A/N: I was bored on a Sunday evening, didn't feel like studying, so here you go. You get the chapter a day early since I doubt I'll have much time to post it tomorrow. Gonna wait until after my tests end before I start the Korea vacation arc, which pretty much everyone who voted chose. Not really much of a surprise tbh, since the Korea vacation is basically "summer beach resort vacation + lots more stuff that the kids'll be more likely to enjoy."

I've retroactively changed Melody's last name to Park since Kim as a Korean last name is so ridiculously cliché.

These last two weeks have been absolutely AMAZING for me in terms of FNAF accomplishments. I managed to beat Nightmare Aggressive Mode on FNAF3, Mad Freddy Mode, regular Blind Mode Nightmare AND Blind Mode All Nightmare on FNAF4 :D. Here's a tip for you guys – if you beat Blind Mode All Nightmare, you DO get the red stars for Blind Mode and All Nightmare as well as the combo blue star.

BlauOrange: Hey, Alex was the one who said it, not me :P

KaiIsAwesome: Aww, I'm sure they're not as bad as you think they are 😊 Though I can't say anything about fanbase sizes.

Happy Holidays: That voice was Cassidy's present-day voice trying (and failing, since it was merely a Nightmare-induced hallucination) to tell her past self not to follow William Afton and get killed by him.

Chapter 61 – Misc. Family Moments 3

Collateral Damage

"I have a question…" Gabe asked as he floated into the dining room where Mike and Charlie were. He had just finished taking a nap in Rockstar Freddy, his animatronic body actually allowing him to feel what he was lying down on for the first time.

"Go right ahead," Mike invited as he finished eating his dinner.

"How is this house supporting the weight of the Rockstars?" he asked. "I mean, each animatronic weighs a couple of hundred pounds, right? We should have collapsed through the floor into the basement and left a giant hole behind."

"That is a very good question,"Charlie replied from the Security Puppet, ironically in the one animatronic that didn't have the problem of heaviness. "I actually used my magic to create several wards that strengthened the foundation of the house so that it could hold up the weight of the animatronics. I put up a few when I first came here so that the house could hold up Lefty whenever I needed to move him from the basement to the garage or vice-versa."

"And they were strong enough to hold all of us?" Gabe questioned incredulously.

Mike smirked. "Why do you think it took several hours for Charlie to make her preparations for our little game that night? We didn't wait only because we wanted to get a creepy atmosphere. Just don't do something that's dumb as fuck like jumping up and down on the floors while you're in the Rockstars."

Gabe returned the smirk. "No kidding," he replied as he left the room.

In the days following the gift of the Rockstar animatronics, the ghost kids had gotten adjusted to using their new bodies. After those experimental days, however, it soon became clear that the kids had varying preferences when it came to how frequently they used the Rockstars. Some of them, like Liz, actually preferred the freedom and mobility that came with being a ghost and only used Lefty sparingly (though admittedly her particularly unpleasant experiences and alternate form in Scrap Baby likely affected her decision). Cassidy and Gabe used the Rockstar Freddies occasionally whenever the mood suited them, while Jeremy and Susie enjoyed moving around and living "life" as Rockstar Bonnie and Rockstar Chica.

But predictably, there was one ghost who particularly enjoyed being his respective animatronic more than any other.

"Argh, go fuck yourself!" Rockstar Foxy snarled and slammed his fist on the desk as Withered Foxy leapt towards his screen. "That's the 100th fucking time in a row! I couldn't have been THAT much of a jackass!"

Scott Cawthon had released the second game in the "Five Nights at Freddy's series," this one focused on the night shift in the 1987 pizzeria instead of the 1993 pizzeria. Mike had played the game almost immediately after it came out, and to the surprise of the ghosts it took him nearly three hours to beat Night 6 after he had defeated the same night so effortlessly in FNAF1. The ghosts, having gotten better at the first game, had tried their hand on the second…and promptly gotten wrecked hard.

As Fritz could currently attest to.

"Hey, will you keep it down?" Cassidy poked her head through the wall. "And don't hit the table like that, you're lucky you didn't break it!"

"Night 6 is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE!" Rockstar Foxy ranted. "Every time I try, I either get fucked by the Puppet, fucked by Foxy, or Balloon Boy and Toy Bonnie decide to take their sweet ass time in the vent openings! Just…how are you supposed to beat this? Why have you betrayed me Foxy?"

Cassidy only rolled her eyes at her brother's obsession. By far, Fritz had spent the most time in his animatronic compared to the others to the point that Mike had started to worry that he might accidentally get stuck in Rockstar Foxy even without Remnant involved. "Just…calm down, geez…"

"This is dad's fault," Rockstar Foxy grouched. "He was the one who worked with this Scott Cawthon guy on making the game, he probably made it like this just to fuck with everybody."

Mike, who happened to be walking by when he said that, poked his head in. "You do realize that I didn't design the game like that? I gave Scott the information that Charlie told me and he implemented it into the mechanics." He suddenly grinned. "All I did was approve it."

"Oh, so you APPROVED…" Rockstar Foxy lifted a middle finger towards Mike. "…well fuck you, dad!"

Mike smirked and returned the middle finger before leaving the room. Rockstar Foxy groaned in irritation and hit "6th Night" on the menu screen for FNAF2 again. "I'm going to beat this shit if it fucking kills me a second time."

Cassidy shook her head in exasperation and pulled her head back through the wall to her room. Rockstar Foxy gritted his fangs and began to play through the game. As the in-game hours passed and 5 AM approached, Rockstar Foxy began to hope that maybe, just maybe, he could finally join the ranks of his brothers and sisters who had beaten this night.

And then, Balloon Boy decided to ruin everything.

"Why are you still here?" Rockstar Foxy shouted. He lifted the Freddy mask and quickly shined the flashlight on Withered Foxy before slamming the mask back down on his face. "It's been seven fucking seconds! Fuck off already!"

Balloon Boy finally departed from the vent, but not before leaving one final fuck-you. The music box had been winding down all this time, and because Balloon Boy had wasted so much time…it had finally run out.

"Aww, shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit…." Rockstar Foxy groaned as Pop Goes the Weasel started playing and he fended off an attack from Withered Freddy. "Please be merciful," he started praying frantically, "please be merciful, please be merciful, please be…"

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

The Marionette leapt at the screen from the shadows, causing a Game Over. With a roar of outrage, Rockstar Foxy raised his fist and smashed it through the laptop screen. The screen shattered into pieces as the animatronic's hand punched its way through, leaving bits of broken glass everywhere. The eyepatch covering Rockstar Foxy's right eye lifted up in shock as the ghost inside realized what had just happened.

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me…" a voice muttered from outside. Very slowly, Rockstar Foxy turned to look towards his father, who was staring at the mess in disbelief.

"Oh my God, dad, I'm so sorry…" the animatronic muttered, his voice unusually quiet and subdued. He had often vented his rage at video games by punching harmlessly through the laptops as a ghost…but he had forgotten that he wasn't just a ghost anymore.

Mike groaned and palmed his face. "Ugggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh…look, I know I have more than enough money to replace things that get broken in this house, but for God's sake, this does NOT mean you can break your laptop whenever you rage at a video game. Even if it is Night 6 of Five Nights at Freddy's 2."

"In my defense…I kinda forgot I was in an animatronic?" Fritz offered weakly.

"You forgot…" Mike spluttered and then sighed. "Okay, I try to be as easygoing as possible but even I'm gonna have to put in some discipline for this. First off, you're cleaning up this mess right now."

"Okay," Fritz readily agreed as he left the animatronic. He could deal with that easily.

"Second, you can't use anyone else's laptop until your new one comes in. I'll still let you use your phone and play video games with the others, but I know for a fact that there's some things you can do on a laptop that you can't do on anything else," Mike continued.

Not unreasonable either. "Sure," Fritz acquiesced again.

The faintest trace of a smirk appeared on Mike's lips. "And three…your animatronic privileges are revoked for an entire week."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Several minutes later, Liz would fly up to her room to find a sulking Fritz in the corner and a laptop with a smashed screen. "What did you do?" she gaped.

"Don't…even…ask…"

If Mike was the Phone Guy

The first thing the ghosts noticed when Mike walked into the living room was the satisfied smirk on his face. "Well, that can't be good…" Jeremy thought dryly.

"You seem happy with yourself," Susie commented as she saw his expression.

"Yes, I am," Mike grinned. "I've found a way to add a little more to the, ah…atmosphere of our One Night at Mike's game."

The kids stopped what they were doing, as One Night at Mike's had (to the slight guilt of the ghosts) become one of the family's favorite pastimes. They had even started a little competition over who could catch Mike first every round, as Mike did sometimes lose under Night 5 and more frequently Night 6 conditions.

"The two FNAF games released so far have always had some guy talking to the night guard over the phone," Mike explained. "I always felt something was missing from our own game, and hearing the Phone Guy's messages in the second game made me realize what was missing. So, I've decided to make some phone messages myself to the beginning of every quote-on-quote night of our game."

The mischievous gleam in his eyes made it clear to everyone that these weren't just simple "phone messages." "All right, I definitely need to hear this," Charlie commented as she and the rest of the kids followed Mike up to his study.

Mike's phone was flashing with incoming messages. "All right, let me just take care of this shit first," he said as he began playing them. He rolled his eyes as ad after ad popped up. "Nobody gives a shit about your fucking merchandise," he growled as he deleted them all. Soon, there was only one message left. Mike's message. "Ah, here we go!" He clicked the button on the phone and it began to play.

"Hey, what's up? The name's Mike Schmidt, and if you're hearing this message then more than likely you're some asshole thief who decided that trying to break into my house was a good idea. I'll get into a detailed explanation of why it wasn't in a bit, but the short version is that you fucked up. Big time."

Liz tilted her head in confusion. "Wait, is this supposed to be from the perspective of a thief who tries to break into your house? Kind of like that one guy way back then?"

"Yeah," Mike confirmed. "Wanted to set up a different kind of context than the actual Freddy's night shift. Plus," he smirked, "I'm planning on pranking Melody or possibly even the Marshalls with this some time in the future and I think it'll be hilarious to fool them into thinking that they were mistaken for a thief."

The kids were torn between amusement and slight guilt (remembering how they had first met Melody) as the message continued. "There's a couple of reasons for that. The first being that I don't even keep most of my money in the house to begin with, so if you thought that you were gonna hit a huge payload, you aren't getting jack shit. So too fucking bad."

"Ouch," Fritz winced with an expression of mock scolding. "You could've been a little more polite about it."

Mike raised an eyebrow. "Polite to a person trying to rob me of my stuff?"

"Good point."

"But that's not really the big issue right now compared to your second problem. You see, I happen to be the proud owner of the last and newest line of Freddy Fazbear animatronics. I like to call 'em the Rockstars, though maracas and accordions are a bit of a weird thing for a rock star to have. Anyway, I keep these animatronics with me in the house to…how should I put it? Brighten up the décor. The problem for you is that these animatronics act like they have a mind of their own when night time rolls around, and they REALLY don't like it when somebody who I didn't invite decides to fuck around here where they don't belong. And by 'don't like it', I mean they tend to beat the everloving shit out of intruders and then take out the trash, if you know what I'm saying. So, full disclosure here, as of this moment…

you're fucked."

Snickers broke out as the kids desperately tried to contain their mirth. After several futile seconds, they gave up entirely and all but collapsed into laughter. "Well, that's one way to put it," Cassidy chortled. "I don't remember Phone Guy ever being this honest."

"Hey, I'm not like those fucktards at Fazbear Entertainment. I tell shit the way it is," Mike replied with a grin, causing the ghosts' amusement to increase even more. "Well, I mean technically I'm bullshitting to begin with since you guys aren't ACTUALLY going to kill anybody, but putting aside that minor detail…"

"Now, if you listen very carefully to my instructions, you might be able to make it out of here alive. Granted, this isn't because I particularly give a shit about your continued existence…"

"Oof, you are such a savage, dad," Jeremy remarked with a grin that was just a tad creepy.

"…but more because I really don't want to spend literal hours cleaning the blood off the carpet. I mean, good God, do you know how hard it is to clean this carpet when somebody spills shit all over it? It takes fucking hours, man! And it's not like I can just waltz to the public laundry either and take out a carpet covered in blood and gore."

"Glad to see you have your priorities straight," Susie snickered.

Mike gave her a deadpan look. "Pizza."

Susie huffed and the other ghosts snickered as the message played on. "I don't want to deal with that shit, and unless you're seriously fucked in the head in one way or another, you probably don't either. So sit your ass down in the sofa in the living room, because that's probably the safest place in the entire house right now. Now, since this is your first night here, the animatronics aren't really all that active, though I don't think trying to make a break for it is the best idea since you might piss them off. You might have noticed a staff with a giant middle finger next to you, something that I like to call the Fuckstick. Love it, worship it, because that's the one thing that'll save your sorry ass tonight. And by that I mean most of the animatronics will get confused by the Fuckstick and just walk away if you flip it in front of their face quickly enough if they try to get you in the living room. You'll want to use that against Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica. That's the bear, the bunny, and the chicken, if you aren't aware."

"How nice of you to provide a detailed guide on how to avoid getting fucked," Gabe drawled as he rolled his eyes. "Instead of, you know, actually coming to the poor shmuck's rescue."

"Hey, it's their problem for breaking into a house filled with haunted animatronics in the first place," Mike countered.

"Now, there's another thing you should be aware of. In my basement, there happens to be a music box with a puppet inside it. A Security Puppet, to be more specific. That thing hates intruders even more than the rest of the bots, and if it gets out of the music box there is not a single thing on God's good Earth that can stop it from wrecking your face in."

"More accurate than I care to admit," Charlie conceded sheepishly, her sins as the Puppet in the back of her mind.

"Fortunately, the tablet over on the sofa comes with a program that'll let you wind the music box up while the camera's focused on the basement. It also comes with a map of the house and cameras in each room so you can keep track of the animatronics. Trust me when I say that you'll want to keep that box wound up at all times. I wasn't kidding earlier, if that Puppet gets out of the box that Fuckstick isn't gonna do jack shit against it."

"How come you didn't mention me or Fritz…err, Foxy?" Liz asked.

"It's Night 1," Mike explained, "Foxy was never really a Night 1 threat. Not in the actual night shift or in either of the games. Thought I'd keep it that way and have it apply to you too since you act similarly to how Withered Foxy does in FNAF2."

"That's pretty much all I have for you right now," Mike's voice on the answering machine was wrapping up the call. "Hopefully, you now realize why trying to break into my house was a fucking awful idea and what you can do to get yourself out of this mess. The bots all deactivate every couple of minutes to reboot their programming, and that's your chance to get the hell out of this house if you've managed to make it that far. So, good luck, and if you do manage to get the hell out of here…

stay the fuck off my property."

The line went dead and Mike turned to his kids. "Well, whaddaya guys think?"

"That is the most asinine, shameless, brutally honest Freddy's-related phone message I have ever heard in my entire existence," Charlie gave her verdict, before her mouth split into a grin. "And I loved every second of it."

"I don't think you could've gotten your point across more clearly if you shoved it up the player's ass," Fritz added, causing the other ghosts to crack up even more at the…interesting imagery.

"Well that's good," Mike replied. "I know I did this partially just to be an ass, but the Phone Guy really did give me the basic information I needed to survive and I wanted to make sure I did the same here, all jokes aside."

The amusement faded somewhat as the ghosts remembered the man they had murdered. Seeing the despondent looks on their faces, Mike quickly changed the subject. "So! Who's up for wanting to see me try and fail miserably at 10/20 mode of FNAF2?"

The ghosts grinned. The best night guard they knew versus a mode that put 4/20 mode to deep and everlasting shame? This should be good.

Confrontation

Mike hummed to himself as he worked on his project in the workshop. It had taken him the better part of a few months, but he was almost done. Hopefully, he would be able to finish it before he took the kids out for an extended vacation out of the country later in the summer. After the complete success of the vacation to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, he was ready to broaden their horizons and really show them the rest of the world.

A distant knock on the door to his workshop drew his attention. "Come in!" he called as he set down his tools. The door opened, and Ryan walked in. To his surprise, the man looked troubled, even agitated. "What's up, Ryan?" he asked in concern. "Is something the matter?"

"…you could say that," Ryan muttered as he closed the door behind him. "We need to talk, Mike."

"I'm all ears," Mike assured him as he drew two chairs for himself and his friend. "What about?"

"Your kids, Mike," Ryan responded, and immediately Mike was on alert. "They're not just a bunch of random ghost kids who quote-on-quote happened to pop up in your house…are they?"

The silence from Mike was enough of a confirmation in and of itself. "How did you figure it out?" Mike asked quietly.

"Some of it was from the Five Nights at Freddy's games," Ryan admitted. "My kids like to play those sometimes. Though it wasn't just that. The fact that the game takes place in 1993, back when that pizzeria was still a thing, the fact that many night guards disappeared and were more than likely killed by being stuffed in suits, the way that your kids seem to possess and move around the Rockstar animatronics almost too easily…different things that might actually be much more connected than they initially seem…"

"…"

"Are they the ones?" Ryan looked Mike in the eyes. "Are they the ghosts that were possessing the original Freddy Fazbear animatronics?"

"…yes."

"So it's true," Ryan muttered. "They're not the innocent ghosts I thought they were. They've killed people…just like the bastard who murdered them. They're…"

"If you call them monsters, I swear to God…" Mike hissed venomously. Ryan's head snapped up to his friend…and what he saw and felt chilled him to his very core.

The friendliness, the good humor, the compassion, the characteristics that had made Mike such a valuable friend for over thirty years…all of it had completely vanished. Mike's face and eyes burned with barely restrained fury, and he seemed to almost emanate an aura of menace that was nothing short of terrifying. "You don't know a damn thing about them, Ryan," he snarled. "You don't know ANYTHING about the sheer amount of shit they've been through, or how much they regret doing what they did thirty years ago."

"Then help me understand!" Ryan protested. "Help me see them as something other than murderers of innocent night guards."

Mike took a deep breath to calm himself down. "You do deserve an explanation, I'll give you that," he conceded. "Most of them were slaughtered by a man working at Freddy Fazbear's pizzeria, a man wearing an old Bonnie suit. None of them ever saw the man's face, only that he was wearing the purple uniform of the security guards working there. But that was only the beginning of their suffering."

Ryan's eyes widened in horror as he realized what was about to come. "Oh, God…" he breathed.

"The murderer stuffed the kids in the animatronics, probably to hide the evidence of his crimes," Mike continued, carefully omitting the details regarding Remnant and William Afton. "But there was something inside those suits that caused the souls to be trapped in the animatronics instead of being free to move on. Can you imagine it, Ryan? Being forced into a cursed existence, trapped inside the animatronics and unable to move or say anything as your friends and family search for you without ever being able to find you? Not ever able to DO anything until midnight when the only company you have is your fellow murder victims, existing like this for years on end? Can you honestly tell me that you WOULDN'T want revenge on the person who put you into that never-ending torture?"

"…I'd go insane," Ryan admitted, already realizing how unfair he'd been. Yes, the ghosts now hanging out with his son and daughter had killed innocent people, he wasn't wrong about that, but he hadn't even bothered to consider why or how these now-pleasant and friendly children could have ended up like that. "Fucking dammit, I'd go insane and probably end up doing the same thing."

"…and I would too," Mike agreed. "These kids…they wanted revenge on the bastard who murdered them. I'm not going to deny that, and I'm not going to deny that they fucked up in a big way while they were trying to get it. But it wasn't just revenge that they were looking for, Ryan. They also wanted to protect other kids like them, kids who might one day be murdered by a security guard pretending to be a good person. It's already happened once, why couldn't it happen again?"

"But it was at nighttime!" Ryan protested. "There wouldn't even BE any kids around nighttime!"

"I never said their logic was flawless," Mike answered. "I freely admit that their logic is a pile of nonsense to any sane, rational person. But they did genuinely want to help other children, even if it was based on a rationale that was utterly fucked up. And besides," his lips twitched slightly, "I've found that ghosts don't really mature, at least not at the same rate that a living person would. Charlie's really the only exception. Do you honestly expect rational and coherent thought from a regular kid, let alone one who's gone utterly bonkers?"

Ryan thought back to how silly Alex and Meghan had been even just a few years prior. "You have a point," he admitted. "You were there, weren't you?" he asked. "You spent 20 nights at Freddy's. You spent 20 nights being attacked by them."

"Yes, I was there," Mike agreed. "I dealt with their shit night after night for 20 nights in a row. Which means that I have more of a right to judge them for their actions than almost anyone else alive right now. And after spending a year with them, living together as a family, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that they were just kids who lost their way. All of them regret what they did in the past to the point that they still have nightmares to this day about their own actions. And it was lucky both for them and for me that they finally found their way here of all places. Because this past year has been the best one in my entire life."

He suddenly glared right back into Ryan's eyes. "So do you still think my kids are nothing but killers and monsters, Ryan?" His voice dipped back down into its unholy, chilling growl. "Choose your next words very carefully."

"…they're not, and now I feel like an asshole because I knew they weren't bad at heart even before you gave me this explanation," Ryan finally answered after several seconds of silence. "I know that just from the way they hang around with my kids and the way they look up to you. If they really were evil then something bad would've happened to either you or to them long before now. It's just…" he sighed, "…when I found out that they killed people back then, I started panicking. I got worried that Alex or Meghan might not be safe around them, that one day they might kill them when I wasn't looking." He shook his head in self-disgust. "It's such a stupid thought in hindsight…"

A ghost of a smile appeared on Mike's lips. "Let me set your mind at ease," he assured them. "There is zero chance of that happening. Every single one of my ghost kids hates, and I mean HATES, child murderers and hurting kids more than anything else. I'd go so far as to say that they'd rather throw themselves straight into Hell than do anything that would hurt me, Alex, Meghan, or anybody they care about." There was an odd intensity in his voice that sent shivers down Ryan's spine for some reason, though he couldn't tell why. "Heck, apart from you or Stella, I don't think you could find anybody else who could better protect them, if anything."

Ryan took a deep breath and nodded, clearing away the last of his doubts. "I don't want them to know, Mike. I don't want Alex or Meghan to know about what your kids did three decades ago."

Mike's lips curled into a wry smile. "Believe me, Ryan, that is the LAST thing that I want to happen." Ryan got up and was about to leave, but before he could Mike stopped him. "Ryan?"

The man turned to look at his friend. "You were smart to talk to me about this privately. And you were very, VERY lucky that none of my kids were around to hear this. So just to make sure that the two of us are crystal clear on this, let me give you this warning right here and now."

Mike's eyes narrowed back into the menacing glare from before, though this time it wasn't as hostile. "I've worked my ass for an entire year trying to give my kids the closest thing they can ever get to a new life, and I helped get the Five Nights at Freddy's games out in a way that people would know what happened to those poor kids that got murdered without outright telling people that the hauntings actually did happen. The last thing either of us needs is for the past to come back and bite them in the ass if someone they trust and respect decides to throw their sins in their face or if the wrong kind of people find out that the ghost stories surrounding the Freddy Fazbear franchise are actually true. So never tell a single person what I've told you here today under any circumstances, and never insult my kids to my face or theirs ever again. Do I make myself clear?"

Ryan gulped, fighting down his fear. "Since when the fuck was Mike this terrifying?" he thought blankly. "Crystal," he managed to choke out.

"Good…so how're the kids doing?" the abrupt change to Mike's normal friendly tone was so sudden that Ryan could have sworn he felt the mental whiplash.

"Uh…they're doing fine," Ryan replied uncertainly. "Meghan showed them Rayman Legends and now all of them are obsessed with it."

"Ah, Rayman Legends. Great game, easily one of the best platformers ever made. Now I'm curious to see how the kids handle the original Rayman, cause THAT was some brutal shit," Mike started rambling about the Rayman series, almost as though the last few minutes were nothing more than a figment of the imagination.

But he knew that it wasn't. Ryan knew that somewhere in the corners of Mike's mind lurked a dark and terrible fury that he was only now seeing for the first time. And as his college friend showed him the progress of his latest creation, he uttered a silent prayer for the poor fool who ever managed to bring down the wrath of Mike Schmidt upon his head.

/

A/N: And there we go. Two light-hearted, humorous shorts and a surprise one that's dark and serious thrown into the mix. I figured you guys would enjoy the imagery of Rockstar Foxy literally punching a hole through his computer. And you can blame Mike for all the bullshit moments in FNAF2 :P. And as for the phone message, can you imagine my version of Mike leaving a "Phone Guy" message that ISN'T sarcastic, brutally honest, and asinine as all hell?

For the third short, a long time ago one of my reviewers brought up the point that Ryan never really found out about the ghost kids' pasts like Melody did. And not everyone might display her immediate forgiveness. I didn't want Ryan to just give away a free pass like Melody did, but I didn't want him to hate and reject them either. So I found a middle ground with Ryan questioning what kind of people they are, and Mike being the one to set him straight. Finding out that your children are hanging out with people who are technically murderers can't be a pleasant experience, after all, even if the days of violent insanity are LONG behind the ghost kids.

And of course, we can't forget the (brief and subdued) return of Dark!Mike! Even if his concerns were understandable, Ryan came dangerously close to hitting one of the few things that could legitimately piss Mike off, and we all know how terrifying his wrath can be from the conclusion of Nightmare's attack on the family. I originally had a different idea where Mike outright snarled at Ryan to "get the hell out of my sight," but that didn't really fit since they ARE friends and Ryan's concerns aren't unreasonable. So instead I had Mike do a Mood Whiplash that (a) fits his character better and (b) is still a bit creepy due to how sudden it was. But if you're disappointed that Dark!Mike didn't stay for very long, don't you worry. I'll be thoroughly scratching THAT particular itch sooner than you think.

Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed!