza World again to find a possessed Spring Bonnie suit roaming around. It called me by my name and tried to chase me, but I got out first. It couldn't follow, but it wouldn't talk to me when I got past the door other to repetitively say my name and 'follow me', which I definitely was not about to do. I think it might be him. My father."

For the first time, the Marionette reacted dramatically to his words. Her eyes widened, and her fingers began twitching as her white pupils stared past him.

"It must be him. I never found him. I never found that place."

"You looked for him too?" Michael asked quietly.

"Yes. But I prioritized my family, in the end. I came back after some years had passed."

Michael sighed. "I didn't have a family to prioritize. My mother's dead from suicide, my sister is barely, if at all sane, and my brother…" Michael clenched his teeth together, trying not to cry. Not that he could shed tears, but his body would try to.

"Is fine," he heard a deep voice say from behind him. Michael turned around to see a man standing there with grey skin, solid black eyes with white pupils, and dark grey hair. He was an almost equivalent build to Michael, only being a little bit thinner. But what struck Michael was his face; it looked like the face he saw in his dreams, dreams where his brother was still alive. Dreams where Michael hadn't killed him.

He was even in a larger version of the striped shirt he had been wearing the day that he died.

Michael opened his mouth to speak, but was beat to it.

"Yeah," the specter said. "It's me."

—

Michael fell to his knees, wanting badly to close his nonexistent eyelids as he covered his face and dropped to his knees.

"Evan-"

"I forgive you. I heard your apologies years ago. I heard everything that you said to me in that hospital."

A warm, soft hand was placed on his arm, and Michael couldn't help but break down into fully-fledged sobs.

"You didn't kill me, you immortalized me. I never went through the Agony like the others did because my body died in peace. I was never subjected to the horrors that you were subjected to, so I may well be grateful."

Evan was being far too kind to him. So kind that he couldn't take it. Everything he knew, all of his empty, hate-filled nights in which he loathed himself for killing his brother were meaningless. His brother wasn't dead. He was even better off because of the accident.

And Michael still had family left.

Ignoring the skinless state of his brother, Evan knelt next to Michael and hugged him for the first time in nearly forty years. Michael hugged him back, but still couldn't stop sobbing. It was probably very strange sight to everyone that saw it, those being Foxy and the Marionette.

"So tat's what ye did when ye projected. I though' so," Foxy loudly whispered to the Marionette.

It took a good two minutes of sobbing and hugging for Michael to finally calm down enough to stop, at which point he realized that the wolf had joined the party watching them.

But if Fredbear bit Evan, and the wolf was Fredbear, was Evan the wolf? Why did it look female, then? Why had it assisted in trying to kill him?

Following his gaze, Evan knew what he was thinking.

"That's Gold. She was put into the Fredbear suit with me, but she took the dominant control. For the most part, I'm a voice in her head unless I project or she lets me control the body, which I don't usually want to do."

"Susie or Cassidy? Or a transgender Gabriel or Jeremy?"

Evan laughed, and the sound, though different, brought back some of the only good memories from his childhood.

"Cassidy. Gabriel is Freddy, Susie is Chica, Jeremy is Bonnie, and I guess you know who Fritz is. Charlotte Emily is the Puppet, and Gwen, Susie's sister, is Mangle."

"I've been wondering who's who forever!" Michael said, giving a hysterical laugh afterward. All the crying and comfort had left him with an inexplicable light feeling in his chest, and he didn't feel quite right in his head at the moment.

"And you call her Mangle? Like, that's her name now? I thought the Phone Dude and the staff just called her that."

"Yeah, Gold nicknamed her when she first came and it stuck, even though she's not mangled anymore. Also, who is the Phone Dude?"

"Oh- he was one of the guards before me, left a bunch of messages on the phone that are probably the only reason that I survived. He must have survived the first iteration of the Pizzeria too, because there's no other place he could have learned to leave the messages like Phone Guy. Phone Guy must've inspired him. Man, I miss that guy, even though I never knew him. I did get in contact with Phone Dude though, his name's Devin. Told him about my story, and he believed me. We still talk over the phone sometimes."

Michael knew that he was rambling, so he stopped himself.

"Ah, I think I know who you're referring to as Phone Guy. Gold knocked out the power and then kicked him out because he was being too loud."

Michael frowned. He had heard the Toreador March playing, and he had always wondered how the Phone Guy had run out of power. He seemed too good at the job for that. He also had always thought that the Phone Guy was dead, but if that wasn't the case…

"What do you mean by kick him out?"

"Eh, well, after I convinced her and the others not to kill every adult on sight, I still had a little bit of trouble convincing her not to kill your Phone Guy. She threw him out of the door and told him not to come back. We never saw him again, so he got the message."

"Threw him, like-"

"A baseball, yeah. He probably tore up his clothes and got some pavement burns, but we saw him walk away."

"So he's still alive! The papers always use the same wording if someone dies or bails, but I never thought Phone Guy would bail. I should find him!"

This time, the wolf, Gold, spoke. "And you're not telling many people about the… status of the Pizzeria, right?"

"No, no, just Devin, and he already had suspected. I'm guessing that Phone Guy has too, after being yeeted and spoken to by an endoless suit."

"Right. We can expect that you won't tell anyone else?"

"No. I mean; except Phone Guy, if I find him."

Without a word, Gold disappeared.

"Okay…" he said, turning back toward Evan.

"She does that. Well, I can assume that you'll be staying the night guard now that you know there is no danger?"

"Yeah! Well, mostly because you're here, but as long as I don't get stuffed in a suit, I'm good."

Evan tilted his head. "That's what you thought we were trying to do? The latest iteration is just a game, but you probably would have just been attacked if you were seen being fully purple before. The others never actually tried to do anything to the other night-guards, they just wandered around like the job description says."

"Huh, wow. And here I was thinking I was something special for having survived two weeks."

"Well, that must have been difficult, but no, the others never tried so hard to get into the office until you came along."

"Why did you and Gold teleport into my office every so often?"

"I don't know, actually. She doesn't either. There weren't many reasons for the things they did when they were effected by the Agony."

"I'm guessing that the Agony is the thing making my sister and Ennard insane; they always complained about intense pain. How did you get rid of it?"

"Well, Mari's father, your boss, dropped out of ownership of Fazbear Entertainment to research Remnant when he found out about Mari's pain. After about thirty years, his final solution was to create a device that would move the Remnant from one body to another, but not Agony. He then revamped the Pizzeria and got everyone new bodies."

Michael looked thoughtful.

"Huh. I wonder if that transfer would work on me."

"You have Agony, or you want to be an animatronic?"

"Neither, I was just wondering."

"Well, I suppose that's a question to ask Mari."

Before Michael got the chance to ask her, Mari replied.

"I don't know, we will have to research you."

"Um, that doesn't include dissecting, right?"

"Probably not," said the Marionette, sounding entirely serious.

Michael looked slightly worried.

"Her humor takes some getting used to," added Evan.

Michael again realized the absurdity of the situation. He was on a first-name basis with Foxy, Fredbear, and his boss's daughter, Fredbear was partly his brother, and he was talking to his boss's daughter, who happened to be a possessed animatronic, while shirtless.

"You never told us why you came here." Mari pointed out.

"Oh- right. I was going to start a fire. Not doing that anymore, obviously."

"Ah. Well, you should probably hide your fire-starter before Jeremy finds it," Evan said.

"Bonnie?"

"Yeah. There's no telling what he'd do with it."

Michael nodded, stood, and began to make his way back to the office. Evan and Foxy followed him, but Mari drifted off in some other direction.

He returned to the office to find the white fox animatronic, who he guessed was Mangle, spinning at insane speeds on his desk chair. Chica had a foot on one of the wheels of the chair and was pushing it every so often with her arm.

"I though' ye bailed!" Mangle said from the chair, voice sounding like she was speaking through a fan because of the speed she was spinning. "Why ye look like tat?"

"I be explainin' tat later, Gwen." Foxy said, saving Michael from another explanation.

"I thought she went by Mangle?" Michael asked no one in particular.

"Fritz calls her Gwen, and I do too, sometimes!" Chica replied. "You're not going to commit arson anymore?" She continued, looking at the two cans of gasoline Michael had next to his desk.

Though he was still uncertain, he didn't perceive the animatronics in this place as threats anymore. He had never been afraid of any animatronics but the Funtimes, so he didn't have that hurdle to get over.

He shrugged and gestured to Evan.

"No. My brother's here; how could I?"

Chica gasped. "You're Evan's brother?!"

She walked up to both of them, taking her foot off of the spinning chair in the process. The chair tilted like a van turning a corner too fast and then toppled over, sending the chair flying in Foxy and Michael's direction and Mangle tumbling across the floor a small ways. Foxy deflected the flying chair like it was a toy and went to check on Mangle while Chica stood, looking conflicted. "Sorry!" She called to Mangle. Mangle began laughing, making some of the most fox-like noises Michael had ever heard out of either robotic fox. "It's ok! Ta' was fun!"

Chica then turned back to Michael and Evan, giggling and pulling them both into a hug.

"Family reunion! We all found some of our siblings! Gold, me, then you!"

"Alright," Michael said awkwardly, feeling strange at being hugged by the robot he had been convinced was trying to kill him only minutes ago. Probably due to being made to interact with children, Chica felt like a giant plush toy.

She let go after a second and smiled at both of them. Her beak had lost its teeth, thank the Lord, but the holographic detailing on the beak curved the mouth upwards into a smile.

Michael suddenly remembered what he was here to do. The lighter wouldn't be a problem, it was in his pocket, but the gasoline definitely could be.

"What should I do with the gas cans until six?"

"If we stay here, we can keep Jeremy from trying to make rats drink it or something like that," said Evan.

"Wha- Why would he do that?"

"He… never fully regained his sanity. He likes breaking things, especially things that bleed. None of us are really sure if that's a result of years in Agony or if that's just how he's like normally,"

"Ah…" Michael made a mental note to avoid the bunny.

"But he's not so bad if you get to know him! He's just got that habit," Chica insisted energetically.

He wasn't sure what age he should be treating the animaronics. Evan looked and acted like an adult, but something was different about him from the others. Mari acted mature enough, Foxy was somewhere in the middle, and he couldn't tell yet with Chica and Mangle.

"How old are you guys? Like, how old do you act?"

Evan seemed ready for the question. "We all developmentally age until we're about twenty-one. Seeing as we've all been here for more than twenty-one years, we're all the same age."

"Ah. Just wondering."

There was an awkward silence.

"Do you want pizza?" Chica asked him.

"Uh, I can't eat without a really annoying clean-up. I don't really have a stomach. Or saliva."

"Oh. You should ask Mari to see if you can project! I don't know what you are, but you are obviously dead, so maybe you can project like us!"

"Is projecting what Evan's doing?"

He had noticed the greyscale of his brother, and had been slightly surprised at the corporeal nature of his body. He had been expecting more of a pass-through ghost thing when he saw him.

"Yeah! You can eat when you project! I do it a lot."

The holographs on the animatronic suddenly shut down, and Chica froze in position. A woman with the same color scheme as Evan appeared in front of the animatronic, smiling and waving. It looked like she had blond hair in life, and her skin was almost porcelain white. For an animatronic with an infamous diet, it was surprising to find that she was remarkably skinny, even to a point where she almost looked malnourished.

He suddenly understood what Foxy had been talking about earlier. Mari must have 'projected' to tell Evan that he was here when she shut down.

If Michael could do that… his life would be a whole lot easier. Exponentially easier, even. And eating? Michael was pretty sure it had been at least ten years since the last time he tried and regretted doing that. He could still drink soda and alcohol though; not that the alcohol did anything, as Michael no longer had a brain for it to affect or a bloodstream for it to enter. Water was just depressing to drink.

"I hope I can… my life would be so much better."

"You probably can!" Chica assured with her projection.

Evan frowned at her, but Michael couldn't tell why.

"Well, what are you going to do for the rest of the night? I doubt that you brought any entertainment for your boring shift, and it's only ten-something."

"I brought my phone, and I'm pretty sure that you guys, err, this place, has free internet."

"Ah. Well, we work here, you know, so you can say 'you guys'. Henry pays us."

Michael raised an eyebrow.

"Really? How does he explain that to corporate?"

"Maintenance costs."

"And what about the actual maintenance costs?"

"The suits are the only thing that can usually break. Our endos are made of Remnant, which is pretty much indestructible, and that's usually the most expensive thing to repair. Foam and fabric are comparatively cheap. Besides, it's not like Fazbear Entertainment has ever used Holo animatronics before, they don't know what costs to expect. Oh- we get paid a crap ton, if you need anything."

"Oh, please don't buy me anything. I can't have it on my conscience for the dead brother that I killed to buy me something."

Michael regretted making the joke, as it immediately brought a wave of regret. He wasn't going to get past that issue any time soon, if ever.

Evan laughed darkly.

"Your conscience? I could have asked for Henry to find you long ago. To tell you that I was alive. I let you spend forty years thinking that you killed me because I didn't want to handle my family. I wanted to stay alone, to not have to deal with this whole thing, and you suffered because of that."

He saw Evan's eyes tear up, and his brother looked away. Why did Evan want to stay alone? Sure, Michael was pretty alone aside from a couple of fairly close online friends and Devin, but that was because he was an immortal corpse, not because he was antisocial.

Was Evan actually antisocial? He knew his brother had never had too many friends… and come to think of it, he had stayed in his room most of the time. Michael had always attributed to that to his tormenting of his brother.

His hands clenched into fists. Whenever he thought back on those times, he wanted to pummel his younger self. He wanted to scream in his face to stop, to tell him that 'a little bit of fun' wasn't worth it.

Realizing with a start that Evan was now the one in need of comfort, Michael gave him a hug, which his brother returned. There had been a lot of hugging in the past fifteen minutes, but apparently everyone needed it.

After a while, Evan broke out of it, looking more collected. Strangely, the dried tears on his face were an inky black color, and some of the tears stained his shirt and Michael's shoulder.

"Thanks. A ghost and a zombie hugging; what a sight."

Chica laughed. "I know! That was funny to see!"

Then her face fell. "I mean, not funny because you were sad, funny because-"

"We know, Susie. You're fine."

Chica brightened again. "Ok! Do you want me to bring Gabriel and Jeremy for you to tell that you found your brother, or are you going to wait to tell them?"

"We'll wait until we see them, if Gold or Mari haven't told them already."

Evan looked contemplative. "Two who believe their own sins are the greatest will have comfort, and two who believe the others' sins are the greatest will have conflict," he said out of nowhere.

Michael looked at his brother in confusion. "Who said that?" He asked.

"Me, just now."

"Oh! That sounded like a proverb or something."

"It might become one eventually. Who knows?"

There was some silence.

Michael looked over to the two foxes in the room when he heard a shuffling noise, but then looked away and pretended to not have noticed them cuddling on the floor. Privacy, much?

Chica noticed them as well.

"Ew! Take that to Pirate Cove!"

Foxy growled gruffly and stood, picking Mangle up as he did and carrying her out of the room.

"Ye can't handle a little cuddlin' just cause ye an' ta rabbit aren' together yet. Figures," he mumbled as he left.

Chica looked a little offended, but not nearly as much as he would have expected from a comment like that. Maybe there was something that he didn't know about the situation.

"I'd hate to see what would happen if they had tried that with their old bodies…"

Chica laughed at his joke, but Evan stayed silent.

"They weren't together then. The Agony wouldn't really let us feel anything aside from pain, so there was no love," she explained.

"Ah." Was all Michael said.

After some more awkward silence, Chica tilted her head.

"I'm a third wheel. I'll leave!" She declared, turning.

The overly nice chicken waved as she left, and both brothers waved back.

When she was gone, Michael began talking.

"So, uh, your friends are interesting."

Evan shrugged. "They're more Gold's friends than mine. I stay to myself, mostly."

"What do you do?"

"I think. The convenient thing about having another person controlling the body you're in is that you don't have to do anything to get information and new things to think about, it just happens."

"Huh." Honestly, that sounded like heck to him, but his brother liked what he liked, Michael supposed. "Do you play chess? I have a chess app that can do multiplayer."

"Your slang is lost on me, but I have only heard of chess, never played it. There are only arcade machines here, this isn't really a place for classics."

Michael decided not to tell him that arcade machines now classified as classics. Instead, he pulled out his phone, sat with his legs crossed on the floor, and placed it between them after he found the app.

"Then it's time to learn," he stated.

He may have lost a lot of time with his brother, but they now had eternity to make it up.

And Michael wouldn't waste a second.

—

Gold and Gabriel sat on the edge of the stage, Mari hovering in front of them.

"So, you're saying that Evan's long-lost bully brother showed up as the security guard and knows where the Purple Guy is?" Gold clarified.

Mari nodded. "He thinks that what he found is him. It would truly be an ironic fate if William is inside of a Spring Bonnie suit, seeing as that is the suit that he created and used to lure most of you lot."

Gold nodded. "That it would. If he is there, can your device get him to project over the barrier? We definitely wouldn't want to let him out, even to bring him here."

"I should be able to modify a Tunnel to only let the forced projection out. The only problem with that is if he learns to multi-project, he could get an extra projection out while we torture him. He couldn't get too far, seeing as the deactivator on the forced projection device ends all projections, but I wouldn't underestimate the damage he could do in a short amount of time. The other option would be to move him into the Styx as per the original plan."

Gold shook her head, muzzle swinging. "No, I think it's best to keep him where he's at. He's trapped there, and there's nothing that he can do about it unless he's been researching Remnant to the same degree that Henry has, which is practically impossible under Agony. There was always a little bit of risk with the Styx plan, and it's better for a projection to possibly slip out than for all of him to."

"That's true. I'm going to go ask the zombie where the Circus Baby's place is, and we can start planning. I suppose that you're coming, Gold? You should be able to overpower William."

"If she's going, I'm going," Gabriel interjected.

His older sister looked at him and nodded.

"Yes, I'm going. And if he has something unexpected up his sleeve, an extra can always be a game changer. But you will stay back unless there is an emergency, yes?"

"Yes."

Mari nodded.

"I'll need some time to prepare the separate forced projection device; the only one that I have right now is inside the Styx. I should be ready by this day next week."

"Then it's a plan," Gold said, ending the conversation.

—

Six AM came and went, and Michael only noticed that his shift was over when a door alert caught the corner of his eye from the computer. He had taught Evan how to play chess, and the game had sucked both of them in with countless rematches. It was a miracle that his phone's battery hadn't run out yet.

"Oh, crap. I need to get out of here, the day guard's coming."

Michael put his phone in his pocket after Evan took his last turn. "I think this thing saves. I'll be back tonight."

Evan nodded and disappeared without a word.

After slipping on his ski mask and gloves to cover his skin, Michael picked up the two gas cans and slipped out the opposite direction that the day guard was coming in, walking out through the front door. He then walked around the building and got in his car without incident. Next, he put the gas cans on the floor of the backseat and turned to put his key in. However, he saw the day guard staring at him from the employee door, unsure of what to do about the very suspicious looking man.

Michael gave him an awkward thumbs-up as he pulled out, as he was unable to smile with the mask covering his mouth and he needed to do something non-threatening. The guard just stared blankly back at him.

With no other hindrances, he drove to his apartment, lost in thought from the events of the night.