A/N: Sorry for the extremely long wait for this chapter, everyone. Not only was I very busy for the past month because I'm now working on the hospital floor, but I straight-up got Writer's Block and couldn't get my mind to generate ideas on how this birthday party should go.

But now that I've finally got some creative juices flowing again, I'm finally ready to give Mike Schmidt the birthday party he rightfully deserves. I was originally going to make this the final part, but the actual birthday party is gonna need to be its own chapter.

On an unrelated note, I finally got to see snippets of the Puss in Boots 2 movie, and hot damn, I really wish I'd seen this movie before I wrote the fight between Mike and William Afton in Mike's mental world. Not going into too many details, but that movie had some of the best choreography I've ever seen in an animated movie and I definitely would've implemented some of it into the fight between Dark!Mike and Nightmare Springtrap. Ah well, hindsight is 20/20 as they say.

Chapter 183 – Happy Birthday Mike Part 2

As the ghost kids quickly discovered, it wasn't necessarily the planning of the birthday party itself that was the hard part. It was keeping the whole thing secret from Mike.

Having already lived with Mike for years now, the ghost kids knew just how perceptive and intelligent Mike could be. They had little doubt that if they were even a tad bit careless, Mike would pick up on their plan to throw him a surprise birthday party and it would completely ruin the surprise.

"Some of you are definitely worse at keeping secrets than others," Charlie had commented during one of their planning conversations. "You guys know who you are. If you know you can't keep a secret well, try not to talk about the party we're throwing around Dad as much as possible. You can help with planning things from behind the scenes, but don't be the one to blab your mouth out in front of Dad and ruin everything!"

Charlie didn't name names, but Susie, Cassidy, and even Fritz had grown enough self-awareness by now that they knew they were the ones who their older sister was referring to. And thankfully, they also had enough self-awareness not to talk about the party whenever Mike was around.

Granted, it wasn't as though they could have hidden the secret from Mike entirely. The man was very perceptive, and from the askance glances and questioning eyebrow raises that he gave them, the ghost kids could tell that Mike knew something was up. But that was a benchmark they were perfectly okay with. For as Liz put it, "There's no way we can hide that we're doing something for Dad from him completely. But as long as he doesn't know what we're planning, then that's good enough for us."

Their stealth wasn't perfect by any means, as ironic as it might have been for children who could literally turn invisible and intangible due to their natures as ghosts. But miraculously, the ghost kids were able to make it all the way to Mike's birthday without him outright discovering all or even most of their surprise birthday plans.

Gabe had scheduled his phone alarm to wake him up at 7 AM, a time which Mike was generally still asleep at (and thankfully today had not been an exception). The moment he rubbed the sleep away from his eyes, he grabbed his phone, flew down to the basement, and dialed Melody's number. To his relief, Melody answered almost immediately. "Hello?"

"Hey Melody," Gabe greeted her, before proceeding to the order of the day without any preamble, "you know what day it is today, right?"

"Yep," Melody immediately confirmed. "It's Mike's birthday…which means it's time for us to implement the plan, right?"

"You got it," Gabe affirmed. "Do you have a way of getting Dad out of the house using Eisensteel like you said you were going to?"

"Yeah, I've got a plan," Melody reassured him. "Mike never made that big of a deal about his birthday in the past, so it's not gonna look weird or look like we're being dicks if Eisensteel calls him out for help on his birthday or something."

"All right," the former Freddy inhabitant replied. "Make sure you get here soon after Dad leaves!"

"Roger that!" Melody replied, before hanging up. Gabe floated back into the room and waited for his brothers and sisters to wake up and join him in the living room. They quickly went over their surprise birthday party plans, before going to separate rooms to avoid arousing Mike's suspicion by congregating together. At around 9 AM, Mike came down to the living room, which was currently only being occupied by Gabe and Charlie.

"Happy Birthday, Dad!" the two of them greeted him cheerfully. The other ghost kids quickly abandoned whatever they were doing and flew into the room, adding their own birthday wishes to Gabe and Charlie's.

"Hey guys, thanks for the birthday wishes," Mike tried to sound grateful, but everyone could tell that he seemed in a bit of a hurry. "Sorry if it looks like I'm trying to brush you off, but I got a call from Eisensteel just a few minutes ago. They wanted me to come over there to discuss the prospects for a new project that they're thinking of getting started on. Melody would normally do it herself, but she had called in the day off so they needed me instead."

"They're asking you to work on your birthday? When you're not even working for them before?" Susie asked with perfectly feigned surprise. "Isn't that kind of mean?"

Mike shrugged. "Eh, it's for Eisensteel, so I don't mind. If it had been for Fazbear Entertainment, on the other hand, I would've told them to fuck right off," he added, earning a couple of snickers from everyone else in the room. "Anyways, depending on how long this takes, I'll be back in a couple of hours or so."

"We'll be waiting!" Cassidy promised on behalf of all of them. Mike smiled in response and quickly left the room, stopping only to grab his keys before making his way out the door and slamming it shut behind him.

Charlie flew towards the windows next to the front door, watching Mike get into his car, pull out of the driveway, and disappear past the gate leading to their house. Once she was sure that he was gone, she quickly flew back to the living room where all the ghosts were waiting. "All right, guys, Dad's gone. Let's get to work!"

"Heck yeah! Time for us to get this party started!" Jeremy shouted.

"I'll go call the Marshalls and invite them over here," Liz offered. The Marshalls were just as important to the surprise birthday party as Melody was, as they were the ones who had bought the birthday party supplies (with a promise that they would be reimbursed by the ghost kids) and hidden them away in their home so that there wouldn't be any way for Mike to know about their existence. The former Baby inhabitant quickly called Ryan Marshall's phone, letting him know that Mike had left the house and it was time for them to get the surprise birthday party set up. After the call had been made, it only took a few minutes for the Marshalls to arrive at Mike's house. Stella hadn't come with them, as she had been busy working that today, but both Alex and Meghan did, and that was what really mattered to the ghost kids.

"Great to see you guys, it feels like it's been forever!" Alex exclaimed.

"You wanted us to help set up a surprise birthday party for your dad, right?" Meghan asked. "We brought all of the stuff that you guys wanted us to get for the party."

"Heck yeah, you guys rock!" Fritz exclaimed.

"Do you mind helping us set up the decorations for the birthday party?" Susie requested. "There's a lot of things we need to set up, and a lot to do!"

"Just tell us what you need us to do," Ryan offered.

The living and ghostly families spent the next couple of minutes unloading the party materials and bringing them into the house. They opened the boxes in the living room and began taking out decorations that would have fit perfectly with traditional birthday parties of old. Confetti, balloons, streamers, birthday hats, and even a banner that had been customized for this particular occasion. They had brought so many of these for the party that they had enough decorations to cover not just the dining room where the actual birthday party would be held, but also the living room and even the hallway that connected the two.

"Why don't you guys help set up the party hats and blowing up the balloons?" Charlie advised. "We'll take care of things like the banners so that you guys don't hurt yourselves."

"Yeah, we'll get right on it!" Alex declared. He, Meghan, and their father took out the birthday-party tablecloth and spread it over the dining table, before taking out the party hats and putting them in front of the table's many chairs. As they started blowing up the many, many balloons that they had brought with them to the house, the ghosts began arranging the custom-made banners that they had created specifically for the surprise party. Their ability to fly proved to be very helpful here, as it allowed them to effortlessly lift the banner up to the ceiling and attach it there without any difficulty, a task that would have been inconvenient at best and dangerous at worst for a normal human.

With the living and the dead working together, the Schmidts and the Marshalls were able to set up the living room and the dining room with their birthday decorations in a relatively short amount of time. "Damn, this is giving me flashbacks to my childhood days in all the best ways possible," Ryan commented approvingly as they spent a few minutes to admire their handiwork.

"So what's next?" Meghan asked. "We set up the decorations, are we just gonna sit here and wait for you Dad to get back?"

Gabe shook his head. "Nope," he answered with a smirk. "Now we gotta call in the other people we invited…and also get food for you guys, too!"

"We've got two other people we invited!" Fritz chimed in.

Ryan raised an eyebrow. "Do they know about you guys' existence?" he wondered. "It's gonna be hella awkward if we try to have a birthday party where half the people in there are trying to keep themselves a secret from the other half."

Susie shook her head. "That's not gonna be a problem," she reassured them. "The two people we're gonna invite know who we are already."

"Didn't realize you guys knew other people besides us," Alex remarked. "I thought you wanted to keep yourselves secret as much as possible."

"I mean we don't know a LOT of people," Jeremy conceded. "But if the only people we knew were each other and you guys for the past couple of years, I think we would've gone insane a long time ago. No offense."

Meghan shook her head. "Don't worry about it, I get what you're saying."

"So I guess you're gonna call them over here now that we've finished setting up the rooms?" Ryan guessed.

Liz had already lifted her phone up. "Was gonna take care of that right now." She dialed her phone and called Melody's number, while Jeremy did the same with Colm's.

As Liz talked with Melody and confirmed that the time for her to arrive with the food had indeed come, Jeremy did the same with Colm. From the hesitant tone in the man's voice, the former Bonnie inhabitant could tell that he was still uncertain about whether he would truly be welcome in the house of a man who he had once tried to steal from.

"You sure about this?" Colm mumbled. "The last time I was deep in your house, I was trying to steal thousands of dollars from Mike and I can thank my lucky stars that he decided not to get me arrested for breaking and entering."

"The fact that you're calling Dad by his first name is enough proof that you're a friend of the family now," Jeremy pointed out. "We invited you for a reason, Mr. Duessell. If you hadn't been Dad's bodyguard for months, he might've gotten himself seriously hurt or killed. I think that's more than enough reason for us to invite you over to Dad's birthday party."

Colm sighed. "All right, you guys have convinced me. I'll come. Should I let Mike know, or…?"

"NO!" Jeremy nearly shouted, before realizing he had been far too harsh in his tone. "Sorry about yelling," he immediately apologized, "but this is a SURPRISE birthday party. If you call Dad and let him know you're coming, it'll ruin everything. Just drive over here and we'll let you in."

"Fair enough," Colm acknowledged. "I'll be there in a couple of minutes."

"See you then! You don't have to bring anything, we'll take care of all that," Jeremy assured him, before hanging up. He flew back up to the living room, where Liz had just finished talking to Melody. "Mr. Duessel's coming!" he declared. "He said he'd be here in a couple of minutes."

"Great!" Charlie answered with a smile. "He worked hard to keep Dad safe, he deserves to be invited. I was hoping he'd show up, otherwise it'd just be the Marshalls and Melody."

"Melody's on her way too, and she's bringing the food," Liz reported. "I think we can get everything set up before Dad comes back!"

"How DID you guys get Mike out of here?" Ryan couldn't help but wonder. "He's always been pretty perceptive, I'm pretty sure he would've thought something was up especially on a day that's as heavily telegraphed as his birthday."

"Melody drew Dad from away from his house by bringing him over to his old company to work on something," Cassidy replied with a mischievous grin. "The best part is that the thing she drew him away from here for was actually completely real, so we were actually telling the truth! We just didn't mention anything about what's waiting for him after he comes back, is all."

Ryan chuckled. "That's pretty clever, actually. And with how much I know Mike loves Eisensteel, there's no way he would leave them hanging out to dry if they needed his help with something," he agreed.

The Marshalls and Schmidts exchanged small talk for the next several minutes, until they finally heard the loud buzzer that indicated that somebody was waiting for them at the front gate. "I'll get it!" Charlie quickly offered. She flew up to Mike's room, where the tablet that showed the front gate and who was waiting for it was lying on the bed. When she switched over to the camera showing the front gate, the former Marionette was mildly surprised to see that there were two cars waiting in front of the gate, both Melody's and Colm's. "I didn't think I'd see you both here at the same time," she commented over the speaker. "Did you guys both show up at the same time?" she asked.

"Just about," Colm answered. "We were just waiting for you to open the gate?"

"I actually could've opened it myself," Melody admitted, "but I didn't feel comfortable with the idea of letting someone I didn't know personally just wander into Mike's house like that."

"I get why you say that, Melody," Charlie replied sympathetically, "but this time you don't have to worry. Mr. Duessel's a newer friend of the family we made, and he's helped us out in a big way for the past couple of months."

"Oh!" Melody blinked, before turning to Colm and offering a handshake. "Well in that case, a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Duessel."

"Pleasure to meet you too," Colm replied as he accepted the shake. "I heard her say your name, Ms…?"

Melody brushed off the title. "Just call me Melody, I prefer it like that," she replied.

Colm smirked. "Then I guess you can call me Colm too, then."

The gate unlocked as Charlie deactivated the locks remotely, allowing both Melody and Colm to drive their cars up to Mike's house without any further delay. Melody opened the back of her trunk, revealing five aluminum catering trays that were filled with food. "Mind helping me bring these in?" she requested.

"Sure," Colm agreed. Together, he and Melody helped bring in the food to the house. The Marshalls were visibly excited at the idea of enjoying a nice meal for free, and even the ghosts couldn't help but feel some anticipation despite their inability to eat food without possessing someone.

Right as Colm brought the last food tray in, Gabe suddenly got a call on his phone. His eyes widened as he realized that the Caller ID was Mike, and he immediately answered the phone. "Hey Dad, what's up?" the former Freddy inhabitant greeted his father.

"I finished up that thing Eisensteel asked me to help them out with, and I'm coming back home now," Mike reported. "Hope you guys didn't burn the house down without me!" he added with a snicker.

"All right, see you in a couple of minutes then," Gabe answered, before hanging up the phone. He immediately turned to face everyone. "Guys, Dad is coming! Get ready!"

"Remember, when he comes in, everyone yell SURPRISE!" Liz instructed.

Alex laughed. "Just like our birthday parties. We'll be ready!"

For the next several minutes, the living and dead friends and family of Mike Schmidt waited for the birthday man to come home. The ghosts had an easy time concealing themselves as they could simply make themselves invisible, while the living individuals hid in the living room behind the wall, peeking out to focus on the door. Fritz shut the lights off in every room, plunging the house into darkness with only the sunlight illuminating the inside of the house.

After a seeming eternity, everyone could hear footsteps approaching the front door. They watched with baited breath as Mike turned his key into the lock, and slowly opened the door. "Hey guys! I'm back!" Mike announced, before his eyes widened as he realized that the house was in complete darkness. "What the heck?" he mumbled. "Why is it completely dark here? Where is everyone?"

His first thought was that the worst had happened, that whoever Glitchtrap's possession victim was had somehow found her way into his house and that the ghost kids had needed to hide or flee to safety. But the door hadn't been forced in, and he could see no other signs of disturbance to his house. Still, though, he needed to be careful. Even if it wasn't Glitchtrap's possession victim who had invaded his house, that didn't mean it couldn't be an unrelated intruder. He slowly made his way down the hallway, approaching the living room…

…and immediately the lights flashed on, with confetti exploding from all around him. The Marshalls, Melody, and Colm popped out of their hiding spaces, while the ghosts manifested into existence in front of him. All united in delivering one single message.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"

/

A/N: It isn't easy to get the drop on Mike, but the ghost kids have managed to do it. Whatever he was expecting on his birthday, it wasn't a surprise party where the Marshalls, Melody, AND Colm showed up to celebrate.

I'm sorry I made you wait for 3 weeks only to have the actual birthday party in the next chapter, but I've been extremely busy over those weeks and it took me a lot more time than usual to even bring out this chapter. Among other things, my car got vandalized and that fucked with my mental state something nasty, which certainly didn't help matters at all.

May will continue to be a pretty busy month. I hope to get the actual birthday party done before the month ends, but I must say with all honesty that I cannot make that a guarantee. I hope you enjoy the fluffy moments with the ghost kids working with their living friends to make Mike's party one to remember.

That's all I have for now. I hope you guys enjoyed, even if it meant deferring the actual party to the next chapter.