A/N: I managed to scrape some time to write up another chapter just in time for the Christmas weekend! The chapter itself won't have anything to do with Christmas, but I guess you can still qualify it as a gift, right?

Guest: It's a more than likely possibility 😊

Clown2107: Maybe, though probably not for a while.

Guest: Not really, to be honest. Haven't had much time to catch up on FNaF stuff lately, sadly.

Guest: Who knows what goes in that demented rabbit glitch's head, lol.

Guest: I…kinda wish you hadn't written that, only because I haven't had time to play, watch, or even get familiar with Security Breach. Please refrain from posting spoilers in the future.

That being said, this can potentially be explained (at least going with the rules in my universe) that the Remnant in Molten Freddy was destroyed by the extreme heat of the flames and the spirits of the ghost kids set free, even if the actual animatronic itself wasn't completely destroyed. And as for William's spirit staying in Springtrap while the ghost kids are gone for Molten Freddy…we all know how tenacious that fucker is. And his spirit will want to stick around in the mortal world a hell of a lot harder than the ghost kids', who at this point just want to be freed.

BlixerBlast: Thank you for reading! To be honest, it's very unlikely that I'll introduce a franchise from another fan game series at this point. To start with, I know practically nothing about Five Nights at Candy's and other FNAF fangames. And even if I did, I have very limited time thanks to my job as a resident and I struggle to write and keep up with the original FNaF series entries as it is. I simply don't have time to introduce another fan game into the mix, especially when doing so would require me to spend multiple chapters on it like I do for the original game series.

Kaleis Kingdom: Nelson was never the owner of Fazbear Entertainment. He was just an executive who worked for the past incarnation of Fazbear Entertainment, who was also a friend of Henry and eventually quit his job out of disgust for what FE was doing. If Nelson really was the owner, then dealing with the new version of Fazbear Entertainment would be a hell of a lot easier lmao.

Kassandra Danvers: Thank you!

Qxr: You are right, of course. It is entirely possible to separate Freddy Fazbear and friends from the creator, remembering the good while acknowledging and confronting the bad. Unfortunately, Fazbear Entertainment makes it hard to do that with all their shitty decisions, and that's WITHOUT bringing William Afton into the picture…

Jack0Lanterns: They probably would have been a lot less restrained if they were left to their own devices, which is why we have Mike and Charlie there to rein them in. And they probably coordinated, discussed, and reviewed a lot of their posts before actually putting them up.

TU4Q: Indeed, a calculated maneuver is generally much more effective than going all-out without coming up with a proper plan of attack.

RicAlburquerque: That is a VERY valid point, and I'd like to address it now. The reason why it seems like Mike is doing a lot of the work right now is because, as a living human, he is capable of doing things that the ghost kids simply can't (for example, interacting with Fazbear Entertainment and Mr. Averus). He also has MUCH more experience in understanding how the real world works compared to the ghost kids, most notably with things like the Internet (he's been using computers for decades when the kids have only had a few years at most). Right now, Mike has to be the one doing the hard work because he's the only one who can do it.

But the reverse is also true. The ghost kids are also able to do things that Mike can't, either because it's literally impossible for Mike to do them or because the man would be in danger of serious injury or death if he tried. And I can promise you right now that very soon, when the action starts up again, the amount of help that Mike can give the ghost kids will be very limited at best, and minimal to nonexistent at worst. And this will come to pass even before we get to Security Breach.

FireFlamerx9z: Thank you very much 😊

AlchemyWriter: Thank you very much, and you too!

Fnaffan418: Irony at its finest! Yeah, shipping is very much NOT a possibility here for reasons that should be fairly obvious…

Properman: Perhaps. Or there's another way they can do things…

Thanatos D.E.M.: You're about to find out 😊

Chapter 148 – Multi-Pronged Attack, Part 3

Mike couldn't help but smirk with satisfaction as he read through Fazbear Entertainment. "Well," he commented as his eyes scanned through a particularly vitriolic set of criticisms from Redditors aimed straight at Fazbear Entertainment. "You guys certainly kicked up quite the shitstorm of responses, haven't you?"

Fritz smirked. "Just as planned, Dad!"

"We've started way too many fires on the Internet for Fazbear Entertainment to ignore or easily put down," Jeremy commented, looking equally as satisfied with their actions.

"What are they gonna do, ban everyone?" Cassidy asked with a scoff.

Gabe shook his head. "I wouldn't be surprised. These guys seem like the types of bastards to silence anybody who doesn't worship the ground they walk on," he pointed out.

"That would make them look even worse," Susie argued. "Especially there aren't that many people supporting Fazbear Entertainment at all right now."

The former Chica inhabitant had a point. While it would be inaccurate to state that there weren't ANY supporters of Fazbear Entertainment, the number of people online who were opposing or at the very least criticizing or questioning Fazbear Entertainment's behavior far exceeded those who supported or defended them. And even then that support was either lukewarm or tempered with caution, given the recent revelations that had bombarded the company's reputation.

"I'm…kinda surprised they haven't gone on a mass banning spree, to be honest," Liz admitted. "Feels like that would be the first thing they'd do."

Charlie looked at the web page she had been scrolling through more closely. "Now that you've mentioned it," the former Puppet inhabitant observed, "I don't think there's been ANY official response from Fazbear Entertainment on any of these pages. They've pretty much stayed silent the whole time."

"Wait, really?" Fritz skimmed through the website that he was on right now and his eyes widened. "Holy crap, you're right!" he exclaimed. "They haven't said a goddamn thing!"

"What does this mean?" Cassidy wondered, sounding a bit nervous.

"They can't just be completely ignoring this, right?" Jeremy asked. "Surely they can't be THAT lazy or care that little about what we're doing, right?"

Gabe shook his head. "I don't think so," he countered after a few seconds of thought. "I think if the situation was different, they'd be able to ignore it. If we didn't have solid evidence backing up Nelson's claims, or if we tried attacking Fazbear Entertainment online when there wasn't a massive scandal that just got exposed. Or hell, even if all those things DID happen, but we only chose to attack through only one website or two, Fazbear Entertainment could still probably just get away with banning us and moving on."

"But they can't anymore," Liz agreed. "Not with the way things are. If they try to ignore everyone now, it'll either make them look really weak, or make them look as if they don't give a crap. They would look even worse than they already do."

"I honestly have no clue if ignoring us or trying to mass ban everyone would look worse," Susie dryly added.

"Back to what Gabe was saying, I think it's more likely that Fazbear Entertainment is trying to plan out their next move," Charlie addressed the points Gabe had brought up earlier. "They have to be careful with how they react to us, cause otherwise they could end up destroying their own reputations completely."

Fritz raised a confused eyebrow. "I thought we weren't trying to go for that, though?" he pointed out.

Gabe scoffed. "Maybe not," he replied acridly, "but if they give so little of a shit about making their restaurants better and safer that they'd rather just throw a giant temper tantrum online, then trying to improve them was a lost cause to begin with."

"Yeah," Jeremy agreed. "At that point, letting Glitchtrap's puppet around Fazbear Entertainment would probably be even more dangerous than just letting them slip away while Fazbear Entertainment tears itself to pieces."

"They don't have a lot of time to wait," Susie added ominously.

A ring from Mike's cell phone suddenly interrupted their conversation. Everyone stopped talking as they watched their father pick it up to his ear and answer it. After a few seconds, the man's eyes narrowed dangerously, causing all of the ghosts in the room to tense up.

"You want me to come in?" Mike asked, his voice carefully neutral even as irritation flashed in his eyes. "Why? To my understanding, any obligation I had towards Fazbear Entertainment was finished after I helped save that video game of yours." A voice responded on the other end of the line. The ghosts couldn't tell who it was, but they doubted it was someone friendly with their family. "All right, fine," Mike grumbled, "I'll be there in a few hours." He brusquely disconnected the call a few seconds later.

"Who was that?" Cassidy asked nervously.

Mike sighed. "That Fazbear Entertainment executive I've had to deal with," he curtly replied. "Mr. Averus, or whatever the hell his name is. He demanded that I go over to the Fazbear Entertainment office to meet with him."

"What?" Fritz exclaimed. "Why?"

Gabe scowled. "Probably because they blame Dad for all the crap that we've posted online." He muttered. "It feels like every time something goes wrong for them, they always want to blame Dad first."

Liz couldn't resist a snicker. "I mean…they're technically not wrong."

"What are you laughing about?" Susie scolded. "They could try to land Dad in serious trouble!"

"How would they even do that though?" Jeremy wondered. "There's absolutely no way that they could possibly connect what we've done online with Dad."

Charlie's eyes widened with realization. "But they COULD maybe connect Nelson with Dad," she gasped.

Everyone was suddenly struck with the terrible implications, but Mike didn't seem particularly worried. On the contrary, a smirk was slowly growing on his face. "Maybe," he replied coolly, "but they don't have any reason to even think that Nelson and I have ever met each other. And even if they did, it's not like they can drag him to their headquarters and torture the information out of him."

Mike's face twisted into a sneer. "Besides, I'd like to see them try to accuse me of ruining their rep online," he declared. "If they want to play that game, I'll just remind them that I'm the reason their sorry asses are still afloat in the first place…and that they have a hell of a lot more to fear from me than I have to fear from them."

"That's a dangerous game to mess with," Charlie cautioned.

Her father nodded. "I know," he acknowledged, "but fortunately, I know how to play it."

A Few Hours Later…

"Thank you for coming, Mr. Schmidt," Mr. Averus greeted him as he entered the now irritatingly familiar office, before gesturing to the chair in front of his deck. "Please, have a seat."

Mike kept his face carefully neutral, though inwardly he was raising his eyebrows at how surprisingly polite the Fazbear executive was being. "Either I've gotten some more respect from these Fazbear Entertainment fuckers for saving their video game and their asses…or they're just using this as a way to try and get to me. Or both."

Regardless, there was no reason for him not to play along…at least for now. Mike gave Mr. Averus a friendly smile. "No problem at all," he replied as he sat down. "So why exactly did you want to call me in here?"

The executive returned the smile. "Well to begin with, I wanted to exchange a thank you on behalf of Fazbear Entertainment for the aid that you and your friend Mr. Nacht offered to us on the development of our video game," he explained, his voice smooth and pleasant. "The two of you provided a great deal of assistance that made the process of developing our game much more streamlined and successfully, especially with the limited time we had to meet our deadline."

"Great deal of assistance?" Mike thought snidely. "You mean Nightmare literally did all of your work for you, dipshits." The man wasn't surprised that Fazbear Entertainment was trying to pass off the recreation of the VR game with the Curse of Dreadbear addition as their accomplishment…but he was surprised by the fact that they were even bothering to thank him and Nightmare to begin with. He would have presumed that Fazbear Entertainment would've completely forgotten about his existence the moment the VR game had finished…which only made him more wary of what Fazbear Entertainment had summoned him for. "Not a problem," he answered, keeping his voice and facial expression equally polite. "I thought that the VR game had a lot of potential, and I'm pleased to see that I was right."

Mr. Averus' smile widened. "You're certainly perceptive," he remarked. "The game has become a bestseller and more than served its purpose to reignite interest in Fazbear Entertainment and a franchise that we hope to once again make into a beloved icon of children's happiness and enjoyment." The smile faded a bit, and Mike sensed the shift in the room. "But…we are still facing some rather…significant complications."

"Oh?" Mike raised an eyebrow, feigning surprise. "What do you mean by that?"

The scowl that Mike had associated with the executive's face appeared. "You see, we recently discovered that an executive from a past incarnation of our franchise decided to reveal some rather…uncomfortable secrets…about Fazbear Entertainment's past. Secrets that we would have rather kept hidden from the public. And because these secrets are now public knowledge, we are facing heavy backlash that could threaten our very existence despite the success of our VR game."

"Are you accusing me of something?" Mike inquired, his eyes narrowed.

Mr. Averus shook his head. "Merely pointing out that you have made your disdain of our corporation very clear in our previous encounters," he answered coolly. "And I wouldn't be surprised to discover that you cooperated with this…Nelson…character behind the scenes to bring us crashing down purely out of spite."

Mike scoffed derisively, shaking his head as if he were astounded by the sheer ridiculousness of the accusation. "You must be joking," he retorted. "This…I'll call it a hypothetical suggestion, although it sounds suspiciously like an accusation, is so absurd that I don't even know where to begin. For starters, do you have even the slightest bit of evidence that this Nelson guy and I have even met to begin with, let alone that we spent time collaborating to fuck you guys over?"

"That's not a denial," Mr. Averus coolly noted.

Mike scoffed. "It doesn't have to be one," he challenged. "Whether or not I've actually met Nelson before, whether or not I've worked together with him to knock you down a peg, it doesn't matter because you have no way to prove a goddamn thing. You don't even have proof that we've met in a bar for 5 minutes. Who the hell's gonna believe a word out of your goddamn mouths? And even if they did, who the fuck would even care, compared to all the shady shit this goddamn company's pulled in the past?"

Mr. Averus fought the urge to grit his teeth. He had suspected that Mike was responsible for the PR disaster that was raging through the web, and had brought the man back into the office to see if he could get the man to slip something. But once again, Schmidt was outmaneuvering him. Once again, Schmidt was countering his moves with arguments of his own. Arguments that were as aggravating as they were completely valid.

"Cat got your tongue?" Mike asked derisively. "What are you going to do next, blame me for the entire Internet shitting on you?"

"Of course not!" Mr. Averus snapped. "I'm not stupid!"

"Glad to hear it," Mike drawled. "Because it honestly sounded like you were going to point the finger at me for every single negative comment on the net calling you out on your bullshit!"

The executive was sorely tempted to reach out with his hands and try and strangle the man right then and there. Unfortunately, such a prospect was completely out of the bounds of possibility. Even if the man himself wasn't surprisingly fit despite his age and would more than likely fight him off, attacking him would pretty much guarantee that Mike would go straight to the police, both to report him for assault and also to expose every single dirty secret he had that wasn't already exposed to the wider world. A path that would only land him in jail, and would be the nail in the coffin for Fazbear Entertainment as a whole.

Mike couldn't help but chuckle with amusement. "Besides, for someone so eager to blame me for all of your problems, you're forgetting one brief but very crucial detail."

"And what would that be?" Averus growled.

Mike laughed. "The simple fact that if I really wanted to see Fazbear Entertainment crash and burn, I wouldn't have called Mr. Nacht in to help you," he declared. "If I really wanted to see this goddamn company fall to pieces, I wouldn't have needed to lift a goddamn finger. I could've just sit back, opened a bag of popcorn and a bottle of soda, and then watched and laughed as you collapsed under the weight of scandal after scandal." He considered a monumental accomplishment of the virtue of self-control to have not uttered the words "you fucking imbecile" at the end of his sentence. Out loud, he continued, "I went out of my way to contact someone who saved you from your own mistakes and failures. Someone who doesn't care about you any more than I do, and probably would have joined me in laughing at your misery if I'd asked. We went out of our way to keep you guys from going under, and THIS is how you repay us?" he almost shouted as he got to his feet, adding a touch of anger to his performance. "Maybe I should just go to the news and spill the beans anyway, if this is how you treat someone who literally saved your fucking asses!"

Mr. Averus' eyes widened in panic. He'd completely overlooked about the point that Mike had brought up, one that seemed totally obvious in hindsight. And from the looks of things, the man was one second away from unleashing yet another scandal on Fazbear Entertainment purely out of rage. "Wait, Mr. Schmidt!" he exclaimed, extending his arms in what he hoped was a placating gesture. "I didn't mean to insult you. It's just that I allowed my frustrations to get the better of me, and it clouded my judgment. Please, sit back down, and let us continue our discussion once we have cooled our heads a bit."

Inwardly, Mike was smirking at watching the corrupt executive squirm. Still, in the interest of maintaining appearances, he gave the man a hostile glance and made a show of reluctantly sitting back down into the chair.

"You are completely right," Mr. Averus conceded after a few seconds had passed and he was certain that Mike's "anger" had been placated. "You wouldn't be orchestrating our downfall if you and your friend Mr. Nacht were the ones who salvaged our previous dire situation. My apologies for insinuating that."

Mike rolled his eyes at how blatantly Averus was now trying to kiss his ass. "Whatever," he muttered.

"But I must ask you this," the executive questioned, his tone far more polite than it had been seconds earlier. "You've made your distaste for our company clearly known, despite your willingness to help us. If you have such a low opinion of Fazbear Entertainment, why are you helping us to begin with?"

Mike had to concede that it was a surprisingly legitimate question. Obviously, there was no way that he could tell Fazbear Entertainment the truth without sounding like a maniac, and there was absolutely no way he would trust them with that truth regardless. "Because," he began, "despite all the shit that's happened surrounding Fazbear Entertainment, I believe in what it can be, what it was meant to be. A place where children are supposed to be safe and have fun, escape all the shit that's going on in the world to play in a world of wonders and enjoy themselves in ways that they couldn't really do in anywhere else. The fundamental concept is one that I can respect, and one that I still believe is something Fazbear Entertainment can pull off."

The sneer returned on his face. "That is, if you'd stop fucking it up over and over again," he finished with the mocking tone back into his voice. "With one mistake and one stupid decision after another."

Mr. Averus bristled. "You can't blame us for the murder of those children!" he protested.

"I arguably can," Mike thought, but he decided not to antagonize him on this specific point. "Maybe not," he countered, "but for everything else? All the night guards who died in your restaurants, the fact that you hid those deaths behind missing persons notices instead of reporting them to the police and trying to make the place safer, the fact that you could have prevented most of those deaths if you'd bothered to spend a few seconds every night to change the AIs to 0 and change them back to normal during the day? That's entirely Fazbear Entertainment's fault," he snarled, the anger in his voice real this time, "and you fucking know it!"

Mr. Averus gritted his teeth, but this time he couldn't challenge Mike's argument. As much as he hated to admit it, the points that he made were valid. And even if he wanted to argue on behalf of the past incarnation of Fazbear Entertainment, it was clear that doing so would accomplish nothing besides antagonize Schmidt even bigger.

And besides, they were a bigger and better version of Fazbear Entertainment than the past incarnations ever were. Surely they wouldn't make the same mistakes that their predecessors had made. They were above such ridiculous follies!

"Perhaps you may have a point," Mr. Averus admitted with a sigh. It was barely a confession as far as Mike was concerned, but it was better than nothing. "But a discussion on how to improve Fazbear Entertainment's business locations will have to wait for the future. Right now, I have a much bigger issue to deal with." He gestured towards a computer screen in frustration, where Mike could see a forum with several comments criticizing Fazbear Entertainment's past decision. "This PR disaster that couldn't have come at a worse time!"

Mike couldn't resist a snicker, and this immediately drew a hostile glance from the executive. "You find this amusing?" he demanded.

"Of course I do," Mike retorted. "I might not want to see Fazbear Entertainment fall completely, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to enjoy watching you squirm after everything I've been through when I was a night guard."

"And what would you do?" Mr. Averus challenged. "If you actually care about seeing our company survive this crisis, what would you do in this situation?"

That was when Mike inwardly broke into a full-blown grin. This was the moment that he had been hoping for, the real reason why he had bothered to come into Fazbear Entertainment's godforsaken office and tolerated the idiocies of one of its executives. He had been hoping for a way to influence Fazbear Entertainment into doing the right thing or once in its goddamn existence, an opening to manipulate them into doing what they should have done in the first place.

And now, he had finally found it.

"My advice?" Mike offered, keeping his face completely serious and his tone as non-confrontational as possible. He might've been content to troll Mr. Averus and Fazbear Entertainment when they were giving him nothing but abuse and accusations, but he knew how to play things seriously when it actually mattered. "To start things off, tell the public the truth. Acknowledge all of these mistakes and apologize."

Mr. Averus looked at him incredulously. "You…you actually think admitting all of those past failings is a good idea?" he spluttered. "I asked you for advice that would make our reputation better, not worse!"

"And what good would hiding the truth or lying about it do your company now?" Mike fired back. "The closet door's been flung wide open, and all the skeletons you've tried to hide are now out there for all the world to see. In case you've forgotten, this Nelson guy didn't just go to the news empty-handed. He provided solid evidence, documents, blueprints, all the proof that he needed to make sure the public will believe him, or at the very least take his claims seriously. And that's not even getting into the fact that the police made public statements confirming the tragedies and deaths, something that you were stupid enough to try to deny in your VR game at first!"

"That wasn't us!" Mr. Averus blustered. "A renegade employee made that decision and was promptly fired for it!"

"I'll believe that Nightmare is an angel sent from Heaven before I believe that bullshit. At least the demon lord actually helps, even if it's for selfish reasons" Mike mentally snarked. "Sure, whatever. My point is that the truth is already out there, with plenty of evidence to back it up. If you keep trying to deny it now, if you try to mass ban everyone who's saying what we all know is true, you're just going to keep digging yourself into an even deeper hole as more and more people decide 'you know what? Fuck Fazbear Entertainment. It's obvious they can't tell the truth or admit their mistakes to save their fucking lives or the lives of the people visiting their restaurants.'"

"…" the executive couldn't say anything in response.

"And staying silent isn't going to help either," Mike pressed, repeating the statements that his children had made earlier. Allowing his ghost kids to speak to Fazbear Entertainment through him. "If you try to brush it off with a weak statement or ignore the whole thing entirely, then everyone's going to think that you're either weak and can't stand negative feedback, or even worse, they're going to think that you just don't fucking care, period. And that's another way you can say good-bye to what little's left of your reputation."

Mr. Averus rubbed his temples, frustrated that Mike was shooting down all the easy ways out…and that his arguments were, once again, completely valid and true. "So what you're saying is…"

"Admit the truth, and apologize," Mike suggested, his voice much kinder and with an earnestness to help that was, for once, completely genuine. "A lot of the mistakes and scandals that are showing up to the public aren't your mistakes. They're the mistakes of a past incarnation of Fazbear Entertainment, ones that are dead and gone. Give a serious apology for all the terrible things that have happened in the past, one that you actually spend time on so that people know you're taking this seriously, and then promise to do much better than any past Fazbear Entertainment incarnation ever did. You'll look a lot better in front of the rest of the public if you just show some goddamn humility for once, instead of whatever the hell you've been doing up to now."

The Fazbear executive didn't move for several seconds. Then, the man slowly started nodding, and Mike could see the gears in his head turning for once. It seemed like despite his enormous greed and sloth, vices that were no doubt mirrored across the rest of Fazbear Entertainment's higher-ups, Mr. Averus seemed to be genuinely considering Mike's suggestions.

"And you have to actually keep that promise, too," Mike emphasized. "For any project or any restaurant that Fazbear Entertainment might work on in the future, you HAVE to make it far safer than anything the past Fazbear Entertainment came up with. You have to make sure that there is minimal possible danger to both the public and your employees."

"WHAT?" Mr. Averus exclaimed. "Do you know how much extra time or money that would cost us?"

"Compared to what happens if you don't? Let me a tell you a story of what you don't want to happen," Mike retorted, allowing his eyes to narrow menacingly once more. "You decide to cut corners for the umpteenth time in a row, and something terrible happens at your restaurant because you couldn't be bothered to take proper safety measures. A child gets injured or, God forbid, killed because of something Fazbear-related. Maybe it's because of an animatronic accident, or maybe it's because you somehow let another child-killing psychopath slip into your facility. Or maybe it's a guard who gets killed because the security measures in place at the restaurant suck ass or don't exist to begin with. Either way, it's yet another tragedy, this one completely fresh and new instead of one that happened years ago. Your reputation is already unstable as a nuclear reactor waiting to blow. If even one more tragedy happens? Then you can bet your ass that everyone's going to turn your back on you, especially after you made a promise to be better than what Fazbear Entertainment used to be." He gave Mr. Averus a pointed glare to make sure he was getting his point across. "You might've survived a scandal here and there, but this is a catastrophe that you won't survive. All that time and money you're afraid of wasting to make Fazbear Entertainment better and safer? That'll be nothing compared to the complete collapse of the franchise under the weight of another major tragedy, and having ALL of the time, money, and effort you put into resurrecting the franchise lead to nothing except for more unnecessary deaths."

Mr. Averus sat there silently as he took in and processed Mike's speech. He hadn't considered things from the other man's perspective before, and what the man was saying made a disturbing amount of sense. He wanted to deny that another tragedy would happen, and that things would be fine…but even he couldn't deny that Fazbear Entertainment's long and extensive track record of tragedies pointed to the contrary. And with how unstable Fazbear Entertainment's reputation was already, Mike was entirely correct to point out that they couldn't survive another major scandal, especially if it was another tragedy.

The executive didn't like Mike. The man had made his disdain for him and his company very clearly known, and seemingly went out of his way to piss him off whenever he could get away with it. But that didn't mean he wasn't unintelligent, and it didn't make any of his points wrong. Maybe if their reputation had appeared spotless, he could laugh off Schmidt's suggestions and arguments as unnecessary and overly paranoid. But the ideal situation wasn't the one they were in, and so Mr. Averus was forced to consider the man's words seriously.

Perhaps following Schmidt's advice wasn't a bad idea. Perhaps he and his fellow executives should implement the man's strategy in dealing with the PR crisis that they were thrust into. For all his contempt towards Fazbear Entertainment, the man did seem like he genuinely wanted to save the corporation from ruin.

And if his advice helped them recover from the overwhelming surge of negative public opinion, then it wouldn't be the first time he had done so.

"You…may have a point," Mr. Averus slowly conceded, his expression looking as though he were being forced to drink poison as he ground out the words. "Perhaps what you're suggesting…may be our best option going forward. I will bring your recommendations in front of my fellow executives, and see what their opinions are on the matter."

Mike grinned, and this time the expression was much friendlier than it had been previously. "That's all I'm really asking for, at the moment." He got up from his seat and offered a hand to the executive. "I really do think this will help save you guys from the PR mess you've stumbled into."

"It may very well," Mr. Averus forced a smile on his own face as he offered an outstretched hand. "Your advice is greatly appreciated."

"If you're taking this seriously, then I'm sure it is," Mike smiled as he accepted the handshake. "I hope you all make the right decisions going forward."

"We'll certainly endeavor to do our best in that regard," Mr. Averus assured him as he gestured towards the door. "I trust that you can find your own way out?"

"Not a problem," Mike replied as he turned to leave the office. Once he was out of the building and safely back in his car where nobody could see him, he let out a sigh.

"God…" he muttered, "it's such a pain in the ass being polite and friendly to people who you know are complete jackasses." Hell, dealing with Nightmare was more pleasant than dealing with Fazbear Entertainment's executives. At least the demon lord had positive qualities that he had come to know and respect.

Still, he couldn't help the exhilarated smile that appeared on his face. Against all odds, and contrary to his incredibly low expectations, Mr. Averus seemed to be taking his words seriously. His and his family's plan, their multi-pronged attack, seemed to have gone off perfectly!

And yet, there was an uneasy feeling in his gut. A feeling as though things had gone a little too smoothly, that the problems that Fazbear Entertainment had caused with its rebirth and its stupid decisions were far from done. Mike had learned the hard way that nothing ever worth doing was easy, and so far things had been the textbook definition of too easy.

"We've done what we can for now," Mike thought as he pulled out of the parking lot and maneuvered his car onto the road. "Fazbear Entertainment would never let an outside into their plans, especially not someone like me. All we can do is wait for their move…and put a stop to any dumb ideas they might come up with."

/

A/N: And here we have the final stage of the Multi-Pronged Attack. Mike was hoping for an opportunity to influence Fazbear Entertainment into doing the right thing for once, and he's finally gotten one…or at least, it seems like he has.

I can already hear some particular criticisms coming: "This is supposed to be the ghost kids' redemption! And yet it feels like, once again, Mike is doing all the heavy lifting! And so far, Mike and the ghost kids have succeeded in facing every single challenge that came across their way! When are they going to suffer setbacks? When are they going to suffer the hardships and challenges that would make the ghost kids' redemption actually MEANINGFUL?"

All completely valid criticisms…and ones that I intend to address in future chapters. The Schmidt family's problems with Fazbear Entertainment are far from over. They might have had a near-perfect success rate in facing challenges so far, but nothing lasts forever. Mike is very intelligent and an excellent strategist, and the ghost kids have the dedication to see their missions through to the end. But there's also an element of luck to their successes as well…

…and everyone's luck runs out eventually. If something is too good to be true, then it probably is. And there are two mainline FNaF games that we haven't addressed, after all. Heh heh heh…

Anyways, I hope this was a good Christmas gift for you all! I almost certainly won't be posting a new chapter before the end of December, so I think now would be as good of a time as any to say Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!