A/N: Wow, working on the hospital ward is a whole different beast from what I've been doing so far. 12 hour work day and usually only 1 day off per week. Needless to say, weekly updates are pretty much a thing of the past unless I get an easier rotation (given that my next month is night shift, that's not looking particularly likely), and at this point I'll honestly be shocked if I'm able to maintain a chapter per 2 weeks on a consistent basis.

But anyways, we have FNaF work to do! And this chapter, we'll be wrapping up the rest of the Spooky Mansion levels with another ghost kid!

Arvid: Sorry, I've had a very busy past couple of weeks.

Grisword: That would be an interesting conversation for sure (the whole argument why a good God allows evil to happen), although I'm not sure if I have the time to address it given how busy my schedule is. I know this sounds like a cop-out answer, but I genuinely am extremely busy while working on my hospital floor and when I get home I have too little energy to work on fanfic chapters.

Person: Whatever humanity once existed within William Afton has died a long time ago. All that's left is a monster that needs to be put down…in one way or another.

Lawl haha: Well, at least Nightmare didn't turn him into a plushie XD

1 A: It's funny how that works, isn't it? :P

Jack0Lanterns: There's a price for losing a game where demons are involved. Even if that price is something silly like getting insulted by two of them or being humiliated in front of your peers :P

FrostTheFrozenFox: He probably DID lose a few of them during playtesting (Plushkin Patch and Night 3 of "Danger! Keep Out!" come to mind as potential levels), but it's not like the other Nightmares can mock him for it like they can do to the ghost kids or each other.

MegaMaster78: Laughably Evil is a well-known and loved trope for a reason 😊

DeaththeWolf: Sometimes, the Nightmares end up writing themselves XD

FireFlamerx9z: There's certainly parallels to be made between the Nightmare family and the Schmidts, and some of those parallels aren't necessarily a bad thing.

AlchemyWriter: God, imagine if William Afton got his hands on the Ink Machine. He's already fucked enough shit up with Remnant as it is.

Thanatos D.E.M.: Yes you do, congrats! And I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter as well 😊

Chapter 142 – Curse of Dreadbear Part 4

Rockstar Golden Freddy took off the VR headset and put it gently on the table. "Who wants to go next?" he asked.

Rockstar Freddy and Rockstar Chica looked at each other uncertainly. They were the only two animatronics left (at least, ones possessed by the original MCI children) who hadn't played any of the levels in Curse of Dreadbear yet, and both of them were morbidly curious on the nature of the levels that Nightmare had introduced into the game.

"You can go," Rockstar Freddy finally offered. "I don't mind waiting til last."

"Are you sure?" Rockstar Chica asked. When Rockstar Freddy nodded, the animatronic bird shrugged and picked up the headset. "All right then, wish me luck!" As she put it on, the real world disappeared around her and the virtual world that Fazbear Entertainment had created took its place. Not wasting any time, Susie reached out and pushed the button on the cupcake pail that would teleport her to the world of Curse of Dreadbear.

"Wow…" Susie whistled as her eyes took in the same haunted environment that the rest of her siblings had seen. "This is really cool! Nightmare did such an amazing job!" She wished that she could explore some of the surroundings in more detail, such as the run-down car, the farmhouse, or the pirate ship. Unfortunately, she was forced to remain in the one spot by the restrictions imposed on her by the game. "Oh well," she sighed, before focusing her attention on the computer screen in front of her. "Let's see what I can play!"

After scrolling through the levels, Susie quickly confirmed that half of the Spooky Mansion levels and all of the Afraid of the Dark! Levels had already been played, except for the one that would not unlock before the very end. That left only two possible choices for her: finish up the levels that were within the Spooky Mansion, or start the Danger! Keep Out levels.

"Trick or Treat?" Susie wondered as she read aloud the third Spooky Mansion level. All she could see on the level icon was Withered Foxy and, faintly, Withered Freddy in the background. "I mean…it is Halloween, I guess." Her mind made up, the ghost girl reached out and pressed the level.

The world faded into darkness, and the instructions appeared in front of her. "Look through windows to see who will answer the door," Susie read. "Wear mask. Wait, what?" she shook her head, completely bewildered. "What does that even mean? I don't think any of the minigames so far have ever played like this before!" But with no other clues available to her, she had no choice but to proceed and hope that the game provided more details.

When the actual level loaded, Susie was blown away by what she saw. She found herself in front of a full-blown mansion, one that reminded her of the Haunted Mansion ride back when she had gone to Disneyworld, standing right in front of a door that had a Foxy doorknob on it with a ring in its mouth. A small plaque reading "Please Ring the Bell" was plastered right on top of it, with a doorbell immediately to the left of the door. There were two large windows positioned on top of small shelves, one to either side, with 3 masks located in front of each window. The window to Susie's left held Mangle, Chica, and Bonnie masks, while the window to her right had Freddy, Foxy, and B.B. masks. On the floor in front of her was a welcome mat with a Jack-O-Lantern on it, an unmistakable symbol of Halloween.

The rest of the scenery was equally impressive, though it was clearly added to add flavor to the level more than anything else. There were two other doors into the mansion, one to each side of Susie, but they were positioned far away from where she was and far out of reach from the main entrance. Behind her, she could see a path leading to a distant gate faintly lit by old-fashioned lampposts in a front yard filled with gnarled, twisted trees and things that Susie could have sworn were gravestones.

"Yeeesh, definitely not like Dad's house," Susie mumbled, shaking her head. Rather morbidly, she thought, "What if Dad buried our bodies in his front yard and put gravestones on them like he did in that cemetery?" It was an exercise in imagination that was as darkly humorous as it was creepy as hell. "Wow, what the hell am I even thinking…"

Shaking her head, the former Chica inhabitant focused her attention back on the front door. "Wait…" she wondered. "What if I hit that Foxy knocker thing instead of the doorbell?" She reached out and grabbed the knocker lifting it and hitting it against the door. She hit it one…two…three times…and then the door suddenly opened inward into a black void.

"I just screwed myself, didn't I?" she groaned. Her prediction of doom came true a few seconds later, when Withered Chica suddenly lunged at her out of the darkness, biting at her and swiping at her with his claw. "Gah!" she exclaimed as the world dissolved into static. Once the surprise wore off, however, she only felt resigned acceptance of her death more than anything else. She'd ignored the instructions on the doorbell, knowing full well what she was doing, and had paid the price.

Like her siblings before her, Susie was equal parts both awestruck and creeped out by the graveyard that was the Game Over! Screen. But she didn't have much time to take in her surroundings, for Dreadbear and Grim Foxy were both waiting for her.

And they showed no more mercy to her than they had to them.

"BARELY STARTED THE GAME, AND YOU DIED ALREADY?" Dreadbear asked, equal parts mocking and incredulous. "HOW DID YOU EVEN CARRY OUT SUCH A FEAT OF SHEER INCOMPETENCE?"

"IT'S ALMOST IMPRESSIVE IN HOW PATHETIC THIS LITTLE DISPLAY IS, LASS," Grim Foxy commented with his flaming fanged grin.

"I only died because I wanted to see what happened when I hit the knocker in that Trick or Treat game!" Susie protested.

To her frustration, both Dreadbear's and Grim Foxy's eyes seemed to glow brighter with delight, and their grins seemed to spread even wider, if such a thing were possible. "YESSSSSS!" Dreadbear roared in triumph. "SOMEONE FELL FOR IT! SOMEONE ACTUALLY FELL FOR IT!"

Grim Foxy let out a guttural, inhuman laugh. "DID I NOT TELL YOU, BROTHER, THAT SOMEWHERE OUT THERE WOULD BE AN IMBECILE STUPID ENOUGH TO ACTUALLY TRY IT?" he asked, pointing his claw at Susie. "WE HAVE OUR LOSER!"

"I AM PLEASED TO HAVE BEEN PROVEN WRONG, BROTHER," Dreadbear chuckled.

Susie pouted at the demons. "You guys are assholes!" she complained.

Grim Foxy grinned at her. "WE TOLD THIS TO YOUR SISTER BEFORE YOU, LASS, AND WE WILL SAY IT AGAIN."

"WE'RE DEMONS," Dreadbear declared in a derisive tone. "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU EXPECT?"

Susie let out a groan of frustration and pushed the Restart button, not wanting to deal with the two Halloween animatronics' mockery any longer. This time, when she arrived back at the entrance to the mansion, she made sure to press the doorbell, as she was meant to.

The doorbell let out a shower of sparks as a bell rang, and a small section of the door in front of her flipped around to reveal a brass "1". Lights suddenly flickered on inside the house, prompting Susie to remember the instructions given to her and look into the left window.

A gentle music box melody began to play from inside the house, one that was similar to the ending theme that played in FNaF 2 but with a more subdued and more soothing tone. The inside of the room was still mostly dark, with most of the furniture covered in shadows except for a gramophone. However, lights lit up three specific areas in the dark room. The one closest to the window was occupied by Withered Chica, while one of the spots at the further end was occupied by Withered Freddy and the last spot was empty. A quick look into the right window revealed a similar situation, only this time all three spots lit up by the lights were occupied by Withered Bonnie, Withered Foxy, and Balloon Boy.

"So what's going on?" Susie wondered. "Am I about to get jumpscared through the windows?"

But none of the animatronics attacked. Instead, Susie watched as Withered Bonnie stepped out from his spot in the room, his heavy footsteps hitting the ground as he marched across the room and towards the front door. However, the animatronic didn't stop, instead marching across the left half of the mansion away from both her and the door, until he reached the spot that had previously been deserted and stopped moving.

"Wait, what?" Susie asked, confused. "Withered Bonnie just walked across the mansion and that's it? Was there even any point to what he just did?" She barely had time to process her thoughts when Freddy's signature laugh echoed from within the house, with the animatronic bear himself moving towards the front door just like Withered Bonnie. Unlike Withered Bonnie, however, Withered Freddy did not cross the mansion in its entirety. Instead, he walked across the room, entered whatever space was directly behind the front door, and stopped moving.

It was then that Susie's eyes fell on the masks of the animatronics, and the realization of how the game was supposed to be played hit her. "Ohhhhhh…" she realized. "I'm supposed to figure out which animatronic is behind the door, and wear the mask of that animatronic when it opens!" She frowned. "But there has to be a time limit, right? How'll I know when to put on the mask?"

She watched as Withered Freddy laughed again and walked away from the door, and a few seconds later Withered Foxy took his place. Unlike the other animatronics, the decrepit version of Fritz's former animatronic ran quickly across the room to the door, giving him a unique feature that also made it easier for Susie to track his movements. The animatronic, didn't stay long, running back to his location while Balloon Boy let out a high-pitched laugh and ran to take his place.

"I think I'm starting to get the hang of this," Susie thought as she watched and listened to the Withered animatronics move back and forth between the front door and any one of the six brightened spots in between the two rooms. Soon enough, Withered Freddy was walking to the front door with another laugh while Withered Chica left…right in time for the song to end.

Up until that point, the music had been calm and slow-paced, a relaxing and beautiful melody. But as the song started to pick up in tempo as it ended, a harsh chime akin to one you would hear from a grandfather clock began to ring, signaling that the time to pick the correct mask was now.

"Oh, crap!" Susie exclaimed. "I gotta pick one!" Given that the most logical answer would be to pick up the mask of the animatronic that corresponded to whoever was at the door, the former Chica inhabitant grabbed the Freddy mask and put it on her virtual face right as the door opened. Susie waited with bated breath, wondering if she had made the wrong move and was about to get jumpscared.

Fortunately, that turned out to not be the case. The door did swing open, but there was no attack or jumpscare when Withered Freddy appeared. Instead, the dilapidated version of Freddy simply looked out onto the front porch, staring right into Susie's eyes through the eyehole of the mask, before simply shutting the door. As the door closed, the panel with the 1 revolved once, turning into a 2.

"Phew, I was right," Susie thought with relief as the doorbell rang again. The music began to play, signaling to the former Chica inhabitant that another round had begun. As it did so, she heard and saw the doors to the side open and slam shut, but when she paid closer attention to them, they remained firmly closed, as though they hadn't ever opened to begin with.

"What was that?" Susie wondered as she stared at the side doors. But when none of them moved, she turned her attention back to the animatronics again. As she did so she collected information about how each animatronic moved in her mind to make things easier on herself. Withered Foxy and Balloon Boy both ran across the room, but Withered Foxy had heavier footsteps, while Balloon Boy's footsteps were much lighter and were always preceded by his signature high-pitched laugh. Withered Freddy also laughed before moving, though his laugh was the deep baritone that had come to be associated with the main animatronic of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. Finally, Withered Bonnie and Withered Chica both moved with the same heavy walk as Withered Freddy, but unfortunately neither of them made any distinct sound before moving, forcing Susie to pay attention visually to properly follow their actions. "This isn't too bad," she thought as she heard Balloon Boy waddle his way away from the door and to one of the rooms. "I can beat this on my first…GAH!"

Her train of thought was abruptly cut off as Mangle suddenly appeared right behind the left window, blocking her view of the room beyond. "What the hell?" she exclaimed. "Where did YOU come from?" Looking around frantically, Susie's eyes fell on the Mangle mask on the left windowsill. She instinctively grabbed it and placed it on her face.

To her immense relief, Mangle climbed up and away from the window, disappearing and allowing Susie to properly look into the room again. Unfortunately, the rooms had briefly darkened, and she needed a few seconds to reorient herself. It took her a while, but she was able to regain her bearings just as she heard Withered Foxy run to the door, and just as the round reached its end. "I've got this!" Susie thought confidently as she reached out and grabbed the Foxy mask, putting it on her head a second or two before the door opened. When the inside lit up, Withered Foxy was looking out at her, just as she predicted. The run-down animatronic fox stared out at her, his mouth open wide similar to his jumpscare in FNaF 2. But since Susie had picked correctly, he did not attack, and a few seconds later the door closed, the panel in its center switching to the number 3.

"How many rounds are even in this game?" Susie thought as the music started playing for a third time. "I'm gonna be real mad if I lose now and have to start over!" The animatronics had started moving again, and this time the former Chica inhabitant knew about Mangle's existence, and therefore knew to expect another appearance from her soon. Sure enough, Mangle appeared to block her view again a few seconds into the round, this time covering the right window. "Get outta here!" Susie exclaimed as she put the Mangle mask on her head again, forcing the animatronic to withdraw just in time to see Withered Bonnie walk from the door and Withered Freddy take his place with his signature laugh.

With her knowledge of how the animatronics worked, Susie felt like she could track the movements and figure out which animatronic would appear behind the door without a problem. And for the rest of the round, that was true…up until Mangle showed up at the window a second time, with only a few seconds left before the song was to end.

"Wait, WHAT?" Susie exclaimed in disbelief. "She can appear TWICE? And why NOW of all times?" She frantically grabbed the Mangle mask to put it on her head, but when Mangle finally left the clocks were already starting to chime. The only thing she could remember hearing were slow footsteps without any sound…but that meant that there were two possible Withered animatronics at the door: Withered Bonnie and Withered Chica. And with the rooms now darkened with the end of the round, there was no way for Susie to really tell which one was now at the door.

"Uh…uh…" Susie frantically looked between Bonnie's and Chica's masks as the clock started to chime. Acting on impulse, she grabbed the Bonnie mask and shoved it on her face, hoping against hope that she had picked the right one. She waited with bated breath as the door slowly opened, and…

"GRAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

"Aggggghhhh!" Susie exclaimed as Withered Chica lunged out of the darkness, flailing the wire stumps that she had for arms as she lunged at Susie and tried to bite down on her head with the multiple sets of teeth within her giant, dislocated beak. "Oh, come on!" she complained as the world dissolved into static. "Had a 50-50 shot and I picked the wrong one. Dammit!" It didn't help that she had been killed by her own animatronic, an irony that was most certainly not lost on her. "If only Mangle hadn't screwed me over that second time," she pouted as she was taken back to the Game Over graveyard.

"WELCOME BACK, LITTLE ONE," Dreadbear greeted her. His voice was almost courteous, although Susie could still sense the mockery in his eyes and his voice. "I MUST SAY, FOR YOUR FIRST TRUE ATTEMPT, YOU PERFORMED BETTER THAN I EXPECTED!"

"YOU CAME SO CLOSE TO VICTORY, LASS," Grim Foxy informed her, a pleased glint in her eyes. "BUT IN THE END, ALL YOU FOUND WAS DISASTER."

"THE MOST DEVASTATING LOSSES ARE THOSE THAT COME SO CLOSE TO VICTORY," Dreadbear added smugly. "WOULDN'T YOU AGREE?"

"Screw you guys!" Susie sulked. "I only lost because Mangle blocked the window a second time in the third round just when it was about to end."

Her complaint was met only with a cackle from Grim Foxy. "THAT'S THE IDEA, LASS!" he commented gleefully.

"PERHAPS YOU SHOULD PAY MORE ATTENTION NEXT TIME," an amused Dreadbear commented.

"I'll beat this level on my next try, just watch me!" Susie declared.

Grim Foxy's eyes narrowed. "THEN PROVE IT, LASS," he growled.

"I will!" Without any further hesitation, Susie pushed the Restart button, taking her away from the graveyard and back to the front of the Trick or Treat mansion. With determination burning in her soul, she pressed the doorbell and impatiently waited for the game to begin again.

This time, when the Withereds and Balloon Boy started moving around within the depths of the house, Susie gave them her full attention. She focused not just on the sound of their movements, but also actually watched the animatronics move. With her full and undivided concentration, Susie was able to easily tell that Withered Bonnie was at the door by the end of round 1, and that Balloon Boy was at the end of round 2. By the time round 3 started, Susie was actually holding the Mangle mask in her hand pre-emptively. "When she comes back, I'll be ready!" she thought as she watched and listened to the animatronics.

Her preparation was rewarded with Mangle appeared in the left window, and it took only a second for Susie to put on the mask and get rid of her. But strangely, the second Mangle attack that she was anticipating wasn't coming. Even as Withered Foxy ran from the door and both Withered Freddy and Withered Chica started approaching it, even as the background music reached its end, Mangle never appeared. The rooms darkened and the harsh chimes sounded, but Susie could still see and hear a figure moving in the left side away from the door. Since Withered Freddy had started from the right and Withered Chica from the left, Susie was fairly confident that Withered Chica was the one who was right in front of her.

"I've got this," she thought confidently as she reached out and put the Chica mask on her head. "It's Chica this time. There's no way I messed this up twice!" The front door swung open…and she grinned when she saw Withered Chica right in front of her, a mirror of what had happened at the end of the last round 3. And since Susie had chosen correctly this time, her former animatronic didn't attack. Instead, she simply stared out at Susie, her head and arms twitching slightly similarly to how Withered Freddy's had.

"Yes!" Susie cheered. "I got it right!" The door closed, faster than it had the other two rounds, and the sound of cheering children could be heard. The panel on the door swiveled open, but this time it only did so half-way. Candy poured out through the hole in the door onto the porch in front of her like a fountain, and Susie wasted no time in picking pieces of candy and "eating them" via her in-game avatar. "If only every house gave candy out like this on Halloween!" the former Chica inhabitant thought as the level faded away.

Then again, a house with a bunch of decrepit, broken-down animatronics attacking anybody who lost a game at the door probably wasn't the best of ideas.

When the "Game Won!" Farmhouse took the mansion's place, Susie spent a few moments admiring the detail that Nightmare had put into creating the area, just as her siblings had done. Then, she reached out and cranked the handle on the Halloween-themed music gift box. When it opened, the former Chica inhabitant was rewarded with a figurine of Withered Foxy. "It's really amazing," she thought as she briefly studied the model in her hands, "how accurate these models are to the ones that actually existed." Whatever else could be said about Nightmare, the demon lord had definitely done his homework when he had created these figurines.

Her prize claimed, Susie pressed the button on the gift box to move on. When she found herself back in the creepy farmyard-themed main level hub, the final level in Spooky Mansion had already opened. This one was simply called "Dreadbear," and it didn't take a genius to figure out which Halloween animatronic would be the main star of that particular level.

"Is this gonna be in a creepy secret lab or something?" Susie wondered as she pressed the level to begin it. When the instructions came up, they were extremely vague, only telling her to "grab and release." "Thanks for nothing," she grumbled as she started the game with minimal information to go on.

When the level finally loaded, it was in a completely different location from the front porch of the mansion that she had played the last level in. Instead, she was in a very dark room, standing in front of various pieces of machinery. There was a TV with a screen covered by static to her left, underneath with which was a panel full of colored circles with a syringe of some kind attached to it. To her right was a machine of some kind with a small screen, a green button, and three knobs, with a diode attached to a wire extending out of it. Just to the left of that machine was a smaller one with four brightly glowing lights on the top and a switch on the bottom. And directly in front of her was, disturbingly enough, a gray brain, resting neatly between a blue coil and a red coil. "Oh my God," Susie stared in disbelief at the brain. "I really AM in a mad scientist lab, aren't I?"

"Welcome back to research and development," HandUnit's voice greeted her, interrupting her train of thought. "Today, we are using science to pervert the mysteries of life and reanimate the inanimate."

"Holy crap," Susie thought. "This really is a Freddy Fazbear version of Frankenstein, isn't it?" She also didn't miss how the mission HandUnit described was a disturbingly accurate description of how they had come to possess the animatronics, and how William Afton had violated the laws of life and death through Remnant. The irony wasn't lost on Susie, and she didn't like it one bit. "This is creeping the hell out of me," she muttered as she shook her head to clear it of her morbid thoughts.

"To begin, it's customary for the creator to give a melodramatic speech. Go on, I will wait."

"Uhh…melodramatic speech?" Susie wondered. "Like what?"

But HandUnit continued before she could even begin to say words out loud. "Well done. Now, let's wake our little experiment with a controlled shock. Turn the crank to lower the platform, then throw the switch."

Susie's eyes fell on a wheel to the left of her station, and she did as she was instructed. The sound of machinery reached her ears, and Susie looked up to see that a table was being lowered from the ceiling. As it reached the ground, the table titled forward, and Susie jolted a bit when she realized that Dreadbear was lying on the table, tightly bound to it by two straps to keep him from breaking free. The former Chica inhabitant watched nervously as the table holding Dreadbear approached her, stopping just in front of the brain. Dreadbear's eyes were glowing white with a faint red hue, but the animatronic himself wasn't talking, insulting her, or otherwise making a sound with his mouth. And that disturbed Susie more than if the transformed demon had opted to mock her like he had done in the graveyard.

"You're somehow creepier here than you were back in the graveyard," she mumbled as she flipped the switch. As soon as she did so, Dreadbear was blasted with an electric shock, one that was so powerful that it briefly lit up the entire room. It was so bright that Susie could see the background of the room for the first time, and she could see that her surroundings looked like the dungeons of a castle rather than a simple mansion's basement.

But more important to her was the effect the shock had on the machinery. The TV screen that had previously been showing only static instantly cleared up, showing a black screen that showed the brain, only with its many different segments decorated with distinct colors. Underneath the colored brain was a scale from 1-10, with the number 4 being colored red and the number 8 being colored yellow. And finally, the machinery to the right had also flickered to life, though Susie wasn't sure what effect that had had just yet.

After being blasted by the electric shock, Dreadbear was twitching and jerking on the table, seemingly coming to life after being blasted. Susie couldn't help but feel bad for effectively torturing the animatronic like Circus Baby had been tortured back in William Afton's hellhole of a facility, although the effect was dampened somewhat by the fact that Dreadbear's true nature was that of a demon who (a) had mocked and insulted her with no remorse and (b) dealt with torment on a daily basis.

"It's alive, but lacking the necessary control module, mainly the brain," Susie's eyes fell on the brain in front of her again as HandUnit continued with his instructions. "So, let's calibrate one. Use the laboratory tools to adjust the brain's vital characteristics. Use the blueprints as a guide for matching the correct colors, size, and neural feedback loop. When you are satisfied, carefully place the brain in the creature's animatronic head cavity."

"And I'm guessing if I get any of this wrong, I get jumpscared," she muttered. There wasn't a reply, but she didn't need one. "All right, time to get to work," she added with a sigh. From what it sounded like, she had three things that she needed to take care of for the brain. She picked up the red coil and poked the brain with it. An electric charge zapped out of the coil (though not nearly as strong as the one that had shocked Dreadbear), and the brain seemed to grow in size. This was confirmed by the number scale, which now showed 9 as the yellow number instead of 8.

"Oh, crap, I'm going the wrong way!" Susie realized. She quickly picked up the boil coil and poked the brain repeatedly with it. With each poke, the brain seemed to grow smaller, and she was able to poke it enough times for only the number 4 to be glowing…right as the power went out, and the room plunged into darkness. "Gah!" she exclaimed, having been taken off guard by the sudden power outage. Dreadbear was still shaking and shuddering in front of her, looking disturbingly like a captured animal trying to break free. Which, in a twisted way, he honestly was. Susie also noticed that one of the glowing yellow bars above the switch had turned off, leaving only three left. She didn't need to be a rocket science to guess what would happen if the number of lights reached 0.

"Good thing I was able to get the size right in time," Susie thought as she flipped the switch again. Another powerful electric charge blasted through Dreadbear and turned the machinery back on. This time, she picked up the syringe attached to the panel of colors, and began to color the sections of the brain (as marked by the diagram) by coloring the syringe with one button at a time and poking a specific part of the brain with it. Unfortunately for her, however, she couldn't finish coloring the entire brain before the power shut down again, leaving her with a brain that was somewhat, but not completely colored. "Oh, come on!" she complained.

With a sigh, she flicked the switch, shocking Dreadbear for the third time. By now, Susie had only two "power" bars left, something that was making her increasingly nervous. The way Dreadbear was thrashing against his restraints wasn't helping soothe her nerves either. "Is it just me?" she wondered worriedly, "or is he stronger than he was before?"

Not wasting any time, she finished coloring the last few parts of the brain she had missed, before turning her attention over to the machine to her right. When she plugged the diode into the brain, she saw a distinct wave pattern appear on the machine's small green screen. Out of curiosity, Susie pressed the green button on the machine, and the screen instantly turned red, revealing a much different pattern that showed a smaller wave, moving much faster with more humps present on the screen.

"Oh crap, what the hell does this even mean?" Susie mumbled. Her eyes fell on the three knobs that were part of the machine. She let go of the button, and the wave on the screen turned back to the one that had originally been there. She reached out and turned the left knob, and as she turned it clockwise the wave grew larger. "Wrong way!" she thought frantically as she quickly turned the knob the other direction, decreasing the size of the wave until it was down to what she believed was the same size as the "goal" wave on the red screen. She did the same with the center knob, and found that doing so changed the speed of the wave to make it faster or slower depending on the direction. Susie adjusted the knob so that it was moving faster, until it had reached the same speed as the wave she remembered seeing on the red screen. "So this last knob should change how many waves show up at a time on the screen," she thought, and a quick turn of the knob confirmed her thoughts. But right as she was about to turn the knob, the entire lab suddenly turned dark, depriving her of her light source and, more importantly, her ability to see the wave.

"No, no, no!" Susie babbled. "Not now!" By now, Dreadbear was thrashing against his restraints, and this time she could definitely tell that he was struggling against his bindings harder than he ever had at the start of the level. But she had no choice. She reached out and flipped the switch, shocking Dreadbear for a fourth time and giving power back to the laboratory.

A move that would prove to be a fatal mistake. The shock worked as anticipated, but right as Susie reached out for the diode, Dreadbear suddenly lunged at her, breaking free from his restraints as he let out a bellowing roar right in her face. A terrifying howl that Cassidy or Mike would have immediately recognized as the same roar that the Nightmares made whenever they attacked, if they had been around to hear it. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Susie screamed, completely taken off-guard by the sudden attack.

"YOU DARED TO GIVE ME LIFE," Dreadbear growled as the world dissolved into static, "SO NOW I SHALL GIVE YOU DEATH."

"Wait, what the hell?" Susie exclaimed with both disbelief and fury. "I had one light bar left! I should have been safe!" When the graveyard re-emerged, she didn't even wait for either Dreadbear or Grim Foxy to taunt her before she immediately started ranting. "Why the hell did I die when I still hard one bar of light left on that power machine? I should've been fine!"

"HEH HEH HEH HEH HEH…" Grim Foxy chuckled menacingly. "NO ONE EVER CLAIMED THAT YOU WOULD BE SAFE UNTIL YOU USED UP ALL FOUR BARS OF LIGHT, LASS."

"YOU MADE THAT FOOLISH ASSUMPTION ALL BY YOURSELF," Dreadbear added gleefully. "YOU HAVE ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME."

"I…I…" Susie wanted to argue back, but found that she couldn't. Because technically, the demons were right. Technically, there hadn't been an explicit statement by HandUnit telling her that she would be safe until she got rid of all the power bars, even if it might have appeared as such. "Dammit."

"THAT BEING SAID," Dreadbear was now looking over at Grim Foxy, and his tone seemed…bemused, more than anything. "IF I RECALL CORRECTLY, I BELIEVE THAT OUR MASTER DID INTEND FOR YOU TO BE ALLOWED FOUR SHOCKS THROUGHOUT THE COURSE OF THE GAME, NOT JUST THREE"

"OH?" Grim Foxy asked, and Susie had the feeling he'd be raising an eyebrow if that was physically possible. "IS THERE AN ERROR THAT NEEDS TO BE CORRECTED AFTER ALL?"

"I DO BELIEVE THERE IS," Dreadbear answered with a nod. "OF COURSE, WE COULD LEAVE IT BE AND MAKE THINGS HARDER," he suggested, the grin permanently stretched across his face widening.

"WE COULD," Grim Foxy agreed, before shaking his head. "HOWEVER, WE SHOULD AT LEAST INFORM LORD NIGHTMARE OF THIS DEVELOPMENT. HE WILL NOT BE PLEASED IF WE DISCOVERED A POTENTIAL ERROR AND CHOSE TO LEAVE HIM IGNORANT."

"Please do. I really don't think three shocks is enough to beat that level by itself," Susie commented, pouting.

"WE WILL BRING IT UP FOR CONSIDERATION," Dreadbear growled, "BUT THAT IS ALL THAT WE PROMISE."

"Fine!" Susie acknowledged. "But I have another question," she looked up at the towering Dreadbear. "Why'd you say 'give me life'? Aren't you a demon?"

"IT IS SIMPLY MY CHARACTER, LITTLE ONE," Dreadbear explained. "I HAVE A PART TO PLAY AFTER ALL, EVEN IF I DESPISE THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH FORCED ME INTO THIS ROLE."

"Fair enough," she conceded, before pressing the Restart button to take her back to Dreadbear's lab. As she waited for HandUnit to give her the same instructions and for Dreadbear to descend on his table, Susie's eyes fell on the syringe attached to the colored panel. "Wait a minute," she mused, "can I color the brain without the power on?" She picked up the syringe, brought the needle to the red circle, and then touched a random section of the brain with it. To her surprise and delight, the part of the brain she had injected turned red, even though she hadn't turned on the power even once.

"Yes!" she cheered as she flipped the switch, giving Dreadbear his first shock in her second attempt at the level. Like before, she decided to change the size of the brain first. This time, the expected size was 6 and the starting size was 4, allowing Susie to make the brain reach the correct size more quickly than previously. This gave more time for Susie to look at the brain and start coloring its sections before the power went out. Even after the room fell into darkness, Susie remembered the brain well enough that she could color over half of the sections with certainty before needing to give Dreadbear his second shock.

"I can do this!" the former Chica inhabitant asserted as she zapped the creature again, turning the power back on. With more than half the brain already completed, she had little trouble filling in the rest of the missing sections (as well as giving a quick check to make sure that all the sections were colored correctly), before turning her attention to the radio-based machinery on the right. This time, she knew how the machine worked, and she immediately pressed the green button to see what wave pattern she needed to recreate. Unlike before, the "goal" waves were much larger and moved at a much slower pace, although they still had a relatively high frequency/low wavelength. Susie was able to adjust the wave amplitude so that it was at its highest, matching what had been on the red screen, and had been in the middle of adjusting the frequency of the waves when the room ran out of power.

"So close!" Susie thought as she gave Dreadbear a third blast of electricity. When the power returned, she quickly finished adjusting the knob to match the wavelength to the objective, leaving only the speed of the waves. Fortunately, the wave had been moving extremely slowly this time, so Susie had little trouble bringing the knob all the way down. With that last part completed, all that was left to do was to check her work. She checked the colors on the diagram to make sure they matched the colors currently on the brain, she checked the scale to make sure the size was correct, and she checked the wave by pressing the green button one last time to ensure that it matched the objective. "All right, we're good to go!" Susie declared once she had finished her review. Then, she picked up the brain, and placed it squarely into Dreadbear's head.

There was a spark of electricity (though not nearly as powerful as the ones she had sent through Dreadbear) the moment she put the brain in. Then, Dreadbear suddenly stopped moving, and looked up slowly towards her. For a terrifying second, Susie wondered if she had somehow messed up, if she had gotten any part of the brain wrong. Then, the color of Dreadbear's eyes suddenly changed from red to brilliant white, and the former Chica inhabitant instinctively knew that she had gotten it correct.

"Well done," HandUnit congratulated her as the table holding tilted Dreadbear tilted backward and started carrying Dreadbear away. "It's time to introduce the creature to the kids for testing and troubleshooting."

"Wait, what?" Susie exclaimed in disbelief. "This thing is going to be taken to kids? For PLAYTESTING? No way, Fazbear Entertainment can't be THAT dumb…right?"

Then again, Nightmare had created this level, and he had made his opinion of Fazbear Entertainment's incompetence abundantly clear. The way the demon lord was portraying the company as being willing to send a violent monster out among kids was likely meant more as an insult than anything else…not that Susie could blame him. Even if Fazbear Entertainment weren't actually dumb enough to release something like Dreadbear to children, there were plenty of mistakes and acts of stupidity that weren't much better.

The level faded away, and the "Game Won!" farmhouse returned. Susie started turning the crank handle on the gift box right away. And this time, the prize was very different from an animatronic figurine. Instead, it was a Jack-O-Lantern, its face glowing with a fiery yellow light similar to the ones that she had seen scattered throughout the Curse of Dreadbear DLC. Susie might have dismissed it as simply a generic Jack-O-Lantern irrelevant to the Freddy Fazbear franchise, were it not for the fact that it had a beak carved for a mouth. And that was all Susie needed to see to realize that this was meant to be a Jack-O-Lantern of Chica.

"Holy crap, this is actually really cool!" Susie exclaimed. She gave the Jack-O-Lantern a curious look. "What if…what if our family made our own Jack-O-Lanterns that had faces of Freddy Fazbear animatronics on them?" she wondered. On the one hand, it would be a really cool idea and a way to pay homage to their favorite animatronics before everything had gone to hell.

On the other hand, giving away hints about their past to people visiting the house probably wouldn't be the best idea, even if the vast majority of the world wasn't even aware of the ghost kids' existence.

"I'll put the idea out in front of Dad and see what he thinks," Susie decided, pressing the button on the gift box to bring her back to the main level. There was now only one section of levels left available to play, and the former Chica inhabitant hoped that Gabe was up to the challenge of beating it.

/

A/N: I genuinely do think the non-VR version of the Dreadbear level has a bug where Dreadbear can attack before the fifth shock that is supposed to kill you according to the wiki. I've played the level before and he's definitely killed me with fewer shocks than he was supposed to. Then again, in the Flat Mode version you can cheat by using a smartphone to take a picture of the brain diagram and then color in the brain while the power is off, so it balances out, I guess.

I really am sorry that it's taken so long to release another chapter, the hospital floor is extremely busy and often when I come home I'm just too exhausted to work on fanfiction. Real life takes priority over everything else, and I hope you guys can understand.

That being said, there's not too much left of Curse of Dreadbear! Only "Danger! Keep Out!" and "Corn Maze" are left!

That's all I have for now. Hope you guys enjoyed!