A/N: Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do the filler chapter this time. Not only because there weren't really enough people who voted for their favorite among Primal Groudon, Primal Kyogre, and Mega Rayquaza, but also because the votes for all three of them were actually tied XD (one of the votes was through PM). So, I've decided to just cut my losses on that front and instead focus on some plot advancement.
RicAlberquerque: For the most part, I would agree. However, one should always be careful and self-aware with moral compromises, no matter how clear the answer might seem. There's a reason why "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" is a saying, after all. I think an excellent example of this is Count Dooku from "The Tales of the Jedi," who started out as a noble Jedi master who was genuinely devoted to correcting the flaws of the Republic and of the Jedi…and slowly fell down the slippery slope through these moral compromises and Palpatine's manipulations into a cruel and tyrannical Sith lord.
I think it would be very easy to forgive a moral compromise where the lesser evil was chosen…but seeking that forgiveness is a sign of self-awareness and understanding that a lesser evil is still technically an evil in the end.
Anyways, enough heavy philosophical stuff. On with the chapter!
Chapter 176 – Storage Prophylaxis
Mike drove up to the parking lot outside of the Special Delivery project factory, smiling contentedly to himself. Thanks to his leadership and the suggestions made by the ghost kids, he was already much more optimistic about the prospects of selling animatronics to the public than he had been when he had first heard about the project.
He couldn't let himself feel too excited or satisfied about their recent string of victories, however. There were still plenty of opportunities for Glitchtrap's possession victim, whoever she was, to get her hands on the animatronics and mess with their programming to transform them back into murderous machines. A dangerous series of circumstances that neither Mike nor his family had any intention of allowing to happen.
"How far are we in taking the programming chips out of the animatronics that've already been created?" Jeremy asked.
"Not far," Mike answered as his bodyguards drove up in their own cars and parked next to his own. Colm and Hector got out, the former approaching the driver's seat to open the door for Mike while Hector prepared his wheelchair. "If the projections are correct, then we might be able to finish going through all of the chips by the end of today."
"Woooo!" Susie cheered. "That's some great progress!"
Charlie frowned. "Maybe a little too good," she commented. "Do we have any plans for what we're going to do when we start putting the uncorrupted chips back into the animatronics? Or where we're going to store away the animatronics that are completed so that Glitchtrap's possession victim can't get to them and mess them up?"
The enthusiasm dampened significantly as the Schmidt family realized that they hadn't thought through everything as well as they had believed they had. "Shit," Fritz mumbled. "I didn't think about that."
"We have some time," Mike reassured them as he got out of the car and into the wheelchair that Hector had set up for him. He could tell that in just a few days, he'd be strong enough to get rid of the wheelchair entirely and only need to rely on crutches. But he didn't have quite enough strength to navigate through the huge factory on just crutches throughout the course of an entire day, and so he would rely on the wheelchair for just a little while longer. "While the workers are finishing up with processing the programming chips, look for anything that we can use to help safely store away animatronics where Glitchtrap's possession victim can't get to them."
The ghost kids nodded as they followed Mike, Hector, and Colm to the balcony overlooking the main work area, where Mike praised the employees of the factory for their efficiency and the significant progress they had made. "I think we're almost done with going through all of the programming chips," he announced. "Once you guys are done, the next stage of making sure this project is a success can begin!"
The workers cheered as Mike, his bodyguards, and his ghost kids retired to the man's office. "One or maybe two of you should stay around or right outside the office to make sure that nobody tries to attack me," he telepathically gave his instructions to the ghost kids. "The rest of you should try and find some way we can securely store the animatronics that've already been made and the ones that we'll soon be making."
Charlie and Liz volunteered to stay, while the rest of the ghost kids flew away from the office to scout out potential solutions to their problem. Susie and Cassidy chose to fly through the many office rooms in the factory, seeing if there were any available rooms among them. While some of the offices were predictably filled with people working on computers or doing one task or another, there were more than a few rooms that were completely empty, leaving behind wide open spaces that could easily fit a few animatronics each.
"Do you think we could fit some animatronics in those empty offices?" Cassidy asked her sister. "There's a lot of space we can use!"
Susie frowned. "Maybe for now, but there's a lot of animatronics that this factory needs to make. We're definitely not gonna be able to fit all of them in these offices, especially when Dad starts making them from scratch again."
"It's worth a shot, though!" Cassidy argued. "If the other guys can't find anything!"
"I can't argue that," Susie admitted as they watched some of the workers pass by them, completely oblivious to their presence. The two girls carefully studied them for any signs of suspicious activity, but after a couple of minutes of finding nothing significant they were forced to give up and return back to their father's office.
Meanwhile, Fritz had gone in a different direction, flying back towards the main factory area where the workers were finishing the task of removing and analyzing the chips in the animatronics that had already been created. At first, he looked over the workers themselves, but with nothing significant going on, the former Foxy inhabitant quickly grew bored and decided to check out a storage room that was a short distance away from the main factory area. The room was large and spacious just like the main factory area, but unlike the latter there were much less people milling about and taking care of their own business. Instead, there were several tall metal shelves that nearly reached to the ceiling, giving off the appearance of the inside of a Home Depot (albeit much smaller in size).
"Damn," Fritz whistled appreciatively. "Now that I'm looking at all this, this reminds me of the time that Dad took us all to IKEA to get some new furniture."
He immediately floated around the room, trying to find something Mike could use as part of their strategies against Glitchtrap's possession victim. Most of the various articles and equipment stacked on the shelf didn't catch Fritz's attention in the slightest, and right when he was about to leave something at the very edge of one of the shelves caught his eye.
"What is this even?" the former Foxy inhabitant wondered as he got closer to the thing that had caught his attention. A closer inspection revealed several rolls of wrapping paper, most of which proudly displayed Freddy Fazbear holding a microphone in his right hand and waving his left hand in front of a stage that looked vaguely similar to the one from the 1993 location. The wrapping paper was easily taller than most of the animatronics Fritz had seen so far, although it was clear that the wrapping paper rolls had been cast aside and forgotten about for quite some time.
"Huh," Fritz scratched his chin curiously. He didn't know why, but for some reason his gut instinct was telling him that this wrapping paper was something worth remembering. He tried to think more deeply about why that would be, before giving up and shrugging after a few moments of thought. "Meh, I'm sure Dad can figure something out."
As the former Foxy inhabitant departed from the storage room, Gabe and Jeremy were surveying another storage room very similar to the one Fritz had been in. Unlike him, however, they weren't interested so much in the specific objects that could be found in the storage room, but rather the layout of the storage room itself. "You think this could be a good place to store animatronics once they start making them again?" Jeremy asked.
Gabe frowned. "Maybe? But this is a big room. I feel like there's a lot of places Glitchtrap's possession victim can hide and mess around with the animatronics if there isn't enough camera surveillance or people aren't paying attention."
"I don't think we have to worry about not there being enough cameras," Jeremy commented, pointing to several different locations. There were multiple different cameras scattered around the storage room, all of which were focused down the rows in between the tall metal shelves. There was also one camera trained directly on the door leading back to the main factory area, and one focused on a door that led outside the building located right next to a much larger garage door. "I've counted at least, like, five in this room alone."
"Assuming the other storage rooms have the same kind of camera coverage, that's fine," Gabe conceded. "But will that be enough?"
An idea suddenly came to Jeremy's mind and he flew over to the doors leading out of the storage room. To his delight, there were lock mechanisms present on both doors (with the door leading outside having the more complicated mechanism), both of whom required some kind of key. "Okay then," he mused as he flew back up to where Gabe was in the air. "The doors to these storage rooms are locked and need a key to open up. I know it sounds like I'm stating the obvious, but I think these storage rooms might not be a bad place to put away the animatronics."
Gabe was in agreement, though it was for different reasons. "These shelves are really tall," he pointed out. "Easily tall enough to fit the animatronics. If we store them away in boxes and stack them up on these shelves, then there's really no way for Glitchtrap's possession victim to get anywhere near them. She'd either need a forklift to move one of the animatronics off the shelves, or try to climb onto them with pretty much no space to work with. Either way, she'd stick out like crazy and get caught by the cameras and the night team asap." He frowned slightly, before shaking his head. "The only animatronics that MIGHT be in danger are the ones on the floor, but even then she'd still need to cut open the packages to get her hands on the animatronics. I think this is as safe of a plan as we can get, to be honest."
"Then let's report back to Dad and tell him what we've found out," Jeremy suggested.
The two boys nodded and left the storage area, flying back over to Mike's office. When they got there, they could see Mike typing something on his computer, with Colm and Hector reading the screen over his shoulder with mild interest.
"Dad!" Cassidy called out. "We're back!"
Mike didn't outwardly react, but he quickly greeted them with a quick "Hey!" of his own before turning to Colm and Hector. "Would you guys mind stepping out for a bit?" he asked politely. "I have something I need to take care of by myself for a bit."
The two bodyguards looked at each other, shrugged, and then left the room. Once they were gone, Mike allowed himself to actually look at his kids, though the latter were still using their invisibility and teleportation powers. "Okay guys," he telepathically communicated. "What did you find?"
Susie and Cassidy were the first to go, explaining their idea about how they could store the finished animatronics in the spare rooms and offices scattered around the factory. Though they presented their case as best as they could, the rest of their family members could tell that they themselves weren't particularly enthused about their suggestion, a sentiment that was all but confirmed when Mike shook his head.
"A decent idea, but there's a couple of problems with it," Mike gently but firmly pointed out. "The first being that it would be extremely cumbersome to try and move every single animatronic that we finish and place in packaging out of the main factory areas and into those offices. But more importantly, not every room on these floors has a key, and not every room on these floors has a camera."
"Oh," Susie mumbled. "I'm seeing the problem with this already."
"Yeah," Mike agreed. "There's some decent camera coverage of the hallways in these floors, but it's not perfect. If Glitchtrap's possession victim manages to sneak through the blind spots, then they still might get a chance to fuck around with the animatronics we've made. And the less opportunities we give her, the better."
Cassidy sighed. "Yeah, I wasn't really all that confident about this idea to begin with, to be honest," she admitted.
Charlie put a comforting hand on her shoulder, earning a grateful smile back. "At least you gave it a good shot," she offered comfortingly.
"Any idea is worth bringing up," Mike agreed, before turning to the other ghosts. "Anybody else?"
Fritz decided to go next. "I found these wrapping papers in one of the storage rooms," he reported. "I think they were supposed to be used to wrap around the packages that they're gonna put the animatronics in, but they were just left alone on the shelves and I don't think anybody was using them for anything. If we wrap the packages in that wrapping paper, then it might make it harder for whoever Glitchtrap's possessing to open up an animatronic and fuck it up. Or at least, it'd make it really obvious if the animatronic was fucked with," he finished.
Mike was stroking his chin thoughtfully, nodding his head up and down as he contemplated Fritz's idea. "That could work," he muttered thoughtfully. "Nobody's going to pretend that wrapping paper will actually physically stop Glitchtrap's possession victim from doing anything, but wrapping paper that was ripped open would be a huge red flag. And there's no way to replace that wrapping paper either, since it would be very obvious and she'd probably get caught by the cameras if she actually tried to go for it."
"Yeah, that's not a bad idea at all!" Liz agreed, eager to support her closest brother's surprisingly solid suggestion.
"The only problem I can think of is that we might not have enough wrapping paper to cover the packages of every single animatronic we make," Mike acknowledged. "And I vaguely remember something about Fazbear Entertainment deciding to scrap wrapping the packages in the decorative paper because it was a quote-unquote unnecessary cost," he repeated the words disdainfully.
Fritz snorted derisively. "Of course they'd say shit like that," he grumbled.
"I'll send them an e-mail," Mike decided. "I'll make sure to phrase it as a cheap and easy way to increase security and minimize the chances of the saboteur getting their hands on more animatronics." He smirked. "Remember kids, when it comes to getting people to agree with you, half the battle is phrasing what you're saying in a way that whoever you're talking to is more likely to listen."
"I don't know how frequently we'll get to apply that lesson since we're dead and supposed to keep ourselves invisible from the public, but I'll keep that in mind," Charlie commented a bit dryly, although like the rest of her siblings she couldn't hide a knowing smile at the wisdom behind Mike's words.
There were only two ghost kids left to talk to, and Mike turned to the two oldest ghost boys in his family. "Gabe, Jeremy? What did you guys find?"
Jeremy was the first to speak. "We actually think that the best place to store the animatronics once we start making them again is…the storage rooms."
His siblings besides Gabe stared at him blankly. "Wait, what?" Susie broke the silence. "Isn't that, like…the most obvious answer?"
"And it sounds way too easy," Fritz agreed skeptically.
Liz wasn't any more enthusiastic about that fact than her closest brother. "William Afton went after Dad and massively screwed himself over cause he thought messing Dad would be way too easy," she pointed out with a frown. "I really, REALLY don't want us to mess up the same way he did."
"I know this sounds too obvious and too easy," Gabe responded with a nod of understanding, "but we thought long and hard about this and we really do think this is the best way to go about this."
"Well, let's hear what you have to say," Mike invited.
"The storage rooms are actually a lot more secure than it looks," Jeremy explained. "There's actually a lot of camera coverage in the aisles between the shelves, and looking at the doors going into and out of the room. If all those cameras can be seen from the security room, the storage areas probably have some of the best security in this entire factory."
Mike nodded. "I was the one who made that happen," he admitted. "I think I was just super paranoid that shady shit could go down in those storage rooms without being noticed if we didn't cover those areas as thoroughly as possible."
"Well it's a good thing you did!" Gabe exclaimed. "Not only are those storage rooms well-covered by the cameras, but they've actually got their own locks and alarm systems on the doors leading in and out of the rooms! Locks that need keys to open! The only way to get into those doors without breaking them down or setting off the alarms is to use a key to open them!"
"I get it!" Susie realized, looking noticeably more excited about Gabe and Jeremy's idea than she had at first, now that the pieces were beginning to fall into place. "If Glitchtrap's possession victim wants to hack any new animatronics we make, she'd not only have to break into a room that has a lot of cameras looking into it, but also need to find a way to get into the room in the first place! Between those two things, there's no way she'd be able to do all that without getting noticed at SOME point!"
"And if we put all the animatronics in packages and cover them in that wrapping paper that Fritz mentioned, that's even MORE things that Glitchtrap's possession victim will need to go through before she can actually get her hands on the animatronics," Jeremy added eagerly. "The more things we put up to block her out, the more time she'll waste and the more likely she'll get caught!"
Mike grinned at his children's enthusiasm. "For what it's worth, I think that this is a great idea," he praised. "Sometimes, the simplest and obvious solution really is the best solution to a major problem."
Charlie didn't say a word, and it took a few seconds to realize that she wasn't sharing her siblings' enthusiasm. "Uh…did we say something wrong, Dad?" Gabe wondered nervously.
His sister shook her head. "No, it's not that," she answered after several seconds of careful thought. "I think this idea actually has a lot of potential, and it's certainly better than anything I could have come up with. But there's a few problems I can think of."
"What kind of problems?" Jeremy asked, worry clear on his face.
The former Marionette frowned. "The first one is…do we actually have any way of lifting up the animatronics up on the shelves?" she asked. "We certainly can't ask the workers to physically lift up the animatronics up onto them, it's probably straight-up impossible. And if we have to leave all the animatronics on the ground-level shelf, then Glitchtrap's possession victim will have an easier time getting to them."
"All valid points," Mike acknowledged, before his face broke into a smile. "Fortunately, that particular problem's fairly easy to solve. This factory does have forklifts that can lift animatronic packages up onto the shelves. We don't have all that many, but we have enough to make this work without everything being super slow."
"Okay," Charlie nodded, visibly (but not completely) relieved that at least one of her prospective problems had already been solved. "But what are we going to do about the keys to the storage room? You say that we can lock up everything in the factory at night, but there's always the chance that Glitchtrap's possession victim might try and look for the keys before invading the storage rooms. Those rooms specifically might be under a lot of camera surveillance, but not everywhere in the factory is. There's always the chance that she could find the keys by herself and get access to the storage rooms."
Cassidy looked rather skeptical. "Doesn't really seem all that likely, though," she pointed out. "Even we don't know where the janitors keep the keys at night, and Glitchtrap's possession victim would have to find those keys AND not get caught on the cameras at all."
Charlie gave her youngest sister a thoroughly unimpressed look. "This is a Fazbear Entertainment project we're talking about," she deadpanned. "If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong."
"I hate how right that is," Mike drawled, before a smirk suddenly appeared on his face. "But there's one way we can make sure that the accomplice won't get her hands on the keys without alerting the night surveillance team. And that's if we store all of the keys to the storage room inside of the security room itself. A security room that will have four to five people working at night, and can be locked from the inside to make sure that nothing can get in that we don't want to get in."
"So we can make it so that it's literally impossible for Glitchtrap's possession victim to get into the storage room without tipping off the night team first," Gabe finished, his eyes flashing with excitement. "I'm liking this plan more and more."
"There's an alarm system that we built into the security system," Mike smirked, "and nobody is supposed to be here at night. If they see anything suspicious, the night team can sound an alarm that will blare through the entire factory and even alert the police for good measure. Once that alarm goes off, the intruder won't have a lot of time before the cops come rolling in."
Liz frowned. "There's only one problem I can see here, but it's a pretty big one," she commented. "What if Glitchtrap's possession victim decides to go straight for the security room and try to kill the night team. Glitchtrap might be acting a lot smarter and more careful than the old William Afton, but he's still Glitchtrap. He might decide that murdering the night team is the only way for him to get things done, and if he manages to kill the night team then his possession victim can do whatever the hell she wants to the animatronics in the factory with nothing to stop him!"
The ghosts immediately adopted similar expressions of worry and concern as their minds processed Liz's grim hypothesis. All of them knew full well just how much of a bloodthirsty monster William Afton was, no matter what form he might take. If he was desperate enough, Glitchtrap might decide that violence was the best solution and go for a killing spree on the night team. And the worst part was that he might very well be right to do so.
"Ummm…should one of us stay overnight at the factory every night?" Fritz ventured hesitantly. "I mean, doing a night shift ourselves sounds like it would suck, but if we have to do what we have to do…"
"We're trying to atone for our crimes, Fritz," Jeremy reminded him. "We don't get to complain when the going gets tough."
Fritz was about to acknowledge Jeremy's comment, but to his surprise Mike suddenly smirked before he had a chance to do so. "I think that's less of a problem than you might think," he commented mischievously. A clear sign to those who knew him best that he knew something that the rest of them didn't.
"What do you mean, Dad?" Susie wondered, mentally questioning why her father was so unbothered by what was potentially a huge problem.
"Well, first off, the security room can be locked from the inside, so Glitchtrap's possession victim would have to force open the door," Mike explained. "But even if she didn't, all of this assumes that the night team is completely unable to defend themselves." The smirk transformed into a full-blown grin. "An assumption that is completely wrong."
He reached down towards his desk, opening a compartment, and every single ghost kid's eyes widened in shock and disbelief as Mike took out a pistol and laid it on the desk.
"Is that…" Cassidy stammered, her mind shutting down at the sight of the firearm. "Is that…?"
"That's a gun," Jeremy mumbled numbly. "That's an actual gun."
"What the FUCK?" Fritz exploded in disbelief. "Why is there a fucking GUN in this factory?"
"Cause I secured it for the Special Delivery project a few days ago," Mike explained nonchalantly, clearly enjoying the stunned expressions on his children's faces. "It was one of the things I was working on in this office for the past couple of days while you were out doing your surveillance runs. I've already made the arrangements with the police and got the license for this place to have it and everything, and Fazbear Entertainment barely batted an eye when I told them I was getting a gun for this factory."
Fritz scoffed. "That doesn't mean shit, Fazbear Entertainment don't give a fuck about anything that isn't about saving money."
"True," Mike acknowledged, "but their inability to give a fuck actually works out well for us this time around. Before you ask, yes, this gun uses live ammunition and is very capable of killing someone if used with lethal intent. Which is why it's going to be carefully stored away in one of those emergency glass boxes with the ammunition placed in a container to the side, to be broken open only in case of absolute emergency. I'm going to give the night team very clear instructions that the gun is only to be used if your lives are under threat from an intruder who is trying to kill them, and that anything less than that might risk them getting arrested for using a lethal weapon inappropriately."
"But…but…wouldn't that mean someone innocent getting killed?" Susie asked hesitantly. "Like, yeah, I know Glitchtrap's victim might've gotten their mind messed up by the evil glitchy rabbit, but it's not their fault. Someone innocent shouldn't have to die because of that."
Mike sighed, and for the first time the ghost kids could clearly see uncertainty and fatigue in his face. "I know," he admitted, clearly not any happier about the necessity of using lethal force than the former Chica inhabitant was. "I know. I know that at the end of the day, Glitchtrap's possession victim was just some poor unlucky sod who blindly messed with things she shouldn't have, and ended up getting possessed by an abomination because of it. She's an innocent person, and not a willing accomplice." The man's expression hardened. "I'd give a lot less of a shit about her well-being if she willingly working with Glitchtrap from the start."
The ghosts resisted the urge to shudder, especially Charlie. The former Marionette inhabitant understood that Mike was striving more than ever to overcome his own flaws, to not regard William Afton and anything associated with him with the same overwhelming hatred and cruelty that had once burned in his soul.
But although there might not be sadism and malice, there wasn't any mercy to be found either. And Charlie had no doubt whatsoever that in a hypothetical situation where Mike was forced to choose between killing a willing accomplice to William Afton or allowing innocents to die, her father would slit the throat of the accomplice without any hesitation, and with only minimal regret (if even that).
Fortunately (if you could even use that word in this situation), Glitchtrap's accomplice was one whose mind had been forcibly corrupted and enslaved. And Charlie was relieved to see that there was only pity in Mike's heart for someone who was ultimately another victim.
That pity wouldn't be enough to overrun Mike's grim determination to do what needed to be done, however. "I have a duty to all the workers in this factory as their boss," he declared solemnly, "and their safety is very much part of that responsibility. Glitchtrap's possession victim might be someone forced into their evil, but they're still a dangerous if not lethal threat to the people working around them. And I can't prioritize saving the life of one innocent person whose mind has been corrupted and compromised over four innocent people who aren't a threat to others around them. If the night team needs to shoot Glitchtrap's possession victim to death to keep themselves from being slaughtered, then that's a compromise that I'm willing to make."
The ghosts looked at each other uneasily, still uncertain over whether giving the night team a gun to potentially kill Glitchtrap's possession victim was the right idea or even a good idea in general. But none of them could argue with Mike's logic, and all of them had to concede that Giltchtrap's possession victim successfully murdering the night team really would be the worst-case scenario possible.
Hopefully, such a situation would never come to pass…and the gun would remain safely locked up in its glass box, unused and unneeded until the Special Delivery project was finally over and done with.
Mike smiled warmly, the expression dissipating some of the tension that the ghost kids were feeling over the gun. "Hopefully, nobody will need to resort to extreme measures. From what we've seen so far, Glitchtrap has been forcing his accomplice to lay low and not do anything suspicious. And though it also means we can't catch her, I'd rather that than risk another catastrophe like the Toy Bonnie that tried to attack me or the mass attack that happened the first day we came here. We can only hope, right?"
"Right," Gabe agreed cautiously. "We can only hope."
Charlie decided to mirror Mike's action, and give them an encouraging smile of her own. "Look on the bright side, guys," she suggested. "We have a solid plan on what to do with the animatronics. We have ways to make sure that Glitchtrap's possession victim can't get her hands on the animatronics. And we can make sure that Fazbear Entertainment's project doesn't end in disaster and tragedy just like it did so many times in the past."
"YEAH!" the ghosts all excitedly declared as one, their voices loud enough that they would've been heard in the hallway if they had shouted the word out loud instead of through telepathy.
Mike smiled at their rekindled enthusiasm, but just as he was about to say something, a knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. "Yes?" he called out, speaking the first word since he had first dismissed his two bodyguards.
"It's one of the workers!" Hector answered back. "He's here to see you."
"Send him in!" Mike invited. A few seconds later, the door swung open and the two bodyguards entered, followed by a young man looking flushed and excited. "What's up?"
"We've just finished the last of the microchip checks!" the worker exclaimed. "All the microchips have been processed, and we've separated the hacked ones from the clean ones. We're ready to hear the next stage of the plan!"
Mike's smile widened into a grin as the ghost children chittered excitedly amongst each other. They hadn't anticipated that the next stage of the project would come so soon, but it had arrived all the same. And the plan they had just created together couldn't have been formed at a better time.
"Well, to quote a certain group of Phantom Thieves," Mike thought as he got up from his chair. "It's Showtime."
/
A/N: Prophylaxis means "medicine meant to prevent health conditions from happening" in medical terms. It's basically a little doctor joke since I'm a doctor-in-training right now :P
I am very sorry that it took 3 weeks to upload another chapter. I was working on the hospital floor for all of January, and I was busy as heck and too tired to come up with a coherent, let alone good chapter to write. The extra week of break was very much needed, and we're ready to get back on track with writing "Mike's New Ghostly Family" now.
Mike and the ghost kids now have a solid plan to stop Vanny from hacking and corrupting more animatronics once the Special Delivery factory finally starts making them again, and they especially like to focus on the worst-case scenario. Given the terrible experiences that all of them had suffered in the past, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. The question is…will the worst-case scenario happen? Will Vanny try to YOLO-attack the night team, will she be cautious in her approach just as Glitchtrap had instructed her to so far, or will she not attack the night team at all? Nobody can really say. But one thing's for sure: when it comes to Five Nights at Freddy's, not preparing for the worst is an invitation for things to go horribly, horribly wrong.
We should be good to go back to the regular schedule starting February. In the meantime, I hope you guys all enjoyed!
