A/N: Well, things had certainly escalated quickly on Mike's first day on the job as the new head of the Special Delivery project. Looks like Glitchtrap and his possession victim have decided to escalate things right out of the gate with a blitz attack, complete with a Foxy aimed straight at Mike. Let's see how the Schmidt family deals with this latest disaster.

ThePencilDude: You know, I never thought about that, to be honest. I the author honestly don't know what Mike's birthday is either XD. You do bring up a good point, that would make a good filler chapter. And I can tell you right now that the vast majority of the skins/costumes will NOT be implemented in this version of Special Delivery, for varying reasons.

Also, Mike's Anathema Curse actually won't help at all or trigger with regards to the Glitchtrap currently possessing Vanny. This is because the Curse only reacts to Glitchtrap/William Afton specifically. Since Glitchtrap is "inside" Vanny, who is a completely different person, he's "protected" from the Anathema Curse. Otherwise, it would be WAY too easy for Mike to identify and expose Vanny/Glitchtrap, cause she would have an extremely violent reaction just from being next to Mike.

Guest: You'll find out soon enough :)

I-Vanya-I: Mike definitely wouldn't accept the current version of Foxy due to all safety hazards that it comes with, even if we ignore the "hacked/corrupted rampaging animatronic" thing out of the equation. As for Springtrap and Circus Baby, we'll see.

Chapter 169 – Fight Against the Machine, Part 1

Foxy lunged at Mike, hook and metal hand outstretched, eager to claim his first kill. If this were any clueless, unprepared shmuck in Mike's place, Foxy's attack would have most certainly ended with horrible catastrophe and violent death.

But "clueless and unprepared" were the last words that could be used to describe Mike Schmidt.

Jeremy's shout of alarm had given a few precious seconds of warning, and those were all that heneeded. Mike's wheelchair had been faced away from the door where Foxy had barged in, but he had left the wheelchair locks off in case he ever needed instant mobility. The moment Foxy made his entrance, Mike immediately moved his wheelchair forward, while a few of the ghosts like Gabe and Charlie used their ghostly telekinetic powers to push their father's wheelchair slightly further away from Foxy.

The Schmidt family's quick reflexes and reactions meant that instead of colliding with Mike, Foxy gracelessly crashed onto the ground where Mike had been just a few seconds earlier. The foxlike animatronic shrieked in metallic, bestial outrage at his failure. "I'm coming after ya, scalawag!" he growled.

"What the FUCK?" both Hector and one of the engineers shouted in disbelief.

The fox animatronic was already starting to climb back on his feet, recovering from the initial shock of crashing onto the ground. Hector was still too stunned to react…but Colm wasn't. The thief whipped out the shocker device that was meant to come with the animatronics, pointed it right at Foxy, and blasted him with a jolt of electricity.

The generated lightning jolted through Foxy, causing the animatronic to shriek with an inhuman scream of agony as he collapsed back onto the ground, writhing and spasming on the ground disturbingly like a human would. When the bolts finally stopped, Foxy tried to climb back onto his feet again. Colm blasted him with another jolt of electricity, causing Foxy to collapse onto the ground once again.

By now, Hector had recovered from his initial shock, and had whipped out the electric rod-like baton from his belt. As Colm continued to blast Foxy with another debilitating round of electricity, Hector turned the electric baton on.

"I'm ready!" Hector shouted. Colm stopped zapping Foxy, and the moment he stopped his attack, Hector began to savagely beat the animatronic with the rod. Despite Colm's description of Hector as "not being the sharpest tool in the shed," Hector was surprisingly tactical with his offense, aiming his strikes towards weak and vulnerable points such as the neck and exposed joints, just as Mike had done with Toy Bonnie.

Combined with the damage already caused by Colm's shocker, this was simply too much, and Foxy malfunctioned completely. He collapsed onto the ground, the occasional spark flying out of the joints that Hector had struck with his baton, leaving nothing but a charred and smoking wreck that had once been an animatronic.

"Fuck's sake," Mike muttered. "I was afraid that something like this could happen, but I wasn't expecting this to happen on literally my first day on the job."

"I know this isn't my fault," Fritz mumbled as he stared at the broken ruin of his favorite Freddy Fazbear animatronic, "but for some reason I still feel shitty about this."

Liz gave him a comforting pat on his shoulder as Mike turned to Colm and Hector. "Good work, both of you," he commented approvingly. "Hector, you were a bit slow to react at first, but that's okay since I don't expect you to have ever fought a rampaging animatronic before. Colm just happened to have faster reflexes than you, but once you got over the initial surprise you were actually really smart with how you finished off Foxy by hitting his weak points." The smile vanished from his face, replaced by a grim and solemn expression. "Now we have to figure out just what the hell is going on, because something tells me this isn't the only animatronic that's gone batshit insane."

Mentally, he sent an additional message to the ghost kids. "Scout out the additional rooms and doors that we pass by in. If there's an animatronic lurking behind any of them, let me know so that we can properly counterattack them when they try to attack us."

"Got it, Dad!" the ghosts all replied.

"Everyone, let's move as a group," Mike verbally started giving out orders. "Colm, Hector, and I will go through the hallways first. We'll deal with any animatronics we come across, and once we've cleared a part of the hallway the rest of you can follow us. Our goal is to get to the main lobby so we can exit the building safely."

He took out his phone and contacted Stacy's number. Fortunately, the receptionist was at the front desk and immediately responded. "Hello?" she replied.

"Stacy, this is Mr. Schmidt. I almost got attacked by an animatronic just now," he tersely reported. He could hear the gasp of surprise from Stacy at the revelation, but didn't give her any time to respond. "I want you to make an announcement to everyone to evacuate the building immediately. We're on our way down to the main lobby now."

"Yes, sir!" she immediately responded. Seconds later, her voice began to ring on the intercom as Mike, Colm, Hector, and the scientists began to walk through the door that Foxy had attacked from. Following the orders Mike had given them, the ghosts flew through the doors connecting the hallway to the adjacent rooms, trying to scout out any potential ambushes from hacked or corrupted animatronics.

"There's a Bonnie in that room!" Susie reported, hovering next to a door and pointing it out so that Mike could see.

"Got it," Mike acknowledged. He was debating how to reveal this fact to Hector and the scientists, but at that moment the animatronic conveniently chose to reveal his presence by making a loud footstep with his metal foot behind the door. "Get ready," he warned, "I think there's another animatronic waiting to attack us."

"That's just great," Colm groaned, but he prepared the shocker device on his hand while Hector readied his electric baton. Hector slowly opened the door, then immediately jumped back as a Bonnie barged through the door. Colm blasted the bunny animatronic with a deadly jolt of electricity, causing him to shriek in agony and outrage and collapse onto the floor. Once Bonnie had been forced onto the ground, Hector wasted no time in smacking the animatronic's joints with his electric rod, frying his circuits and reducing him to a pile of scrap.

Hector grinned as he got back on his feet. "I think we're getting the hang of this!" he declared cheerfully. "That metal hunk of garbage didn't even get the chance to say shit before I fried him to a crisp."

"Doing some good work there, but don't get cocky," Mike warned. "I doubt those two were the only animatronics that got activated by the saboteur." He quickly ordered the ghosts to scout out the adjacent rooms and down both sides of the hallway, but fortunately, there weren't any nearby animatronics this time around. Wasting no time, Mike directed his bodyguards and the engineers down to the main hallway, where Stacy was waiting for them. To the man's relief, several employees were already in the room, evacuating towards the exit.

"I sent the announcement as soon as I got the word, Mr. Schmidt," Stacy reported. "But it turns out that a couple of the workers that were inside or near the storage area when some of the animatronics started to activate by themselves and become hostile. They were already in the middle of telling everyone else when I made my announcement."

A woman with brown hair with rainbow hair extensions passed by the desk, looking understandably fearful as she pushed the door open to the exit and left the factory. "Has anyone been injured or killed?" Mike decided not to delay any potential bad news any further.

"I don't know for sure, but it doesn't sound like there's been any casualties yet," Stacy answered nervously. "There's definitely been some panic though, once the workers realized that animatronics had gone crazy people were scrambling to get out."

"Understandable," Mike muttered. Thinking about what to do for a few seconds, he started to come up with a few ideas and began to relay his orders to Stacy. "All right, Stacy? Go outside and tell everyone that they are to stay in the main parking lot area. That way, we can keep track of everyone and also have them in a position where they can easily escape if an animatronic makes its way out of the building. Take attendance of everyone who's there, and write their names down. And make sure everyone keeps track of each other's presence. If anybody leaves the parking lot, either to go back into the building or just outside the lot, then they're going to be immediately considered a suspect for the saboteur who's behind this. Do you have all that?"

Stacy nodded. "I see what you're trying to do, Mr. Schmidt. I'll relay your orders. But what are you going to do about the animatronics that are still inside the building?"

Mike smirked. "I brought a few extra tools with me. I had a feeling something like this would happen sooner or later," the smirk disappeared, "I just didn't expect it to happen on my first day on the job. Oh, and one last question. Do you know how many animatronics have been hacked or glitched out?"

Stacy sighed. "I don't know for sure, but from what I'm hearing, the answer's roughly around 20."

"Son of a bitch," Mike grumbled as Stacy left the building to relay his orders to the workers. Minus the two that he and his bodyguards had personally destroyed, that still left about 18 animatronics. And he knew full well that far less could cause catastrophic damage by themselves.

"EIGHTEEN animatronics?" Fritz exclaimed. "What the fuck?"

"And we don't know who they are either," Susie added grimly. "They could be just Freddy Fazbears, Balloon Boys, Toy Chicas, literally anything!"

"Could we take care of them with just us, Dad, Colm, and Hector?" Jeremy wondered.

Gabe shook his head. "Not with that many of them. I'd be okay with it if it was just, like, 5 or something. But with 18, there's a good chance those animatronics could just bumrush Dad all at once or attack from multiple sides at the same time, and if that happens, Dad'll definitely get killed. Just because we might be able to see the attacks coming, doesn't mean we can actually stop them from happening."

Mike seemed to be thinking along similar lines as the former Freddy inhabitant. "All right, I can't do this with just a single team. I'm going to have to bring in some backup. Hector, Colm, we're going outside for a bit."

The three men exited the building, where they could see a large crowd of workers waiting nervously. "May I have your attention, everyone!" Mike shouted. At first, the workers were making too much noise for Mike's words to carry through the crowd. Eventually, however, the nearest ones realized that their new chief was speaking to them, and started informing everyone else. A few seconds later, the entire crowd had quieted down. "As many of you are no doubt aware, we have entered a state of emergency. The outside saboteur, whoever they are, have hacked several of the animatronics in this factory with malicious programming, causing them to go berserk and attack anything in sight. Current estimates seem to place the number at around 20, although my assistants and I personally destroyed 2 of them on the way to the evacuation."

The crowd began muttering amongst itself. There was worry, fear, concern, and terror amongst the myriad of emotions, all of which were predictable. But there was also a faint sense of approval, as though the workers were impressed that Mike, Hector, and Colm had destroyed more than one animatronic by themselves.

Although he had given Stacy the instructions to share to the rest of the workers, Mike took it on himself to warn the workers that nobody was allowed to leave the parking lot in front of the room unless an animatronic made its way out of the building, lest they immediately draw attention on themselves as the potential saboteur. There was some grumbling about this, but Mike's logic was sound, and nobody wanted to actually protest for fear of drawing suspicion upon themselves.

"With that being said, my assistants and I aren't able to deal with all of the rogue animatronics by ourselves," Mike continued. "If there were only a few of them, I would have gladly taken on that responsibility. But 18 is just too much, the danger too high for only 3 people. Because of this, I would like to make a personal request. Any able-bodied, physically capable individual who volunteers to be part of a strike force to help take down these animatronics will be personally given 2500 dollars by me. These individuals should not have any pacemakers or anything metal in their bodies. If you suffer any injury from facing an animatronic, I will also compensate the damages done to you in addition to the 2500. I believe 9 total volunteers should suffice, to make 3 teams of 3."

The workers looked at each other uncertainly. Then, after several seconds of tense silence, a few of the employees began to step up. Most of them were men with at least the appearance of decent body strength, but the brown-haired woman with rainbow hair ends had also surprisingly volunteered as well.

Mike looked at her and frowned. "Sorry," he shook his head, "I don't think you're the right person for this job."

"But…but…" the woman feebly protested, "…I can help! Is it because I look weak?"

Mike shook his head. "It's more like the fact that you look like your nerves are going to fall apart any second," he answered quietly. "A single second of hesitation could end up killing your entire team, and I can't let that happen."

The woman looked like she was going to protest further, but then thought better of it. "All…all right…" she mumbled in disappointment as she withdrew back to the crowd.

Mike gave her a sympathetic glance before turning to face the rest of the volunteers. "Let me introduce you to the tools that we're going to use to deal with this crisis," he declared as he went to the back of his car and opened the trunk, revealing a cardboard box filled with extra copies of the same weapons and tools he and his bodyguards had been using. "I asked Fazbear Entertainment to send me backup copies of the shocker device and the Freddy mask, and I made more high-voltage electric rods to actually finish off the animatronics," Mike explained. "For now at least, these are three main tools that we're going to be using to deal with these piles of scrap. Ideally, you'd all be experts in how to use all 3, but for now I want you all to use at least one each. Every group should have someone who uses an electric rod, a shocker device, and a Freddy Fazbear mask."

The volunteers each picked up a tool, put on some leather gloves, and divided themselves into their groups, making sure that every one of them had a different device. Once they had done so, Mike guided them back into the building, assembling them all in the lobby. "Before we start doing anything, Colm and Hector are going to demonstrate how to take down an animatronic," he began. "I'm going to do this here since it's a location with plenty of room and an easy escape route."

Mentally, he sent a different command over to the ghost kids. "Scout out and find the nearest animatronic, please," he instructed.

"Got it, Dad!" the ghosts replied as they flew through the hallways and the rooms they connected to. After a few minutes of searching, Cassidy was the first to come back, being careful to maintain her invisibility. "There's a Toy Chica in, like, two rooms away!" she announced.

"Can you lure it over here?"Mike requested, communicating his last question mentally.

Cassidy nodded and flew back to the room where Toy Chica was, her head twitching as he searched the room, no doubt for potential victims. Cassidy used her telekinetic powers to open the door and knock on it, making a distinct sound that attracted the animatronic's attention. "I'm over here," she whispered.

Toy Chica's head instantly snapped around, attracted to the bait that the former Golden Freddy inhabitant had laid. There was nobody that the animatronic could see, but apparently she had decided not to waste any more time in the current room anyway. The chicken animatronic left the room and marched down the hall towards the main lobby where the teams of animatronic fighters were waiting.

By this point, Cassidy had already flown back to Mike's side. "Toy Chica's coming!" she warned. She also sent a telepathic communication to the rest of her siblings, warning them to come back in the face of an impending animatronic attack.

As if to confirm her words, footsteps (that were surprisingly soft, compared to the clanging of Bonnie or Foxy) were making their way down the hall towards them. "Oh…this is going to be so much fun!" Toy Chica declared as she got closer and closer to them.

One of the employees shuddered. "That thing gives me the creeps," he muttered under his breath.

"I don't blame you," Mike agreed sympathetically as Toy Chica got closer and closer.

"There you are!" the aforementioned animatronic declared with disturbing cheerfulness as her eyes fell on Mike. The effect was made even more disturbing by the fact that her face was just it had been during the night shift of Freddy Fazbear's pizzeria. Her eyes had transformed into black pits with pinpricks of light, and her beak was gone, leaving behind an open mouth with a grin that seemed downright psychotic in appearance.

"Watch and learn," the man replied with a smirk as he threw the Freddy Fazbear mask on his face. The moment Freddy's head covered his own, Toy Chica stopped in her tracks, her inner mechanisms forcing her to stop and process the mask. Her head began to twitch erratically and her eyelights began to fluctuate in intensity as the lights flickered all around them. But while the effect might have been disturbing to those who hadn't seen it before, it also gave Mike's bodyguards more than enough time to strike.

Colm already had the shocker device ready even before Toy Chica had been forcibly stalled by the Freddy Fazbear mask, and he had more than enough time to hit her with a jolt of electricity. The animatronic downright screeched in agony as the lightning blasted through her, an inhuman noise that caused everyone to wince at the display. Liz in particular was cringing harder than some of the others, the scene disturbingly familiar to the many times she (as Circus Baby) and the other Funtime animatronics had been tortured by electric shocks.

Thankfully, it was over mercifully quickly. As Colm stopped his electric attack, Hector charged in to finish the job, using his high-voltage electric rod to strike the animatronic at her joints and other vulnerable areas. In Toy Chica's case, she had an extra weakness thanks to her exposed exoskeleton mouth. After a few well-targeted, powerful attacks from Hector, who wielded his electric rod almost like he was brandishing an axe, Toy Chica joined the other two animatronics that had tried to attack Mike and his bodyguards as a charred and irrevocably destroyed pile of scrap.

"Holy shit," one of the volunteers breathed. "You just took down a rampaging animatronic, just like that!"

"You made that look like a joke!" another volunteer agreed, clearly impressed. "I can't remember the last time I've seen something so clean!"

"Thanks for the compliments," Mike replied with a wave of his hand, "but I meant this to be a learning experience more than anything else. You saw when that animatronic came closer, I put the Freddy Fazbear mask on my head as soon she could see me?"

The volunteers nodded. "That's a trick that works with the Toy animatronics in particular, those being Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, Toy Foxy, and Balloon Boy."

"Ummm…" one of the volunteers interrupted hesitantly, "Balloon Boy doesn't actually work with the Freddy Fazbear mask anymore. The bosses at Fazbear Entertainment didn't want to spend additional money putting those scanners into an extra animatronic since they thought he was already harmless to begin with."

"God fucking dammit…" Mike muttered, palming his face with exasperation. That meant that there was one less animatronic that the Fazbear mask could be used on, and with how their terrible their luck had been already, he was willing to bet that Balloon Boy could actually try to kill them by himself this time around.

He shook his head, deciding to move on his with his lesson. "Anyways, you might already know this since you've worked on the animatronics before I came here, but the Freddy Fazbear mask only works on the Toy animatronics. Don't bother trying to use it on any of the others or it might just get you killed. If you've stalled the animatronic with the Freddy mask, or if it isn't a Toy animatronic and you have to skip this entirely, now we get to the part where you actually fight back."

He gestured to Colm, who held up the shocker device. "This is your first line of defense. A mid-range shocker device that can blast the animatronics with electricity from a safe distance."

"We know what those are," another man interjected. "A few of us have been keeping them with us on standby."

Mike didn't say anything for several seconds. "…you know what, that's not the dumbest thing I've heard from Fazbear Entertainment," he finally commented. "All of you should have them nearby, but at least it isn't something even stupider like you keeping them all locked up in storage or something. Anyways, once an animatronic is close enough, hit them with a blast of electricity from the shocker device. From my experience, it won't be enough to destroy them by itself, but it will stun them and force them onto the ground, leaving them vulnerable to a finishing blow from the electric rod, which I'm about to get into."

A volunteer raised his hand, and Mike recognized him as one of the engineers he had been talking to previously. "What if we can just keep zapping them with the shockers until it fries them?" he asked. "We discovered that, during testing, prolonged and repeated electric shocks can actually short-circuit and permanently damage the animatronics. That's actually one of the warnings we mentioned as part of the instruction manuals, although in our testing it typically only got that far with multiple shocker devices."

"Wait, that actually works?" Fritz asked incredulously. "That shocker device didn't do shit when Dad tried to use it against Toy Bonnie back at home!"

"Actually, we don't know that for sure," Charlie pointed out. "We only had the one shocker device, and Dad only used it for a short time before going in for the kill with the electric rod. It's possible that if we keep shocking an animatronic over and over again, it might be enough to do the job by itself."

"But we don't know that for sure," Gabe countered. "Some of the animatronics might be able to handle the shocks from the device, and even if doing it over and over again CAN destroy them, it's going to attract attention from other animatronics if they're nearby. Those animatronics are freaking LOUD when they get shocked."

"Oh crap, you're right," Susie mumbled. "And there's almost 20 of them running around. If they all bumrush Dad or one of his teams at the same time, they're screwed!"

"Huh, I didn't know that was possible. That's good to know, but it's riskier," Mike commented, verbalizing the same concerns that his children were making out loud for the volunteers' benefit. "In the interest of playing it safe, I would recommend that you use the shocker primarily as your first line of defense instead of relying on it to finish the animatronics."

"That's what this is for," Hector interjected, holding up the high-voltage electric rod in his gloved hand. "This is what's gonna finish off those piles of scrap."

"Hector is right, and unlike the Freddy Fazbear mask or the shocker device, this is a tool that I specifically designed to deal with rampaging animatronics," Mike confirmed. "It carries a high electric voltage concentrated within the rod itself, more powerful than the shocker device and definitely more dangerous, both to animatronics and to people if they're not careful."

"I'll say!" one of the volunteers commented. "That thing fried that Toy Chica to a crisp!"

There were a couple of chuckles from the teams, but Mike didn't allow himself any more than a twitch of his lips. "You can't just run it headfirst and just start whacking an animatronic with this. If you do that, it's basically a shittier version of the shocker device because it's melee range, has a much higher risk of getting yourself electrocuted too since you're so close up, and you might run the risk of breaking the rod."

"Which will probably end up with you getting killed," Colm helpfully added.

Mike rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't have put it that flippantly, but Colm's not wrong," he admitted. "Which is why I'm glad Hector here demonstrated how to use it properly and did a great job of it. While the animatronic was helpless, he aimed at specific weaknesses. Areas like the joints, exposed areas where you can see circuitry, even Toy Chica's mouth in this specific circumstance. The high voltage in the electric rod was enough to completely fry the animatronic and caused it to malfunction for good, but this is also arguably the most dangerous weapon to you guys as well as the animatronics. That's why Hector is wearing these leather gloves, the same gloves that I ordered you guys to put on. I can't guarantee complete safety, but these will at the very least insulate your hands and prevent you from getting shocked through that way, assuming you use them properly."

"Thanks for giving them to us, at the very least," a volunteer offered. "That's more safety tools than Fazbear Entertainment ever gave us."

"Why am I not surprised in the fucking slightest to hear that," Mike muttered his breath. "Okay, before we actually start going in to take care of these animatronics, I want at least one team to demonstrate that they know what they're doing. For that, we're going to need to lure another animatronic over here."

"I'll do it," Colm volunteered, while at the same time the ghost kids flew back into the hallway and the nearby rooms to resume their scouting duties. This time, it was Gabe who found the next animatronic, a fairly standard Freddy Fazbear who was searching in a room similar to how Toy Chica had done.

"This feels so weird," Gabe thought to himself, before he reached out mentally to Colm. "There's a Freddy Fazbear here!"

"Good to know," Colm replied, as he made his way over to the animatronic's location. Colm knocked on the door and alerted the animatronic to his presence, before speedily running down the hallway and making his way back to Mike and the teams in the main lobby. "He's coming!" the former thief warned.

Mike turned to the team of three nearest to the hallway. "Get ready," he warned. "We don't know if this animatronic will respond to the Freddy Fazbear mask or not."

Metal clanging noises could be heard down the hallway, and it wasn't long before everyone could see Freddy Fazbear himself advancing towards them. The bear's eyes were glowing menacingly, and he was laughing the same deep, mocking laughter that was so horribly familiar to anyone who had ever played the original Five Nights at Freddy's. "Th-there you are! I've planned something special, j-just for you!" the original mascot of Fazbear Entertainment's pizzeria declared, his voice twitching ever so slightly during two of the words.

"No thanks," Mike retorted.

"You don't have a ch-choice in the matter, my fr-friend!" Freddy answered as he advanced towards them. By now, the Toreador March music box tone was beginning to emanate from his body, just like it had decades ago. It seemed that even though the circumstances might have been different, some patterns never changed.

Unfortunately for Freddy, one of the things that had changed were how prepared his targets were to deal with his rampage, a lesson that he was about to learn far too late.

"NOW!" Mike shouted as Freddy crossed the threshold into the main lobby, the Toreador Music abruptly cutting off as he was about to attack. The closest volunteer with a Freddy mask put the mask on his face. As Mike had warned, Freddy barely seemed to notice the mask's presence at all, but that ultimately didn't matter. His teammate immediately activated the shocker device, blasting Freddy with a vicious bolt of electricity that forced the animatronic bear onto one knee. Outraged, Freddy shrieked with the same bone-chilling scream that he and his fellow classics made whenever they moved in for the kill, and struggled to get back on his feet. For a second, it looked as though Freddy might actually be able to overcome the electric assault, but the volunteer kept blasting him with electricity, and it was ultimately too much for him to withstand. Freddy fell forward onto the ground, landing face-first and helpless. The third and final member of his team started whacking away at Freddy's weak and exposed areas with his charged-up electric rod, the high voltage wreaking havoc on his inner mechanisms and destroying him beyond any reasonable hope of repair.

"Hell yeah!" the volunteer cheered, as he exchanged high-fives with his teammates. "Did you see that? We kicked that thing's ass, easy as 1-2-3!"

"Nicely done," Mike nodded his head approvingly, "but there are a few things that I need to say first." He pointed towards the wrecked animatronic's hands. "So far, we've been lucky that none of the animatronics were smart enough to actually try and grab your legs while you were trying to hit them with the rod. Make sure you're as far away from their hands as possible when you're going in for the kill with the rod, because if the animatronic actually manages to grab your leg, then the situation suddenly gets a whole lot more dangerous because you're going to have to risk shocking your friend to force the animatronic to let go of his hand."

"What do we do if that actually happens?" one of the volunteers asked nervously.

Mike sighed. "Best advice I can give is to shock the animatronic with either the shocker device for only a few seconds or the electric rod in a weak spot far away from his hand, and force it to let go of your friend as quickly as possible. I'll be the first to admit that this is far from perfect, but right now it's all we can do with the tools we have," he admitted. "Once again, I have to emphasize that the best thing you can do is to prevent that from happening in the first place by being careful with where your legs are."

"We'll be sure to keep that in mind," someone muttered.

"Apart from that, my best advice for you would be to make sure that you don't get surrounded or overwhelmed," Mike warned. "As I've demonstrated, taking down a single animatronic honestly isn't all that hard, if it's not something that rushes at you like Foxy. But if you get surrounded or outnumbered, they're still metal machines that can easily overwhelm you if you're not careful. Be mindful of your environment, cause if you're prepared to deal with the animatronics rampaging around the factory, that situational awareness is just as valuable as the tools I've given you to actually fight back."

Mike smirked and looked down the hallway, taking out an extra shocker device of his own out of his pocket and activating it. "Now let's go take care of these rampaging piles of scrap."

/

A/N: I think Mike's handling his first day as the head of the Special Delivery project rather well, wouldn't you say? He's shown that he and his bodyguards can deal with rogue animatronics without difficulty, and he's also educated his volunteer teams both on the methods to deal with the animatronics and potential pitfalls to avoid while carrying out their offensives.

You might have noticed that dealing with the animatronics is a lot simpler and a lot easier than in the canon Special Delivery game. This was deliberate, and there are a couple of reasons for this. First, and most importantly, animatronic cloaking doesn't exist. There's nothing that turns the animatronics invisible, and while the engineers might have started developing the plans for this, they haven't actually made anything yet and Mike already shut down those plans for good. Because of this, the animatronics remain fully visible at all times, making it much easier to see them coming and track their movements. In addition, I've only used Toy and Classic animatronics so far, both of which are (at least so far) fairly simple to deal with. Finally, Mike has come up with an organized plan to deal with the animatronics they've encountered so far, one that's been proven by experience. The fact that the ghost kids are there to subtly provide assistance and that they're able to work in teams also helps.

That being said, the "gameplay mechanics" might be a lot easier and simpler compared to canon, but just because something is easier doesn't mean it's easy.

That's all I have for now. Please let me know what you think, and I hope you guys enjoyed!