A/N: I'm currently playing Five Nights at Fuckboy's: The Complete Collection, a remake of the original Five Nights at Fuckboy's that's been a blast to play (and completely hilarious to boot), with better graphics and a complete reworking of the combat system to use multiple strategies besides "spam Tophat Toss and Backup Bash." And now part of me is tempted to have the next "filler arc" be a multi-chapter thing where the ghost kids play and react to Five Nights at Fuckboy's. It would be funny. It would be completely terrible and an absolute abomination…but it would be funny.

Also, whoever has been hard at work uploading the TV Tropes page for this fic, I tip my hat off to you. You've done a GREAT job in updating the Characters page and keeping it up to date. And to whoever pointed out I changed Nelson's name…yeah, I'll be honest, I just completely forgot what his original last name was. I'll correct it as soon as I get the chance.

Chapter 159 – To Fend Off Disaster

When Mike left the garage and walked back to his ghost kids, he was looking a lot calmer and a lot better than before he had let out that furious scream. "…are you all right?" Gabe asked.

"Still pissed as hell overall, but I've gotten a grip," Mike answered honestly. "We need to have an emergency family meeting. Now."

That immediately got the ghost kids' attention. The family went back into the house and congregated around Mike's dining table, all electronics placed aside as they got down to business. Considering where Mike and Charlie had just gone, they could make a fairly safe guess on what this particular meeting was about. "Did you find out what Fazbear Entertainment are trying to do?"

"Yeah," Mike replied curtly. "We did." He proceeded to explain everything he had learned from his meeting with Mr. Averus, how Fazbear Entertainment were planning to sell animatronics to the public as their next "great plan" to revitalize the Freddy Fazbear franchise.

Needless to say, none of the ghosts were any more enthusiastic about the idea than Mike was.

"Well, it's…definitely a unique idea…" Jeremy reluctantly admitted.

"You're kidding me, right?" Susie looked at her brother incredulously. "You do realize how many things can go wrong, right?"

"I said their idea was unique," the former Bonnie inhabitant retorted. "I didn't say it was good!"

"I know we were a big reason why animatronics were killing people, but there was still a lot of messed up stuff that happened even with us out of the picture!" Gabe exclaimed. "The Bite of 83, the Bite of 87, Circus Baby killing Liz, anything and everything about the Funtime animatronics. Hell, even something as simple as Foxy having a hook for a hand is a safety hazard! There are SO many things that can go wrong with having animatronics around people who don't know how to take care of them!"

"Are they going to put more safety measures in place?" Cassidy asked. Every single other member of the family turned and gave her a thoroughly unimpressed look.

"What the hell do you think?" Fritz spluttered.

"Sorry, dumb question," the former Golden Freddy inhabitant acknowledged.

"But seriously," Liz interjected. "As far as bad ideas go, I don't think it can get much worse than this."

"All it takes is one glitch in the program for something terrible to happen," Susie agreed. "Remember what happened in the Bite of 87?"

Everyone who had been present at the 1987 Freddy Fazbear's pizzeria shuddered. The Mangle had always been a rather erratic animatronic given her nature, but she had completely gone haywire and bit straight into the dayshift guard's skull. What made it even more disturbing was the fact that the Mangle hadn't been directly possessed or even influenced by any of the ghost kids during that time, meaning that the horrible and legendary accident had simply been the fault of defective and glitchy programming instead of supernatural malevolence.

Faulty and glitchy programming that could very well happen again to an animatronic in the home of an unsuspecting family.

And that was without a Glitchtrap-possessed Fazbear employee thrown into the picture. Whoever the poor woman possessed by him was, she would almost certainly be able to hijack or sabotage the animatronics to make them much more dangerous than they would be otherwise, whether by hacking and interfering with the existing programming…or introducing new programming that would make the animatronics attack and kill anyone in their vicinity.

No matter how you looked at it, it was a situation that could potentially become very catastrophic very quickly.

"We also figured out why Nightmare told us we messed up," Charlie added grimly. "We shouldn't have let Eisensteel refuse Fazbear Entertainment's offer. We should have let them accept it instead."

"Wait, WHAT?" all the other ghost kids exclaimed. "How does THAT make sense?" Cassidy demanded.

Gabe was able to figure it out faster than his siblings. "Because if Eisensteel had partnered with Fazbear Entertainment on the animatronic project, they would have been able to control what they did," he explained grimly. "They wouldn't have tolerated all of Fazbear Entertainment's shitty business practices. They would've carefully studied the plans for the animatronics, focused on making them as safe as possible. And Fazbear Entertainment wouldn't have been able to complain without pissing off Eisensteel and breaking off the partnership."

"Dad would've also been able to influence things a lot more since he used to work on Eisensteel and they love him," Jeremy agreed, now catching on. "But we can't do that anymore. Because Eisensteel refused Fazbear Entertainment, they've partnered with a different robotics company. A company that either doesn't give a shit about safety and making good quality products any more than Fazbear Entertainment does, or don't have enough power or influence to stand up to that horrible company."

"Oh, no…" Susie gasped in horror. "Oh no, oh no, oh no…."

"I really thought we were doing the right thing!" Fritz exclaimed. "How did we fuck that up so badly?"

"You guys didn't fuck up anything," all eyes turned to Mike, who was grimacing. "I did. I was the one who pressed Melody into exposing Fazbear Entertainment's bullshit. I was the one who was so focused on making damn sure they didn't get their filthy hands on my former company, that I didn't think about the consequences and the other options that we had. I'm the one that should be taking the L here, not you guys."

Cassidy shook her head fervently. "That's not true, dad!" she protested. "We all agreed with you on this, it wasn't just you!"

"We all thought we were doing the right thing at the time," Susie agreed, before scowling. "I don't think any of us saw this coming."

"That must have been why Nightmare called what we did rational and understandable, but also the wrong way to go about things," Jeremy mused. "Now we've got an even bigger problem on our hands…"

"Is there anything GOOD that came out of this?" Gabe asked his father, desperately hoping that the answer was "yes."

"…possibly," Mike answered after a few moments of careful thought. "Averus did mention that because they had to turn to a smaller company to make the animatronics instead, they wouldn't be able to make as many as they had originally planned. They also mentioned that there'd be a delay of Eisensteel's rejection."

"That doesn't make me feel much better about the whole thing," Charlie admitted. "Having a bunch of animatronics with careful safety and quality control measures would be much better than having less animatronics that have NO safety measures and/or got hacked or messed with by Glitchtrap's possession victim."

Obviously, nobody was planning to disagree with her on this point.

"I'm actually kinda surprised that they bothered to tell you all of this," Gabe commented. "From what you told us, I thought that executive you talked with hated your guts."

"The feeling's more than mutual," Mike replied dryly, earning a few giggles from the kids. "But personal feelings don't change the fact that I saved their asses. If it wasn't for me bringing in Nightmare to recreate the VR game after he blew them all up with his ritual, Fazbear Entertainment would be completely fucked, and we all know it. Letting me know about this in advance is probably their way of saying thank you."

"Shitty way of saying thank you," Fritz grumbled. "They should've paid you and Nightmare a fuckton of money for saving their asses like that."

"Probably," Mike agreed, "but given that they actually bothered to share some of their plans with me, I'm not complaining. There was also another reason why they wanted to tell me about their delivery service, though."

"Really? Why?" Liz wondered.

"Because they offered to deliver an animatronic to me," Mike revealed. "Both as a gift and as an early test run."

"Oh wow," Susie blinked. "That's…actually pretty generous of them. Like, seriously, I didn't those greedy jerks to actually just offer you one of their first animatronics as a gift."

Mike snorted. "They probably just don't want to bother with the time and effort to actually find and hire dedicated testers."

"This could be a good thing, though!" Cassidy exclaimed. "If we have an animatronic with us in the house, we could be there in person and see if things start to go wrong!"

"Hold up, Cass," Jeremy interrupted her warningly. "Aren't you forgetting exactly what things going wrong actually means? It means we have a glitchy, crazy, dangerous animatronic that could seriously hurt or possibly even kill Dad!"

"Crap…" the former Golden Freddy mumble. "I didn't think about that."

"It is a huge risk," Mike agreed. "And with all the horrible shit that's happened in the Freddy Fazbear franchise, we have to assume that the worst-case scenario can and will happen." A small smirk appeared on his lips. "Although…that might not necessarily be a bad thing."

The ghost kids looked at each other with confusion and uncertainty. "…why do you say that?" Gabe asked, having the feeling that he wasn't going to like the answer.

"Because we might have the opportunity to record the animatronic that we get from Fazbear Entertainment going haywire," Mike answered, as he pointed up towards the ceiling. The ghost kids followed his gaze, realizing what he was pointing at.

The security camera. The same security camera that they used whenever they played "One Night at Mike's." One of many scattered throughout the entire house, with extensive coverage of all of the rooms.

"Ohhhhhh," Jeremy breathed, realizing what Mike was planning.

"Wait, hold on!" Charlie exclaimed. "Surely you're not telling me that you're going to let an animatronic ATTACK YOU ON PURPOSE, right?"

"Fuck no!" Mike exclaimed. "All we need to do is catch it go crazy and record it do something crazy, like smash my TV or punch holes in the walls. That will be all that I need to prove to Fazbear Entertainment that their animatronics are fucked up, and then I'm basically going to blackmail them into doing whatever I want if they don't want me to sue their asses or expose all their dirty laundry to the public."

"So you're basically taking a page out of Nightmare's book, only this time you're going to be threatening them with ruining their reputation if they don't agree, instead of saving their asses from total failure if they do agree," Gabe mused, a smile forming on his lips. "That could work. That could actually work."

"Yeah," Mike agreed. "It obviously wouldn't be as ideal as if we'd simply let Eisensteel take control of the animatronic project and force Fazbear Entertainment to adhere to strict quality control and safety standards, but having myself around to make sure things don't go to shit is infinitely better than doing nothing and letting that company fuck everything up."

"We have to be careful, though," Susie warned. "We can't let the cameras see us or interfere while we're watching the animatronic we buy. The last thing we want is to let Fazbear Entertainment know that we exist."

Mike scoffed. "No kidding," he retorted. "I'd rather literally kiss William Afton's asshole than trust Fazbear Entertainment with the knowledge of your continued existences on this Earth."

The ghost kids all made disgusted faces. "Did you really have to phrase it like THAT?" Liz demanded.

Mike had the grace to look sheepish. "Yeah, fair enough, that was probably going too far," he conceded. "But Susie's right, in all seriousness. If Fazbear Entertainment learn about you guys, or even about the Rockstars in general, that could give them some bargaining power over us that they previously don't have. This shit's complicated enough as it is with us having control over most of our conversations, we definitely don't want to lose that control when the stakes are this high."

"You should also have some kind of weapon to use against the animatronics, Dad," Charlie warned. "I know we're trying not to put you in a dangerous situation, but these our Fazbear animatronics that we're talking about. If things REALLY go wrong, and the animatronic tries to attack you directly, you need to be able to defend yourself."

Mike nodded. "I agree. Fortunately, I think I know what I can use. I might have it in my garage, and if not, I'll make sure to buy one before I agree to bring an animatronic into my home."

"And we should keep the Rockstars and the Security Puppet either in the basement or in the garage, and keep that camera turned off so nobody will be able to see them," Jeremy suggested. "The only problem is that we won't be able to see the animatronic go crazy if it goes into the room where the other animatronics are, though…"

"Keep them in the garage," Mike answered. "We'll keep the Fazbear animatronic in the basement. There's a lot of old shit in there that I personally don't care if it gets destroyed, anyway."

"Okay, so long as Dad has a weapon to protect himself from a worst-case scenario, then I think this will be okay," Charlie concluded. "I'm really, really hoping that we're just being paranoid and that the animatronic we get from Fazbear Entertainment is just a normal, perfectly functioning animatronic that has no problems with it whatsoever."

Mike gave her an unimpressed look. "And how likely do you think that's going to be?" he questioned pointedly.

"With our luck so far? About as likely as William Afton genuinely repenting of his sins and coming back to us to beg on his knees for forgiveness," Gabe deadpanned.

"That's what I figured," Mike drawled.

"Which animatronic are you going to bring home?" Liz asked.

"That I have no idea," her father admitted. "The advertisement that I saw only the classic Freddy Fazbear from 1993, so at the very least I'm going to assume the classic animatronics from the 1993 location are going to be sold."

"I think that's probably one of the safest options out there," Jeremy mused. "You already have an idea on how our old animatronics work, so if we get one of those it shouldn't do anything TOO unpredictable."

"A toy animatronic like Toy Bonnie or Toy Chica might not be a bad idea either," Susie suggested. "Just put on a Freddy Fazbear mask and you don't have anything to worry about."

"I'll keep that in mind, but there's also a good chance that Fazbear Entertainment might just force an animatronic on me without giving me any real say in the matter," Mike pointed out.

"We'll just adapt to whatever happens, we're pretty good at that," Cassidy said proudly.

"Don't I know it," Mike replied dryly. "But I think we have a fairly decent game plan going forward. We might have fucked up by not letting Eisensteel take charge of the Special Delivery, but it's not too late for us to correct our mistake."

"…I feel like something's going to go wrong," Liz admitted, giving them a worried glance. "I just have this sinking feeling that something's not going to go according to plan."

"Probably," Mike flippantly admitted with a smirk on his face. "But that could literally sum up the entire Fazbear fuckfest in a nutshell all the way from the 1980s: things not going according to plan. Why the fuck would you expect anything different?"

The ghosts couldn't help but snicker at that. "I hate how true that is," Gabe replied.

Mike got up from his chair, an unspoken sign that their meeting was over. As the kids floated away from their seats, Charlie approached her father. "Hey, Dad? Can I talk to you privately for a second? In the garage?"

"Uh…sure," Mike replied a bit uncertainly. Given how the garage was recognized by the family as the place where Mike went to get some alone time and was not to be disturbed except in extreme circumstances, whatever Charlie wanted to talk about was something that she didn't want even her other siblings to know about. Mike made a gesture, and the two of them made their way into the man's workshop-garage.

Once Mike had turned his lights on and shut the door, he turned to face Charlie. "Okay, Charlie, what did you want to talk about?"

"It's something I've wanted to talk about for a while, but never really got the chance to," Charlie began. And now that they were alone, she let her mask slip off and let her worry and concern show. "Dad, I'm kinda worried about you. In fact, I've been worried about you for a while."

Mike forced all levity out of his tone and mind. He'd be a shit father if he couldn't recognize when to get serious. "What about me are you worried about?"

"Your rage and hate," Charlie admitted after several seconds of silence. "Dad…I saw you. All the way back when William Afton attacked your mind as Nightmare Springtrap. At the time, I was so afraid that he would cripple and mutilate your soul so thoroughly that it would take years for you to recover. But I never would have imagined that YOU'D be the one to do that to HIM instead."

Mike's mind flashed back to his mental world, when he had been in his demon form and had thoroughly broken William Afton's soul in front of him, seconds away from dealing the final devastating blow. He remembered how his mother had stopped him just before he could do so, remembered seeing Charlie and Nightmare Fredbear through the barrier from his mental world to the real world…and the pure, unadulterated terror that had been on the girl's face as she had watched him unleash atrocity after atrocity on William Afton. He sat there silently, not knowing what to say, instead deciding to let his daughter speak her peace.

The former Marionette inhabitant sighed. "It's funny. Despite the fact that we never met each other until a few years ago, despite the fact that you had a wildly different life from us, we have the same major character flaw. But that flaw showed itself in different ways. We lashed out wildly at anything and everything, with nothing on our minds except getting revenge on our murderer, and innocent people got caught up in the crossfire. You, on the other hand…you focused your rage and hate only one person, one who nobody would argue thoroughly deserved it…but what you DID with that rage was far more violent and horrible than anything we ever did."

She shook her head. "I don't blame you for unleashing your wrath against William Afton, Dad. After learning how we abandoned Liz in Circus Baby's, after how he cut off Evan's life support just so that he didn't have to deal with him anymore…I don't think there's a single person with a functioning moral compass who wouldn't be furious. But if there's anything we learned from our own crimes, it's that there's limits to what we should do with our anger…"

"…and I crossed that line," Mike finished, a grim expression on his face. "No, I didn't just cross it, I completely pole-vaulted over it without looking back."

"You did," Charlie agreed, "and it wasn't the first time. You did the same thing with Glitchtrap when you confronted him in the world of the VR game. I don't know how much of it was due to Nightmare's Anathema Curse, but you really went berserk all over again when attacking Glitchtrap. And that time, all of us were able to see what was happening, not just me." She sighed. "I'm just glad that it wasn't as bad as what you did to Nightmare Springtrap, or else I think the others would have had nightmares for weeks."

"…fuck…" Mike mumbled. He didn't regret the act of destroying Glitchtrap itself in the slightest, for Glitchtrap was a monstrous abomination that needed to be destroyed. But making that death as agonizing, as brutal, and as cruel as possible before dealing that killing blow…even as the seething hatred that he had for William Afton burned as strongly as ever, his conscience told him the truth that he knew deep in his own heart. That the extreme torment he'd inflicted upon any of William Afton's incarnations was both unnecessary and immoral. Especially not when he'd demonstrated such violent and sadistic tendencies in front of his own children.

And the fact that he'd accidentally hurt Charlie in the throes of his rage…that was something that could never be justified.

"…we really are part of the same family, aren't we?" Mike commented with a humorless chuckle. "Who'd have thought that we'd end up having the same fatal flaw?"

"It hasn't been fatal yet," Charlie gently reassured him with a smile on her face, "and it doesn't have to be. You were a big reason why we were all able to move on from that cycle of hate and suffering, Dad. It's only right that we keep you from falling down the same trap that we did, before you do something that we all end up regretting."

Mike grimaced. "It might be a bit late for that," he admitted. "It wasn't the only reason why I convinced Melody to interfere with the deal between Eisensteel and Fazbear Entertainment, but part of the reason why I refused to let that partnership form was because I was so fucking pissed at the idea of Fazbear Entertainment latching onto my old company like a goddamn parasite, and there was no way I was going to that useless, incompetent trash heap drag down Eisensteel into the mud along with it."

Charlie shook her head. "That wasn't just your decision," she reminded him, ironically like a mother chiding her son. "We all agreed with that. We all thought it was a right thing to do at the time. Heck, even Nightmare understood why we did what we did and didn't blame us for it, and I don't think he would have said that if he thought we were being stupid."

And considering that Nightmare had a hatred of stupidity so extreme that that he would work alongside the forces of good to destroy stupid evil demon lords out of sheer spite, Mike had to concede the point.

"I'm not saying anger and rage aren't important," Charlie made sure to clarify. "They have their uses, and I think I'd be more concerned if we WEREN'T angry about what's been going on than if we were. But we have to control our anger, instead of letting it control us. All of us made that mistake in the past, and innocent people died because of it." She gave Mike a pointed glance. "I'm not going to let you make the same mistake," she swore.

"…you're right," Mike agreed after several more seconds of silence. "You're completely right. I'm supposed to be a good role model for you guys…"

"You are!" Charlie quickly reassured him. "You're the best we could have asked for."

"Maybe," Mike replied, "but if I keep letting my anger get the better of me like that, then I'm going to fuck that up in a major way at some point or another. And I can't let that happen if I'm going to take my responsibility as your father seriously." He sighed. "I can't simply promise that I won't get angry. Emotions don't work like that, and like it or not, that anger was useful in dealing with Nightmare Springtrap or Glitchtrap. I genuinely don't think I could have put up as much of a fight without it."

The man smiled at his daughter, and Charlie understood right then and there that her father had not only recognized the message she was trying to tell him, but had accepted it wholeheartedly. "But I promise I will do my best to master it and keep it under tight control. Because you're right, Charlie. I was arrogant. I never committed the crimes that you and the rest of your siblings, so I thought that I didn't have to worry about controlling my anger or hate like you did. But I was wrong. I can make the same fundamental mistakes you guys did, even if the consequences are different. My rage can be a powerful weapon, or a deadly poison that ruins me from the inside out. And it's up to me to decide which one it turns out to be."

Charlie wrapped her father in a hug, happy that she had warned Mike about his fatal flaw in time and stopped him from dragging himself down further into darkness. Mike returned the hug, gently stroking Charlie's spectral hair. "We never blamed you for anything, Dad," she murmured. "We didn't have any right to, after what we did."

"Those days are over, Charlie," Mike reassured her. "And you had every right to speak about what you were worried about. This wasn't something that I could ignore and expect there to be no consequences from it. I'm just glad that there weren't any major consequences from all the times I let my hate get the better of me."

"I'm still worried about letting Fazbear Entertainment make their animatronics with a crappier company than Eisensteel," the former Marionette inhabitant admitted. "I know that's not really related to your hate or rage, at least not completely, but it could still cause some serious problems."

Mike smirked. "Well," he began, "that's what we made our game plan for, isn't it? I'm going to wait a few days just to make sure I don't seem too eager, and then I'll accept Fazbear Entertainment's offer to send me a free animatronic."

Charlie sighed. "I hope you don't get hurt by the animatronic doing this," she murmured worriedly.

"Nah," her father shook his head. "We just need to record it doing some collateral damage to the house. That's all. And that's all we'll need to make Fazbear Entertainment our bitches if they don't want me to sue their sorry asses to bankruptcy."

A Few Days Later…

"Thank you for coming, Mr. Schmidt," Mr. Averus greeted Mike as he walked into the executive's office and sat in his chair. "We at Fazbear Entertainment are quite pleased that you've decided to accept our offer of a free animatronic performer at your very own household."

"Of course," Mike replied smoothly. "You told me in our phone call that you had a catalog of the animatronics that you were planning to create and sell."

"That's right," the executive agreed. "And we'll be adding more once we finalize the details. But for now, I think it would be a good idea for you to choose from these." He opened up a folder, and when Mike looked into it he saw that the pictures were of Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, and what looked like a repaired version of Mangle. The Classics and Toy. Rather basic and nothing particularly unexpected, all things considered.

"Hmm…" Mike stroked his chin thoughtfully for several seconds, before poking a finger at one of the pictures. "I think I'll pick…that one."

/

A/N: And because I'm a massive dick, you won't know which animatronic Mike picked until it arrives at his house. Heh heh heh…

To be honest, the heartfelt moment between Mike and Charlie wasn't originally going to appear in this chapter at all. But a few reviewers brought up a very good point regarding Mike and Charlie, especially regarding Mike's fatal flaw being his hatred and rage, and the consequences that have happened because of it. And Charlie being the kind and considerate girl that she is, would almost certainly point this out to Mike and stop him from digging himself deeper into doing something that he'd regret. Besides, who doesn't love a good family hug?

I'm not sure what I'll do next chapter. I might go straight into the next chapter of Special Delivery, or I might do a filler chapter before that (probably wouldn't be any more than just one, though). Really depends on how I'm feeling.

Anyways, that's all I have for now. Hope you guys enjoyed!