"Be Bold, Be Brave" and "Rise Above", because we got a shit ton of ground to cover for our soon-to-be heroes. ;)

Chapter Sixteen

Be Bold, Be Brave, and Rise Above

"Mikey!"

Her mother-in-law was mortified at the implication, Henry equally so but also resigned and agreeing, and that left Kaleia exhausted and seeing spots remaining of the red haze, consumed by the fury and thirst for William Afton's blood over what he did to her parents, to that poor guy...

...and Charlie and those kids.

They all knew Afton would continue getting away with it as he'd done all these years, but who was to say there was no one on the Hurricane police force who knew he did it without the bodies' being discovered, along with any of the residents in that town? Who was to say that someone hadn't tried anything already? "Why else, Mum?" Michael asked Clara heatedly. "Charlie's here now, we know all of this now -"

"And more to come," Charlie piped in.

"- and more to come," Michael repeated. "Obviously, we can't just jump in, the police should take this on, but they would just think we're crazy if we so much as went to them without something concrete. My sperm donor would come after us as soon as he found out we were onto him. Hell, those machines...who knows."

Clara had the look on her face that was the one a mother would give her child as she told them to not do something they weren't supposed to, but at the same time, Michael was a grown man who made his own choices, and she had to believe in him. Henry's eyes were shadowed with the memories of the past that had come back to haunt him and all of them, one of them being the daughter who was taken from him now in the body of the security marionette that failed to keep her safe. "Mike..." he started only to fall silent for a long time. Then he sighed almost inaudibly. "Clara, he has good points. There's no telling whether or not William will ever track Charlie here, or what he will do next. One thing is sure: the peace we've finally gotten could be shattered."

"Which means we've gotta do something," Kaleia agreed, knowing it only made sense, but she was also scared on so many levels. She served in only one brief but traumatic war and knew enough about guns and enemies, but William Afton had been in Vietnam for a longer time than her. He got away unscathed but tarnished by the disappearances and "possible" murders - possible in the public eye and legal records - and no one knew the truth but this small group.

The police were out of the question.

They were alone.

How were they going to go about this?

~o~

"It's too late, we just learned enough, so we should just try to sleep on it, and then get back to this tomorrow."

They came out here so late and struggled to sleep after that; Henry suggested he and Kaleia stay the night with him and Clara, and then call in sick so they could catch up on some hours and start planning once heads had been cleared.

Except it was difficult to have a peaceful rest after the horrors they were shown.

He and his wife were allowed to sleep in his old room, Kaleia in one of his old t-shirts which was one of the sexiest things ever. She'd slept in his shirts before and it hadn't gotten old yet. If only they could stay awake the rest of the night until dawn, which was how long Charlie said she operated, but she insisted that he and Kaleia sleep for now and she would give them more intel the following night. "The others like me," she'd said, and she was held to it. Along with everything they knew already, it would be put together to tell the whole story. "If you can't sleep tonight, then it's gonna get worse. Much worse."

Yeah, what a night it had been. Living nightmares and reunions all in one.

Kaleia sobbed hard, hiccupped, whined like a baby, and cursed her parents' murderer all in one. She held onto Michael, and he let her bleed her heart. He dwelled on Elizabeth, the sister he never wronged as much as he did to Evan but wished he'd protected just as much. She was trapped in Circus Baby, who their father had created personally in honor of her but also for a sinister purpose...her, his in-laws, the mole...

...and they needed to be FREE.

The solution had to be finding wherever Afton Robotics was, get blueprints, assess the situation with the animatronics, and go from there. That was enough to calm Mike down and sleep with his beloved wife, kissing her and wiping her tears away in the process. He wanted to comfort her in the other way, but he was so tired, and she was, too.

At some point during the night, he could have sworn he saw both glowing pinpricks that were Charlie's eyes through the opened doorway of his room, so that she could peek in and check on them during the night, doing her job as night protector. Unfortunately, that meant she'd had to leave behind the pizzeria where the other lost souls were.

When the morning broke, Michael smelled Clara's cooking. Bacon and blueberry waffles. That told him she was in a somewhat chipper mood despite last night, namely to do with Charlie's presence in their lives and in a new body, mixed with the trauma of horror experimentation seen through shared ESP. His mom was gonna make damn sure they had full stomachs through this, and it was appreciated.

Henry was at the table, emotions in a mixture. He was wiping his tears over his coffee mug, and Michael knew why. It made him enraged towards William, because the families of the other missing children would never know what happened to the lights of their lives, never know what became of them...

...the children who grew up with the Fazbear gang as part of their meaningful childhood, innocent enough to the horrors they were never directly a part of...

...the worst was the entertainment entity itself even after William Afton was "booted".

They cared nothing of the suffering of those direct or indirect.

"She showed us what happened to those children, Mikey," Clara suddenly said, right after embracing Kaleia. A rare bond mother and daughter-in-law shared anywhere in the world. "But we need food in our bellies first."

~o~

He didn't even get to go to Charlie's funeral because he was in here. But Uncle Henry told him how everything went.

Funerals were usually rainy days or sunny ones. The skies either wept with the mourners or were too bright as if trying to tell you life went on and the person would never be forgotten, that you still had so much to live for. "But you tell me, why does shit like this happen?!" Henry had burst over the phone before quickly apologizing in his haste, sniffling as if from crying. "She shouldn't even be in the ground, up on the hill and beneath a tree! She should be going to school, passing her tests and homework, then going off to college - maybe a boyfriend I knew was good for her if I could see it! WHAT DID SHE DO TO DESERVE THAT?!"

And on the same day as Evan, Michael's inner self cruelly whispered to him, that his uncle would never say aloud.

"I went to Junior's with your father after the services, you know, Mike. I wished the Lord would take me so I could be with her and her mother, but Will...well, he barked that Charlie would never have wanted that. I was such an idiot for thinking that, when you and Elizabeth are still here, and all four of us have each other. I'll see them again someday; just know she and Evan are likely playing together again."

Michael bowed his head, keeping the phone to his ear. His time was almost up. He wanted to cry because that was the power of Henry's words. He was gonna be with him and Mom, where she was now, as soon as he was out of here. He never wanted to see William again, not after all this. Not when the old man dropped him like a hat for something he knew nothing about. Not when William would just continue to remind him of his stupidity if he'd continued living with the neglectful bastard.

~o~

"What happened to the kids?" Kaleia asked, calm for the moment and thanks to the rose-extract chamomile tea in both hands.

"Susie Stampler, a friend of Elizabeth's, was the first," Henry monotoned. "William learned of the death of her dog somehow and used that to bring her into the back room. He made it quick for her, taking the knife to her throat." He halted, shoulders shaking. "He...he told her that he spared her the trouble of living without Elizabeth, and her life was going to be part of his mission. And so would the others that came after her.

"Jeremy O'Neill came after her. Kid had just a father after being abandoned by the mother, and after he went missing and was never found, it got out the dad took his own life. William snapped his neck when he tried to escape." Henry then covered his eyes with one palm, unable to continue for a long moment, prompting Clara to pick it up for him.

"You remember the woman who I wanted so much to strangle for what she did to you, even though I understood her pain?" she asked. There was only one woman she spoke of that they all knew: Mrs. Wilson, currently committed in the local rehab center, refusing to leave its walls because she feels there's nothing for her. "Her little boy, Fritz...oh, God...his eyes...and Gabriel Grace with him, losing his hands and feet to an axe...but Cassidy Landis..."

Cassidy Landis got the worst of it as William Afton got more deranged with each murder, but how much worse could he get? "What did he do, Mum?" Michael asked numbly, sounding like he was trying to swallow what he'd throw up.

"...strangulation to weaken her, then bashed her head and neck in with a crowbar."

CRASH!

Kaleia didn't mean to do it, but the half-empty cup slipped out of her fingers. The monstrosity...the brutality...the waste of innocent life...the waste of oxygen that was the murderer...

And worst: the company that now took over from there likely knew about it and was covering it up.

~o~

"So, if Charlie lives on in the puppet...what about the other kids?"

"The bodies were never recovered, so either they're still at the pizzeria or were buried elsewhere after William disposed of them," Henry was telling him as they sat before the television, the women in the kitchen and taking care of the dishes. "I helped the best I could, as you know, but after every inch was accounted for, there was no place left to look. I'm trying to wrack my brain but have nothing at the moment. We should act soon, but we can't just barge in blindly. What your father and I started, meant to bring happiness and escapism for children and their families, turned into a hellscape. It was supposed to be SAFE."

And those people back in Hurricane were safe still? While the true monster was still out and about?

"So, maybe," Michael said after some more thinking, "we should start with Afton Robotics. We get what we need from there, then set the place ablaze after we find the evidence we need. If the Funtimes are there, we set them free. Maybe fire will do the trick, dismantling them? Any of them would work and don't do well with flames. Maybe he'll be there, maybe he won't..."

They had three places they knew of to take down: said Afton Robotics, wherever that was, the Junior's and Freddy Fazbear pizzerias, and maybe the old Fredbear's.

There was a lot of ground to cover.