A/N: I seriously hate how sometimes my fic shows up as an earlier version on the FNAF fic listings with like 8 reviews and 2 chapters sometimes. I don't know what the hell is going on with the site, but it really annoys me how my fic seems to be affected by this glitch more often than others. I won't ever delete reviews (unless they're spam BS) or chapters en masse, guys, so keep a look out in case screws up the display.

Anyway, on to the next chapter. This one will be the last light-hearted one before things start getting serious / advancing forward again. But kids at this age just want to play, and play they shall. Be warned, though: some of the depicted situations might be a little too real.

I'm not going to be explaining how the 3 video games I chose for this chapter work, because seriously, you should know how these games work if you have any rudimentary video game knowledge at all. Also, for most of them, I'm not going to be explicitly assigning the ghost kids any characters. You're free to use your imagination to decide that for yourselves 😊

Chapter 9 – Fun with Video Games 1

One hour after the black cesspit of atrocious grammar and their first online grammar lesson, the ghost kids were all racing to the living room. Mike knew he had a daunting task ahead of him – these kids were woefully behindwhen it came to the glory that was video games, and it was now Mike's solemn duty to bring them up to speed. He'd only show them "kid-friendly" video games for now (showing them mature or even teen games at this early stage sounded like a very bad idea), but even in that category he had plenty of material to work with.

"All right," Mike said as he sat down onto the couch. "Video games. Where do I start? They are, without a doubt, one of the best and most exciting ways to entertain yourself and, if you have friends for multiplayer, others who're playing with you. Quite a few different companies have made consoles for video games, but for now I'm just going to stick to this one." He tapped one of the consoles lightly. "Nintendo. They've made a TON of different video game series that have captured the hearts and minds of children and adults alike, and a lot of them I consider appropriate for kids your age."

"You've got a lot of Nintendo consoles scattered around," Gabe observed. "Some of them look small, like they're meant to be held in your hand."

"Good eye!" Mike grinned. "Some consoles are meant to be played on a TV, while others are for you to hold and play in your hand. But just because a game is played on a smaller handheld doesn't make it inherently worse."

"Will we get to play on all of them?" Cassidy asked, eyes wide and excited.

Her new dad thought for a moment. "Eventually," he decided. "But I'm not going to jump right into the new ones for all of them. Some of them have the same or similar functionality over the years, but others have progressed a LOT beyond their early days. There's a lot of old games that are considered timeless classics, still highly popular to this day even in comparison to newer ones."

Jeremy reached out and picked one of the games. "Like Mario?" he asked. "That name shows up a lot in your stack of games."

"Mario is a legend, a heroic plumber who rescues his princess from the evil Koopa monster King Bowser," Mike explained, "or at least that's the short summary. He has a lot of spin-off games, and in the interest of keeping as many people interested and having fun as possible I'm going to start with those. Mario Kart's as good of a place to start as any for playing with lots of people. Here's how it works…"

[[ONE LONG AND DETAILED EXPLANATION ABOUT MARIO KART AND A FEW PRACTICE ROUNDS LATER…]]

"Dammit!" Fritz shouted as his kart got smashed aside by a chain chomp. "What the hell? Why did it come out JUST as I was about to pass it?"

"Cause you're a noob who doesn't know how to stay away from the big fat hungry bowling ball?" Jeremy taunted as he sped past Cassidy. It was their final lap, and all the ghost kids were playing to win. Mike had to marvel at the fact that they were already being this competitive over a single race, not even a Grand Prix.

Susie sighed as she ran into yet another Goomba. "I'm no good at this," she admitted as her character spun out. "Everyone else is a lot better at this than I am."

"No reason to give up, though," Mike pointed out. "If you're sucking and you know you don't have a chance to win, you can still have fun by screwing around with other players! Lower places get better items."

Susie hit another item block and a lightning bolt appeared in her item box. Mike smirked. "Hit it, Susie."

Jeremy's eyes widened. "Wait, no!" Too late. Lightning struck every other kart except hers, shrinking them and destroying the speed boost that he had snagged in the process. "Oh, come on!" he complained. "Now I'm slow as hell!"

"Eat my dust, you two!" Fritz smirked as he sped past Jeremy and Cassidy, having recovered from the lightning first. He whooped in victory as he crossed the finish line, leaving the others to sigh in defeat as they passed the line behind him.

Mike rolled his eyes "I wouldn't get too cocky yet, Fritz," he warned. "That wasn't even a Grand Prix. If you really are as good as you say you are, then you should be able to handle this track." He took the P1 controller and selected Rainbow Road. The ghosts' eyes widened at the beautiful sight of a rainbow-colored road high up in an outer space filled with stars and lights.

"It's so pretty!" Susie and Cassidy gushed at the brilliant and colorful graphics. Mike smirked. These kids had no idea of the true Hell that awaited them underneath the track's heavenly façade.

"Ready, kids?" Mike asked as Cassidy, Susie, Fritz, and Jeremy grabbed their controllers. "Three…two…one…"

What followed was absolute chaos. The kids had only just gotten an understanding of how the controls worked, and Rainbow Road was a course designed for experts. It seemed like every three seconds one of them would fall off the track and another racer would zoom past, only for THAT racer to fall off and squander that momentary lead. Funnily enough, this actually kept the race relatively close, as nobody could maintain a consistent lead due to the numerous failures.

And that was BEFORE the racers started throwing items at each other.

"Oh, screw off!" Jeremy snarled as Cassidy hit him with a Green Shell. This would have been bad enough, except for the fact that the impact managed to knock him off the track entirely as well. "That's bullshit!"

"Too bad!" Cassidy smirked as she charged ahead, only to hit a fake cube. She barely managed to regain control of her cart in time, but the loss of momentum had given Fritz the opportunity to pass her.

"Why the hell is this track so GOD DAMN LONG?" Susie exclaimed. Her luck had not improved in the slightest since the last race, and it was only thanks to a Chain Chomp and the others' constant failures that she was able to even be in the running. She sighed as she picked up three mushrooms from an Item box. "Ugh…I'm not sure I even want these with how easy it is to fall off. I'll take what I can get I guess…" she muttered, waiting until the road was straighter or protected by railways before activating them.

"I'm not done yet!" Jeremy snapped as he picked up a star and activated it. He grinned as he sped forward, and Cassidy yelped as he smashed into her kart, and this time she did fall off. "Payback!"

Fritz, in the meantime, had taken advantage of the chaos messing with the other racers to boost himself to first place, with Susie following behind thanks to the three mushrooms she had gotten earlier. "Final lap!" he thought excitedly as he crossed the checkpoint line. "I can do this!"

"Dammit, Fritz is getting away!" Jeremy exclaimed. He drove forward into an item block, and cursed as it yielded a Blooper. "Oh, God dammit!" he shouted. "That doesn't help me!"

"On this track, it might," Mike commented. Jeremy activated the Blooper, but unfortunately for him, Fritz managed to avoid falling off the Road. "Or not."

"We have to stop him!" Susie exclaimed.

"Why are you guys teaming up on me?" Fritz complained as he narrowly avoided falling off a sharp turn.

Cassidy drove into an item block and got a lightning bolt. "Perfect."

"Ah, shi…" CRACK! Fritz cursed as the lightning bolt struck him, but unfortunately for the others, he had gotten struck by it on a straight track just behind a boost panel, and he was able to use that to make up for the lost speed.

Jeremy, meanwhile, had gotten an item that none of them had seen before. A spiky blue shell with wings? "Hey, Mike, what does this do?"

"Why don't you use it, Jeremy?" Mike suggested in an innocent tone that sounded all too fake.

Jeremy activated the item and watched it fly off. "So what does it do?" he repeated.

His dad grinned sinisterly. "It screws over whoever's in first place."

Fritz's eyes widened in horror. "Wait, but that's…oh, fuck. Oh, fuck! OH FUUUUU…!"

The blue shell spun around his cart and exploded, creating a devastating blast that sent his cart flying into the air. To add insult to injury, a Red Shell thrown by Susie knocked right into him seconds later, and that small push was just enough to force him off the track. "DAMN IT!" Fritz howled as he watched his cart plummet into the abyss. As he was forced to watch Lakitu rescue his cart, every other racer zoomed past him and made it to the finish line, leaving him in last place. "What the hell?" Fritz shouted. "How is that fair?"

"Welcome to Mario Kart," Mike smirked. "Where everyone and anyone can get screwed at any time, and nobody gets first place until somebody crosses that finish line after the final lap."

"I won!" Susie cheered. "I barely even knew what I was doing and I'm the worst racer here, but I won!"

"This game seems kind of luck-based," Gabe commented.

"Pretty much every video game has some kind of luck factor," Mike replied. "Skill does matter, but being better doesn't mean you're always going to win. If that were true, then every game would be boring because nobody would be able to catch up to first place ever. Being better means you can minimize the number of times you get screwed and you can recover from when you get screwed as quickly as possible. Because in Mario Kart, whether it's from a well-aimed shell or a blue shell of doom, you WILL get screwed."

"That was pretty fun until the part when Jeremy and Cassidy wrecked the crap out of me…" Fritz grudgingly admitted.

"Anyway, that's enough Mario Kart for now," Mike turned off the game. "I've got more to show you guys. This next game is just as famous as Mario Kart, and has a LOT more than just a fat red plumber. It's time to show you guys the glory of Super Smash Bros.!"

[[ANOTHER LONG EXPLANATION OF SUPER SMASH BROS. AND HOW IT WORKS LATER BECAUSE IF I ACTUALLY WROTE OUT THE DAMN THING IT WOULD BORE THE CRAP OUT OF EVERYONE WHO ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT SMASH BROS. IS, AKA EVERYONE]]

Everyone watched excitedly as four fighters from different game genres started beating the ever- loving crap out of each other in different ways. This time, Gabe, the Marionette, Liz, and Jeremy were playing, the latter having won the right to play two games in a row by correctly guessing how many fingers Mike was holding behind his back. Mike had chosen Final Destination as the playing field, the most basic field so that they could play without worrying about obstacles.

"Hah!" Gabe shouted triumphantly as he sent Mary flying off the screen and to oblivion. "Take that!"

"So you managed to finally knock me off at 170% damage, when I still have more lives than the rest of you," Mary retorted. "I hope you feel proud of yourself."

"Uh oh, this isn't good," Jeremy muttered as he tried to keep away from the other fighters and attack from a distance. He'd been ganged up on by both Liz and Gabe earlier, and had only avoided death because the two had noticed that Mary was relatively healthy and had started attacking her instead. Unfortunately for him, Liz had noticed his vulnerable position, and was now charging toward him.

"Ah, crap!" he tried to jump out of the way, but Liz had predicted his movement and had also jumped to attack him midair. Her attack sent him flying off the screen, but not quite far enough to instantly KO him. He tried to jump and spin back to the platform, but he had been too far off and ended up falling to his death anyway. "Dammit!"

"Gotcha!" Liz cheered, only for Mary to attack her while she was distracted. She managed to get out of the way, but Gabe was waiting for her and grabbed her. He leaped off the platform and sent them both plummeting into the abyss, killing them both instantly. "What….why?" she spluttered.

"I was at high damage and figured I might as well take you with me," he replied nonchalantly.

Mike shrugged. "It's not a bad idea. If you're going to die anyway, might as well make sure somebody else goes down with you."

"Well played," she grudgingly admitted as they both respawned. At this point, everyone only had one life left, except for the Marionette, who still had 2.

"If we don't do something soon, Mary's gonna win!" Jeremy suddenly realized.

"Everybody get her!" Gabe shouted.

Mary sighed. "You've got to be kidding me!" she muttered. Still, she put up a valiant fight, and managed to get around 50-60% damage on everyone before Gabe finally blasted her off the arena, destroying her extra life. The lights in her eyes flickered on as she respawned. "If that's how you want to play…" She suddenly started playing much more expertly, using combos that the other kids had no idea were even possible. Jeremy and Gabe tried to gang up on her again to their frustration, but the Marionette was done messing around. She effortlessly dodged every attack that the two ghost kids tried to land on her, and her counter-attacks gave no room for either of them to block or dodge. Within a few seconds, she had utterly wiped the floor with both, leaving only a very nervous Liz behind.

"Ummm…" she stuttered as she watched Mary's character advance on her own. "What just happened?"

"We got wrecked is what happened," Jeremy mumbled.

The Marionette smirked. "Come at me," she taunted as she waited for Liz to attack. To her credit, Liz did her best, and was even able to land a few hits on Mary. But it just wasn't enough. Mary pummeled Liz and sent her character rocketing into the sky, where she flew off into the horizon and disappeared in a twinkle of light. "And that's game."

The results screen appeared, with Mary as the obvious winner. Gabe had done the second best, with Liz third and Jeremy fourth. "Maybe we should've had somebody besides Mary play this round," Jeremy commented. "I mean, she's had a year's worth of practice ahead of everyone else."

Mike shrugged. "It is what it is. There's a very competitive environment around Smash, and people actually hold tournaments for games like Smash and Mario Kart. This one takes a lot of practice to master, and that's not even taking character tiers into account."

"Character tiers?" Cassidy repeated.

"Some characters are better than others," Mike explained. "You can look up the tier lists on the Internet later. Right now, I've got one more game to show you, and this one is one of my personal favorites."

[[YET ANOTHER LONG-ASS EXPLANATION ABOUT A VIDEO GAME EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT, BECAUSE SERIOUSLY, IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT MARIO PARTY IS YOU MUST HAVE BEEN LIVING UNDER A FUCKING ROCK FOR THE PAST TWENTY YEARS OR SOMETHING…]]

Mike was particularly enthusiastic about this set of games, and it was easy for the ghosts to see why. Most of the minigames were loads of fun, and the way the game combined them with the board game dynamic made it a huge hit with everyone. However, his decision to pick the second game instead of the first had confused everyone except the Marionette. Jeremy had even asked Mike why they weren't playing any of the newer games, especially since they had much better graphics from being on newer consoles.

"Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy," Mike shook his head. "You are but a novice to the inner workings of Mario Party, and have yet to understand the fundamental truth that the oldest Mario Party games are the best Mario Party games. Mario Party 2 and 3 are timeless classics that will never be replaced."

"What about Mario Party 1?" Susie asked.

Mike scowled. "Fuck those control stick spinning minigames…" he muttered under his breath.

"What?"

"Don't worry about it."

Back in the present, Fritz was about to take his turn. "Come on…" he pleaded as the dice block appeared over his head. "Don't give me a one!"

"Why did you say that?" Liz asked in bemusement. "Now you're going to get a one for sure."

The two of them, Susie, and Cassidy had been playing Pirate Land on Mario Party 2. Currently, Susie was in the lead with 2 stars (one of which she had gotten from a Hidden Block, to the consternation of every other player), Cassidy and Liz both had 1, while Fritz had 0. They all had a medium-high number of coins, except for Cassidy, who had managed to stockpile over 100 thanks to a 30-coin battle minigame of Bowser's Big Blast.

"I hate luck-based mini-games!" Fritz had complained when he had been the first one to get blown up.

Mike shrugged. "Yeah, me too usually, but I dunno. There's always been something about Bowser's Big Blast that makes me like it despite everything. Day on the Races, on the other hand, can fuck off and die…" he had muttered the last part under his breath.

Fritz hit the dice block, and breathed a sigh of relief as he landed a 5, which was enough for him to reach the star. "Oh, thank God…"

"To be honest, when you said 'don't roll a one' I kind of expected you to get screwed over and roll the one," Mike said dryly as Fritz hit a blue space.

Susie hit the dice block and groaned as she got a 2. "Dammit…" she cursed. "Now I get Bowser." The Koopa King's menacing visage showed up, and forced Susie to spin his roulette. She breathed a sigh of relief as it landed on "Bowser's Appearing Act." "Oh, well at least I might not be getting screwed this time."

"Bowser will appear on the board?" Gabe read. "What does that do?"

Mike grinned. "Oh, nothing much. All he does is show up where Baby Bowser is, roll three dice blocks, and steal every single coin from every person he passes."

"Oh, that's it?" Susie asked. Then she fully processed what Mike had just said. "SHIT! I'm only a few spaces away from Baby Bowser!"

Liz also was panicking at this point, as she was also within killing range. "I need to roll high so I can steal Susie's star!" She rolled her dice and only got a 4. "Oh, thank God…" she might not have escaped Bowser's incoming attack, but she had reached Boo. "Gimme that star!"

"NO!" Susie shouted, but it was too late. Boo had taken one of her stars, and there was nothing she could do about it.

"Thank God…" Liz sighed in relief. Even if she lost her coins now, at least the star would keep her high up in the rankings.

"I am so, SO happy I got the star first," Fritz thankfully muttered. He didn't have as much coins as everyone else, so Bowser taking everyone's coins might be a hidden blessing rather than a game wrecker for him.

"This is a weird game," Mike muttered. "Usually, people get screwed over by dice rolls when they need them the most. The fact that nobody's failed this turn is very weird."

"Well, they're about to get screwed over by something else," Gabe pointed out as Bowser took to the field. The kids couldn't help but giggle at his pirate costume. "Let's see what he hits."

Bowser hit the first block. 10. "Well, that sucks…" Fritz muttered. He hit the second block. 10. "Again? No way…" Jeremy breathed. He hit the third block. , physical or otherwise, dropped to the floor. "HE ROLLED A THIRTY?" everyone exclaimed.

"Wait…that means…OH NO!" Cassidy suddenly exclaimed. "I'm in range!" The players could only watch helplessly as Bowser ruthlessly charged forward through the island, showing no mercy whatsoever. Liz had been the lucky one – her star steal expenditure meant she only lost around 25 coins. But as for the others…

Fritz: -35 coins. Susie: -67 coins. Cassidy: -156 coins.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!" Cassidy wailed as Bowser completed his rampage. "WHHHHHYYYYYYYYYY?"

Mike cringed. That was a tough pill to swallow no matter how many times you played the game. And on the last turn, too…that was a game-changer right there, that's for sure. "Uhm…" he mumbled, "there's still…Chance…Time?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," Cassidy mumbled sarcastically as she hit her dice block. "Like that'll help me." She rolled her dice block and hit a 3. "Wait a minute…there's a Chance Time spot over there…and I have a Skeleton Key…"

"Oh, wow!" her dad exclaimed. "I was just kidding about the Chance Time thing, but this might actually be real!"

"Do it!" Fritz challenged her. "What've you got to lose?"

"Absolutely nothing, let's do it!" Cassidy exclaimed as she landed on the space. The Chance Time stage showed up, and she hit the middle block first. The players and the crowd "oooooh"-ed as it revealed a star giveaway.

"This could define the game right here," Mike commented as Cassidy hit the giver block next, revealing…

"Awwwwww!" Liz moaned. "I just got that star!"

"One more…" Mike breathed as Cassidy hit the giver block, revealing…

"YES!" Fritz cheered. "Finally, I get some GOOD luck for once! After getting shafted in Mario Kart! Thank God!"

Liz looked over at him, and couldn't help but smile despite everything. "Well, if I had to give a star to someone, I'm glad it was you."

He grinned back at her. "Thanks, Liz."

"Wow, that is one of the most chill reactions to losing a star on Chance Time that I've ever seen," Mike commented as the last minigame played out. It was Demolition Dash, and the four players began smashing away and pummeling at a Bowser statue. Cassidy and Susie destroyed their statue first a few seconds later, and the game reached its conclusion.

"These bonus stars are going to decide the entire game," Mike declared as the characters lined up on the screen.

The first one appeared, the Mini-game star, and it went to…

"Yes!" Susie exclaimed. "I don't go home with nothing!"

The Coin star appeared next, and there were no surprises as to who won this one.

"If I didn't get the Coin star after stacking up over 130 coins, I was going to be very angry," Cassidy snarked.

"All that's left is the Happening Star," Mike announced. "Whoever wins this might win the game…"

The Happening Star appeared, and the last game-defining star went to…

"YES!" Fritz whooped. "I WON! AFTER GETTING SCREWED OVER IN RAINBOW ROAD, I FINALLY WON!"

Liz smirked. "Bet things wouldn't have turned out so well if you hadn't gotten that star I stole from Cassidy," she commented.

Fritz brushed it off. "Who cares, I finally won! But seriously, Liz," he smiled, "thanks for the help."

"Did the entirety of a 20-turn game get decided by that last turn?" Gabe asked. "I'm starting to sense a pattern here…"

Mike shrugged. "That was an incredibly rare sequence of events, Gabe. Getting Bowser's Appearing Act on the roulette, him rolling a freaking thirty, AND Chance Time? The chance of that happening in one turn is probably less than 1 in 10000. Besides, who cares? At the end of the day, it's all in good fun. Plus, in its own weird way, seeing people get screwed in video games makes for some top-tier hilarity in and of itself. If only because you get to see the rage-filled reactions of whoever got the short end of the stick." He smiled fondly. "I still get together with some of my old buddies from college sometimes for a game, and I never get tired of seeing their reactions whenever I fuck'em over with a Boo."

"Will we ever get to meet your college friends? Or their kids?" Cassidy asked.

Mike's smile faded. "That's…a difficult question to answer, Cassidy," he admitted. "I told Mary this and I'll tell you too. I have to be very careful about who I tell about you guys. Remember, as far as everyone else is concerned, ghosts and souls either don't exist or don't stick around. And there's a lot of problems that can happen if I fuck this up. You can talk on the Internet as much as you want, but when it comes to the actual meet and greet, that's gonna be tricky for me to deal with."

The children all sighed. In the bodies of the animatronics, they had been forced to watch endlessly from the stage as children happily played with each other and took part in something they never could. They were happy just to be with each other, especially now that they were free from the Fazbear curse, with so many new toys at their disposal and a loving parent to watch over them, but they had missed playing with other kids for 30 years and still missed it to this day. Still, it was out of there hands, and all of them trusted Mike's judgment.

"Anyway," Mike looked up at the clock. "It's 1 pm and I need lunch. You guys can continue playing whatever you want while I eat, and when I come back we can move on to other things. Sound good?"

"Yep!" the children chorused, and he couldn't help but smile inwardly as he got up and left. Even after 30 years of pain and loneliness, the kids had reacted to the video games exactly how people normally would. Some things never changed, and as far as he concerned, that was a good sign.

/

A/N: I didn't grow up with larger Nintendo consoles, surprisingly enough. Most of my experience with things like Mario Kart and Mario Party are from Youtube videos. But I've seen plenty of those to know ALL about the rage-inducing moments that can happen. The possibilities of getting screwed over are simply endless XD

After getting mentally tortured by horrendous grammar, I figured I should give the kids something that would be just as fun for them as it would be for the readers. Video games have advanced so much in the past 30 years that it isn't even funny, and they have a LOT to catch up on. Mario Kart, Mario Party, Super Smash Bros….that's only scratching the surface. There's an entire world out there. But that's for another time.

Hope I didn't give any of you guys PTSD flashbacks from getting your ass kicked by bad luck in any of these games :P