A/N: A lot of you were wondering whether Glitchtrap and Vanny actually would attempt any form of attack to try and salvage their plans for Special Delivery, given how they've been very careful to lay low and not risk any unwanted attention to themselves. Perhaps Mike and the ghost kids are simply being paranoid (albeit very justifiably) about Glitchtrap trying to fuck up the project. Or perhaps, their foresight might yet save the project from one final strike from their enemies…

Also, so far it seems like Mega Rayquaza is winning. That is…very interesting. Very interesting indeed.

MothraRanger: The gun is going to be stored in the security room where the night team are already stationed. There's literally no way for Vanny to get to the gun unless every single person on the night team decides to leave the room, which would be (a) a very fucking stupid idea and (b) something that Mike would give strict instructions for them not to do.

VAVillain: I have indeed seen a few of the fandom articles, and I'm honored that people found my characters compelling enough to write articles on them to begin with.

Chapter 177 – One Last Gambit

"Am I the only one who thinks this is too easy?" Jeremy mumbled as the ghost kids (minus Charlie and Liz, who were currently in Mike's office along with the man himself) surveyed the bustling activities of the factory workers and machinery from high above the main factory area.

It was a question that the ghost kids had asked themselves more than once, given how smoothly the next few days had gone after they had come up with their plan to store the animatronics securely. After the factory workers had finished processing, removing, and destroying the chips corrupted by Glitchtrap and his possession victim, Mike had brought out the central processing chips that hadn't been tainted from his office. Mike had made a public announcement declaring most of their plans going forward, describing how they were going to use the storage rooms with the factory's newly heightened security to securely store animatronics that would be covered with both cardboard boxes and wrapping paper that would each provide additional barriers against anybody who wished to get access to and corrupt the animatronics.

The only detail that Mike hadn't revealed to the factory workers at large was the gun, which was a secret that would be disclosed only to a carefully picked and trusted night team, and only after they had a secure container for the gun so that it couldn't be picked up and used haphazardly or carelessly.

"…Did Dad actually talk about his plans in detail to the police and to Fazbear Entertainment?" Susie asked the rest of them. "…I'm kinda surprised that they're just okay-ing his ideas without fighting back at all, especially the LITERAL GUN."

"About that…" the ghosts turned to see Liz flying towards them, joining their group high in the air. "The police just called Dad," the orange-haired ghost girl reported. "They gave some thought about the gun, and they decided they didn't want someone holding a lethal weapon without proper training, even in the case of emergencies. They're going to let the night team use stun guns to zap Glitchtrap's possession victim to nonlethally take her out, though. The police are actually going to be training the night team on how to use them."

"That's…probably for the best, to be honest," Gabe admitted. "Like Dad said…Glitchtrap's possession victim is really an innocent person who got wrapped up in a giant mess that wasn't really her fault. I get that killing her isn't an option we can ever completely forget about, but it's something we should avoid doing if at all possible."

"Hey, that's not all bad news," Fritz offered hopefully. "If the police really are giving the night team more than one stun gun, they might actually be able to protect themselves better than with just one gun."

Cassidy nodded in agreement. "Plus, she'll only get zapped and knocked out, not killed. That would solve all of our problems right then and there!"

Jeremy frowned. "I feel like the night team not having the real gun to defend themselves with is gonna make them less safe somehow…but I can't really figure out how," he reluctantly admitted.

"What did Fazbear Entertainment say about everything?" Susie asked Liz.

"Yeah. Are they actually going along with what Dad's saying like they're supposed?" Fritz wondered. "Or are they just being a giant pain in the ass like they always are?"

"Fazbear Entertainment were on board with the police swapping out Dad's real, lethal gun for the stun guns," Liz answered with a grimace. "I hate to give Fazbear Entertainment credit for anything, but like you guys already said, this was probably the right call for once."

"What about Dad's packaging and wrapping paper plans?" Gabe asked.

Liz rolled her eyes. "From what I could hear from the phone call, they complained about how making more wrapping paper would increase their costs at first," she replied, clearly unsurprised with this latest manifestation of their greed. "But Dad managed to win them over by framing the packaging and wrapping paper as a cheap and easy way to minimize the chances of another scandal. I think they're scared of getting caught up in another scandal that will sink their reputation even more, which is how Dad was able to shut them up so easily."

Fritz snorted. "That, and the fact that a demon lord will torture half of them in their dreams if they try to be too much of a pain in the ass," he commented dryly.

Susie looked down at the factory workers and machinery far below them. "Hey guys? It looks like they've just started finishing up the first animatronics," she pointed out.

The rest of the ghost kids looked down as well. A few hours ago, the workers had finished placing the uncorrupted chips back into the few animatronics that had already been built before Mike had taken over the project and implemented his reforms. Now, they were bringing the animatronics back from whatever testing grounds they had placed them in. And from the lack of injuries or worried/panicked/angry expressions on the workers' faces, the ghost kids felt optimistic that for once, everything was going as planned.

A feeling that was confirmed by the workers a few seconds later. "We've kept these animatronics active for 3 hours," one of them declared. "Not a single one of them attacked anyone or otherwise went batshit crazy. These ones are good to go!"

"Oh, thank God!" Cassidy breathed a huge sigh of relief at the report. "I did NOT want to deal with another animatronic attack in this factory!"

"And they tested the animatronics for hours, which was how long it took for Toy Bonnie to attack Dad in his house," Gabe added approvingly. "With all the new security measures we put in, at this point the chances of these new animatronics being hacked and corrupted by Glitchtrap and his possession victim are fairly low. Obviously, we can't rule it out completely, but I'm a hell of a lot more confident in their safety now than I was before we got involved."

The ghost kids continued to watch as the workers started maneuvering the animatronics into the large cardboard boxes that would serve as their home until they were delivered and covering the boxes with the wrapping paper that Fritz had found earlier. Despite all of the suffering and tragedy they had experienced, all of them couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction that, for the first time in decades, the animatronics would be able to serve as the entertainers and performers they were meant to be, without William Afton's malicious hand corrupting their purpose.

/

Meanwhile, another figure looked upon the progress being made in the Special Delivery project with much less happiness. On the contrary, the feeling she was experiencing was nothing less than impotent fury.

"This is so infuriating!" Vanny complained mentally, all while carefully maintaining her façade of being a timid and obedient worker dutifully carrying out her appointed tasks. "All of our hard work, everything we've done over the past few months, completely wasted!"

"It is…unfortunate…" Glitchtrap was forced to admit his own frustrations. "Although our designs might have been centered on those Fazbear fools' future project, it would have been nothing short of delightful to unleash a little chaos early through the animatronics that this latest incarnation of that wretched company so foolishly chose to recreate. I don't have the slightest idea where Fazbear Entertainment's imbeciles found this new manager, but he has unfortunately proven himself to be intelligent, competent, and organized. Schmidt has made it all but impossible for us to proceed as we intended."

"I can't ask Luis to let me "borrow" the keys that would let me access the storage rooms where the animatronics are held anymore," Vanny grumbled. "I could have tricked him into handing those over to me before Schmidt took over…but there's no way he's going to do that now. That would just get both him and me in a lot of trouble if we're lucky, and completely ruin everything if we're not."

"Even if you could still convince that weak-willed tool, it would not be nearly as valuable of an asset as it would have been in the past," Glitchtrap admitted. "Schmidt has forbidden any access to the factory outside of the night team barring exceptional circumstances, so our very presence in those storage rooms would trigger an alarm. Between the many security cameras placed in each of the storage rooms, and the packages and wrapping paper that we would need to waste time cutting through to reach the animatronics within, it will be practically impossible for us to remain undetected."

"And we can't fire up a rebellion against Schmidt or his policies, can we?" Vanny thought unhappily. "He has way too much support for that to work."

"Yes, and the bitter irony is that our own actions may be part of the reason why that support is so high in the first place," Glitchtrap grumbled, his resentment clear. Schmidt might have been infinitely more respected than the lazy and incompetent fool that he had replaced, but his more hands-on and meticulous management also meant that his policies were stricter and more controlling than in the past. If they hadn't tried to kill Schmidt and some of the other factory workers by setting several hacked animatronics on him, it was possible that Vanny could have incited some form of rebellion against Schmidt for being an overly harsh taskmaster.

Now, that option was off the table almost entirely. The animatronic attack in the factory could easily have spiraled into a catastrophe, and as much as they hated to admit it, Schmidt had demonstrated excellent leadership and strategic capabilities by neutralizing the threat without a single death or even serious injury. This success, combined with his intelligence, logic, and charisma, meant that he had won over pretty much the entire factory's workforce, or at least a large enough percentage that it basically equated to the same thing. If Vanny tried to stir up any kind of rebellion now, all that would do is draw suspicion on her at best, and get her outright exposed at worst.

Neither Vanny nor Glitchtrap missed the irony that it was, at least partially, their own failed attack that had rendered one of their other options completely unviable. And it only fueled their frustrations further.

"Is there anything we can even do at this point?" Vanny complained again. "All of our hard work is going down the drain. You said this was going to be fun, but this isn't any fun at all!"

Glitchtrap thought for several seconds, trying to find a satisfactory answer. If he was being completely honest with himself, their options at this point were extremely limited. A direct attack on Schmidt had long been out of the question; not only did his bodyguards render any chance of a successful assault on the man minimal to nonexistent, but for some reason the man himself seemed to have an uncanny awareness of his surroundings. And since Vanny was forced to work alongside three partners at all time, individuals that she had never really formed a rapport with prior to the new team system being implemented, the chances of her being able to successfully slipping away to glitch up a few animatronics were just as remote.

"I believe…" the virus-like abomination who had been born from William Afton's decrepit soul finally answered, "…we stand no chance of bringing about the change that we so desire during the day. However, depending on our fortunes and the vigilance of the night team, we may stand a chance of infiltrating the factory at night. We will have to be extremely careful in our approach, and flee at the first sign that we have been discovered. But perhaps…" a sinister grin mentally stretched across his face. "A window of opportunity might present itself to us…"

Vanny giggled in her mind, a sound that would have been disturbing and unhinged to anyone who would have been able to hear it. "Maybe we might have some fun after all then…"

"Indeed…" Glitchtrap agreed. "And it is better than being forced to accept that all of our plans will go to waste, with no hope of fighting back."

"Hey, Vanessa!" one of the other team members called out to her, breaking her out of her mental conversation with Glitchtrap. "You all right, there? You kinda spaced out for a few secs, and we still have some work to do!"

"Oh, s-sorry…" Vanessa gave a hasty apology, portraying herself once again as a timid and unassuming employee.

"Back to work," Glitchtrap instructed, his tone suddenly business-like. "And remember, you must play your intended role. Secrecy is the only true advantage we have left in this stage of the game, and it would not do for you to lose it at such an inopportune time…"

Two Nights Later…

Night had fallen, covering the entire sky in darkness. Vanny cautiously approached the factory from the shadows of the trees, the dense forest providing more than enough cover to ensure that she remained undetected.

"How fortunate for us that this factory happens to lie right next to a dense forest," Glitchtrap mused. "Escaping from here would have been much more difficult if we had been in a densely populated area and this factory was surrounded by other streets and buildings."

"We can't get into the building through the storage rooms or the main entrance, but I think there are a few side doors that don't open into any important locations. I can try to break in through one of those," Vanny suggested.

"That is indeed our best course of action for now," Glitchtrap agreed. Vanny nodded her head once, then put on the black mask that covered every part of her face except for her eyes. She had originally planned to wear the handmade bunny suit that she had created to demonstrate her allegiance to her new master, but the entity had refused to allow her to wear it as it would have been too conspicuous.

Vanny approached one of the doors on the side of the factory, a fairly inconspicuous and easily-forgotten side entryway. She took out the lockpick she had brought with her and fiddled with the keyhole. After several seconds of work, she heard the distinct click of the mechanism turning, and she was able to open the door leading into the factory. The intruder tensed as she waited for an alarm to blare out throughout the factory, but after several seconds of silence she relaxed, realizing that this particularly entryway at least hadn't been connected to any alarm.

"Our first success of the night," Glitchtrap hissed with satisfaction, "but our work is far from done. There appear to be no cameras in this particular section of the hallway, but we must assume that there may be some around every corner."

Vanny nodded and cautiously made her way down the hallway, looking out for any surveillance cameras that could give away her position. As she approached the end of her current hallway segment, she suddenly stopped short. "There is a camera around the corner," she warned her master. "I know it because I've seen it before."

"Allow me to see it, but be cautious," Glitchtrap instructed warningly. Vanny poked her head as minimally as possible, allowing her master to see the camera that she was talking about. Indeed, there was a security camera a few feet away, though thankfully it currently was not pointing in their direction. "Now then…it is time for me to play my part in our little game." The entity focused his power and channeled it towards the camera, interfering with and glitching its vision.

/

In the security room, one of the men who had been stationed on the night shift suddenly blinked as he stared at one of the screens. "The heck?" he mumbled.

"What's up?" one of his fellow night team members asked.

"I could have sworn one of the cameras went haywire for a few seconds," the first man replied, sounding puzzled. "But it looks fine now." He sighed. "Maybe I'm just being paranoid after the crazy shit that happened with the animatronics a couple of days ago…"

/

"I have interfered with the camera's vision," Glitchtrap explained to Vanny as he concentrated on interfering with the camera, "as we discussed earlier. But my powers are limited, and I can only maintain the effect for so long. Hurry across the hallway while you still have a chance, and make sure that you leave any doors that were opened or closed in that state before you proceed. Go, now!"

Vanny hurried across the hallway, tension filling her body as she waited for the cameras to catch her and for the night team to fire an alarm. But there was no such sound to indicate that she had been detected; it seemed as though Glitchtrap's powers really were messing with the cameras as they had planned.

With Glitchtrap's assistance, Vanny was able to make it all the way to the outside of the main factory area. The vast room was still lit, but the lights were dimmer compared to what they would normally have been in the daytime. Vanny frowned as she realized that, with the main factory area still moderately lit, there was no way she'd be able to make it to the storage rooms where the animatronics were being held undetected.

Glitchtrap seemed to follow the same line of thinking. "I do not have the power or mental capabilities to interfere with multiple cameras at a time," he warned Vanny. "We cannot make our way to the storage rooms right now."

"I know!" Vanny replied, clearly frustrated. "But then this whole journey was a waste of time to begin with!"

"I am aware," Glitchtrap snarled out, before forcing himself to calm down and think rationally. "We have two options at this point in time. We can either abandon our approach, sneak out of the factory the same way we came in, and slip away into the forest with nobody the wiser. Or…or…we can go for an attack on the night team themselves."

"If we can slaughter the entire night team, then we will have several hours to make our way into the storage rooms and begin our work again," Vanny exclaimed, sounding excited at the idea. Her fingers grasped the machete she had brought with her, the weapon she would use to kill any member of the night team unfortunate enough to stumble across her if they were not sufficiently defended.

Glitchtrap didn't say anything for several seconds as he pondered the possibilities. As Vanny was currently not around any nearby cameras, he could afford the time to think through his options. To be honest, the idea of murdering the night team that was tasked with defending the factory from intruders was a very tempting prospect, and one that he would have very likely chosen if he was confident that Vanny could pull it off.

The problem was that he wasn't confident that Vanny could succeed in such an endeavor, not at all. He had been carefully observing his surroundings while Vanny had been at work keeping up the façade of being a normal and loyal worker of the Special Delivery project. And although Schmidt had done his best to cover up as many details about the night team as possible apart from informing the factory at large that one would exist, he had been able to pick up on a few crucial details.

"As much as I am loathe to concede defeat, I do not think we can proceed any further," Glitchtrap reluctantly admitted after several seconds of silence. "I have heard some rather…unfortunate facts regarding the night team, facts that would severely hinder our chances of victory if they turn out to be true. The first being that there are four members of the night team, each of them physically strong males who were chosen by Schmidt himself. If this is true, even with the knife that you have brought with you, it is unlikely that you will be able to successfully fight and kill all four members of the night team at the same time. Perhaps if we could isolate them and lure them into a trap, we could kill them one at a time, but given how intelligent Schmidt has turned out to be, I wouldn't be surprised if he has given them instructions to avoid this exact scenario."

"…" Vanny didn't reply to Glitchtrap's reasoning, for she knew that her master was likely correct and she didn't have any good arguments to provide against him.

"Not only that, but I have picked up on more…disturbing…rumors about the night team," Glitchtrap continued, his voice becoming more wary and guarded. "One I have heard is that Schmidt has given the night team a firearm with which they can defend themselves, and has given the night team permission to shoot to kill if necessary. Another rumor I have heard is that Schmidt has cooperated with the police to provide the night team members with their own stun guns, with which they can neutralize you and capture you with ease. If there is even a sliver of truth to these rumors, then we cannot take that chance."

"So we have to give up then," Vanny summarized grimly. She hated to admit it, but she knew that her master was right. There was no way for them to successfully access the storage rooms and get to the animatronics without alerting the night team, and the chances of her successfully overpowering and killing the night team were low to begin with, and nonexistent if the rumors about them being given weapons were true.

Even if she could kill the night team, there was no guarantee of success. One of the night team members might sound the alarm and alert the police to an intruder's presence before she could finish them off, and the actual means to enter the storage rooms might be located separately from the security room. So she would waste even more time trying to find the keys to open them, time that she might not have.

And the more she thought about it, she wasn't even sure just what she would accomplish even if she could access the storage rooms. It would take time and effort to get to the packages containing the animatronics on the shelves and rip open both the packages and the wrapping paper covering them. Even if she succeeded, she would have to take out the new central processing chips, either corrupt them herself or replace them with corrupted ones, and then somehow find a way to place the animatronic back in its packaging in a way that wouldn't make it blatantly obvious that the animatronic had been tampered with. Not only did she not even know how to pull this kind of feat off, but she had no idea how long this would take for just a single animatronic, let alone several.

All of this was ignoring the fact that, if she killed the night team, she would only have one single night to carry out Glitchtrap's designs. Once the bloodied and brutalized corpses of the night team were discovered, Schmidt would almost certainly increase security even further and get the police involved far more thoroughly than they had been so far. Events would spiral far out of control, possibly leading to the complete shutdown of the Special Delivery project or even the end of Fazbear Entertainment itself. And that just wouldn't do, not when Glitchtrap had his own designs in mind for the future.

Glitchtrap seemed to be sharing the same thought process as his servant. "It appears we must abandon our designs for the Special Delivery project in their entirety, at least for the time being," the virus-like soul fragment of William Afton conceded. "I had hoped that we could yet salvage some of the plans that we had spent so much time concocting together. Such glorious chaos we could have unleashed…but it is not to be. Let us begone from this place, Vanessa. There is nothing further to be gained by lingering here."

Vanny nodded and retraced her steps back through the hallways, always waiting for Glitchtrap to channel his powers and interfere with the cameras first before proceeding. Always she was tense and wary, waiting for the alarms to blare through the entire factory the moment she was discovered by the night team. But with Glitchtrap's assistance, she was able to remain undetected as she navigated through the factory hallways and back towards the one doorway that she had come in.

Neither Vanny nor Glitchtrap relaxed until they had left the factory entirely, and were safely hidden back in the trees where they had originally come in from.

"Should I even stay here at this point?" Vanny asked Glitchtrap as she carefully navigated through the woods. Glitchtrap's essence allowed her to see more keenly in the dark, which allowed her to walk in the darkness back towards the camping site that she had parked her car in with only a simple flashlight. Her only goal now was to make it back to the car without scraping her skin on the branches of the trees. "I feel like we're just wasting our time in the factory at this point, and this isn't any fun at all!"

"No," Glitchtrap disagreed. "Continue to work at the factory, and continue to play the role of an innocent worker. If you were to suddenly quit now without any prior explanation, it would draw suspicion upon your behavior. If we are fortunate, Schmidt or the factory at large may make a mistake and create a potential opportunity for us to exploit."

"Okay…" Vanny relented, clearly disappointed by the answer.

"Patience, my dear. The Special Delivery project may have been an entry point for my plans that is now lost to us, but it was never the main focus of my designs," Glitchtrap assured her, his voice like poisoned honey. "Though we may have failed now, the success of the Special Delivery project may yet provide us with future opportunities down the road. Fazbear Entertainment's greed and ambition will not be satiated with this one success, and I can already foresee that they will use their undeserved success to launch grander projects down the road."

Glitchtrap grinned within the depths of Vanny's mind, an expression filled with sinister delight and malice. "Our time will come again. We will make sure of it."

/

A/N: Vanny and Glitchtrap's titular last gambit has failed, but Glitchtrap doesn't seem to feel too badly about it. After all, as we all know, there's a much bigger Fazbear Entertainment project in which they'll be able to get their grubby hands involved.

I had been thinking about Vanny and Glitchtrap attempting a night infiltration of the factory for a while now, since their avenues to hack and corrupt the animatronics are all but closed off entirely during the day. Would they completely discard the idea of sneaking in at night entirely? Or would they go balls-to-the-wall, and go for a Hail Mary by trying to murder the entire night team by themselves?

Given how I've portrayed Glitchtrap (and Vanny by extension, since Vanny is basically Glitchtrap's thrall at this point) as much more careful, calculating, and logical than William Afton's original soul ever was, I figured that the best way to go about this would be for the night infiltration to be a major reality check. Glitchtrap wouldn't be able to entirely resist the urge to infiltrate the factory one last time to look for any potential opportunities (after all, he did this in Pizza Simulator as Scraptrap, even if that attempt viciously bit him in the ass). But instead of letting his bloodthirst getting the better of him and allowing everything to come crashing down, this attempted infiltration would be the moment where he realizes that the writing is well and truly on the wall and that any future attempts to corrupt the Special Delivery animatronics are effectively dead (barring a major fuck-up from Mike that we all know the man won't make).

The Special Delivery arc has really been a story of incomplete victories and avoiding defeats, for both good and evil. Glitchtrap and Vanny might not be able to mess with the Special Delivery project any longer, but they've also managed to avoid detection and as of now are still free to carry out their evil plans in the future. And conversely, while Mike and his ghostly family have introduced sweeping reforms and purified the Special Delivery project of Glitchtrap's malicious influence, they haven't caught Vanny either. They might have won the battle, but the war is far from over.

I don't plan on spending too much more time in Special Delivery. Now that I've effectively established that Glitchtrap and Vanny have turned their sights away from the Special Delivery project, there isn't really a good reason for me to write several chapters on end about how Mike has saved the project and everything is going according to the Schmidt family's plans.

That's all I have for now. I hope you guys enjoyed!