A/N: Okay, we've had some fun filler chapters for a while, but I think now's as good a time as any for us to get back to FNaF and lore-related stuff. I still have Security Breach and Ruin to cover before I even think about wrapping up this fic once and for all, after all.
Yes1827: The only opinions I have on Ambie Spies are based purely on Soundsmith's "Weapon Stereotypes: Spy" video, for how little that's worth lmao.
Chapter 188 – Ghostly Espionage Part 1
The Schmidt family enjoyed the few months of break time they allowed themselves following their successful salvation of the Special Delivery project. Every day they would check the news, afraid that one they day they would see a story about Freddy Fazbear animatronics going crazy and attacking unsuspecting clients who bought them, even after all the work that they had put in to preventing Glitchtrap's evil plan from succeeding. Thankfully, none of them would ever find such a grim report, with the worst being said about the Special Delivery project was that its sales were lukewarm at best and below what Fazbear Entertainment had expected.
Obviously, neither Mike nor his children gave a shit about how well or how poorly the animatronics were selling. They had promised Fazbear Entertainment that they would make the product of the Special Delivery project safe and free of further scandals, a promise that they had made good on. The success of the project following the cleansing of Glitchtrap's influence was none of their concern.
Still, they couldn't rest on their laurels forever. Glitchtrap's possession victim, whoever she was, was still out there. And although they had prevented Glitchtrap from unleashing another Fazbear-related tragedy, they were no closer to catching them than they had been several months ago.
"As long as Glitchtrap and his possession victim are still out there, and we have no clue who she is, we're on the backfoot," Charlie pointed out the obvious during a family meeting they had arranged to discuss how to proceed in their quest to prevent another Fazbear tragedy from happening. "We know she was somewhere in the Special Delivery project since she programmed all those animatronics to try and attack Dad on the first day of the job, but otherwise she's been keeping her head down…which makes our job harder."
Gabe didn't look much happier about those facts than Charlie or anyone else in the family. "The only thing we can kind of rely on is that if there's a major Fazbear Entertainment project going on," the former Freddy inhabitant added, "she's going to be there to try and screw around with it."
Jeremy sighed. "There's probably going to be another one down the line," he grumbled. "Cause they're bunch of greedy idiots who don't know when to quit."
"We could just wait until Fazbear Entertainment announces their next big project," Susie suggested. "Then we can go ahead and deal with their screw-ups."
Fritz made a face. "That feels way too slow," he complained.
"I'm actually with Fritz here," Mike agreed. "If we wait that long, then there's a decent chance that Fazbear Entertainment will already be almost done with the project by the time they publicly announce it. If that's the case, there's also a decent chance that Glitchtrap's possession victim will already be deep in the project, and who knows how badly she'd have fucked it up by then."
Everyone cringed at the idea. They'd already seen firsthand just how much damage Glitchtrap's possession victim could cause to a major Fazbear Entertainment project, and none of them were eager to see a second catastrophe unfold by their unchecked enemy. "So, what do we do then?" Cassidy wondered. "It's not like we can go online and look stuff up, Fazbear Entertainment hasn't posted anything new. And after all the screw ups they've made, I don't think they're going to announce to the public unless their project is almost ready!"
Mike nodded. "We definitely don't want this to be a case of doing too little, too late. At the very least, we need to figure out exactly what Fazbear Entertainment's latest big project is, if they even have one at all." He frowned, before admitting, "The only problem is…I don't know where we can find that kind of information."
"Why don't we just spy on that one Fazbear Entertainment executive we know about?" Gabe suggested. "Averus, or whatever the hell he's called. He's a high-up executive, right? He should have some kind of important information on his computer."
Fritz perked up at his suggestion. "Ooh, like one of those spy missions?" he asked eagerly.
Mike stroked his chin thoughtfully. "That's a good start, but we're gonna need a little more detail in the plan than that," he replied, not disagreeing but not giving his full endorsement either. "Averus could be working on anything at any given time. Just because you're gonna be spying on him doesn't mean you'll get anything useful. And I'd rather we don't waste hours trying to get anything useful out of him."
"We should have someone spy on Averus during the day, but only so we can figure out what his computer password is," Charlie suggested, refining and fleshing out the plan a bit more.
Liz quickly realized what her sister was suggesting. "Then, we can come back in the dead of night when nobody is around and everything is closed, and we can take as much time as we want to look through Averus' computer!" she finished. Her eyes glistened with excitement. "I think this can really work!"
"I think this is a great idea, but we can't just send anyone inside the office, though," Mike cautioned. "We need people who know how to be stealthy and who know how to keep quiet." He glanced over at Fritz. "Like, no offense, Fritz…but you are literally the LAST person I'd send on any kind of stealth or reconnaissance mission."
The other ghosts snickered. "Yeah, yeah…" the former Foxy inhabitant grumbled. But he didn't argue, because even he was self-aware enough to realize that subtlety was not one of his strengths by any stretch of the imagination.
"I think we should have a team of three of us go in for each spying mission," Gabe advised. "Three for spying on Averus to find out what his username and password are, and three for when we come back in at night to go into his computer properly with nobody around."
"I kinda wanna go on this spying mission…but I know that I'm not the right person for it," Susie admitted with a despondent sight.
"If this was something less serious, I'd give everyone here a chance," Mike answered sympathetically, before his voice became firmer and more authoritative, "but because the stakes are so high with everything surrounding Glitchtrap, we need to pick the best people for the job. I'm picking Charlie, Gabe, and Liz as the three of you who are actually going to do the spying and espionage work. The rest of you guys will be lookouts for the night team while those three do the actual spy work," he instructed.
"That makes sense," Charlie agreed, before sighing. "Let's just hope that there isn't a security camera looking directly into Averus' office, because otherwise that's going to make going through his computer without getting noticed a big issue."
"We could fuck up the security cameras with our powers, though!" Fritz pointed it out.
"True, but it'd still be better if nobody had any reason to believe anything was wrong to begin with," Gabe pointed out, which nobody could argue against.
"If we're really lucky, we might be able to find something just from watching Averus work without needing to sneak into his office at night," Susie suggested hopefully.
Jeremy let out a derisive snort. "Since when has ANYTHING we've done in the past couple of months been the best-case scenario, Susie?" he asked dryly.
That earned a bout of humorless laughter from everyone in the room. "Yeahhhhhh…no, there's a reason why I never base my plans around the best-case scenario," Mike deadpanned. "That's literally begging for your plans to go to complete shit."
"I hate how right you are," Liz grumbled.
"But we have a plan, though," Charlie declared. "I'm not sure how much we can actually learn from spying on Averus, and I'm already assuming that we're not going to find out who Glitchtrap's possession victim is unless we're extremely lucky. But as long as we find something, ANYTHING that's useful, I'll call that a success."
The Next Day…
"You guys know what to do, right?" Mike asked. In order to make it easier for the ghosts going out on the espionage mission to regroup with him, he had decided to rent a room at a nearby hotel. "For the afternoon, you're only going in there to see if there's anything about a big new project that Averus is working on, or you're only trying to find out his computer password. And above all, make sure you don't get caught!"
"We know, Dad, and we'll be careful," Liz reassured him.
"We'll stay around for a couple of hours and then we'll be back to report," Gabe added.
"We all know what the Fazbear Entertainment office building looks like by now, so it shouldn't be very hard for us to get to Averus' office," Charlie commented. "Ready to go?"
"Yep!" The other two ghosts replied.
The three ghosts flew out of the motel room, making sure that they were all invisible and silent, and flew down the street until they were outside the Fazbear Entertainment office building. It was a rather small structure all things considered, only being about 2 floors high. Not that it particularly mattered to the ghost kids, since Mike had already told them what floor and what room Fazbear Entertainment's office was. It was still day out, so there were plenty of cars out on the parking lot. And it was clear that for this first part of their mission, absolute secrecy and stealth was their utmost priority.
The ghosts found the office they were looking for and floated through the wall and into the room. Mike had already described the office to them, but they were surprised by how modest the space turned out to be. After a waiting area where a receptionist was busy working, there was a hallway leading down to a closed door with doors on the left and right side leading to decent-sized office spaces. Averus' office was behind the first door to the left, and it was unsurprisingly the largest office in that entire suite. There were a few Freddy Fazbear related posters on the walls here and there, but that was just about as far as the unique Fazbear decorations went.
"This is kinda…dull…isn't it?" Gabe asked in a tone that was just as dull as the office, sending his thoughts to his sisters telepathically. "I dunno what I was expecting, but this just looks like your run-of-the-mill office."
"I think Dad mentioned that the executives all meet up in a really big fancy office building in a city nearby," Charlie replied, "but I don't remember the details."
"Well, at least finding who we're looking for isn't going to be very hard!" Liz snarked.
"He's not here in the room," Gabe observed. "Do you think he's out for lunch or something?"
Neither of his sisters had any time to answer as Averus barged in, grumbling to himself as he ast down heavily at his chair. "Dammit, dammit, dammit!" he growled, and it was clear to all three ghost kids that he was pissed. "This was supposed to be our flagship project! We were going to sell thousands and thousands of animatronics! But we've only been selling in the low hundreds!"
"I think he's talking about the Special Delivery project," Liz murmured.
Charlie smirked. "Doesn't sound like things are going well for them, are they?" She asked with a slight degree of vindictive satisfaction.
Averus groaned and buried his head in his hands. "It's not like I can blame Schmidt for this either," he grumbled. "As much as I hate to admit it, the dickhead pretty much saved our asses by taking over the project. I don't think we could've survived yet another scandal."
"Who are you calling dickhead, you asshole!" Liz's mental shout of fury rang through both Charlie and Gabe's heads, causing them to both wince.
"Calm down, Liz!" Gabe tried to cool down his sister's temper. "At least he's not blaming Dad for the sales not being as high as they wanted."
"Fuck it," Averus growled as he shoved aside a few papers on his desk. "I don't want to think about that fucking project right now. I'll just focus on that new project that we have planned instead."
"Oh?" Instantly, all three of the ghosts' attention was directed straight at Averus. "Is he about to straight-up show us what Fazbear Entertainment is planning next?" Gabe asked incredulously.
"Shut up and let's listen!" Liz exclaimed.
The three of them watched closely as Averus began to open some files on his computer. The name of the file immediately caught Charlie's attention. "Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex," the former Marionette read. "Oh wow," she whistled, "that sounds like something really high-profile."
Gabe sighed. "Fazbear Entertainment really is just shooting out one big project after another," he grumbled. "What happened to just setting up a few restaurants first, playing things safe like they used to several years back?"
Liz frowned. "It's probably for the best that they're always putting all their eggs in one basket," she pointed out. "Otherwise, Glitchtrap's possession victim could just decide to show up in any one of those many restaurants and we'd have no way of finding her!"
Everyone cringed at the idea. "Good point," Gabe admitted. "At least having only one big project makes finding where she's going to be pretty straightforward…even if the risk of major damage is higher."
"Guys, pay attention!" Charlie scolded, causing the two of them to immediately refocus on what Averus was doing. The corrupt Fazbear executive had stopped complaining and was now working mostly in silence, opening up a few files that were related to the new Pizzaplex project. The ghosts watched in silence as he opened up six pictures showing five different animatronics, none of which the ghost kids had ever seen before. The animatronics were each brightly colored and holding different musical instruments like electric guitars and keytars.
"The heck?" Liz blinked as she tried to process what she was seeing. "Are these guys…rock stars or something?"
"I…think so," Gabe agreed uncertainly. "They look more like rock stars than the actual Rock Star animatronics we have, that's for sure!"
Charlie couldn't argue with either of Liz's or Gabe's statements even if she wanted to. The animatronics that they were looking at on the computer screen absolutely fit the definition of a "rock star" by any metric, an assessment that was further confirmed by reading the names of the animatronics. "Glamrock Freddy," Charlie read the names. "Glamrock Bonnie. Glamrock Chica. Montgomery Gator. Roxanne Wolf."
"Huh," Liz frowned. "No Foxy? That's a bit weird."
"Yeah," Gabe agreed, "and I have no clue what the heck this wolf and this gator are. I've definitely never seen anything like that back in the old days…and I don't remember seeing anything that looked like this in the Special Delivery project either."
"Fazbear Entertainment must've been keeping these hidden to prep for this new project," Charlie surmised. "Either that, or they only came up with these ideas recently."
"Well, I do have to admit, these animatronics are pretty cool," Liz admitted, before sighing. "But with Glitchtrap still running around, he's probably gonna find a way to get his hands on them and ruin everything."
"Did you expect anything else at this point?" Gabe deadpanned as Averus scrolled through the different photos of the Glamrock animatronics. Most of the information on the animatronics was either techno-babble that none of them understood or largely irrelevant, but there was one detail that caught their attention.
"Wait a minute, look at this! They're going to give these animatronics state-of-the-art AI?" Charlie asked incredulously. "With actual personalities and emotions and everything, just like a human!"
"Holy crap!" Liz exclaimed in disbelief. "Is something like that even possible?"
"We definitely have to ask Dad that question," Gabe muttered. "I don't know what animatronics and AI are like right now, but they definitely couldn't do something like this all the way back then. The only reason the animatronics came alive was because WE were in them."
"I'm actually kinda worried about this," Charlie admitted with a frown. "An AI this advanced can be really good…or really bad. Maybe not Skynet destroying the world with a bunch of terminators bad, but if these AI's cause the animatronics to become evil, they could definitely start attacking and seriously hurting or even killing people. And that's WITHOUT factoring in Glitchtrap."
"It's Fazbear Entertainment," Liz deadpanned. "Of course they're going to find some way to fuck it up."
"Well, Dad'll definitely want to hear about this, that's for sure," Gabe remarked. "But let's see if we can find anything else."
The ghosts continued to watch Averus work, but unfortunately, it seemed as though their initial good luck had finally started to run out. It seemed that Averus had decided to tunnel his focus on the animatronics, which didn't give the ghost kids much more information they could make use of beyond what they already had. They couldn't even find out Averus' password, as the executive didn't bother to lock his computer before stepping out to go to the bathroom or get a drink or whatever else he did to take a break.
"This is starting to get boring," Liz complained after more than an hour of failed intelligence. "And useless. I really don't think we're gonna get much more out of this."
"I think you're right, at least for today," Charlie admitted. "Let's just wait a couple of minutes, and if we don't find anything else useful we can report back to Dad. What we already got is more than I expected to find, honestly."
"Yeah," her siblings agreed. Thirty more minutes passed, and right when the three ghosts were about to leave, Averus suddenly received a phone call.
"Hello?" the corpulent executive answered gruffly. "What is it?" There were a few seconds of silence as an unintelligible voice spoke from the other end of the phone. "The status of the building? I already told you at the last meeting that we're still a few months away from completing construction!"
"Oh, hang on, we might just learn something!" Liz exclaimed as the three kids, who had previously been getting bored, gave the executive their full attention once again.
"Yeah yeah, I'll open up the file, hold on a sec," Averus grumbled. Scowling and muttering under his breath, the executive opened up a different file on his computer. The file showed another image, but unlike the ones that featured the Glamrock animatronics, this one showed an unfinished building that was still in the process of being constructed.
"Huh," Gabe studied the image for a moment. "I don't know anything about construction, but this building looks like it's still a couple of months away from being done."
"No wonder we haven't heard anything about it," Liz more or less agreed with her brother's assessment. "Fazbear Entertainment isn't anywhere near ready to announce this project to the public right now." She sighed. "Honestly, I can't even blame them right now. We don't even know if they have the animatronics made yet."
The three of them waited a few seconds to see if Averus would open up a file containing the building's address or say the address out loud, but to their disappointment they did neither. "Look, we're on schedule, which is honestly a miracle since making a new building from scratch is a major pain in the ass," Averus complained. "If you're done asking questions, quit wasting my goddamn time!"
"What a nice guy," Gabe drawled sarcastically as he hung up the phone and roughly slammed it back into its original position. "No wonder Dad liked him so much."
"Let's get out of here," Liz suggested, "I don't want to hang around this asshole any longer than we have to. We've gotten plenty to report back to Dad as it is."
"Yeah…" Charlie agreed, a bit absentmindedly. Gabe and Liz gave her an odd look, but neither of them said anything. The three ghosts flew out of the office and out of the building, back towards the inn where their father and other siblings were waiting.
"Hey, Charlie?" Gabe was the first to speak what both he and his sister had been thinking. "You all right? You're looking kinda…off, there."
"Oh…" the former Marionette shook her head to clear her thoughts. "Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, Gabe."
"No, it's fine," Liz reassured her. "Is something bothering you, though? You can talk to us."
"Nothing…specific," Charlie answered slowly after a few seconds as she tried to decide how to convey what she was thinking. "Just this odd feeling. I don't really have anything to go off of besides just a hunch, but I can't ignore it either."
"What?" Gabe asked intently. After everything they had been through, he trusted Charlie and took her thoughts and words very seriously. A sentiment that he knew Liz shared, given that his sister was also focusing on Charlie.
"It's just that…it's something about the place that Averus showed us when he opened up that file on the Mega Pizzaplex," Charlie explained. "Not the building itself, that's obviously something that's completely new, but where they're building it." She shook her head in frustration. "I can't remember the details, but I feel like…"
"Yeah?" Liz prompted.
Charlie took a breath before continuing. "…I feel like I've seen it somewhere before."
/
A/N: Anyone who's seen the "true ending" of Security Breach will know where this is going. Charlie's hunch is absolutely correct…even if she doesn't know why yet.
Surprisingly, the ghost kids actually got more out of their little espionage episode than they were expecting. They know about the existence of the Mega Pizzaplex, they know about some of the animatronics that are going to be featured there (even if that knowledge is surface-level), and they even know that the Pizzaplex is at least a few months away from being completed).
There will be another "ghostly espionage" chapter where the ghost kids will do some more spying, but it will probably be after a "time skip" so that it's closer to when the actual events of Security Breach happen.
Anyways, that's all I have for now. Hope you guys enjoyed
