A/N: I'd like to start this chapter with a brief warning to everyone. This next chapter is going to be a bit depressing. Especially for those of you who personally experienced a certain tragedy that happened in a certain location in New York City…
I was debating on whether to put this chapter here or as the next chapter. I decided to put it here because I didn't want a depressing chapter so close to the end of what's supposed to be a vacation arc...and also because this chapter will require a lot less research than the next one to properly write.
On the plus side, if you like the philosophical discussions in this fic, this chapter will be more to your liking.
Trigger Warning: The 9/11 Attacks…that should speak for itself.
Chapter 154 – Trip to the Big Apple 4
Out of all the many things to do in the city, going up to the tallest towers of New York City was easily one of the ghost kids' favorite things to do. There was something thrilling about going into a towering skyscraper at base level, ascending to the top of the building in question, and then looking down from the pinnacle on a city that seemed so very small from up on high, and yet spread out in all directions as far as the eye could see.
Technically, they could accomplish this without any tower by simply flying up high into the sky and looking down. But all of them could agree that it just wasn't the same.
The sky had cleared up today with the sun shining more brightly than it had during the rest of the week, and Mike had decided that now would be as good a time as any to visit some of New York's greatest tower tourist attractions. They had spent the morning going to the Empire State Building, enjoying an experience very similar to the Willis Tower they had ascended in a very different city halfway across the country.
"How the hell do they even make these towers?" Fritz asked as they left the Empire State Building after enjoying a breathtaking view from the skyscraper's observatory. "It must take forever to make buildings that tall!"
"What I'm wondering is how they make those towers without having the whole thing topple over onto the city," Jeremy added. "That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen."
"I have absolutely no idea," Mike replied blithely. "That's why we leave mysteries like this to the experts who actually know what the fuck they're doing."
"I mean, whoever made the Empire State Building clearly knew what they were doing," Charlie commented. "If they successfully made one of New York City's most iconic buildings."
"So basically someone a thousand times more competent than Fazbear Entertainment ever was," Liz snickered.
"Uh-uh. Your math is wrong," Mike retorted. When the orange-haired girl gave him a confused look, he smirked. "A thousand times zero is still zero, Liz."
All the ghosts snickered this time around. Insulting the incompetence of Fazbear Entertainment was a new favorite pastime for the Schmidt family that never got old, superseded only by verbally shitting on William Afton (may he rot forever in Hell).
"Are we going to another tower later?" Susie asked once they had finished amusing themselves. "Or are we going to do something else?"
Mike looked up at the sky. "I have no idea if the weather's going to be this clear again later, so I think it's best if we take care of the towers now. There's another tower like this a couple of blocks away, and I think that's a good place for us to visit for the afternoon."
"You're not gonna eat first?" Cassidy asked.
The man shrugged. "Nah, not feeling hungry right now. If I really need to, I'll just pick up a hot dog from a stand or something."
"That's not very healthy," Gabe pointed out.
"Don't really care," Mike replied blithely as he ordered a Lyft on his phone. He had originally planned to walk to the One World Trade Center just as he had walked around to other parts of New York City, but a quick check online revealed that it would take over an hour to get from the Empire State Building to there by walking distance, and Mike had no intention of walking that far especially when he had several Empire State Building-based souvenirs in tour.
At first, everything seemed to be going well. The traffic surprisingly wasn't too bad, and the Lyft driver was making good time driving through the streets. Within a few minutes, they could see the towering glass edifice of the One World Trade Center growing closer.
And that was when the first warning sign began to appear.
"Uhm…guys?" Cassidy asked. "Is it just me, or is it…getting a bit cold in here?"
"Huh?" Susie looked towards her. "You're feeling cold, Cass?"
"Yeah…and I don't know why," the former Golden Freddy inhabitant replied nervously.
"You're probably overthinking it," Fritz suggested. "It IS wintertime." He glanced over at the front of the Lyft. "And this guy doesn't even have the heater on!"
"Yeah…that's probably it," Cassidy decided, shaking her head to brush away her doubts. Noticing her discomfort, Mike asked the driver to turn the heat on, which the driver agreed.
Yet her sense of unease didn't fade as the World Trade Center grew closer. In fact, it only seemed to grow larger as they approached the skyscraper. And the chill she felt from earlier grew stronger as well, even through the increased temperature of the car.
It wasn't just her, either. By now, some of the other ghosts had started to sense the same chill and unease that she had felt, their discomfort clear on their faces as they arrived. By the time they had arrived at the base of the One World Trade Center and gotten out of the car, it was clear to all of them that they were all sensing the same cold aura…and that it wasn't from the winter temperature.
Charlie closed her eyes and focused her senses, trying to determine the exact nature of what she and her siblings her detected…and immediately, her eyes opened wide with horror and fear.
"There's death…" she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. "I can sense so much death. And fear, and horror, and despair. I even hearing screams. What happened here?" the former Marionette asked, desperately turning to her father for answers. "Why does everything about this place feel so wrong?"
Mike grimaced. He hadn't told the ghost children about the events that had occurred in this place back in September 11, 2001. He had planned to explain the tragedy of the Attack on the Twin Towers when they had arrived, not wanting to kill the festive mood in a vacation that was supposed to be relaxed and carefree.
In hindsight, that was looking more and more like an error in judgment.
"I can feel it too, now," Jeremy mumbled, shuddering a little in the air. "What happened here, Dad?"
Mike sighed and took a deep breath. "Get ready," he warned grimly, "because this is going to be a depressing tale."
He started to walk deeper into the grounds of the WTC, not quite in the direction of the skyscraper itself. "This building you see here wasn't always here," Mike explained. "There used to be two buildings here, just as tall as the skyscraper you see here now. But that all changed on September 11, 2001."
Already, the ghost kids could already tell that Mike's story was going to take a dark and ugly turn. It was Gabe who voiced the question they were all thinking. "What happened?"
Mike took another breath before continuing. He was lucky that he never had any family who suffered or witnessed the tragedy that had happened here, but it didn't make it any easier to explain. "On that day, some planes were captured by religious extremists." He scowled. "Nutjobs and fanatics who use religion as an excuse to commit violence towards innocent people. They captured the planes…and drove them straight into the towers."
Everyone's eyes widened in horror. "Oh my God…" Susie breathed.
"That…that's insane," Jeremy stammered.
"What the fuck…" Fritz mumbled. "What the actual fuck."
An image flashed in their minds of planes just like the ones they had ridden crashing straight into two towering skyscrapers standing next to each other. They could only watch as the planes crashed into the side of the towers in a gigantic blast of black smoke and flame, followed by the towers slowly collapsing in on themselves, all while the sound of screams filled the air.
And the worst part was? They couldn't tell if it was just their imaginations…or if they were actually seeing the events as they had played out in the past.
"Almost 3000 people were killed that day," Mike continued grimly. "And the Twin Towers themselves collapsed because of the impact of the plane crash and the fires, along with all the other buildings in the immediate area. It was one of the most horrible tragedies to ever hit America in the modern day. I remember seeing it on the news while I was at work…I don't think the place where I worked was ever that quiet ever again."
The ghosts floated silently as they took in his words. It was particularly telling how grave the situation was that Mike hadn't uttered a single curse word in the entirety of his explanation.
"It took a long time afterwards to recover from the tragedy," Mike finished. "Thousands of people came from all over to help clean up and rescue anyone they could who was still trapped, but it took several months for them to finish the job." A faint smile appeared on his lips, though it was wistful and with no trace of his usual humor. "A display of the worst of humanity followed by the best of humanity at the same time."
The man had been walking while he had been telling his story, and stopped in front of a vast memorial pool. There was no fancy statue or anything of the like present, unlike other water-based structures they had seen before. Instead, the pools themselves emptied into a vast square basin, with water cascading down the sides into the basin from all four sides in a unique form of a manmade waterfall. At the very center of the basin was another, smaller square pit into which the water flowed into an empty black void, reflecting the emptiness where there had once been a towering structure filled with life. Surrounding the pool were bronze parapets that had the names of those killed by the World Trade Center attacks inscribed upon them.
Though the ghosts could have flown into the black void to explore if they had wanted to, for once nobody was in the mood to do so. Not when such an action could easily be disrespectful to the dead.
"How could…" Cassidy stammered.
"…how could anyone do something like this?" Gabe finished the thought.
Mike shook his head, the grim look on his face returning. "You'd be amazed at the kind of excuses people will tell themselves to justify the atrocities that they are willing to commit," he replied. "The terrorists who crashed the planes into the World Trade Center used religion as their excuse, deluding themselves into thinking they were fighting a holy and righteous war in the name of God, when in reality they were committing one of the most evil and unholy actions of the modern era. I'd bet my life that the only thing they found in death was damnation."
An uncomfortable silence fell as the kids reflected on their father's statement and how it could apply to their own lives. Though they had thankfully never killed nearly as many people as the terrorists of 9/11, they too had their own hands stained with the blood of innocents, all in the name of both revenge and a twisted desire to stop William Afton from hurting any more children like them. And as Mike had demonstrated very clearly in his confrontation with Glitchtrap, even he wasn't exempt from committing evil actions, though thankfully those had been exclusively focused on someone thoroughly depraved and irredeemable.
And speaking of which… "Dad?" Liz asked, her voice filled with both nervousness and curiosity that she couldn't hide. "What do you think was William Afton's reasons for killing us?"
Mike scowled. "Who can say what goes on in that psychopath's mind?" he answered. "Maybe he actually did have a legitimate reason underneath all that madness, as twisted and as fucked up as it would be from a mind as insane as his. Or maybe he was just an irredeemable and utterly depraved piece of shit from Day 1, and killed innocent children just for the hell of it." The sheer disgust in his tone made it abundantly clear which option he had a worse opinion of…and which one he believed was more likely to be true. "But in the end, it doesn't matter. William Afton became a monster with practically no humanity left in him, and no redeeming qualities whatsoever to speak of." Their encounter with him in the past had been undeniable proof of that.
"There's a lesson to be learned here," Mike continued, drawing the ghosts' attention back to him. "Evil can take many different forms. It can take the form of someone who genuinely believes they're doing the right thing, only to commit the most horrible actions imaginable in the name of that twisted sense of morality. It can take the form of a complete sociopath who ruins or destroys people's lives just because they can. And the results of that evil can be just as varying in how horrible and destructive they can be."
"What you're saying basically summarizes the entire Fazbear tragedy in a nutshell," Charlie murmured. "Evil took the form of William Afton killing all of us and corrupting Liz into a murderer. It took the form of Michael Afton shoving his younger brother's head into Fredbear's mouth. It took the form of all of us trying to kill innocent night guards for our revenge. It took the form of Fazbear Entertainment's extreme greed and corruption. And now it's taken the form of Glitchtrap, trying to continue what the original William Afton started."
"Maybe," Gabe's brow furrowed and his eyes gained a hard, determined look. "But this time is different. This time, there's people who can stop it. And that's going to be us."
"Yeah!" All the ghosts affirmed.
Mike nodded, silent and proud, in acknowledgment of their newfound dedication. "If you learned something coming here today, then that alone made this visit worth it," he replied. "Let's take a look around these two pools and then go into the memorial. Afterwards, we can visit the new World Trade Center that took the twin towers' place."
Nobody had any reason to disagree with his suggestion, and they made their way over to the actual memorial museum. It was only once they were past the doors that they realized that the memorial pools themselves were in roughly the same locations as the Twin Towers themselves had once been, the watery basins being the only remaining landmark of the two skyscrapers before they had been destroyed.
The museum itself was predominantly underground, deep beneath the streets of New York City, so isolated from the outside that it was like stepping into another world. A staircase lead down into the depths of the museum; the misshapen, worn down stairs of the original WTC to their right, and a beautifully crafted wall made of watercolor squares colored in different shades of blue to their left. In the center of the wall was a panel that read, "No Day Shall Erase You from The Memory of Time."
"Nobody will truly be forgotten if even one person remembers them," Mike murmured.
"Amen," Liz bowed her head in agreement as they reached the bottom of the staircase.
The 9/11 Memorial Museum was a very different museum than anything the ghost kids had been to before, which was only fitting given that it had been created to commemorate a very specific tragedy in American history. There were twisted pieces of metal and entire sections of old wall that had once belonged to the structure of the original World Trade Center, worn-down by the destruction caused by the attacks and the effects of time. There were countless pictures of the World Trade Center both at the time of its peak and at the moment of its destruction, along with quotes written on the wall from people who had born witness to the horror and tragedy of the attacks firsthand. But what really completed the atmosphere of the museum was the audio that echoed throughout the halls. The sound of the Twin Towers being attacked and collapsing, and the frantic and disbelieving cries of the people who watched as one of the New York's most iconic structures crumbled.
And this was without the ghost kids' supernatural senses picking up on the sheer aura of death and negativity that surrounded the place.
"Don't focus your senses too much," Charlie warned. She was speaking to everyone, though her gaze seemed more focused on Cassidy than anyone else. "Otherwise you'll REALLY feel the worst of the terrible aura that surrounds this place. I swear I could hear terrified screaming and cries of despair when I focused back above ground. I don't want any of you to feel the same thing I did."
Cassidy shuddered. "I think I can just barely hear those screams, guys. And I'm NOT focusing like Charlie did."
Mike was grimacing at his youngest daughter's words. "I'm starting to think coming here in the first place was a mistake, if this place is affecting you that badly," he mumbled.
"No," Gabe shook his head. "It was worth coming here. It might not be pleasant, but it was a good learning experience for all of us."
"I'm just glad there aren't any actual ghosts here," Susie commented as they listened to an unknown voice offer her thoughts the day the Twin Towers had fallen. "Can you imagine what it would be like if there were?"
Everyone shuddered at the idea. Thousands of tortured ghosts trapped on Earth at the ruins of the place where they had been violently killed…thankfully, even the violence of their deaths hadn't been enough to actually ensnare them to the place of their death, and they had been able to move on. As far as the Schmidt children were aware, they were truly the exception to the norm…and given what they had witnessed today, that was probably for the best.
"I remember seeing the new World Trade Center tower all the way back when we were first driving into the city," Jeremy commented morosely. "I had no idea that something so tragic and terrible happened here."
"The world is full of unpleasant surprises," Mike commented as they finally left the memorial museum, walking back out into the sun-lit world. "You guys suffered one of the worst of them…but you're far from the only ones."
"Wherever they are, I hope these souls are resting in peace," Charlie sighed as she cast another look at the memorial pools where the towers had once stood.
A heavy silence fell on the ghost kids as they pondered what they had learned from Mike and what they had seen in the past several moments. Mike frowned as he took in their gloomy faces.
"I think I get why God doesn't let most souls stay on Earth as ghosts after they die," Gabe realized. "Imagine all those souls trapped here after their deaths, lashing out against the world for all the terrible shit that happened to them. Basically us, except much, MUCH worse."
"Better for everyone if they just move on from this world," Liz agreed. "The living have enough crap to deal with without a bunch of tortured ghosts roaming around."
"And that shithead Afton somehow found the one thing that fucks with that rule," Fritz muttered.
"Now I'm REALLY glad we blew up Circus Baby's place," Mike concluded grimly. "Nobody deserves to have that kind of power."
"Oh yeah," Fritz nodded. "That place needed to go."
The words were spoken with his usual brashness, but it was only to mask the aura of gloom that was settling on the family. None of them had expected one of their vacation spots to turn out so depressing, even if the lessons from 9/11 were very much worth learning.
"Let's not get too depressed," Mike decided, taking charge. "There's some cool places here that got rebuilt, and look bigger and better than ever before. It's worth seeing those and ending our visit here on a high note."
"Are you talking about the new World Trade Center tower?" Susie asked.
"Well, yeah," her father conceded, "but there's actually somewhere else here that I want to show you guys first." He started walking, not towards the tower, but away from it, towards a rather oddly shaped white building that looked almost like a bird with several white spine-like structures extending from its center, giving it the appearance of wings. It was a particularly bright building that contrasted with the gloomy and somber interior of the memorial museum that they had just left.
"Is that a museum or something?" Cassidy wondered.
"Nope," Mike replied. "It's something completely different. You'll see." He walked towards the building, and once they entered the kids' jaws practically dropped at what they saw.
What seemed like a dainty but small building turned out to be FAR larger on the inside. The entrance had led to the top floor of a large underground construction, looking down at a vast circular pit with several booths where tourists could buy unique products from merchants. The sides of the pit were lined with several stores both on the ground floor and the floor above; the location was almost certainly a shopping center, yet it was one designed in a way that was far different from anything the ghost kids had seen before in any location they had visited. And the entire structure was lined with white steel ribs that extended all the way from the sides of the structure to the very ceiling, creating an image of a building that was almost skeletal in appearance, yet somehow brighter and purer.
"There used to be another mall here," Mike explained. "One that got destroyed during the World Trade Center bombings. This is the building that took its place not to long ago. It's really amazing just how much humans potential have to destroy…and the potential to rebuild. Their ability to do evil…and their ability to do good."
"You really know what to say in any situation, don't you, Dad?" Charlie thought, though she didn't broadcast her thoughts to the rest of the thieves. Instead, she merely joined her siblings in thinking about Mike's words and looking out silently over the vast expanse of the Oculus and the people milling about within it.
The potential for great evil, and the potential for great good…it was something that all of them were intimately familiar with. They had all spent plenty of time proving the former when they had been enslaved in the animatronics. But with their metal prisons broken, and with their father's guidance, they finally had the opportunity to demonstrate the latter as well.
And looking over the Oculus building, with its pure white metal and bright interior, gave her a sense of purity and hope that she hadn't felt so strongly anywhere else.
"Evil controlled our pasts," the former Marionette thought, "but it won't control our future. Not now…and not ever."
/
A/N: This was a heavy chapter for a vacation episode arc, but I think it was certainly worth writing about. New York City's full of wonderful sights and tourist attractions, but it has its fair share of history as well, and the 9/11 Attacks are easily one of the most impactful events in NYC's recent history, if not THE most impactful event.
It says a lot about the gravity of the World Trade Center attacks that Mike, who normally swears up a storm in his dialogue, barely used a single curse word. And when he did, it was to referring to William Afton, not to the WTC attacks themselves.
I might not have needed to do as much research for this chapter as I would've done for something like a museum, but it was a difficult chapter to write in its own way. Still, I hope that this chapter was worth the read, and I hope I did justice to this important part of NYC's history in the way Mike and the children discussed it.
Next chapter we'll go back to brighter and happier things, I promise. Hope you guys enjoyed!
