A/N: A/N: Thanks for all the birthday wishes guys! I had a great time! I was originally gonna wait until late Thursday or Friday like I normally do, but it turns out I had NOTHING to do in the past few days that interested me, so I ended up writing an early chapter instead! (remember when I sometimes posted two times per week? Heh heh heh...sigh...)

Just in case you didn't see the update on this last chapter, some new information has heavily implied that the name of the ghost child in Golden Freddy is named Cassidy, so I've gone through all the chapters and replaced the name Rachel with Cassidy. They're still the same character, though. Just so you don't get confused.

I was originally gonna write a Thanksgiving chapter, but my muse just wasn't singing and to be honest I just wasn't feeling it. So instead, have a couple of miscellaneous moments with the family! There's no set genre for any of them – they could be funny, sad, heartwarming, even philosophical if I really feel like it. These are the kinds of chapters I'm going to write if I'm suffering from Writer's Block or if I don't have the time to write longer or more plot-relevant/plot advancement chapters. Even though they will have minimal to no plot advancement, I hope you enjoy them regardless!

Still on the fence over whether the next chapter will be in late November or December.

Rebiele: I'm not entirely sure, but for now the answer is no. Liz can only turn into Scrap Baby.

Blooper: I'm sorry to hear about your childhood. I hope you're doing better now. And thank you for your kind and detailed reviews on my fic!

Chapter 38 – Misc. Family Moments 1

Impromptu Alarm Clock

Cassidy looked impatiently at the clock on her laptop. "Where is dad?" she asked the other ghosts.

Fritz shrugged as he sent a PM to Alex. "Still asleep, probably," he answered.

"He was going to read the last Harry Potter book to us today!" she complained. "He promised he'd do it as soon as he woke up!"

"Well, he's probably just sleeping in a bit," Jeremy replied. "Nothing wrong with that."

"It's 10:30 AM, though," Cassidy pointed out. "I wouldn't mind waiting a bit to give him some time to sleep in, but two and a half hours?"

"Cassidy does have a point," Susie admitted. "Especially when he outright promised to do something for us."

The sound of Pop Goes the Weasel interrupted their conversation and Charlie floated into the living room. "Well," Charlie reported, sounding rather annoyed, "the only response he gave when I asked him to wake up was, and I quote, I can't be fucked to get up right now. Which is the exact same answer he gave me two hours ago."

"That's…not a good reason at all," Gabe commented dryly.

"Hey guys," Liz's voice called out tiredly as she floated into the living room. "What's up?"

"Dad promised to read Harry Potter 7 to us but he just won't wake up!" Cassidy explained with a frustrated sigh. "He's such a good reader, and I was so looking forward to seeing how Harry finds the Horcruxes and beats Voldemort!"

"Is his alarm clock broken or something?" Liz questioned.

Charlie was about to respond, but she suddenly went still before saying anything. A calculating glint suddenly entered her eyelights, and all the ghosts except Liz immediately stopped what they were doing.

"That look…" Gabe muttered. "Oh God..."

"What?" Liz asked blankly. "What look? What's going on?"

"Hey, Liz!" Charlie suddenly floated up to her and greeted her in a sickeningly sweet voice that even the orange-haired girl could tell was bad news. "How're you doing? You are JUST the person I wanted to talk to. Would you mind doing a teeny, tiny favor for me?"

Liz looked around at the other ghosts, but the looks on their faces made it very clear that they were in no position to help her. "Uh…"

"Great!" Charlie continued as though he hadn't heard her as she wrapped an arm around Liz's shoulder. "Let me tell you what I need you to do."

/

"Daddy?"

"Zzzz…hnrgh…hnrgh…go away…"

"Daddy…" Liz called at him again. "Can I ask you something?"

"Hnrrgghh…what…"

"I'm trying a new look, dad. Could you please tell me what you think?"

"Urrrggghhh…fine…" Mike blearily rubbed his eyes and slowly opened them.

Scrap Baby's face stared right back at him.

For several seconds, there was utter silence. Then…

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Mike nearly leaped out of the bed as Charlie and the other ghosts entered the room and everyone, even Liz, collapsed into laughter. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?"

Charlie was the first to recover from her fit of mirth. "You promised my brothers and sisters you'd read the last Harry Potter book this morning," she reminded him. "And besides," she added smugly, "consider it payback for changing my music box tune to heavy metal."

Mike groaned and palmed his face. "All right, all right, I'm up," he grumbled as he got to his feet. "I'll be down in a second." The ghosts started chattering excitedly as they left the room one at a time. Soon, only Charlie was left. "Oh, and Charlie?"

"Yes, dad?" she replied in a tone that oozed fake innocence.

"Next time just use a regular alarm clock, please."

Fritz the "Chef"

"What exactly are you doing, Fritz?" Jeremy asked as he watched his brother take out various types of food from the refrigerator.

"I'm gonna make lunch for dad!" Fritz declared proudly as he started cracking open some eggs. "Figured if the girls could make something for him, I can do it too!"

The former Bonnie inhabitant gave him an unimpressed look. "Yeah, but they actually have experience with this sort of thing," he challenged. "Susie was the only one out of all of us who actually went into the kitchen to make food when she wasn't doing…you know."

Fritz shrugged and gave his brother a confident grin. "Oh come on, man, how hard can it be?"

Ten Minutes Later…

"Fritz, that is way too much soy sauce to put into a single pan."

"It's just a little extra sauce, Jeremy, it's no big deal."

"I'm pretty sure you're supposed to peel the potato first before you start cooking it."

"It'll be fine, Jeremy."

"Why the hell did you pour raw rice into the freaking pan, Fritz? Even I can tell that's not right!"

"Look, I've got this, Jeremy. It'll all turn out just fine when I finish up."

"Is that fish bones and pork grease inside the pan?"

"For the love of God, Jeremy, shut up!"

Five Minutes Later…

Mike stared at the contents of the pan along with the rest of the ghost kids, Fritz standing sheepishly next to his "creation." The "meal" that he had tried to create was a greenish-brown sludge with bits of fish bones, scales, and bits of grease floating at the top. Whatever food Fritz had started with to make his meal attempt was completely unrecognizable, save for the parts that no sane person would ever want to eat.

"Well, Fritz…" Mike began after he had finally recovered his wits. "This is…this is, uh…"

"A complete disaster," Gabe finished. He usually tried to be nice to his siblings, but with a failure this colossal there was just no way to sugarcoat the truth.

Cassidy inched towards the pan and sniffed it out of some morbid curiosity. Almost instantly, she began to retch in disgust. "This smells worse than our bodies did after we died!" she complained.

"I vote we ban Fritz from the kitchen until he learns how to make things that aren't total garbage," Susie suggested with much less gentleness than she usually displayed towards her siblings. Cooking was one of her passions even after her death and resurrection as Chica, and seeing Fritz's abomination of a meal was outright insulting to her.

"Sorry Fritz, but I have to agree with Susie," Liz admitted. "This is just…not okay."

"Aww come on, guys…"

Charlie took up the pan of sludge in her hand and gave tilted it towards Fritz to give him a closer look. "Would YOU eat this?" she asked in a flat tone.

Fritz crossed his arms and pouted. "Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine…"

New Tunes for an Old Box

"All right, you know what, I've had it!" Susie suddenly declared as she tossed her game controller aside.

"What the…?" Fritz spluttered. Susie had always been a rather quiet girl and she would've been one of the last people he expected to lose her temper like this. "What's blown your fuse?"

"I can't take it anymore!" she pointed at Charlie's music box. "If I have to hear Grandfather's Clock go off one more time I'm going to explode!"

Jeremy was about to speak, but Susie cut him off. "Don't you feel the same way?" she ranted. "Don't you get tired of hearing that music play over and over again? Every single time Charlie goes to sleep in that box, it's always the same freaking tune!"

"Well, that tune was designed to keep the Marionette pacified," Gabe tried to rationalize it. "It had to keep playing while the music box was wound up, otherwise Charlie would have killed a lot more people than she actually had."

Susie shook her head. "I'm not accepting that as an excuse, Gabe. That might have been true back then, but Charlie's dad got rid of the mechanism so there's literally no reason why she needs to keep listening to it!"

"As much as I don't want to do anything to annoy Charlie, I have to admit that Susie has a good point," Liz admitted. "There's so many different songs that box could play, some of them even remade to sound like a music box. It would be nice to listen to something different once in a while."

"What's that about my music box?" Charlie asked groggily as she opened the lids and peered out, having just woken up from a nap.

"Can we please change your music box tune to something different?" Susie pleaded after she forced herself to calm down. "Not everyone in this house likes listening to Grandfather's Clock when you're taking a nap, you know."

"Couldn't we just move the music box downstairs?" Charlie countered.

"And what if someone is using the TV or video game consoles downstairs?" Susie challenged. "Look, we're not asking you to change it to something crazy like heavy metal or something like that."

"Good," Charlie folded her arms petulantly. "I don't need to have my nonexistent ears destroyed every time I try to climb into my box."

Just…ANYTHING different," the former Chica inhabitant finished. "You seriously can't be telling me that Grandfather's Clock is the ONLY thing you want to listen to. Besides, depending on what songs you pick, we might actually enjoy listening to that music box play. Just, pick something different, please, before I go insane."

Charlie groaned. "All right, fine," she gave in. "Bring dad in and we'll see what he can do. But I swear to God, if he changes it to heavy metal again I'm going to play Grandfather's Clock at max volume for an entire week."

A few moments later…

"Promise me you won't change my music box tune to something loud and obnoxious," Charlie glared straight into Mike's eyes. "I still haven't forgotten that one time."

Mike lifted his hands up in surrender. "All right, all right, I promise I won't change your music box tune into anything loud and obnoxious," he grumbled. "I still say that was a good prank though."

"For you, maybe," Charlie muttered, although the stifled laughs from all the other ghosts made it clear that her father wasn't the only one who had liked his little trick. "Just get on with it, please."

Mike nodded and took a closer look at the music box's mechanisms. "Well, let's see what other jingles we can add to this trinket." Charlie and the other ghosts watched as he took out his laptop and began scanning through his iTunes. It took him only a few minutes to find three other songs that he liked and upload them into the music box."

"The joys of modern technology," he commented once he was done. "The old mechanism for this thing is so old it's a useless hunk of junk, but these days it's so easy to remake the old with the tools of the new."

"Is that what you did back at the place you used to work at?" Liz asked curiously.

Mike chuckled. "I did all sorts of shit at Eisensteel, Liz," he replied as he got up. "All right, guys! I've picked a few tunes for Charlie to listen to that won't piss the rest us off with their sheer repetitiveness."

"Only a few?" Cassidy asked.

"I didn't really think we'd be adding that many tunes to this thing so I only designed it to have only a few songs at most," Mike explained. "Anyway, let's see what you guys think."

He clicked a button, and the music box tune began to play a song different from Grandfather's Clock. Gabe's eyes widened as he recognized it. "Hey!" he exclaimed. "That's the Toreador March! It's the exact same tune I used to play when the power at the pizzeria ran out and…" he trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.

"How DO you do that anyway?" Mike asked. "I've always been curious how that worked, since it's tied to you and not Freddy the animatronic."

Gabe shrugged. "I dunno, dad. I always just walked up and…" his eyes started glowing and the Toreador March began to play again, this time from the ghost.

"Huh, kind of a neat party trick. You should show that to the Marshalls or Melody sometime," Mike commented as he clicked on the button again. This time, none of the ghosts had heard the tune before, but many of them felt soothed and calmed by hearing it play.

[[A/N: It's the tune that plays at the end of FNAF 2 when you finish Night 5, Night 6, or Custom Night.]]

"It sounds relaxing," Susie offered her input. "I like it!"

"Yeah, I kind of agree with that actually," Mike replied. "Granted, I didn't have any…uh, experiences with this tune, unlike the one I just played." Gabe cringed and looked away. "But honestly, minus the whole Freddy correlation, I honestly don't mind the Toreador March tune all that much at all."

"What's the last one?" Jeremy asked. Mike pressed the button one more time and the final tune played out.

[[A/N: Imagine FNAF 3's Good Ending theme, either a music box version or the normal theme itself. You know the one.]]

Unlike the other songs, the ghosts remained silent for several moments after the theme ended. "That…that was…" Gabe finally broke the voice.

"So…peaceful…" Fritz finished for him, his voice unnaturally quiet and wistful. "It sounded like freedom…freedom…and hope…"

"I can't remember the last time I heard something this beautiful," Susie murmured, her earlier annoyance completely gone.

Charlie looked up at Mike. "Where did you hear this, dad?"

"It was something my mom once sung to me," Mike answered, his voice barely above a whisper. "Something that helped me go to sleep when I was young. I never found out what it was called, and it took me years to find it again after her death. If this is how you feel about it, I'm glad I could share it with you." He gently closed the lid and wordlessly left the room, buried in his thoughts and memories.

The ghosts stared silently at each other for several seconds. Then, Charlie reached into the music box and played the tune again. Maybe it was because the Marionette was no longer bound by programming, or maybe it was because she was trying to open her emotions up to her friends, however slowly. But there was something about Mike's final chosen song that gave her tranquility and peace far more than Grandfather's Clock ever could.

The Plans of God

[[A/N: Warning – the following short will contain Christian themes.]]

"Dad? Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Mike looked up from the book he was reading. "Sure, Charlie, come on in."

The Puppet gave him a grateful nod as she closed the door behind her. She looked at the book Mike was reading and her eyelights lit up in surprise. "Is that…the Bible?" she asked.

Mike bookmarked the page he was reading and closed the book shut. "It is," he confirmed. "I was technically a Christian from a young age since my parents and Oskar both were, but I never really gave a lot of thought to faith or spirituality until you guys came along." He chuckled dryly. "Between you guys and Nightmare, you've basically confirmed the existence of God, Heaven, and Hell. Kind of hard not to think about spiritual stuff after that."

"It's kind of an odd coincidence that you were reading it, actually," Charlie commented. "I actually wanted to ask you a question about God."

"Oh?" Mike looked at her in surprise. "I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask this, but sure. What did you want to ask?"

Charlie looked around her quickly to make sure that none of the ghosts were eavesdropping, but she needn't have worried. Private father-to-child meetings weren't common, mainly because Mike almost never had a reason to divulge information exclusively, and even if he did the ghost kids were naturally curious and would often congregate in an area anyway. But there seemed to be an unspoken rule among the ghost kids that if Charlie wanted to privately talk to her father, none of them would ever intrude or eavesdrop in any way.

"To be honest, dad…something about God has always bothered me," Charlie confessed. "God is supposed to be good, and for the most part everything He's done has fit that. He gave my friends a second chance to redeem themselves when He could have damned them to Hell instead, He brought all of us to you to create a family together, and He brought Liz to us when she needed that kind of family. Even your survival in Freddy's and the lottery ticket you had could almost be considered miraculous. I'm so thankful for all of this, and yet…"

Mike leaned forward. "I'm listening."

"Why did we have to go through all the tragedy that we did in the first place?" Charlie asked. "Why did we have to be murdered at a young age, and why were we forced into our cursed existence in the first place? How could God let William Afton's evil happen?" She shook her head and gave a frustrated sigh. "That's what I don't get."

Mike opened his mouth and shut it again repeatedly. He had gotten to where he now was in life because of his ability to quickly come up with solutions to problems, and yet Charlie's question had completely thrown him off guard.

"I don't know," Mike admitted after several seconds of silent thought. "Heck, I don't think anybody could, at least not right away." He looked at the Bible laying on the desk again, then back at her. "Give me a day to think about this," he offered. "I may not have an answer for you now, but that doesn't mean I can't come up with one later."

"Take your time, dad," Charlie interrupted gently as she put her hand on his. "I knew this wasn't going to be an easy question. You challenged a demon and won, I'm sure you can come up with the answer."

Mike smiled back at her. "I'll do my best," he promised as the Puppet got up and left the room. He spent the rest of the day pondering that question, occasionally responding to the ghost kids but otherwise spending the day in silence. It wasn't until the next morning that Mike finally found an answer, and it wasn't until several hours afterwards that he felt fully prepared to give it to Charlie. As the rest of the kids left to play video games like they so often did, Mike beckoned to Charlie to follow him to the study so that they could continue where they had left off.

"I thought long and hard about what you asked me yesterday," Mike got straight to the point. "And there was only one answer that I could think of that makes any sort of sense."

"That's better than what I could come up with," Charlie answered as she sat down on the couch.

"Okay…" Mike took a deep breath before continuing. "I think…that the reason why God forced you through all of this…was to prepare you for something incredibly important that you'll be doing at some point in the future. Something you'd only be able to do as ghosts."

"I…don't get it," Charlie tilted her head.

"Well, it's generally accepted that souls don't normally stick around Earth after they die," Mike explained. "As a rule, they're forced to head straight to the afterlife and be judged pretty much immediately after death. But you guys are an exception to that rule. All the sins you committed were after your death, but you also felt remorse for those crimes too at some point. The normal rules of life and death don't apply to you, which means that God didn't have to follow those rules either. It was entirely up to Him where He wanted to send you, and He chose to send you here. Let's take away all the years of suffering for a second. As ghosts, you have some huge advantages compared to a normal, living person. You don't have to worry about death, you don't have to worry about pain unless something like Nightmare comes along, you can move wherever you want, you all have supernatural powers, the list goes on. In short, you're all capable of doing things that a regular person can only dream of, and I think that God wants you to do something big in the future with those abilities."

"But…the most important thing we could possibly do. Isn't that…taking care of you?" Charlie asked after a few moments of hesitation. "Being your family?"

Mike shook his head. "I…honestly don't think so," he answered. "Don't get me wrong," he added quickly. "The days since you've come here have been the happiest in my entire life and I can't imagine life without you anymore, but it's not like my life would have been completely ruined if you hadn't come here. From an outsider's perspective, I'm doing incredibly well for myself. I have more money than most people could dream of having and a mansion for a home, and I have a small but dependable network of friends that I can rely on. Even without you, I would've…I don't know if I'd be happy, but I'd have enjoyed a comfortable style of living with very little to complain about overall."

Charlie slowly nodded as she realized what Mike was getting at. "So…do you know what that future thing is?"

Mike shrugged. "I don't have the faintest idea, Charlie. That's the thing with the future. You can try to predict it, you can try to influence it, but you have no idea what's gonna happen in the end. The closest thing I can give to a guess is that it's either doing a major act of good or stopping a major act of evil. That's all I can tell you."

"So that explains why we're here as ghosts…" Charlie mused, "but that doesn't explain why we had to suffer in those suits for years."

Mike sighed. "Yeah, that was the harder question for me too," he admitted. "One possibility is because God couldn't free you back when you were in the suits. Five of you were filled with murderous, vengeful rage for a long time. Even you were for a while. God can do a lot of things, but He can't or won't mess with free will. If He brought you to the afterlife while you were still murderous and hateful, He'd probably have to send you all to Hell. He couldn't do anything to free you until after you started feeling remorse."

"So He made us go through years of suffering to save us from an eternity of torment?" Charlie asked. "Okay, that makes at least a little sense…but that still doesn't explain why He couldn't just free us immediately after that point, or why I or Liz had to go through what we did."

Her father shrugged. "I can't answer to Liz or your first question, but you wanted to protect them no matter what, didn't you?" he replied. "But yeah, I'm not completely satisfied with that answer either. "I think a better answer goes back to what I said earlier about you and the rest of the kids' future."

He leaned back in his chair and took a drink of water before continuing. "It's one thing to be able to do something. It's another thing to have the personality and character to actually do it. Back when you were killing the night guards, did you have any reason besides wanting revenge on Afton?"

"Yes," Charlie answered firmly. "We didn't want any other kid to suffer what we'd been through. I know we were wrong and that our logic doesn't make any sense looking back, but we did honestly believe that we were protecting the children who come to Fazbear's pizzeria by killing the guards."

"Would any of you have felt that way if you hadn't been killed by Afton?"

Charlie shrugged. "I doubt it, since nothing would have happened to…" her eye lights flashed in shock. "OH."

"It might have been twisted by your desire for revenge, but you all gained some positive characteristics because of what you went through," Mike explained. "Determination, resourcefulness, a desire to protect people you care about from harm, even a stronger understanding of justice and right once you broke through your vengeful feelings. Put these together, and you have the real makings of a hero in the works."

"We haven't really done anything to deserve being called a hero," Charlie muttered.

"Maybe not, but you can start," Mike said encouragingly. "Thanks to your experiences, every one of you has the characteristics to be heroes, along with the desire to do the right thing as part of your redemption. And unlike most people, you don't have limitations that will stop you because you're ghosts with supernatural powers."

"And Liz?"

"After being freed from Scrap Baby's and Afton's influence, the only difference between Liz and the rest of you is that her reasons for wanting to be better are different. But you and I both know that she's just as dedicated to doing the right thing now as anybody else in this family."

"So you're saying that God made us go through those years of agony so that we could grow to one day become true heroes and do something really heroic as ghosts at some point in the future?" Charlie repeated. "I'm still not sure how I feel about that."

"Neither am I," Mike admitted, "but I can say this for sure. He didn't make you all suffer for no reason. And if I'm right, if that moment I talked about comes and you pull it off, all those years of pain and dread might be worth it in the end." He thought about Oskar and the lottery ticket he had found. "It was for me," he added to himself.

Charlie got up and floated over to her dad. "I still might not understand completely, but I feel a lot better about this than I did before I talked to you," she said as she wrapped her arms around her father in a hug. "Thanks for taking the time to answer my question."

"No problem, Charlie," Mike returned the hug. "I'm glad I could help." As Charlie let go of Mike and left the room, his expression turned pensive and he looked back at the Bible on his desk. "But if I am right, then I can't help but wonder…what does that future hold?"

/

A/N: Well this chapter was certainly all over the place, wasn't it? Two dumb blurbs, one blurb that starts dumb but ends with some sentimentality at the end, and a long philosophical discussion about God with a free helping of Mike-Charlie bonding that came out of nowhere. The first word is miscellaneous for a reason, lol.

I don't intend to ever show God directly in this fic, but I do want to make it clear that He IS meant to be benevolent force. I think I've managed to portray that well for the most part, but I never addressed the biggest hurdle in the way of that theme: the fact that all the ghost kids had to go through their nightmare of pain and suffering in the first place. The last "short" was my attempt to take on that issue and provide an explanation as to why a good God would allow evil like William Afton's to happen in the first place. The answers Mike gave were the only ones that made any sense to me, and even then those answers are incomplete in nature and will very likely remain incomplete until whatever "future event" he talked about rolls around.

Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed!