A/N: I've seen the reviews saying that readers are getting a bit tired of me shitting on Fazbear Entertainment. That's completely understandable, and fortunately I wasn't planning on beating what may very well be a dead horse for all that much longer anyway. I was only planning on writing one chapter left that featured significant interactions between Mike and Fazbear Entertainment for the time being anyway, that being Mike's tour of the (incomplete) Pizzaplex.
With that being said, I just could not get my thoughts gathered to write a chapter that would meaningfully progress the plot. I was feeling sick for most of two weeks ago (which I still blame the 7 hour exam I had to take 3 weeks ago for), and even if I wasn't, I ended up being super busy last week while I was in the hospital. So I just couldn't do the research and appropriate collecting of my thoughts to write a good and proper chapter that focused on plot advancement.
So instead, please enjoy this filler chapter that will actually feature more on the philosophical side. It's going to be one of those rare chapters that features just Mike and Charlie. While I'll freely admit that it is inspired by Christian themes, this chapter was written in a way that readers can enjoy it without needing to be part of any religion in general.
To all of you asking about the Mimic, it WILL feature in the Ruin portion of this story. That's all I'm willing to divulge at this point in time.
ThePencilDude: Trying to possess other people, besides being unethical, wouldn't nearly be as successful. Keep in mind that Mike has full knowledge of their possession of him, it's completely willing, and the ghost kids are only partially possessing him mainly for fairly mundane and low-effort things like tasting food. Trying to take over other people's minds and fully control them is not only fundamentally a much higher effort task, but it would also be resisted by their target once they realized what was going on. The chances of it succeeding would be much, much lower…not that the ghost kids would ever do such a thing due to how evil it would be unless they had a VERY good reason to even try (and it would have to be a really high-stakes situation for them to even consider it an option).
Chapter 191 – To Define a Monster
Mike frowned as he shut off his email address for the day and leaned back in his private study's chair. It had been two months since he had discovered the blueprints and made his ultimatum to Fazbear Entertainment to correct them or suffer the consequences. Fazbear Entertainment had fulfilled their end of the bargain and presented new and updated blueprints as they had promised, but otherwise he hadn't heard anything from them ever since then.
"They better not be trying to cheat their way out of our agreement," he thought. Mike understood that creating a new building from scratch was a naturally time-consuming process, and despite the overwhelmingly negative feelings he had for them, he was willing to give Fazbear Entertainment some leeway since he didn't know how much of the building they had actually constructed so far.
His thoughts were interrupted as Charlie's head poked out of the floor. "Hey, Dad?"
"Oh hey, Charlie," Mike greeted her as he righted himself in his chair. "What's up?"
"I was wondering if you had a few minutes so that we could talk about something," the former Marionette inhabitant answered. "I was reading this term on TV Tropes and I was just curious about your thoughts on it."
"Ah, so you like to waste part of your free time on TV Tropes, huh?" Mike commented with a chuckle. "Yeah, I get that. Which trope did you want to talk about?"
"The Complete Monster," Charlie answered with a frown. "A truly irredeemable villain, someone so horrifically evil that they pretty much have no good qualities at all, or what good qualities they do have are so tiny in comparison to their sheer evil that they don't even matter. It makes me wonder…does William Afton qualify? Cause he sure fits the bill from what I've read."
"Oh yeah, I've read that trope page too," Mike acknowledged, "and I've had a lot of time to think about it." He chuckled. "I had a loooooooot of free time after I retired from Eisensteel."
Charlie snickered. "You wouldn't be having nearly as much fun without us around, would you?" she asked. Mike merely shook his head with amusement, as both of them knew full well what the answer to that question was.
"Anyways, even though the Complete Monster sounds like it'd be really easy to define, I actually think that there's a lot of analysis and thought that should go into what truly defines one," Mike began, his tone turning more serious as he started to address the question that Charlie had brought up to him. "You really have to think about all the aspects of a villain before labeling them as a complete monster, otherwise you're just brushing something off as completely evil without even thinking about it. Which, let's be real, is ignorant and stupid as hell."
"I can agree with that," Charlie agreed. "So what do you factor in when you decide whether or not a villain is a Complete Monster or not? I'm guessing one factor is how many evil deeds they commit, or how serious those evil deeds are?"
"That's absolutely one factor, but even then different deeds can be horrible for different reasons," Mike clarified. "For example, I think we can all agree that someone attacking, torturing, and violently murdering a thousand innocent people just for shits and giggles is a horrifically evil action, right?"
"Uh…I'm pretty sure every person with even a minimally functioning moral compass would agree with that statement, Dad," Charlie deadpanned.
"Yeah, but one could easily argue that betraying a close friend or family member is equally horrible for different reasons," Mike answered, providing an alternate interpretation to his own point. "Technically, when you betray someone, you're only hurting one person, not counting the collateral damage. But that person trusted you, developed a close bond with you…and then you decided to smash that trust to pieces and spit in the face of the person who gave it to you. That kind of sin cuts deep into the soul in a way that no other sin can. One could easily argue that a betrayer is committing the type of horrifically evil crime that could label them a monster…although obviously, we'd need context to understand the circumstances and whether a traitor truly is evil or not," he was quick to add.
"Yeah, we need to know the full story," the former Marionette inhabitant agreed. "Someone backstabbing a friend or their family just to make some extra money is very different than a minion with a conscience abandoning their evil overlord."
"So that's one thing we need to take into account, the severity of their crimes and sins," Mike raised a finger, before raising a second one. "But we also need to take into account the motives behind a villain's evil deeds in the first place. If someone's motives are sympathetic and understandable, then they're a lot less likely to be a complete monster than someone who's doing it because they're selfish, a sociopath, or just a massive asshole in general. Granted, the motive can only balance out the severity of people's crimes up to a degree…but in theory, even the mass murderer who kills thousands of people can be excused from being called a monster if killing thousands of people is literally the only thing stopping the literal demons of Hell from invading Earth, assuming that this is actually true."
"That's a very big assumption to make, but if it's actually true, then I can agree with that as much as I hate to admit it," Charlie reluctantly conceded. "Killing thousands of people is still better than the entire world ending or literally being dragged straight into Hell itself."
"A lot different from the mass murderer who kills people cause he feels like it," Mike agreed. "Which leads to my third point…positive or sympathetic qualities a villain might have. Granted, redeeming features can only go so far to balance out against a villain's evil deeds and flaws. But the more redeeming qualities a villain has, the less likely they are to be a complete monster. Hell, even one or two redeeming qualities might be enough to exclude a villain from being an irredeemable monster if those qualities are a predominant part of his personality."
"That's pretty much what the TV Tropes page said too," Charlie acknowledged. "In fact, one of the big talking points they brought up when talking about the Complete Monster was, like I said earlier, they have either no positive qualities or their positive qualities are so few and far between that they don't even matter in the grand scheme of things."
"And I completely agree with them," Mike affirmed. "You can't really have an honest discussion over whether or not a villain is a complete monster without factoring in any positive qualities that they have into account. My last point could arguably be considered a part of positive qualities, but I think it's important enough to separate into its own category. And that's whether the villain feels any sort of remorse or regret for his sins. Does a villain know what they're doing is evil? Do they feel any type of remorse for the crimes they commit, and are they willing to repent for their actions and turn away from their dark path? Can they at least recognize that what they're doing is wrong and regret what they do, even if they don't see or feel that they have any other options? Or do they not give a single shit and continue to be an unrepentant asshole until it's too late for their path to lead to anything but ruin and destruction?"
"I think that's one of the biggest factors when it comes to whether or not someone is a complete monster, to be honest," Charlie commented. "A complete monster doesn't give a crap about the people he's hurting. They'll never show any kind of remorse whatsoever, and they'll keep doing evil things and ruining other people's lives until they're taken down by the heroes, one way or another."
"Sometimes, the only way to deal with a monster is to put him down for good," Mike agreed, before his face twisted into a grimace. "I might've gone too far with how I brutally tortured Nightmare Springtrap back when he tried to invade my mind, but I don't regret how I dealt with him prior to that. He was going to try and break my mind and soul, and I wasn't going to take that shit lying down."
"There is not a single person here who would've asked you to," Charlie reassured him. "So…does William Afton qualifies as a complete monster? Because it sure as hell sounds like it based on what I've read on the TV Tropes page."
"The short answer is yes, but I want our discussion to have a bit more depth than that," Mike replied. He thought for a few seconds before continuing. "I think the best way to have this discussion is to give you examples of villains who aren't anywhere close to being a complete monster, a villain who seems like they meet the criteria for a monster but actually doesn't, and a villain who definitely matches the criteria of a complete monster."
"What kind of fictional work are you going to use for these examples?" the former Marionette wondered.
Mike chuckled. "I don't need to use any fictional pieces of work, Charlie, because I have the perfect example already with people who've been involved in the Freddy Fazbear franchise one way or another. And a perfect example of villains who definitely don't fit the criteria for complete monsters is…all of you guys, actually."
His statement earned a disgruntled look from Charlie. "I know calling us villains is objectively a true statement…but that still doesn't mean I like it," she muttered.
Mike shrugged his shoulders. "I mean, you can't really call murdering night guards as anything other than villainous, Charlie. I'm not gonna bullshit you and pretend otherwise." He smiled. "But the good news for you guys is that you guys never really fit any of the criteria for a complete monster. The only one that you arguably meet is committing horrible crimes, and even that is extremely debatable."
Charlie returned the smile with one of her own. "I'm glad that you feel that way about us, dad…but what do you mean by extremely debatable?"
"Well, I'm still not convinced that everyone, besides you specifically Charlie, were sane and capable of rational thinking," Mike explained. "I mean…you were just a bunch of kids who suddenly got brutally murdered by the supreme dipshit known as William Afton and found yourselves enslaved in animatronic bodies. I highly doubt that any of you were in your right minds when all this shit went down, not even you at first. With Liz it was even worse, since her animatronic's programming actively corrupted her mind. You can't really count sins and crimes committed by people against them if they're incapable of rational thinking or if they were corrupted from an outside source. At least where I'm concerned, an evil deed only really counts if the person who commits them knowingly and willingly chooses to do them."
Charlie sighed. "It's been so long since those horrible years when we were killing night guards. I'm honestly not even sure why I decided starting to kill night guards in the first place was a good idea. All I know for sure is that once I snapped out of it, I stopped drowning my hands in blood. I just wish that I could've convinced the others to stop too."
"Which adds more support to the idea that you weren't really in your right minds when you WERE killing people," her father replied encouragingly. "But either way, whether or not you and the others consciously and willingly chose to murder those night guards, you don't fit the rest of the criteria for monsters at all. You guys have sympathetic motives for why you started killing people, motives that anybody can understand even if they wouldn't agree with you. You guys have plenty of positive qualities like love, loyalty, close friendships with the people you care about. Hell, you're basically just kids who happen to be ghosts now that all the nastiness of the past is behind you for the most part. And most importantly, you regret your crimes. You all regret them so much that you're willing to do anything to make up for them. You protected me from William Afton when he decided to fuck around in our home, and you've been as active as you possibly can in trying to prevent Fazbear Entertainment from fucking up with their stupid projects and Glitchtrap from recreating another mass tragedy. Your pasts are bloody, but all of you have grown way beyond that for a long time now. Whatever someone might say about your actions and deeds in the past, nobody could call you anything but heroic in the present."
Charlie flew over to her father and gave him a hug. "Thanks, Dad…" she gratefully murmured. "I know that's something we've known and accepted for a while now, but it always hits different whenever we hear it coming out loud from you."
"No problem, I mean every word I say," Mike replied without hesitation as Charlie let go of her hug and flew back to the chair she had been "sitting" in. "Now that we've talked about how you guys aren't monsters, let's talk about someone who might seem like one at first but really isn't."
"…It's Nightmare, isn't it?" the former Marionette guessed. "He's the only person I can think of who fits that description."
Mike smirked. "You got it, Charlie, I was thinking about Nightmare," he confirmed. "At first glance, it might be easy to see Nightmare as a monster, and it's not hard to see why. He's a demon lord straight from Hell, and demons are cruel and evil beings by their very nature. I'm pretty sure he's tortured thousands if not millions of damned souls in hideous and cruel ways for thousands of years, inflicting all of those horrors willingly and without a shred of remorse. Seems like a monster for sure, right?"
Charlie gave her father an unimpressed look. "The way you're asking that question kinda suggests that you're gonna counter your own statement in like a few seconds," she pointed out.
Mike snorted. "Yeah, not that hard to tell. But in all seriousness, I'd argue that no, Nightmare doesn't count as a complete monster. He might have a fuckton of negative qualities as a demon lord, many of them probably worse than anything most humans are capable of…but he does have positive qualities. Quite a few of them, actually. He's able to show love and compassion to his fellow Nightmares. He hides it well, but I've seen signs of it. When he talked to me about William Afton escaping from Hell as Nightmare Springtrap, he told me that Afton had committed a grave insult against the other Nightmares. And he was pissed. Nobody gets that pissed about someone attacking their family if they don't care about them."
"I'll take your word for it on that one, Dad," Charlie replied, before admitting. "And I've seen the way the other Nightmares talk with him. If the other Nightmares hated and feared Nightmare, they wouldn't talk so casually and in such a friendly way with him. From all the fantasy I've read, that's honestly pretty good as far as demon standards go."
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure most demons try to backstab and kill each other as hard as they can," Mike commented dryly. "And that's another point in Nightmare's favor. He's actually really honest. I have no doubt that he'll happily lie to someone if he needs to, and he's almost certainly hiding some kind of selfish motive behind it…but every time he's talked to us about something, he's been completely truthful with us every single time. He hasn't spoken a single lie to us, and almost everything he's said has had a valid point behind it to some degree."
"Not only that, but a lot of what he's said has actually been really helpful, as much as I hate to admit it," Charlie acknowledged. "It's only thanks to him that we learned about William Afton's plan to attack you as Nightmare Springtrap, and we were able to prepare for it in time."
"And that ties in nicely with another one of Nightmare's positive qualities," Mike added. "He's actually an incredibly loyal ally to people he respects and is willing to work together with. Even though our relationship started off in an incredibly shit way, we've ended up working together quite a lot lately…and every time he's been incredibly productive and helpful, as weird as it is for me to say. He helped us prepare for Nightmare Springtrap's attack, and like you said, that warning is the only reason we were able to properly get ready for it. He was also a major team player when it came to dealing with the VR Game. He not only purged every copy of Glitchtrap from all the VR game copies apart from the one that had already escaped, but then he even went so far as to add the Curse of Dreadbear DLC as a way to hide the one piece of evidence that gives us any insight into Glitchtrap's possession victim at all. Every single time we've worked with Nightmare, it's paid off for us in a big way and he hasn't tried to stab us in the back once. Is he being ordered by Heaven to help us? Maybe. Is he doing it at least partially because he's a spiteful bastard and wants to see William Afton fail miserably at every possible opportunity? Almost certainly. But even then, he hasn't needed to go out of his way to help us the way he has, and we'd be up shit creek without a paddle without his very necessary help."
His lips turned into a frown. "The only time Nightmare's actions screwed us over was when he tortured the Fazbear Entertainment executives in their dreams and caused one of them to resign and confess, forcing us to directly take charge of the Special Delivery project. But that wasn't him deliberately trying to fuck with us, that was just an unfortunate side effect of his actions."
"I'll happily give Nightmare the credit he deserves," Charlie remarked. "He's been a major help more often than not, and I'm grateful for it. I might not ever really like him, but he does have my respect." She let out a dry giggle. "Which is more than I'd ever thought I'd say for a demon lord from Hell."
"Same here," Mike replied with a chuckle of his own. "Nightmare is a villain, there's no doubt about it. He's a horrific lord of monsters who probably has a body count higher than most humans put together, has probably spilled enough of blood to fill oceans of it, and probably has hours of experience in torture that would put the cruelest members of the Spanish Inquisition to deep and everlasting shame. And he probably doesn't feel any regret over it. But he has plenty of positive qualities too, qualities that have helped us many times personally and have earned him our respect despite the many atrocities he's no doubt caused over his existence. And because of his positive traits, I can't call him a complete monster. It just wouldn't be right for me to do so."
"I see what you mean, and I'm with you there," Charlie agreed. "He might fit the criteria for a lot of them, but it's those positive qualities that you described that ultimately save him from being the absolute worst of the worst, the bottom of the morality barrel. He doesn't belong at the bottom," her face immediately darkened and her tone became much harsher, "but I can tell you who does."
"And I'm pretty sure we're thinking of the exact same person," Mike replied with a growl. "William Fucking Afton. A true monster, worse than Nightmare has ever been or will ever be."
"All those criteria for a monster, and he fits every single one of them," Charlie scowled. "I know Nightmare's committed countless evil acts throughout his existence, but William's crimes somehow make look even worse. He murdered six innocent children with his bare hands, including me. He pulled the plug on his youngest son after his head injury and took away his chance to live through the bite, just because he didn't want to waste time trying to take care of him. He lied to Michael Afton and got him scooped in Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental, and he tried to corrupt Liz into becoming a monster like him. He murdered and betrayed his entire family, in one way or another. Those are only SOME of the crimes and sins William Afton's committed, and even these by themselves would cement Afton as an irredeemable monster in the eyes of some people even without all those other criteria we talk about."
"Yeah, and when we think about those other criteria, it just does not get any better," Mike deadpanned. "You saw that fucker when he broke into our house. He does not have the slightest bit of remorse for his crimes. Whether as a living human, a decrepit robotic rabbit zombie, or a fake demon from Hell, he has always been and will always be a sociopathic asshole who doesn't give the slightest shit about the people he's hurt and all the innocents he's killed. He knows he's an evil bastard and he doesn't give a fuck in the slightest. His motivations are selfish, spiteful, and just plain malicious all around. And I can't think of a single positive quality he has to even slightly balance out the massive black pit of evil that makes up his soul. Actually, the only thing I can give him credit for is that he's a determined motherfucker, but that only serves to ENHANCE his evil, not lessen it."
"William Afton meets every single criteria for a complete monster, and then some," Charlie readily agreed. "And honestly? I've looked up some of the examples for Complete Monsters and their descriptions in that TV Tropes page. Some of them are honestly less evil and less frightening than William Afton is, as far as monsters go. And unlike the rest of them, William Afton exists. His crimes are real. We suffered for decades because of them. I don't like thinking evil thoughts about other people, but there are some days when I'm in a particularly dark mood that I think that the world would've been a better place if somebody strangled or killed William Afton as a baby when he was first born."
"That's a pretty dark statement coming from someone like you, Charlie," Mike commented with a raised eyebrow, before continuing with a sigh, "but I can understand why you'd think that. The ideal situation would be to go back in time to when William Afton wasn't a complete piece of shit and stop him from becoming one…but that's just not possible, and there's no point in wasting time dwelling on that."
"You're right, dad," Charlie nodded. "We have a more important mission now. We have the closest thing possible to a return of William Afton thanks to Glitchtrap, and we need to do what we can to put an end to his evil plans and stop him from unleashing the same kind of tragedies he caused to us as much as possible."
"Couldn't have said it better myself, Charlie," Mike replied, placing an approving hand on his shoulder (or his best approximation of it). His face hardened. "And Fazbear Entertainment's stupidity isn't helping. That Pizzaplex is going to be opening soon, and this time I can only do so much to minimize the damage. Even if they completely and properly fix the glaring problem with the fire escapes, there's plenty of other ways things can go wrong. And when Glitchtrap inevitably comes into the picture, things can only get worse from there," he warned with a stern expression.
Charlie was completely undeterred. "We know what the stakes are," she answered firmly with the light of determination burning in her eyes. "We know this won't be easy. But we'll be there," she promised with a tone as unyielding as steel, "…and we will be ready."
/
A/N: Well, with a statement like that, wouldn't really feel right to include another filler chapter before we start the Security Breach stuff, would it?
So yeah, this chapter really just boils down to Charlie and Mike discussing the "Complete Monster" trope and how it does or doesn't apply to some of the characters in Five Nights and Freddy's, with regards to both the game in general and this fic in particular. Hope you enjoyed the two most mature characters in the family being philosophical.
Again, sorry about the massive delay with this chapter coming out. Next chapter, we will be proceeding straight to plot advancement.
Hope you guys enjoyed!