A/N: Nobody's really requested a new Museum chapter, so I won't be writing one. Honestly, I was inclined not to write one regardless, as the last one left me utterly exhausted. Sorry about the extra half week delay by the way, this is the last chapter of the Chicago Vacation and it took me longer than I expected.

RicAlbuquerque: If I have the time I'll take a look at it, but unfortunately I'm starting another rotation at a hospital soon and I dunno how my schedule's gonna be.

Reap2: That's a neat idea, although I dunno if I'll do a CAH chapter any time soon. I really don't want to do any research that's not related to FNaF right now after all these Chicago Vacation chapters. And sadly, the ship regarding Michael Afton has sailed. He absolutely died his final death during the events of FNaF 6.

Conceptualentity42: That's pretty interesting! I dunno much about machines like that, so reading about the Oscilloscope was a bit of an enlightening experience. Mike would probably know more than I ever could XD

WhyIsThePuppetSticky: Most of their early past (before William Afton decided to fuck everything up like the asshole he is) is sadly lost to the ghost kids. The decades of suffering have eroded most of their memories, with Charlie and Liz being the two main exceptions to this rule. They're mostly content with making new memories with Mike and each other than trying to dig for old ones through the shadow of obscurity.

Theworstnameever: That's an interesting concept that has a lot of potential in another fic, although it's unlikely to be implemented here. MNGF's William Afton is very much an unrepentant monster, and will be treated as such both by me and by the characters in the fic.

AlexTheMechanicFox: Ehhhh…he'll be fine XD

Greenden: I don't really make special benchmarks for chapter numbers.

BarcodeMan47: Hmmm…I suppose I could have Mike take the kids to a Church. I imagine Mike as a "private" kind of religious, being Christian but not really committed to any form of organized religion. Still, it would raise an interesting discussion, that's for sure.

TobiasRieper: I'm going to be completely honest. I don't have any major or ulterior plot point behind the explosion of Eisensteel, or at least I didn't when I wrote it back then. It was mostly used as a reason for Melody to join the Schmidt family on their trip to Korea. Could I retroactively add more backstory to the Eisensteel explosion? I suppose so…but right now there's nothing more. Kinda reminds me of what Mr. Hippo said, now that I think about it. XD

Chapter 111 - Vacation to Chicago, Part 4

There were many sights to see in Chicago, many wonderful places to explore. After their visit to the Museum of Science and Industry, Mike continue to guide the ghost kids to the many unique buildings and features of Chicago. Over the next few days, the family visited a wide range of buildings, from the dignified and majestic Museum of Natural History and the Art Institute of Chicago, all the way down to the exciting and nature-focused Lincoln Park Zoo. Each and every one of them was a joy and a wonder for the ghost kids to explore, a chance to finally see a different and wonderful aspect of the world that they had been so cruelly denied for more than forty years.

It was ironic that their last moments in Chicago would be simple in comparison.

"So where are we going now, Dad?" Gabe asked. They had visited the Shedd Aquarium that morning and returned to the Intercontinental Hotel so that Mike could drop off the souvenirs he had bought. He had amassed quite the collection thanks to his wealth and available resources, and actually had to limit his spending so that he'd have enough room in his suitcase and backpack to bring them all home with him.

"Man, I loved the Aquarium!" Jeremy declared excitedly, displaying a level of enthusiasm that was usually only expressed by Fritz. "So many cool sea creatures in those tanks! All those sharks and penguins. And how did they even manage to bring a freaking WHALE in?"

"I have no idea," Liz shook her head in amazement, "but that beluga whale is over 37 years old!"

Gabe gave Jeremy an unimpressed look. "Did you really have to touch one of those sharks?" he asked scoldingly, "and make it so the poor thing could actually feel it?"

"I just wanted to pet the shark!" the former Bonnie inhabitant protested, "and I mean REALLY pet it. How many people can say they've pet a real life shark before?"

"At least he didn't make himself visible," Charlie sighed. "Can you imagine how much of a disaster THAT would've been?"

Susie shuddered. "A boy pops up in the middle of a shark tank, in front of said shark AND a bunch of people looking into the tank? That would have gone REAL well."

"I could have sworn that shark jerked around the moment it felt Jeremy touch it as it is!" Liz pointed out.

"I'm not THAT dumb!" Jeremy insisted.

"Guys, guys!" Mike finally interrupted. He secretly enjoyed watching his kids argue and banter for a time, though he would always step in eventually before things got too out of hand. "Let's tone it down, please. The city's loud enough without hearing you guys arguing in my head."

The ghost shuffled uncomfortably. "Sorry…" they mumbled.

"It's fine," Mike assured them.

"So where are we going now?" Cassidy asked. The noon hour had just passed, and they still had the latter half of the day left for their last day in Chicago.

"I'd like to take things a bit simpler for this last day," Mike explained. "But we'll still be visiting places very important to Chicago, don't you worry."

The ghosts waited expectantly for Mike to order a Lyft like he'd always done in the past, but to their surprise Mike instead turned left and started to walk, going in the same direction that he had when they were going on the River Tour. The ghosts followed him down the street, crossing over the bridge spanning the Chicago River that by now was familiar to them. For the next several minutes, the ghost kids admired the different buildings of Chicago as Mike continued to walk down the street, never diverting from his trajectory in either the left or right direction. Eventually, however, the buildings to their left broke away, revealing a huge open stretch of land that was heavily, though not entirely, covered by trees.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Fritz exclaimed. "Isn't this that park that we kept driving by?"

"Now that I think about it," Gabe mused, "you're right. We kept driving past this park on the way to all the cool buildings, museums, and whatnot. But we never actually stopped to visit the park itself!"

"A mistake that we are correcting right now," Mike assured them. "This is Millennium Park, easily the most famous park in the Chicago area. The park is small compared to all the museums that we've been to, so we don't need to split up for this." Mike turned to his left and walked down one of the paths leading into the park, with the ghosts following close behind. The path led to the large tree-lined clearing of Wrigley Square, and the family was treated to one of the first great structures of Millennium Park. The Millennium Monument was a graceful stone monument fashioned made of several elegant Doric columns that were arranged in the form of a semicircle, united with a semicircular block of stone at their peaks and fashioned to a large pedestal at their bases that listed the names of the founders of the park. The monument was surrounding a large circular fountain that blasted out water into the air, giving the entire scene a dignified and noble appearance that wouldn't have been out of place when compared to Roman architecture.

"Wow…" Jeremy was the first one to break the silence. "For something that's outside one of Chicago's museums, that thing looks REALLY cool!"

"How do they even make things like this?" Liz asked incredulously. "Make buildings that look like they're straight out of old, famous civilizations?"

Mike mentally shrugged. "You'd be amazed by what people can do when they put their minds to it," he replied. Suddenly, he blinked. Instead of seven ghost kids in front of him, there were only six. "Hey, where did that Cassidy go?"

"Hey!" A voice called out to them, sounding more distant than it should have been. Mike and the rest of the family looked up to see Cassidy sitting on the top of the monument, waving at them. "Up here! The view is great!"

Mike chuckled at his youngest daughter's antics as the rest of the kids flew up to join her. The seven of them sat above a different column, getting a good view of the rest of the park that nobody else could. The ghosts were shocked at just how big the park was, a verdant and green patch of land filled with natural life surrounded by buildings on three sides and the vast lake on the last. Though even within the park, there were still several structures clearly made by man. The ghosts could identify two large black rectangular blocks in the distance, a strange but large building to their left, and a weird bean-like thing a short distance away.

"This park is huge!" was the first thing Susie said to Mike once they floated back down to rejoin him.

"Sure is, isn't it?" Mike agreed. "I think Central Park might still be bigger, but that's in New York and halfway across the continent in the other direction from where we live. Did you guys see the other buildings in the park?"

"Yep!" Fritz cheerfully replied. "Let's go visit them now!"

"You got it!" Mike replied, deciding to go to the left first, the direction he had originally been walking in. They passed by more trees and tourists, as well as a large clearing where several tourists were sitting down on benches and enjoying themselves. Eventually, the trees broke away into what was easily the largest stretch of open land in the entire park, and the kids gasped at what they saw.

Stretching over most of open land was a huge pavilion that was easily one of the most bizarre structures any of them had ever seen. Most of the building itself was on the far left of the clearing, a metal building with a glass wall covering the front. A landing extended out from the wall, giving the appearance of a performance stage of some kind. Layers of metal curls extended from the stage's size and top, spreading out haphazardly in all directions. The land in front of the stage had been cleared out and replaced with rows of seats, with a green lawn spreading out beyond. And more than half of this vast space was covered above with a network of metal beams that criss-crossed from one side to the other, a substitute for a ceiling that would offer little protection against disagreeable weather but would provide a clear view of a beautiful sky, like the one above them today. It was safe to say that none of the ghosts had ever seen in a building that looked like the one they were staring at in their entire lives.

"What the fuck are we looking at?" Fritz was the first to break the silence.

"That's the Jay Pritzker Pavilion Concert Hall," Mike explained. To be honest, the building was just as weird-looking to him as it was to the ghosts, though it was certainly elegant in its own way. "Every so often you have orchestras and stuff like that performing on stage in front of the entire park. Though it looks like there's nothing going on today, sadly."

"Concert Hall?" Jeremy repeated. He suddenly smirked. "Imagine if we put on our Rockstar animatronics and started performing up on that stage. I bet it'd be the first time that anybody here has ever seen animatronics performing music up on the big stage!"

Everybody snickered at the mental image the former Bonnie inhabitant provided. "As hilarious as that is, I can't even begin to explain why that would be a terrible idea," Gabe shook his head once he stopped laughing internally.

"If you can figure out how to transfer 7 animatronics from Utah, lemme know," Mike deadpanned, earning some more giggles from his kids. He looked at them to make sure they were still there, only to find that one of the was missing. "Wait, what the hell?"

"Heeeeeyyyyy!" a voice called from above them. Mike looked up to see Susie sitting on one of the metal curls, grinning and waving at them. "Up here!"

Charlie facepalmed. "Of course…" she mumbled. Mike waved them off, and the ghosts took off to join their sister up on the top of the Pritzker Pavilion, this time taking the time to fly around and examine the weird architectural design of the building itself as well as sitting on both the metal curls and the beams covering the clearing.

"There would be sooooo many people jealous of us if they could see us," Liz commented as they rejoined their father after a few minutes.

"Well, you're invisible for a reason," Mike drawled as they left the Pritzker Pavilion behind them.

"There was this weird bean thingy we saw closer to the front of the park," Cassidy pointed out. "Can we go check that out next?"

"Sure!" Mike replied. "I think it's closer to the other main thing I wanted to check out anyway." He began to walk back towards the street that they had come from but also moving down the direction of that street, passing by more trees, clearings, and tourists who were either relaxing in the park or walking and talking animatedly with each other. Eventually, they reached the edge of the trees, and found themselves on a stone platform that bordered right alongside the towering skyscrapers of Chicago. On the opposite side was what could only be described as a giant metal bean that was being swarmed by other tourists that were both looking at it from the outside and crawling underneath it.

"Is that a giant bean?" Gabe asked skeptically. "Why are there so many people crowding around it?"

Charlie smiled. "That bean is actually one of the most famous things in this entire park," she replied. "Get up a little closer and you'll see why."

Taking her advice, the ghosts floated up towards the bean. As they joined the living and unsuspecting crowd of tourists, Susie gasped. "Oh my God!" she exclaimed. "The entire thing is a giant mirror!" The former Chica inhabitant pointed at the surface of the Bean, which was reflecting off the tourists who were gathered around it in distorted, goofy-looking reflections. Susie tried to find her own reflection on it, only to realize that as an invisible ghost she wouldn't give one off to play around it. "Aww…" she groaned sadly, "I wanted to make funny faces on the Bean!"

Gabe looked enviously at two other kids who were stretching their mouths out and sticking their tongues out at the Bean. "There's a lot of things we can do that other people can't, and a lot of things other people can do that we can't," he sighed. "I guess it's your call if the tradeoff's worth it or not."

"If it helps," Mike offered helpfully, "I'd rather be able to fly on top of the concert hall and on that monument than make funny reflections off the Bean."

That seemed to cheer Susie up a little. "Yeah, that was really cool, wasn't it?" she agreed.

Without the ability to make any reflections (and nobody was going to try and make themselves visible to find out), the ghosts settled for watching Mike approach the Bean and distort his image on its reflective surface. The man grinned and waved at the Bean once, crawling underneath it to see his face hilariously elongate, before stepping out from underneath the Bean and guiding his kids away from the park's unique feature. "I think there's one more big thing that I'd like to see in this Park," he declared. "I think we just need to keep going down the direction we were…"

"I think I see it!" Jeremy announced, pointing up to something in front of them. The rest of the family followed his finger to see a large glass block tower in front of them, with another one several feet away. "What IS that thing?"

Mike smiled. "Why don't we get up a little closer and find out?" The ghosts followed his instructions and stared in shock once they finally had a clear view of yet another feature that distinguished Millennium Park from others. The entire section of the Park between the glass blocks was a shallow reflecting pool, where several tourists were walking through the water and allowing it to splash all over their bodies as an unorthodox way of cooling themselves from the summer heat. The real surprise was the glass towers, which none of them expected to be projecting visual images to all the visitors. The towers were presenting pictures of different faces stretched to cover the entire side of the tower…from which water was pouring out of the mouth and onto the pool below, giving the impression that the faces were squirting water out of their mouth.

"That is the weirdest fountain I have ever seen," This time, Charlie was the first person to break the silence.

Gabe gave her an unimpressed glance. "We've barely even seen all that many fountains in our lives," he deadpanned.

The look that Charlie gave him was equally dry. "And does that change my point at all?" Gabe only shrugged in response.

"Aww…" Cassidy pouted as she realized something unfortunate. "We can't have fun in the fountain either!"

To her surprise, Liz smirked. "So what?" she countered. "How many of these people have a Dad who can literally make water parks in his dream world?"

The former Golden Freddy inhabitant's consternation vanished instantly. "Oh yeah!" she brightened. "I forgot about that!" She looked expectantly at Mike. "Can we do that again?"

Mike thought for a moment. "Maybe in like a week or two," he decided. "I'm gonna be real tired once we get back home." A thought suddenly occurred to him and he sighed as he took a head count of his ghosts and, as expected, only found 6. "Okay, who's the one who disappeared to go fly off to the top of the fountain this time?"

"Heeeeeeyyyyyyy!" Liz sat on one of the towers, waving at them with a grin on her face.

Mike rolled his eyes as the other ghosts burst into giggles. "Called it."

Thirty Minutes Later

"That was a really fun park!" Jeremy commented excitedly as the family rode their Lyft car to their next destination. "So many different things to see. I don't think we'll see anything like that anywhere else!"

"My favorite thing that we saw wasn't anything in the park though," Susie countered. "I liked that really big fountain in the park past the Art Institute the most!"

The fountain that Susie was talking about was the Clarence Buckingham Memorial Fountain in Grant Park, one of the largest fountains in the entire world. The fountain was positioned in a large pool and made of three layers of marble, each one higher than the next. An uncountable number of jets spouted out water from the top, each layer, and even outside the actual fountain itself, which was also surrounded by four jade-colored sea horses that looked as though they were patrolling and guarding the fountain from harm. It was easily one of the most beautiful "classic" fountains that the ghosts had ever seen.

"Whoever made that fountain really went all-out," Liz agreed. "People have some really creative imaginations."

"There's been a lot of awesome-looking things like the fountain and all those museum buildings," Fritz commented, reflecting on all the places they had visited in Chicago that week.

"Speaking of buildings, are we going to visit another museum for our last trip this week?" Gabe asked Mike.

"Nope," Mike answered. "We're going to be visiting something completely different from anything we've been to so far."

"Ooooooh…" Cassidy gushed. "Where are we going?"

"A place called Navy Pier," Charlie answered as the Lyft car exited the highway and entered a road underneath the bridge.

Fritz perked up instantly. "Pier?" he repeated, immediately interested.

"Oh God," Jeremy groaned. "Here he goes again."

"Shut up!" Fritz pouted as the other ghosts laughed at his predictability. The Lyft car turned to the right, leaving the shadow of the bridge and returning to the sunlight. They passed by a few more buildings and suddenly found themselves facing the open sea of Lake Michigan. By now they had seen it enough times to not be overwhelmed, but there was always something awe-inspiring about the vast sea. The car drove up to a building that sat on the edge of the sea and stopped.

"Here you go, sir!" the driver announced. "Have a good rest of your day."

"Same to you!" Mike replied cheerfully as he got out of the car, the ghosts following him out to see the last main attraction that they would visit in Chicago. They found themselves standing in front of a building that stood proudly at the edge of the sea, that was much smaller than the skyscrapers of Chicago but was no less a unique part of the city. The top of the building was covered with a raised glass hemi-dome, on which the words "Navy Pier" were emblazoned proudly upon it. Two large columns lined with windows and lights flanked the main entrance of the building on either side, and the main entrance of the building itself was colored red at the top, the entrance of which was lined with a series of glass doors that invited tourists inside.

"A Children's Museum?" Cassidy read the sign on the building excitedly. "We should check that out!"

Mike thought for a moment. "Maybe a little later," he suggested. "If I remember correctly, Stella told me that there were a lot of cool things to see here." He gave the building another look and noticed that there were also roads on the side that bordered the edge of the sea. Even with this little information, he quickly realized that the entire Navy Pier was effectively a man-made peninsula and that the building was much, much longer than he had originally assumed. "Well, we have a choice," Mike decided. "Go in…or go around?"

"In!" Gabe, Liz, Susie, Charlie, and Jeremy declared.

"Around!" Fritz and Cassidy retorted. Realizing they were outvoted, they pouted. "Aww, come on…"

"Well, we'll get to both eventually, but the In's got it," Mike answered. "Hopefully they have some A/C, it's really getting kind of hot out here."

"That's part of the reason why I want to go inside," Jeremy admitted.

"Not disagreeing with that, let's go!" Mike declared. He rushed towards the glass doors leading into the building, the promise of air conditioning too enticing to delay any longer. To his immense relief, the inside of the Navy Pier building was indeed air conditioned, and they found themselves in a large, open antechamber that was positively crowded with people. The path straight ahead led further into the building under a sign that read "Navy Pier Market", but there were also two sets of staircases leading up the second floor, and a large glass wall with plants on the other side.

"Ooh! Ooh Ooh!" Susie babbled excitedly as she pointed upstairs. "I want to go there!"

"Why don't we check out what's on the rest of this floor first?" Gabe suggested. "Save the best for last and all that?"

"I'm cool with that," Jeremy agreed. "I just hope whatever's upstairs is worth the wait." The family followed the path that led to the Navy Pier Market, and found themselves in a long hallway that was positively bustling with life and activity. To their left was a series of shops, each offering a different kind of product or souvenir for the eager tourist with money to spend. To their right was a large food court that offered many different types of food, ranging from classic fried food to Chinese food, ice cream, and desserts. Mike wasted no time in heading off to the stores, looking for different souvenirs to buy not just for himself, but also for Melody and the Marshalls. As they advanced further down the length of the building, they found themselves outside of a rather strange attraction that was labelled the "Amazing Chicago's Funhouse Maze."

Liz raised an eyebrow as she read the title. "The heck is this?" she asked.

Fritz grinned. "I dunno, but I want to find out!" she declared.

"Go ahead, guys, I'll wait out here," Mike decided. "Besides, it'll be kind of creepy if a grown man goes into a kid's funhouse all by himself."

"Right," Charlie muttered. "We're invisible."

The ghosts entered a long mirrored hallway streaked with lines of colored lights, passing by a green-colored room filled with pictures and entering the first true chamber of the maze. The walls of the chamber were lined with random traffic signs that one would expect to see on the road, and the room itself was filled with mirrors that were more distorted and twisted than the surface of the Bean could ever be.

"Oh, come on!" Cassidy threw her hands up in the air in frustration. "MORE mirrors? First the Bean and now this?"

Jeremy facepalmed. "Please don't tell me this whole thing is going to be a giant letdown," he muttered.

Fortunately, another group of kids happened to pass by at that very moment, and took the time to marvel at their distorted reflections in the mirrors, each of which stretched out or compressed different parts of the body. Fritz burst out into laughter when he saw a normally thin kid become very, very fat in the mirror, and Charlie breathed a sigh of relief that nobody could hear them. Once they were done entertaining themselves with the mirrors and reflections, the ghosts moved on to the next hallway, which was very similar to the picture room they had seen earlier. The main difference being that the room was much darker, and the paintings in the room were colored with glowing, fluorescent colored lights that made them look completely and utterly bizarre and alien.

"Wow…" Susie snickered. "Imagine if the paintings in the Art Institute looked like these. I bet all those fancy paintings would be so much cooler if they looked like this."

"I think the painters would disagree with you," Gabe deadpanned. "They'd be rolling in their graves if any of their artwork looked like this."

As they reached the end of the hallway, they heard the same group of kids from before enter the room. Right as they were about to leave, they heard a gasp from one of the kids behind them and a rumbling metal sound. "Oh my God, the floor!" a boy exclaimed. The ghosts instantly turned around to look down at the floor, and gasped. They had been so engrossed with the paintings that they had completely missed the floor, which was covered in fluorescent handprints that led down the hallway. But even more astonishing than the decorations was the fact that the floor was actually moving, tilting whenever someone stepped on it to throw them off-balance.

"That is genius," Fritz commented admiringly as they moved on to the next room, though again they were somewhat disappointed that they couldn't directly take part in the feature itself as ghosts. The maze abruptly transitioned from a neon-lit hallway to a sewer of some kind, and they found themselves outside of a cage that was brightly lit in comparison to the rest of the sewer. There was a life-sized adult mannequin dressed in worker clothes inside the cage, reaching up towards a power grid of some kind. On the wall right next to the cage, there were several buttons.

"Can I press them?" Cassidy pleaded. "Please? Otherwise this whole thing is gonna be so boring!"

"Do it quickly," Charlie warned. Cassidy gave her a grateful smile and pushed on the buttons as quickly as she could before someone could come in. The first few buttons accomplished nothing, but as soon as she pressed the glowing red one…

"HEY!" a male voice suddenly shouted, and the ghosts jolted as they saw the worker mannequin turn its head to glare at them (or at least, that's what it felt like to them). "I'm trying to work over here."

"Ack!" Liz exclaimed. "I didn't see that one coming!"

"This maze is just full of surprises, isn't it?" Gabe shook his head in bewilderment. "At least we got to actually participate in it this time." The ghosts moved further down the sewer tunnel, passing by holes and pipes that reminded them of the submarine in the Museum of Science and Industry, albeit on a much, much smaller scale. They could hear music in the next room gradually getting louder, although none of the ghosts had ever heard the song before or could even figure out what the lyrics were. Fritz instinctively turned a wheel in the wall and yelped as one of the pipes let out a loud hiss, to everyone's amusement.

"Thanks for being the guinea pig," Susie joked.

"I hate you," Fritz mumbled, only increasing his siblings' amusement.

The next chamber was easily the darkest room in the entire funhouse, almost entirely pitch-black except for tiny green and red lights that sprinkled the black walls. Even with their increased eyesight in the dark, the ghosts could barely make out the shape of several walls.

"Wait a minute," Charlie realized. "This whole thing is a maze!"

"Oh, so THIS is the reason why it's called the Funhouse MAZE," Jeremy commented.

Cassidy looked around uncertainly at the mishmash of walls. "How are we going to get out?" she asked worriedly.

Gabe gave her an unimpressed look. "Uh…you do realize we're ghosts, right?" he deadpanned. "And we can just float through the walls at any time?"

Cassidy blushed in embarrassment. "Oh…right."

"You don't even need to do that, to be honest," the ghosts looked around and realized that Charlie was already gone, and her voice was coming from within the maze. "I've already figured out how to get through even without using ghost powers."

"Wait for us!" Susie exclaimed. The ghosts quickly rushed through the maze to reunite with their older sister, and true to Charlie's words it didn't take them very long to make their way through at all. They found themselves in another sewer-like hallway, only this one was colored purple and the floor was covered with a splash-like shape of luminescent green light, eerily resembling a toxic waste spillage of some kind.

"Ooh, another big red button!" Fritz exclaimed, pointing to one on the wall. He tried pushing it, but this time nothing happened. "Dammit!"

"Maybe that's part of the trick?" Gabe asked. "Things that look like they do something but actually don't?"

"That's…actually kinda clever, now that I think about it," Liz admitted. "Still wish it did something though."

They reached the end of the purple sewer hallway, where they saw the entrance to a black corridor marked with green and orange spirals. "Tight Squeeze," Jeremy read. "Huh…"

"I think that means the walls will narrow down on us as we keep going further down," Cassidy commented.

Charlie thought for a moment. "Wait…" she realized. "Won't we not feel any of the walls on us cause we're ghosts?"

"Are you kidding me? I'm getting real tired of that happening to us over and over again in this maze!" Susie complained.

Gabe sighed. "Might as well just get through this, I guess," he mumbled. The ghosts advanced down the corridor, muttering at how their experience in the Funhouse kept getting messed up by being ghosts. Fortunately, however, the squeeze hallway wasn't entirely devoid of excitement. It was pitch-black, darker even than the maze they had entered previously, with flashes of light periodically going off to reveal the barest hint of detail before plunging the hallway into darkness again. Still, they were glad to get it over with and enter the next room, another sewer chamber with the lights glowing crimson red this time around.

"Really going all out with the sewer motif, aren't they?" Fritz muttered.

A squeaking noise suddenly interrupted his thoughts, and the ghosts realized that one of the circular sewer wall holes had a giant robotic rat behind a metal cage, "Eeeek!" Cassidy shrieked.

"Calm down, Cass," Jeremy rolled his eyes. "It's just a robot."

"I know, but it's still creepy!" Cassidy protested. She noticed a button on the wall a few inches away from the rat labelled, "Press to Activate Sewer Cleaning." "Yes PLEASE!" she frenziedly stabbed the button, and the wall let out a loud hiss as the rat slowly descended and disappeared, with only the top of its head peeking out.

"Creepy rat…" Susie muttered as they left the sewer wall and rat behind them. To their relief, the next hallway was another artistic one complete with the fluorescent lights, although now the pictures themselves were just as nonsensical and mindboggling as the colors. As they approached one of the paintings, a series of pots and pans suddenly banged against each other in the ceiling above them, startling them from their examination of the portraits.

"Why are we getting spooked out so easily?" Fritz complained. "We're the ghosts. WE'RE the ones who are supposed to be doing the spooking."

Charlie groaned. "I swear, Fritz, if you end up starting horror stories about the Funhouse Maze being haunted."

"I'm not!" Fritz denied. "I'm just pointing it out, is all."

The ghosts advanced down the hallway, which was positively filled with artwork that glowed with bizarre fluorescent lights, making the entire experience positively disorienting. There were displays ranging from a bizarrely colored painting of a tropical island to cellphones, helmets, and even a grotesque monstrous face. Having gotten fed up with not being able to feature other parts of the museum and after checking to make sure nobody was around, Susie decided to manifest just enough of a presence that the hallway sensors would be able to detect someone was there. This proved to be a great idea, as the walls started emitting loud hissing noises, catching the ghosts off-guard and startling them whenever they moved from one section to another. As they reached the end of the hallway, approaching a metal barrel with music notes in the background, the metal barrel suddenly rattled and jolted, making a loud banging noise that actually caused the younger ghosts to jump back in fright.

"Eeeeek!" Susie shrieked. "That scared me!"

Charlie smirked. "Serves you right for making your presence more known."

"Hey, I checked to make sure that nobody was around!" Susie countered.

Charlie shrugged. "Well, you got what you asked for," was all she said in reply. Susie couldn't come up with an argument to that, so she opted to take the L for now and not dig herself into a deeper hole. Out of curiosity, she peered inside the barrel to see if there was anything inside, but all she could find was a small mechanism to trigger its movement.

"Awww…" the former Chica inhabitant groaned in disappointment. "That's it? That's a bit of a letdown."

"What, were you expecting a monster to pop out of the barrel?" Gabe raised an eyebrow.

"No, but something cooler than that," Susie muttered as they left the insane hallway behind them. The next chamber they found themselves was a different breed of crazy, a revolving tunnel with a background of swirling purple gas that spiraled above, below, and around them.

"I'm getting dizzy just from looking at this," Cassidy groaned.

"Let's move on before I start falling out of the sky," Gabe quickly suggested, and everyone agreed. They emerged from the hallway into the next chamber, and were immediately greeted with the disgusting sound of somebody vomiting. Gabe read the sign on the wall: "Uh Oh! Looks like Dan had a hard time in the spinning tunnel…sorry Dan."

"Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww!" Liz suddenly shrieked in disgust. Gabe quickly turned his head to see what Liz was revolted by…and his eyes fell on what was easily the most disgusting fountain that he had ever seen in his entire life. A fountain that was literally a man vomiting water out of his mouth into a barrel.

Charlie shuddered. "What the hell am I even looking at?" she mumbled.

Susie's face scrunched up in disgust. "That is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen outside of our deaths," she squealed.

"Bit of a downgrade from the fountains we saw out in the park, isn't it?" Fritz joked weakly. Nobody laughed.

"Why the fuck am I still looking at this?" Jeremy grumbled. "Can we PLEASE move on now?"

"YES!" Everyone practically shouted, only too happy to leave the vomiting man fountain behind them. The rest of the room was (thankfully) relatively inoffensive in comparison, a control room that glowed green with danger signs scattered on the walls. To the right, the ghosts could see a large panel labelled with a "DO NOT TOUCH" sign. Susie, having still manifested enough of a presence to interact with the funhouse, reached a hand to touched the panel…only to let out a large shriek as it rattled and let out a loud noise.

"I have a feeling this thing is supposed to shock us though," Gabe observed. "Really wish we could really touch it."

"I think I've had enough shocks for one day," Cassidy muttered as they turned their attention to the rest of the room. There was another generator panel to their left that let out another loud noise when Susie touched some of the buttons (although it didn't rattle or give off a shock), but the biggest display in the room was a station dedicated specifically to quizzing visitors on Chicago Movie Trivia. Having never seen a Chicago movie before, the ghost kids naturally had no idea what the answers were, but they did enjoy learning about the movies that included Chicago in one way or another. Once they were finished, Charlie led them down a ramp that was ominously labelled the catacombs, where they were greeted with a burst of loud air blowing a blanket in their face. The walls had started to be covered in fluorescent artwork again, with the words "I'd Turn Back If I Were You…" written on a nearby wall in neon green colors.

Fritz only smirked upon reading it. "That only makes me want to go inside," he commented.

"Yep," Liz agreed nonchalantly. The ghosts entered the "Catacombs" and found themselves in yet another maze. Unlike the others, this time the walls and the fake wall-like plastic curtains that hid passageways through the maze were positively covered in fluorescent artwork, but many of them had a distinctly creepy and Halloween-ish feel that made the ghosts feel right at home. Jack-O-Lanterns, ghoulish masks, and pictures of monsters were only some of the many spooky decorations they found, but there was also much larger and more interesting artwork that included a creepy mansion surrounded by a gate, a catacombs, and even a life-size fluorescent portrait of Jack Skellington. It was easily their most favorite maze so far, in no small part thanks to the fact that they didn't even need to interact with anything to enjoy it.

"It's a Trap…" Jeremy read the wall just before the next section of the maze. "Well, that's not a good sign…"

"Who cares?" Cassidy snorted. "I'm not afraid of anything!"

The ghosts passed through a fluorescent artwork of Al Capone and a wizard, as well as two layers of plastic wall curtains that each had fluorescent music notes painted on them, to find another wall with another painted message: "I have a bad feeling about this."

"Is this supposed to be a Halloween thing?" Fritz asked incredulously as Jeremy admired a painted fluorescent replica of Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, cheekily labelled as Starry Night 2.0. "Or is this Star Wars?"

Charlie smirked and pointed at another message on the wall that read "Rebel Scum", complete the Rebel Alliance symbol being crossed out with a red slash. "Yep," she replied flippantly. "Definitely Star Wars."

"Not what I was expecting from a place located deep in a catacombs," Liz drawled as they phased through more plastic fake curtains and reached the final hallway. The only way they could describe it was a "party" hallway, as unlike any of the rooms or hallways they had visited before there was a strobe light that illuminated the entire room in many different colors. The walls were plastered with newspaper clippings and small profile plaques that showed many famous people related to Chicago. As they reached the end of the hallway and the final door that would lead them to outside they passed by a robotic man who seemed to be locked behind a jail cell some kind. The man mumbled something too garbled for them to hear anything, but they could hear the giant BEEP sound that signaled that the man would have said something inappropriate if not for the censor.

"Imagine if a BEEP went off every time Dad cursed," Gabe joked, earning ripples of laughter from the ghosts as they finally crossed the hallway and phased through the exit door, finally finding themselves back in the sunlight. Mike was waiting for them, his eyes lighting up as he saw his ghost kids come back from the maze.

"How was it?" he asked as they started making their way back towards the main antechamber of the Navy Pier building where they had originally come in, having now completed their exploration of most of the first floor and being ready to move on upstairs.

"It was fun!" Jeremy exclaimed, though he frowned slightly. "Though we couldn't really some parts of it all that much because we were ghosts."

"Susie had to manifest a presence in order to try out some of the maze features," Charlie added. "Otherwise a lot of it would have been just flat-out boring."

Mike frowned. "You did make sure nobody was around when you did that, right?" he asked.

The former Chica inhabitant nodded her head fervently. "Yeah, I was careful!" she promised.

"Good enough for me," Mike replied as they passed by the food court and the shops, this time in the opposite direction. Mike had already bought a snack for himself while he had waited so there was no need for him to buy anything as they returned to the opening hallway and walked up the stairs. He pushed open the doors installed inside the glass wall, and together the family found themselves in Navy Pier's Crystal Gardens.

The place where they found themselves in could only be described as a natural paradise. The entire garden was under an enormous glass dome, large enough to fit in several towering palm trees. Dense and lush foliage was everywhere, taking the form of both heavy clusters of natural vegetation and smaller rings of plants surrounding fountains. The fountains themselves shot water up in specific arcs from one fountain to another, creating makeshift arches for tourists to walk under. It was easily one of the most beautiful sights they had ever witnessed in all of their time in Chicago.

"Oh my God…" Cassidy's jaw dropped. "This is so pretty!"

Jeremy was equally stunned. "How did they manage to MAKE all of this?" He floated up to one of the palm trees and examined it closely. "Are these palm trees real?"

"I think they are!" Gabe answered in the affirmative.

"This is so beautiful!" Susie gushed as she admired one of the nearby fountains. "I never expected to find something like this here!"

"I heard that people host a lot of really cool events here," Charlie remarked, remembering what she had found in her research. "Apparently people like to hold parties and even weddings here!"

"I can see why!" Liz grinned. "This would be a beautiful place to have a wedding!"

Fritz smirked. "So is this where Dad and Melody are gonna eventually hold their wedding?" he asked smugly.

Mike normally had great self-control when it came to interacting with the ghosts in public, but even his restraint and discipline weren't enough to keep him spluttering out loud and attracting the attention of some other tourists. Mike hastily tried to distract his action as a violent cough while the other ghost kids collapsed into laughter around him. "Fritz!" Mike nearly shouted in his mind, only barely managing to avoid calling him out loud. "Fritz, what the FUCK!"

The former Foxy inhabitant positively cackled with delight. "Best. Joke. Ever!" he declared, earning cheers from the other ghosts.

"We don't like each other like that!" Mike insisted as they crossed through the Crystal Gardens, to the growing amusement of his children. "Besides, she's a couple of years younger than I am!"

"Doesn't age difference matter less as you grow older?" Charlie countered as Mike passed under an arc of water. "Besides, I'm pretty sure you're both in the forties."

"Fuck you Charlie, you're not helping!" Mike grumbled, earning another bout of laughter from the ghosts. Once he had finally caught his breath and regained his composure, he took one last look to admire the Crystal Gardens and pushed open the door leading outside. Crossing threshold, they found that they had left a botanical garden behind to discover that they had wandered into a miniature amusement park up on the ceiling of the Navy Pier building. Somehow, whoever had designed one of the most iconic tourist attractions of Chicago had managed to fit a Merry-Go-Round, a Light Tower, a Wave Swinger, and even a gigantic Ferris Wheel all on the ceiling. Though it wasn't anything remotely on the same scale of Disney World or Islands of Adventure, the ghosts were still delighted with the idea of being able to enjoy the thrill and excitement of amusement park rides, no matter where they were.

Mike smiled, already knowing what was coming. "All right guys, go have fun!" he declared. With excited yells, the ghostly children flew towards the rides, ready to anchor themselves and enjoy them in a way that the living could never have imagined. Their father walked towards the ticket booth, intent on hitching a ride on the Ferris Wheel, the most iconic of the rides at Navy Pier. "I wonder if I should take them to Six Flags next?" he mused, before shrugging. "Oh well, that's a problem for future me."

Thirty Minutes Later

The ghosts gathered around their father, contentedly gazing over the open sea of Lake Michigan together. After they had made their rounds through the amusement park on the top of Navy Pier, they had decided to finally explore the outside road of Navy Pier that bordered on the edge of the sea. As it turned out, the attraction had its name for more reasons than just for show, as there were several small ferries docked throughout the entire length of the peninsula.

"Can we ride one of those?" Fritz asked eagerly, pointing to a ferry that was both larger and cleaner than the others, with a lounge on the inside with ornate decorations and dining setups that rivalled that of a fancy ballroom.

"No," Mike denied. "They usually have these boats reserved for large parties, and you have to make a reservation beforehand." He gestured with his eyes towards a group of high school students wearing fancy suits and dresses who were climbing onto a nearby boat, likely a party or an important gathering of some kind. "Besides, we've already ridden on a Boat Tour earlier this week."

"Oh right," the former Foxy inhabitant mumbled. They had actually passed by a station for the Boat Tour while walking on the road, though they hadn't gotten on this one for obvious reasons. The family continued to advance down the street, having passed the entrance to the Funhouse Maze a while ago. After a long, long distance, Mike and his kids finally arrived at the very edge of the Pier. The section of the building for this area was the Grand Ballroom, but unfortunately it was currently being closed for renovations. The only part that was now easily accessible was the Navy Pier Beer Garden, and while Mike wouldn't say no to a small amount of alcohol on special occasions such as weddings, he had no intentions whatsoever to get himself casually inebriated thanks to his past life experiences. And even if he did, he almost certainly wasn't going to expose his ghostly children to alcohol, even if it was through possession.

Besides, they didn't need to visit the building anyway. What was outside the building was more than enough to satisfy them.

The open sea was finally exposed to them, a panoramic view of Lake Michigan to all sides save the one that they had just come from. In front of them was nothing but the blue water gently flowing and spreading out to the horizons, border between sea and sky interrupted only by the occasional boat in the distance. To their left and right, the sea met the edge of the city, creating a boundary between nature and industry that was often defined by sandy beaches where tourists could relax to their hearts' content.

It was a scene that was just as soothing to the Schmidt family as well.

"I feel like I could float here all day looking at the sea," Charlie sighed contentedly as she felt the wind blowing gently against her spectral form.

"It's so relaxing," Cassidy agreed, sitting on Mike's shoulder and leaning against his head even though she couldn't actually touch it.

"This was a great way to wrap up our vacation," Gabe commented with a smile as he watched the sea move gently around them.

"I'm gonna miss Chicago," Susie murmured sadly. The first American city that they had ever visited had positively vibrated with life, and it had done so on a much larger scale than even Las Vegas. Casinos might have been the highlight of Las Vegas, but there had been so much more to see in Chicago. The Sears Tower, all the Museums they had visited, the Zoo, the Aquarium, even the city itself had plenty of sights to offer without ever needing to step foot inside any of the buildings.

And finally, their vacation would, for all intents and purposes, come to an end at the edge of one of America's largest lakes, on Chicago's most famous seaside tourist attraction.

"You must really be enjoying yourself on the sea, Fritz," Liz remarked to Fritz, turning her head to look at him…only to find that the former Foxy inhabitant was gone. "Fritz?" she repeated the name in shock. "Where'd he go?"

"Oh my God," Jeremy groaned as they all looked around, trying to find the redhead. "Are we seriously doing this shit NOW of all times?"

"Heyyyyyy!" a voice called out to them, only their mental link allowing them to hear it at all. They turned to see one of the boats leaving the dock….and Fritz was on top of it, waving at them cheerfully. "Up here! I'm the new captain of this boat, woohoo!"

Everyone, even Mike, facepalmed at the sight. "Are you really doing this now, of all times?" Charlie scolded incredulously, already moving to intercept the former Foxy inhabitant and get him back to the rest of the family before he went too far out to sea. Despite himself, Mike couldn't help but chuckle at the sight before him.

"Yep," he thought fondly, this time keeping his thoughts to himself. "this has been yet another amazing vacation, and I couldn't have done it without them."

/

A/N: It's incredibly ironic how the "vacation" arcs in a story are usually short filler, but thanks to the nature of this fanfic and the circumstances surrounding the ghosts, the vacation chapters are some of the longest and most labor-intensive chapters in the entire fic XD

It's been a long time since I've touched on anything that's actually directly FNaF-related, so I think it's time we steer this fic back towards actual FNaF plot and lore. And there's no need to hide it any longer: Yes, "Help Wanted" will absolutely be playing a significant role in this fic. In fact, it's the next major plot arc. Of course, the nature of "Help Wanted" will be somewhat different than in the canon timeline, but the essentials will be the same. So you can guess what that means…

Of course, I'll probably end up writing a true filler chapter or two in between them just to give myself a break. If I keep doing chapters like these all the time, I'm going to burn myself out, and that isn't good for anybody.

Hope you guys enjoyed!