ShoutOuts: ArchineerRob (thank you ! I love seeing supportive comments like this), and OrangyGinger (dont't worry, there will be a good ending! It might take a week or so to come out, but it'll happen sometime.)

Bad Ending: Part 3

*One week later*

The inferno had only lasted for five minutes before the fire department showed up. Charlie had called the police as soon as Goldie ran back into the restaurant, and minutes later, the fire started. Mike called the fire department after that, but it was already too late by the time they got there. They went through the building and came out with a body covered in a sheet on a stretcher. Everyone knew who it was, although they never said it aloud.

The next week was a blur. Mike, Fritz, and Jeremy had to find new jobs, and Raina and Zoe went back to their old routines of running their shops. Charlie's life didn't seem to change much, as she didn't have a job at the pizzeria before. Scott decided to go into retirement and spent most of his time at home.

Zoe couldn't sleep for most of that week. She knew the animatronics had only been metal things with A.I.s, but she couldn't help but feel how she did when Travis ran away with Jesse, like she lost a child. But this felt ten times worse. She hadn't even known Jesse for all that long before they were taken away, but the animatronics had had personality. She had cared about all of them, and now they were gone, burnt to a crisp, and there would be no funeral for them. Yeah, maybe it was silly, caring about robots like they were her kids, but she couldn't help it.

Vincent's funeral came around, and it passed by quietly. Aside from Charlie, Mike, Jeremy, Raina, Zoe, and Scott, barely anyone had shown up. There were no parents or siblings or friends, just a few adults and their kids who had known him through the pizzeria. She recognized the mom who was complaining about her daughter not winning a Foxy plush, her kid standing next to her. There was also that one man who was angry because his kid hadn't won a scavenger hunt. None of them looked angry now.

Zoe didn't remember the details, and the funeral was over before she knew it. Raina was driving the two of them back to Zoe's house when they turned down a different street. Zoe glanced over at her. "Where are we going?"

"Mike and Charlie asked to meet us," she answered. She took her eyes off the road for a moment to look at Zoe. "I hope that's okay with you. You can always take the truck and pick me up later."

Zoe shook her head. "No, it's okay. I think we should see them."

They pulled up to a house and Raina stopped the truck on the curb. There were already three other vehicles parked along the street. She recognized Fritz's grey minivan, Jeremy's silver convertible, and Charlie's little blue car (and horrendous parking job). Mike's red truck was parked in the open garage. They hopped out of Zoe's truck and walked up the driveway to the house.

Mike opened the door, still in his suit from the funeral. "Hey guys," he said. He sounded like he was on the verge of crying. "Glad you made it."

"Thanks for inviting us," Zoe said absentmindedly. She looked around the room. Jeremy was sitting in the armchair, staring at the floor and looking slightly traumatized. Fritz was sitting cross-legged on the floor, a can of pop forgotten on the coffee table. Charlie was on the couch, her eyes red and puffy like she'd recently been crying.

"Where's Scott?" Raina wondered, asking the question Zoe had been thinking.

"Dunno," Mike replied. "I invited him, but I don't think he's gonna come." He gestured to the couch. "You guys can sit down if you want. Sorry I don't have much room."

"S'okay," Zoe slurred as she and Raina sat down on the couch next to Charlie. "So why'd you invite us over?"

"So we can talk," Charlie said, her voice thick with emotion. She swiped at her eyes. "We can give you guys a full explanation now."

Mike nodded and sat down on the floor in between Fritz and Jeremy. "We were going to get Scott to help explain, but I don't think he's going to show up. I'm don't think it would be a good idea for him to revisit all this right now anyway."

Charlie took a shaky breath. "Okay. You guys might want to get comfortable. This is going to take a while."

"Wait." Jeremy spoke up before they could begin. "So you're going to explain why the animatronics went haywire and tried to attack us?"

"Well, that will be part of it," Mike said hesitantly. "This is probably going to answer some questions, but it might be confusing." He looked at Charlie. "Do you want to start?"

Charlie sighed and nodded. "Alright. I'll start with William and my dad." She swallowed nervously. "William Afton and my dad, Henry Brooks, used to own Fredbear's Family Diner together. William dealt with the animatronics and my dad handled the business part of the restaurant, like paying the employees and stuff. Eventually, Dad suggested that they expand the company by creating a rental company for the animatronics. Dad asked William to make some new animatronics. So William made the robots, and I don't really remember them much. Funtime Freddy was always my favourite," she added with a fond smile.

"William brought them to Fredbear's to showcase them," Mike continued, taking over as Charlie began to get off track. "But although Henry wasn't a mechanic, he'd always been fascinated with mechanics and stuff like that, so he decided to tinker with the animatronics and see if he could get them to do the opposite of what they were supposed to do."

"What was that?" Raina asked skeptically.

"Kill people," Charlie answered bitterly. "He wanted to see if he could turn kid-friendly robots into killing machines, and he did it."

"But William saw Henry backstage with the animatronics and became suspicious," Mike explained. "He warned his daughter to stay away from the robots until he could get a look at them, but she-" He stopped and looked down at the floor. "She didn't listen," he said, his voice thick with emotion.

"Eventually, his daughter got away from him and went to play with Circus Baby, the ringleader of the animatronics," Charlie announced. "She was killed. Nobody knew how, and even we don't know, but her body was inside the animatronic after, all folded up and crushed and-" She broke off her sentence and shuddered. "Ugh. Sorry. I'm not going to describe it. It's too disgusting. Anyway, Henry blamed the death on William, who was taken in for questioning. He was eventually declared innocent and quit working with Henry immediately. The sister location animatronics were shut away, and Spring Bonnie and Fredbear were taken with them. After that, Dad decided to just pack up and move away. Me and my brothers Michael and Daniel wanted to stay here, but Dad just seemed really eager to leave. Of course, I didn't know why at the time, but I did know that something was up."

"After Henry saw what he could with just one animatronic, he became obsessed with them," Mike continued. "He took the old robots and changed them so they would do horrible things in different situations. But he didn't want some random kid to just go up to them and die. He wanted to see if he could drive someone else to kill someone or themselves with the modified robots. He got an entire warehouse and built an entire environment under it. A restaurant, some small houses, and even an entire street with a sidewalk and everything. He'd gone absolutely mad with power, and started kidnapping people, kids mostly, to live in this underground place."

Charlie swallowed nervously. "I was always Dad's favourite, so I was safe from his experiments. Unfortunately, my brothers weren't. He put Michael on hallucinatory drugs and trapped him in dark rooms where he'd have to fend off imaginary monsters, and he kept talking to this Fredbear plush. Daniel and three others were all injected with some weird drug that made them act really aggressive. They constantly picked on Michael, and they eventually..." Her voice trailed off and she began to cry.

"They killed him," Mike finished quietly. "That was the Bite of '87. They put him in Fredbear's mouth, and the animatronic's jaw snapped shut on his head."

Zoe gaped at him in horror. What kind of man would do that to his own children?

"You guys can leave if you want," Charlie sniffled. "We understand if you don't want to hear anymore."

Zoe looked around, waiting for someone to stand up and leave, but no one did. Even Jeremy was still in his seat, although he was eyeing the door as though debating whether or not to make a break for it.

"Well, I guess we're all okay," Zoe observed. "Continue.

Mike took a deep breath. "Alright. So all of this happened over the course of a few years, and a few years after the Bite, I turned sixteen. I knew that there was something weird going on at this warehouse, so I decided to get a job there. Unfortunately, I didn't know that I had basically signed up to be a part of Henry's weird experiments. The job was kind of difficult because I had to deal with the modified sister location animatronics, but everything was going pretty okay until my fifth night on the job. Henry had built some kind of machine that would dispose of the bodies in the animatronics he used to kill kids, and-" He paused. "Well, this is going to sound crazy, but a ghost lured me to the machine."

Jeremy raised an eyebrow. "A ghost?" he asked skeptically.

Mike sighed. "I know, it's weird, but Henry only used the machine four times, once for each of the animatronics. Sometimes, he killed a kid with one and didn't take the body out of the robot for years. But he didn't really realize that the kids- well, they weren't really alive exactly, but-" He stopped and turned to Charlie for help.

"The kids' souls kind of used the robots as their vessels," Charlie continued. "They were alive and Henry only modified them to kill children, but the kids started going after Mike, too. William's daughter pretended to help him, but instead she got him to the machine and it..." She trailed off and thogh for a moment.

"It kinda scooped out my skeleton," Mike finished.

Fritz shuddered in disgust. "Eww, that's gross."

"It's even more disgusting if you're the one experiencing it," Mike said.

"But how did you survive?" Raina wondered.

"She promised I wouldn't die," Mike stated. "And when a ghost promises something, it happens, no matter how impossible it usually is."

"But why did she do that?" Zoe asked. "Scoop out your skeleton, I mean."

"They wanted to get out of the warehouse," Charlie explained, "so they all got scooped, formed parts of their vessels into one big skeleton-like robot, and went inside Mike's body so they could leave."

"I felt really sick for the next few days, and I kept hearing the ghosts' voices all the time," Mike said. "I don't remember much of it; those few months were kind of a blur. Eventually, Dad asked what was wrong-"

"Wait," Raina interrupted. "Who's your dad?"

"Scott," Mike answered. "Anyway, he asked what was wrong, and I told him and William. William went to confront Henry about it, and Henry tried to kill him. The robot skeleton- I think its name was Ennard?- decided to leave my body so they could go save William. I don't even know what happened after that, because I didn't have a skeleton and I should have died, but the ghosts said I wouldn't, so I guess I just grew a new skeleton? Honestly, I have no idea. I just know that I'm not a boneless pile of mush and I'm still alive."

"So the sister location was shut down and so was Fredbear's," Charlie continued. Years later, it was reopened as Freddy Fazbear's, and Jeremy got a job there. I didn't know what happened to my dad or my one remaining brother after that, but Dad showed up again in that restaurant. He disguised himself as an animatronic using an old springlock suit and killed a bunch of kids. He put them in the Toy animatronics, and since he couldn't put a body in the Marionette, he put it in the its box. Eventually, the Toys were carted off and dumped in the old warehouse, and the bodies were never found."

"The restaurant closed again, but it reopened years later," Mike said. "Nobody would take the job on the night shift, so I did. On the fourth night, Henry somehow got into the pizzeria and attacked Dad. William was in a spare room working on the Toy animatronics and was able to get to him in time. William fired me to keep me safe, and he decided to end Freddy's for good by destroying the animatronics."

"Destroying the vessels of the kids' souls was supposed to free them," Charlie explained, "but they were still tied to the restaurant because they wanted revenge on their killer. They saw William, remembered him from their past lives in the pizzeria, and since their memories were jumbled up, they thought he was the killer. It didn't really help that he had just destroyed their vessels, so they got a little confused and tried to attack him."

Mike nodded. "His daughter's soul in the metal skeleton took over and put their body in the old Spring Bonnie suit. She saw an opportunity to get out of William's body and she took it. Scott was packing up the restaurant at the time and he heard the springlocks snap in Parts and Service. He was able to get William out of the suit, but..." He hesitated. "Uh, William's body was too damaged to survive, but the metal skeleton wasn't, and that was where all the souls were anyway, so..." He shrugged. "William survived, but he had to find a new body if he wanted to- well, look normal... and alive."

"So he did," Charlie said with a disgusted grimace, "and he started going by the name Vincent Graves, because to the rest of the world, William Afton was dead. His daughter's soul had moved from Ennard to Springtrap. Eventually, Fazbear's Fright opened. We still have no idea who opened it, but I got the night shift there during college. Mike was there as an assistant manager/security guard. I was there for the same reason Mike was, to see who had opened the attraction and if there was anything that could be done to free the children."

"Everything was going fine until Charlie's last night," Mike said. "Then Henry showed up. We have no idea how he was able to find us, but he knocked me out and put me in one of the springlock suits. I still don't understand why he didn't just stab me or shoot me or something, because that would have been a lot easier, but I'm not complaining. If he had done that, I'd probably be dead. Anyway, he triggered the springlocks, and I almost died."

"Luckily, I was just heading down to the office to resign and pick up my pay cheque," Charlie continued. "I found him and got him out of the suit and to a hospital before he could die. The next day, the attraction burnt down. We don't know how, but we think it was my dad. He died in the fire, but he was able to remain as a ghost. He was a murderer, so he wouldn't be able to leave the places he was connected to until he made up for what he'd done or the kids he killed either got revenge or forgave him."

"And in return, the kids couldn't leave until Henry was gone, so they had to forgive him or get revenge," Mike explained. "They didn't want to forgive him, and they couldn't get revenge, so they were all stuck there."

Charlie sighed. "I moved away, but I heard of the pizzeria being rebuilt. I knew William had something to do with it, so I moved back here." She shrugged. "And that's the end of it."

Fritz furrowed his brow. "But why couldn't you tell us this before?"

"Because Henry was keeping tabs on me, Mike, Scott, and William," Charlie answered. "He didn't want anyone knowing what was really going on, because he liked messing with people." Charlie pursed her lips. "I know he's my dad, but I'm actually kind of glad he's gone."

Everyone was quiet for a moment. Then Raina spoke up. "I have a question," she said quietly.

"What is it?" Mike sat forward.

"Why did you tell us this?"

Mike and Charlie exchanged a glance. "Well," Mike began, "a lot of people thought that William was the killer. Even if we can never let anyone else know, at least we can tell you."

Everyone went quiet. They all looked at each other. In that moment, they all made a silent promise; they would remember William for who he was, not for who everyone else thought he was. The rest of the world would never know what really happened, but the six of them would.

And that would have to be enough.

BAD ENDING