A/N: Hey guys! I am pleased to announce that Mike's New Ghostly Family has a TV Tropes page! I was shocked to discover it and am humbled that my fic was considered good enough to make a page for it. If there are any entries you wish to add, please be my guest! Any help in contributing to the page would be greatly appreciated. I only ask that you spoiler tag major events in the story properly, though I won't consider things like Liz being in the fic spoilers since that's a development that happens earlier on and she plays an integral role in many more important events in the story.
Anyways, let's continue on with the Schmidts' vacation, shall we?
Properman: I have a few ideas on how to address this, but I can tell you right now that it WON'T be because the ghosts will be discovered and exposed to the public at large. Because there's no way that could happen without things turning horrible for the family, and that would be counterproductive to the point of this fic.
Clown2107: When I was still writing those chapters, I was operating under the theory that Michael Afton was Jeremy Fitzgerald and Fritz Smith at the time. Nowadays, I actually agree with you and find this theory largely unfeasible. I could see the possibility of Michael Afton being Fritz Smith, but not Jeremy Fitzgerald. If I were to rewrite the fic (which unfortunately won't ever happen, as I don't have the time), I would probably focus on the Michael Afton segments and re-integrate Jeremy Fitzgerald into the fic. I still think Michael was the one who burned down Fazbear's Fright, but that's a relatively minor detail.
As for Remnant, sorry, but I have to disagree with you there. I've seen two predominant theories as to what Remnant is, possessed metal or fragments of soul. To me, the idea of Remnant being "soul fragments" doesn't really make sense for a variety of reasons, one of which being how could William collect soul fragment and dump it in the Scooper? Also, both sources that suggest Remnant being soul fragments, the books and FNAF Special Delivery, are arguably non-canon, especially Special Delivery since the old animatronics like Freddy and Springtrap are in the game when they were very clearly destroyed throughout the main games (though I do think the stuff about Vanny is almost certainly canon at least). I'm not convinced that Remnant is fragment of soul when there's nothing in the main games that suggests it.
Slweaver119: The only answer I can give you is…eventually :P
Jack0Lanterns: Charlie and the ghost kids have had two years to perfect their abilities, I don't think it's much of a stretch for them to make it so that only Mike can see them in public while they remain invisible to everyone else (their strong bond would only help with this).
Rockstar Ballora: Probably Nightmare tbh.
FerMrack: Thank you very much for your detailed review! I am looking forward to getting to Help Wanted….whenever that comes up. Hehehehehehe.
Sweeting: Thanks for the tidbit, I actually haven't lived in Chicago itself despite being close to it for a couple of years, so I didn't actually know about that before now.
Fnaffan418: I doubt I'll be taking the family to the Grand Rapids, sorry.
Chapter 109 - Vacation to Chicago Part 2
Mike yawned as he got up from his warm and comfy bed in his suite, the one up the stairs from the main room. He got on his feet and rubbed his eyes wearily to try and fight off his lingering fatigue.
"Hey, dad!" Gabe's voice called out to him from the doorway. Mike looked up and haphazardly waved at his son. "What are we doing today?" he asked.
"Gimme a minute to shower, I'm still tired as fuck," Mike mumbled. The ghost quickly nodded and rejoined his siblings downstairs as Mike lumbered over to the shower. As the hot water refreshened his mind, he began to ponder what he and the kids should do today. Though he had a few ideas in his mind and he was sure the kids had more, he hadn't actually thought to set up a firm and established schedule for how they would spend the week in one of America's most famous cities.
As luck would have it, however, Mike didn't need to have made a decision for today. As he got back out of the shower and put some clothes on, he saw that all the ghost kids were already in the room waiting for him expectantly. "You guys are up a hell of a lot faster than I am,"he chuckled.
"We wanted to get going as soon as possible!" Cassidy eagerly answered.
Mike grinned. "Well I can definitely share the enthusiasm, but do you have anything in mind that you want to go to right now?"
"Actually, I think we do!" Charlie replied. Mike gestured for her to continue, and she did so. "There was that Architectural Boat Tour that the driver mentioned yesterday. I think it'd be really interesting to learn about the city while on a boat."
"Even if the tour itself is a huge snoozefest," Fritz added, "we can still enjoy the ride!"
"I'm down," Mike agreed easily. To be honest, he had been planning on suggesting the Architectural Boat Tour himself if the kids hadn't beaten him to the punch. "Is there any particular time that you wanted to go?"
"Is there anything wrong with going right now?" Jeremy wondered, to which Mike shook his head. "Well then, no time like the present! Let's go now!"
"Sounds like a plan!" Mike smiled at them. "Just give me a few minutes to get some clothes on, and then we'll head over to the Architecture Tour area as soon as I get some breakfast."
"Can we possess you while you eat?" Susie requested with a hopeful look in her eye.
Mike grinned. "Well, as it so happens, breakfast here happens to be a huge buffet, so…."
"YES!" Fritz pumped a fist in the air with glee, and the other ghost kids could only barely manage to suppress their delight from exploding out of them.
"Keep it down, will you?" Mike scowled, looking more than a little annoyed. "Let's NOT start any ghost stories about the Intercontinental Hotel, okay?"
The ghosts cringed at the idea. "Sorry…" they mumbled.
Mike brushed it off. "Just be more careful after we leave," he reminded them. "I don't think there's anybody else with us up here in the penthouse, but once we leave this room it's total silence to the rest of the world."
"We know," Liz nodded, speaking for the rest of her siblings.
Mike's smile returned. "Just making sure," he finished, before going back to his room to change. A few minutes later, he was wearing a good quality but not overly formal shirt and khakis. "I'll change into more casual stuff later before we leave, this IS a fancy hotel after all."
"Sounds good to me," Charlie replied as they left the suite, the ghosts turning themselves invisible. Mike took the elevator down the hotel and made his way over to the Breakfast Café, where he and the kids enjoyed an incredible and positively mouthwatering buffet breakfast with omelets, buttermilk pancakes with delicious strawberries and syrup poured over them, sausage, bacon, and hash browns all mixed together to create one of the best early morning meals Mike and his family of ghosts had tasted in years.
"Oh…" Mike sighed blissfully as he ate another piece of pancake, this one for Susie. "This is so perfect."
"I know, right…" Susie moaned as the taste of the pancakes flowed through her. "I don't think I've ever tasted pancakes this amazing before…"
"The pancakes were great and all, but it's the omelet that was the real winner here!" Gabe argued.
"What are you talking about?" Fritz spluttered. "The bacon and sausage is where it's at!"
"I honestly couldn't tell you what was the best food here," Mike interrupted their conversation. "As far as I'm concerned they're all amazing."
Liz gave him an unimpressed look. "You're the only one who's eaten all the food here, dad," she pointed out.
"And I'm the only one here who's alive," Mike countered. Liz opened her mouth, but shut it again when she realized that she didn't have any argument to that.
"Well, I'm definitely satisfied!" Charlie declared happily. "I don't even have a stomach, and I feel full after tasting that breakfast!"
"If that was breakfast, I can't wait to see what dinner is!" Cassidy added, her eyes gleaming with anticipation.
"There actually is a restaurant here for that, but I'm not sure whether we'll eat there today or not," Mike replied as he called for the check from the waiter out loud. "Honestly, with how much I've eaten here I'll probably skip lunch or have a snack or something so that my stomach's empty for dinner again. Let's just get going so we can actually explore the city."
"Willis Tower was so much fun!" Jeremy declared as they left the restaurant. "I can't wait to see more of Chicago!"
"You and me both," Mike agreed with a grin as they took the elevator back up to their suite. After Mike changed into more casual clothes, they went back down to the lobby and walked out into the already busy streets of Chicago. The ghosts expected Mike to call for a Lyft on his phone like he had done yesterday, but to his surprise he instead turned to the left and started walking down the street.
"Wait, what?" Susie exclaimed. "Where are you going?"
"We're walking over there," Mike explained as the ghosts got over their surprise and flew over to keep up. "The loading dock's not too far away, it's not worth getting a car for it. Besides, I need to walk off that breakfast cause I feel like a fatass right now."
The ghosts snickered at his choice of words as Mike continued to walk down the street. After only a few minutes, they found themselves back at the ornate bridge that they had travelled across on the way to the Intercontinental Hotel yesterday. Instead of walking across the bridge, however, Mike turned to the side, walking underneath a sign that read "Shoreline Sightseeing" and down a set of stairs that led to the lower level of the city and a sidewalk right next to the river.
"Ohhhhhhh…" Gabe realized. "The boats pick us up right here, don't they?"
"Yep!" Mike confirmed as he approached a booth with the same sign above it. "Hello there!" he greeted the attendant cheerfully. "How long til the boat ride starts?"
"Just a few minutes," he replied. "In the meantime, please make yourself comfortable!"
"Will do," Mike answered. As they waited for the boat, he and the ghosts exchanged small talk about what their next plan was after their architectural tour. Before they could fully form a concrete plan, however, the Architectural Tour boat arrived, a large white and blue ferry with the Shoreline logo emblazoned proudly on it, filled with empty seats waiting to be occupied.
"Huh…" Liz mumbled as the ghosts followed Mike and the other passengers onto the boat. "Not as many people here as I thought."
"I kinda decided that on purpose," Mike explained. "If we waited til later, there was probably gonna be more people to fill up the boat, and that would've gotten really crowded and annoying. Less people means more space, and that's just fine by me."
"Makes sense," Jeremy conceded as the last few passengers took their seats.
The boat began to move forward, and the family took the time to enjoy the view of the city around them as the ferry began to drive into the city. Though they had already witnessed the breathtaking expanse of Chicago from up in Willis Tower, the scenery from below the streetline on the surface of the river was more down-to-earth and beautiful in its own way. Countless towers of different heights, sizes, and architectural designs surrounded the river like towering sentinels, but there were also a surprising number of trees lining the river as well, a sign that industry hadn't completely conquered nature even in a major city like Chicago.
"Look at all these buildings!" Susie gasped as she pointed at a group of skyscrapers to her right. "How did they even MAKE so many of them?"
"And how did they make them so tall without them falling over?" Cassidy wondered, just as mystified. Mike had to remind himself that the kids had very likely never seen a skyscraper or city in their entire lives, or that if they had, the memory had almost certainly been wiped out by decades of torment, misery, and loneliness.
"I'm more surprised by the fact that there's apparently a giant river running straight through the middle of the city," Liz remarked.
"…they were trying to find a central route through the Americas and the Chicago River did just that," the tour guide was explaining, as if on cue. "If you go up the south branch of the Chicago River, you can actually get to the Des Plaines River, to the Mississippi River, and eventually the Gulf of Mexico."
"Wait so we can actually go all the way down to the South of America if we just kept following the River?" Gabe asked incredulously.
"I kinda wanna try that, not gonna lie," Fritz admitted.
"Yeah, no, sorry," Mike shot that idea down. "I've got my limits, even for you guys."
"Awww…"
The ferry coursed under a giant metal bridge that seemed to have multiple layers, its four corners manned by stone towers that were almost like pillars, distinguishing it from the rest of the more normal-appearing bridges. "The highway we just passed under is Lakeshore Drive, it's one of the major highways that wraps around the outer edge of the city," the tour guide continued, completely oblivious to the fact that one of her passengers had several ghostly children floating around enjoying her tour for a free ticket price. "It is one of my favorite views of the city, with the skyline on one side and the lake on the other."
"Maybe we should take a drive on the highway ourselves," Jeremy suggested.
"Hey, maybe we could even go to the beach!" Fritz added, perking up again. "It can't be as bad as that beach in Korea, is it?"
Only Mike's months of practice and willpower stopped him from shrugging at seemingly nothing. "We can always give it a shot when the heat isn't too bad."
The ghosts smiled and returned to watching the scenery around them in contentment. Each and every building was truly different in nature. Some appeared almost as though they were made out of stone and had an almost medieval theme, with two of the most unique ones shaped like a gothic spire with elegant buttresses and a clock tower that extended far above the rest of the building. Others were very clearly modern in design, including a tower that looked like it was seemingly made of pure glass.
"On the left you can see a triangle-shaped building with alternating blue and dark blue glass," the tour guide continued as they passed through several tall buildings that were seemingly hotels of some kind or another. "This triangle-shaped building is Swissotel, made by architect Harry Weese. He loved nautical themes and boating. A lot of his hotels have triangle shapes as though they were sails on a boat."
"Now I kinda wanna see if the inside of that hotel is like a giant aquarium or ship or something," Fritz mumbled.
"Maybe we can explore the city later," Liz suggested.
"On the right, you can see a stone building with a yellow onion dome at the top," the tour guided gestured to a building that was a bit further distance than the other buildings lining the river. "That is Intercontinental Hotel."
"YAY!" the ghosts cheered, making Mike and Charlie very thankful that they had implemented their preparatory spells before going on the boat. "OUR HOTEL!"
"That onion dome up there used to be a blimp dock, believe it or not," the tour guide elaborated. "The architects used to believe that in the future, everyone would travel by their own personal blimp much like people own their personal jets now."
Mike couldn't suppress a snicker. "That'd be kinda hilarious, not gonna lie," he admitted. "The skies would really become a clusterfuck if that happened."
"What's a blimp?" Charlie asked blankly.
"Basically a giant, fat airship that moves a lot slower in the air than an airplane," Mike summarized. "It kinda looks a bit like a balloon. Remind me to show you guys later."
"They wanted to be at the forefront of the new technology, but then the Great Hindenberg Disaster happened," the tour guide concluded.
"Great…Hindenberg…Disaster?" Cassidy repeated, a bit worriedly. "Why do I not like the sound of that?"
"You don't want to know," Mike muttered. "Trust me."
The ghosts shuddered as they diverted their attention to another tall, beautiful glass building that seemed to shine in the sunlight.
"Trump?" Susie read the name that was proudly blazoned on the side of the building. "Who's Trump?"
"You don't need to know," Mike curtly replied. "Only thing I'll say is that I fucking hate politics." The ghosts wisely decided not to press the issue any further.
"That building is covered in beautiful white terracotta that is very sensitive, but that building has to be handwashed every 5-10 years, so you cannot powerwash it or you will destroy it. It is the second tallest tower in Chicago, standing at 96 floors and 1389 feet tall."
"Jesus," Charlie spluttered. "You have to handwash that whole thing? That seems like it would take forever!"
"No way in Hell would I sign up for that," Gabe scowled, "and I'm a ghost who has all the time in the world and doesn't need to worry about falling to my death."
"Still," Susie admitted, "the building does look beautiful…even if it probably takes forever to wash."
Nobody could argue that point, and the ghosts focused their attention back on the tour guide as she talked about Marina City. The ghosts were immediately interested in its description as a city within a city, and got more and more excited as they listened to the tour guide describe its more unique features, including a bowling alley and an ice skating rink. At first, it took a while for the ghosts to recognize the buildings that the tour guide was describing, and then they stared in disbelief when they realized she was talking about a pair of pillar-like buildings to their right, with the bottom third to fourth of the buildings being nothing but parking garages.
"You're kidding me," Charlie stared in disbelief. "They fit all that stuff she was talking about in just those two buildings? HOW?"
"I don't know, but I really want to check them out now," Liz was just as stunned as her sister.
"Can we go there, dad?" Cassidy pleaded. "Please?"
"Maybe tonight," Mike replied. "I've always found that bowling and ice skating are more fun at night for some reason. Couldn't tell you why, it's always just been how I feel about those."
"Sounds good to me!" Cassidy happily accepted, the ghosts nodding in agreement. She and the rest of the ghosts fell into content silence as they observed the rest of the buildings at the riverfront pass them by and listened to their tour guide talk about some of those buildings and what made each of them unique. The most impressive of them all was easily a massive Art Deco building that was two city blocks wide, which was quickly revealed to be TheMart, a massive central marketplace of all things.
The ferry soon reached a fork in the river and turned to the right, going onto the North branch that lead to a more residential section of Chicago. The ghosts immediately noticed that there were many more bridges here, some of them laying flat across the river and others being lifted up on one side. The tour guide brought everyone's attention over to a pink building on the left, which turned out to be Fulton House, the oldest building on the tour in 1908.
"This building was originally a cold storage house, or a giant refrigerator for meat," the tour guide explained.
Gabe snickered. "Great," he mumbled, trying to hold in his laughter. "Now I'm imagining that building just packed full to the brim with meat."
The other ghost kids tried to hold in their sniggers at the imagery, and even Mike couldn't suppress a small chuckle. "Man, imagine if that house was full of bacon," Liz suggested.
Some of the ghost kids' mouths instantly watered at the image. "Bacon…" Susie drooled.
"Damn you, Gabe, now I want bacon!" Fritz scowled. "Even though I tasted it through Dad back at the hotel!"
"Why do people care about bacon so much?" Jeremy countered. "It's so greasy! Give me ham or sausage, they're much better!"
"You take that back!" Susie challenged. "Nobody insults bacon!"
"GUYS!" Charlie's voice cut through their argument. "Calm down! If you seriously start horror stories about the architectural tour because of an argument over fucking BACON of all things, I will NOT be happy!"
The ghosts immediately silenced their argument, giving a nervous look to their father to see if they had inadvertently angered him somehow. Fortunately, Mike was regarding their argument with nothing more than amusement, although there was a bit of warning in his eyes not to let themselves get carried away.
"Get your cameras out if you haven't already!" the tour guide advised them, and they immediately snapped their attention back to her. "You're about to get a great photo-op of the main branch of the river and a beautiful part of the city!"
"Dad?" Charlie prompted.
"On it," Mike answered, having already taken his cell phone out and started taking pictures rapidly. There were many buildings of different shapes and sizes all condensed around the river, creating a beautiful and complete picture of Chicago's diverse skyline even with the river separating two parts of the city. In the meantime, the ghosts took the time to enjoy observing more of the skyscrapers and listen to the tour guide highlight more of those buildings.
"Is that the Willis Tower over there?" Jeremy pointed at a tall black building with two white spires jutting out of the top. "I recognize that building shape!"
Mike squinted at the building shape. "It might be, actually!" he realized. "Holy crap, didn't realize we'd find it this close to the river!"
"Remember that race we had last night?" Cassidy giggled. "That was so much fun!"
"I dunno how the hell Liz beat me!" Fritz complained. "I moved so fast!"
Liz nearly stuck her tongue out at the former Foxy inhabitant as the tour guide described the Board of Trade in the far distance, another Art Deco building with a statue of the Roman goddess Ceres at its very top. The ferry continued to travel down the river, passing under two double decker bridges with trains occasionally zooming over them from one side to another. "Can we ride on the train?" Susie asked. "I don't think I've ever ridden a train before!"
"Hmm…" Mike mused. "The problem with that is that we don't really have anywhere that we want to go that requires a train. And trust me when I say that public transportation is annoying as fuck to deal with."
"Still wanna go on the Loop to be honest," Susie sulked.
"I'll make you a deal," Mike offered. "If you can find a place that's actually worth going to, we'll take the Loop there. Deal?"
"Deal!" the former Chica inhabitant immediately replied, instantly brightening.
"We've passed under about 20 bridges throughout the tour," the tour guide remarked. But we have the most moving bridges in the world. 37."
"That's a lot of bridges," Cassidy commented. "I wasn't even counting how many!"
"I mean, you kinda need a lot of bridges if you have a river running right through the middle of your city," Gabe deadpanned. "Living in this city would be really awkward if you didn't."
"True," Jeremy agreed.
The ferry crossed underneath the bridges in question, maneuvering through the river and past more buildings made of concrete, steel, or glass, including a small box-like building with a steel frame in the shape of an X, a large black glass building next to it that made it look as though it were inflating from the inside, and an older, more dignified stone building that looked ancient in comparison, which the tour guide quickly identified as the old post office. By far one of the most interesting buildings was a massive, older stone building that sat on the edge of the river to their, one that towered over the boat both horizontally and vertically. Most of the building was covered with windows, but the wall they were facing was almost pure stone, with a few small circular windows covered with a crisscrossing network of stone lines. What really caught the attention of the ghosts was the stone-carved scrolls above these windows, with what appeared to be happy and sad mask symbols scattered throughout the "pages."
"This is the Civic Opera House from 1929," the tour guide explained. "It does indeed have an opera within it, and one of the walls of the opera auditorium is here when you see it. It did suffer a lot through the Stock Market Crash, but it did manage to pull through, and it's now the second largest opera company in the United States."
"What's opera?" Susie wondered.
"It's a type of music performance theater," Charlie explained. "I tried listening it to once before you guys came here, but I didn't really like it all that much."
"It's an adult thing," Mike supplied, "and an acquired taste. Probably not the best thing for you guys."
"But still," Liz pointed out. "They have this giant building that's god knows how tall JUST for opera? I mean, I can kinda get why it's so wide because it's of the auditorium, but why do you have so many floors? Just…why?"
"Who the hell even knows, Liz," Fritz mumbled.
As the boat travelled on, the kids started to notice that they were starting to go back in the direction of the lake, albeit in a different direction from the lake. They passed by a large building that seemed oddly shaped like a cash register (which, perhaps fittingly, was revealed to be a bank) and a large, serpentine building that seemed to snake along the edge of the river. The ghosts soon realized that the branch of the river that they were traveling on did indeed open up back into Lake Michigan. The condensed borders of the city and the trees lining them gave way into a vast expanse of water, the land splitting to either side to open a path right into the large body of water that could easily be mistaken for an ocean to the unaware. The family turned back to look at the city that they had just travelled in and were greeted with the sight of the Willis Tower standing proudly, towering above the rest of the skyline.
"Hey!" Cassidy waved at the tower's peak, looking utterly adorable as she did so. "Hi, Willis Tower!"
"I still remember that view from last night," Jeremy sighed contentedly. "Such an amazing sight."
"Maybe we should try and race all the way back up there again?" Fritz suggested mischievously. "And then race back down to the boat?"
"How about no," Mike immediately shot down the idea, earning a groan of disappointment from the former Foxy inhabitant.
"Is Willis Tower the tallest building in the world?" Susie wondered.
Charlie shook her head. "Nope," she denied. "The tallest building in the world is something called the Burj Khalifa in some place called Dubai." She shrugged. "I've never heard of it."
"To the right of the Willis Tower is a stop-sign building in grey and dark-grey," the tour guide interrupted them, drawing their attention to an erratically colored, darker building to the right of the Sears Tower. "Us Chicagoans call it the Morse Code building. We think it's appropriate, but I'm sure there's a lot of kids on this boat that don't know what Morse Code is."
"What's Morse Code?" Gabe immediately asked, justifying the tour guide's statement even as she was unaware of his presence.
"Some type of telecommunication system with a bunch of dots and dashes," Mike explained. "It's still used by Navy and aviators, though not as much as it used to be. You can look it up later if you want, though there's really no reason to use it as far as we're concerned."
"Or we can use it to write messages just to troll you," Fritz suggested with a smirk.
"Oh God, why me…" Mike mentally groaned, earning some giggles from the ghosts. The kids partially hoped that the Shoreline cruise would take them out into the open sea, but their hopes were proved to be disappointed, as the boat started to drive back into the city the way they had come. There were still a few highlights left to be seen, however, including a tall silvery tower with a crown-like peak that the tour guide humorously dubbed as the Birthday Cake or White Castle building and a structure with a top made out of real 25-karat gold.
"I wonder if I could steal that," Fritz commented with a grin on his face.
Charlie rolled her eyes. "There are so many reasons why that would horribly fail that I can't even begin to list them."
"Ruin my fun, why don't you…"
"Besides," Liz pointed out, "it's not like Dad's running out of cash anytime soon. He's still obscenely rich, you know…"
"I already have more money than I know what to deal with, and this is AFTER I started spending it on you guys," Mike drawled. "Even if I didn't get my ass arrested, I have no clue what the hell I would spend money from a 25-karat gold leaf building top."
The ghosts snickered as the boat travelled back down the same route that it had come. As they approached Michigan Avenue and the dock where they had climbed on the boat to begin with, the tour guide directed their attention to one last building, the one with a gothic structure and decorative buttresses at the very top.
"This is the Tribune Tower," the tour guide explained, "built in 1925 by architects Howells and Hood. It was made in a French cathedral style. The Chicago Tribune hosted an interior and exterior design competition for its new headquarters. It was the home of the Chicago Tribune until it moved its headquarters in 2018. The building has been converted into condos, something that was finished by 2020."
"That has easily got to be one of the best looking buildings in this entire city," Charlie commented, the other ghosts easily agreeing with her assessment. "Look at how beautiful that structure is."
"It was a newspaper office building?" Jeremy asked incredulously. "That's…not what I would have expected honestly. And why the hell would they leave a building that looks this awesome?"
"And turning into a bunch of apartment buildings?" Gabe muttered. "Kinda lame for such an awesome looking building."
"Living in that building would be really cool though," Susie admitted. "Would you want to live there, dad?"
"Nah…" Mike denied. "City life isn't for me. Too loud and too crowded. I like my house and the quiet life too much to give it up."
"And besides," Charlie added, "in a city there'd be a much greater risk of us being spotted and exposed. Especially in a condo where there's a bunch of people around. We'd have to keep ourselves quiet and invisible for most of our time there."
The ghosts shuddered at the idea. "Yeeeessh…" Fritz muttered. "No thanks."
"We're already happy the way we are," Mike concluded as the boat approached the dock where they had embarked on their little journey. "No need to change things unless we have to."
"Amen to that!" the ghosts declared as their ferry slowed to a stop, signaling the end of the tour.
"We hope you enjoyed our Chicago Architectural Tour," the tour guide concluded the ride with one final statement. "As you can see, the buildings of Chicago have a very rich history, and each and every one of them contributes to the beauty and wonder of our city. I encourage you to take the time to explore the city however you wish, as there are many more wonders to see than what we've seen today. Thank you, and welcome to Chicago!"
Everyone clapped as the tour guide finished her speech, the ghosts enthusiastically applauding her performance even if it went unseen and unheard. As Mike got up to leave the boat, the ghosts started talking enthusiastically about the buildings featured on the tour."
"Man, I had no idea there was so much history here!" Gabe declared. "And I thought all these buildings were basically the same thing. Boy, was I wrong!"
"I wanna go see that Marina City thing," Susie commented with a grin on her face. "Those buildings looked weird as hell but sound like there's a lot of fun to be had in there!"
"This just makes me want to explore the city more!" Cassidy exclaimed.
"What do you think, dad?" Liz asked. The ghosts turned to face their father, wanting to hear what plan he had next.
Mike scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Well, the day's still early, and there's still plenty to do. Why don't we do what the tour guide suggested and just take a walk around the city? Maybe we'll get lucky and be able to get into some of the buildings without causing any problems. And even if we can't, we can at least say we tried."
"That sounds great!" Charlie happily agreed, and the rest of the ghosts made their own gestures and noises of assent. Mike couldn't help but smile as the ghosts looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to make the next move.
"This is the first time they've been to a city," he reminded himself. "And I think we made the right call by doing this Architectural Tour. Places like this must be absolutely crazy to think about for them, and this little boat ride showed them just how huge cities like these can actually be."
/
A/N: Whoo boy, this was a LOT tougher to write than I thought it would be. I figured the Chicago Architectural Tour would be a good first step for the ghost kids to see and experience Chicago, introducing them to many of the city's most famous buildings and showing them just how big an American city can actually be, even compared to a smaller city like Las Vegas.
I had to do a LOT of research on Youtube to find material for this chapter and it took me hours to write. This was very much an educational-type chapter, and I hope the commentary from the ghost kids was enough to keep it from being a snoozefest for those of you not interested in that kind of thing. I'm very aware that chapters like this can be hit or miss, and I hope that this was more hit than miss.
If you live in the Chicago area, what else should I include? I can tell you right now that Millennium Park, at least once museum (probably the Art Institute though the jury's still out on that), and Navy Pier will absolutely be in, no questions out.
Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed!
