A/N: I had the worst week last week. Three med school tests and four med school quizzes in a single week. You'd think that having Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day would be easier, but nope. We get at least one exam and 3-4 quizzes every single week here. Good times!
Lots of dialogue coming up this chapter. Shouldn't be much of a surprise, considering the topic.
To answer Rebiele in the reviews, I do have something very special and specific planned for Michael Afton. However, his presence requires a significant amount of setup for me to execute properly that also ties in closely with character development for Liz/Elizabeth, and he won't directly show up for a while. I WILL be making mentions of him a few times before that though, such as in this chapter.
Chapter 11 – Old and New Friends, Part 2
Alex and Meghan sat down on the sofa as the ghost kids stood/floated around them. The living and dead kids had exchanged introductions as soon as their parents had gone down into the basement, and now they were brimming with questions and curiosity.
"What's it like being a ghost?" Meghan was the first to voice a question. "Do you just float around, do you have any special powers, or…?"
Gabe shrugged. "Well, we can turn invisible and we're basically intangible for the most part," he explained. "We can interact with the physical world to some degree, although not as much as a living person. For example," he moved over to the pile of consoles and picked up one of them, "I can pick up this Nintendo controller just fine, but I can also float through the walls." He quickly walked through one of them and came back a few seconds later. "Like this!"
"Cool!" Alex said approvingly. "But what about interacting with other people?
Jeremy decided to answer this one. "Well, I'd probably just float through you normally. We can solidify ourselves enough to do things like receive hugs from Mike," the ghosts all smiled at this one, "but according to Mary he already has a bit more supernatural attunement than the average person so that might have something to do with it."
Meghan looked over at the Marionette, who was idly watching the conversation unfold. "Mary's a bit…different…isn't she? I mean, why isn't she a simple ghost like the rest of you?"
"Mary's soul possessed the Puppet when she died," Susie explained. "I don't remember why, but to this day she refuses to leave the Puppet's body."
The Marionette's relaxed demeanor stiffened slightly. "I would rather not go into details," she interrupted in a tone that made it clear this topic of discussion was over.
"On the topic of Mary, out of all of us she's by far the most powerful," Jeremy added. "Besides everything we just talked about right now, Mary can also do magic."
The kids' eyes widened. "That is SO COOL!" they exclaimed. "CAN YOU SHOW US? PLEASE?"
Mary shrugged and stretched out a hand in front of her. It suddenly burst into blue flames for several seconds before quickly dissipating, leaving her hand unharmed.
"That is the coolest thing ever!" Meghan praised.
"A simple trick, really," Mary replied. "But I'm afraid I can't show you some of my more powerful abilities. It's harder to control stronger magic without proper focus and training, and I haven't practiced in a while since I've been busy integrating my friends into our new family."
"So besides Mary, you guys have only been around for about a week?" Alex asked. "That's what it sounded like based on what Mr. Schmidt said just now."
"Yeah," Fritz confirmed. "We came to his house early in the week, and he adopted us as his family." He gestured to the Marionette. "Mary's the one exception, she's been here with dad for about a year now."
"And what've you been doing with Mike in the past week?" Meghan followed up on her brother's question.
Susie grinned. "Dad's been catching us up on everything fun that's happened since we died. Movies, video games, the Internet, there's so many things to do and explore! It's incredible!" she gushed.
Alex and Meghan looked at each other. The Internet was new to them? "How…how long has it been since you…uhm, well…" Alex hesitated.
Gabe shook his head. "It's all right for you to ask. We died over thirty years ago."
Their eyes widened. "ALL of you?" Meghan gasped. "Did you…all die at the same time?"
"Most of us did," Cassidy answered. "Gabe, Susie, Fritz, Jeremy, me…yes. Mary died earlier than the rest of us, and I don't know when Liz died. All of us except Liz have known each other from the beginning; Liz died somewhere else."
"I'm so sorry…" Meghan murmured sympathetically. She didn't know how it had happened, but whatever had caused these many children to die at a young age couldn't have been pleasant.
"It's not your fault," Jeremy replied. "What's done is done, and we're happy with where we are now."
"So how is Mr. Schmidt?" Alex decided to change the subject. "Seems like a chill guy."
The ghosts' eyes all glowed with admiration. "Mike is absolutely amazing!" Liz exclaimed. "The best dad ever, hands down!"
Alex smirked. "I'm going to have to challenge that with our dad."
Mary tilted her head. "Your dad may be great from what little we've seen, but keep in mind that he has had 13 years of practice to raise only 2 kids. Mike has had only 1 year with just me, and only 1 week to be a parent for seven. It's not really a fair comparison."
Meghan shrugged. Fair enough. "So what have you guys been doing?"
"Aside from the movies and video games? Not much…" Gabe admitted. "We can't really go out of the house, at least not right now. We'd probably cause a mass panic if people realized ghosts were real, since we aren't really all that good with keeping our presences completely hidden. Dad spent all of this week trying to figure out how to get us out of the house or introduce us to other people without any problems."
"Well, the second problem's already on its way to being solved," Jeremy commented. "Admittedly, not the way we wanted it…" he flashed a dirty look at Fritz, who shrugged sheepishly.
Mary glared at them. "Knock it off, you two," she ordered, before turning to Alex and Meghan. "To continue answering your last question, Mike has been teaching them good spelling and grammar for their education."
"Spelling and grammar?" Meghan repeated. "That's it? No full-blown homeschooling or anything?"
Fritz grinned. "Yup!" he replied cheerfully. "No point in learning math and all that crap if we can't even apply that to the real world cause we're dead!"
"Ugh, I'm so jealous!" Alex groaned. "I had three freaking tests this week. I swear my teachers are working together to screw us over as hard as possible! You guys are so lucky you don't have to go to school. Being a ghost must be the best thing ever!"
The smiles and happy expressions were instantly wiped from the ghosts' faces. Alex looked at them uncertainly. "Uhm…"
"Alex…" his sister muttered warningly. Thankfully, her brother wisely took the hint and refrained from making further comments.
"Trust me, Alex," Mary finally answered, "you are infinitely, unquestionably better off being alive as you are now. All seven of us will tell you the exact same thing."
"Was it that bad?" Alex asked quietly.
Liz's voice was barely above a whisper. "We died 30 years ago, Alex. None of us found any peace until Mike took us in." Everyone, living and dead, shuddered at the implications.
"I think a change in subject would be a good thing to have right about now," Gabe announced. He gave his new friends a curious look. "What do you plan on being when you become older? We won't ever have that opportunity, but I'm interested in knowing what you want to do in the future."
"Oh, geez, I have no idea," Meghan was taken aback, "you're probably getting a better answer from us a few years down the road. Right now the only thing we're trying to do is get good grades in school and that's about it."
Alex shrugged. "I always liked science. Might do something with that, but yeah, Meghan's right. Middle school is way too early for something like that. Heck, Dad didn't know what he really wanted to do until college."
"What is school like?" Susie asked. "I mean, if we put away all the jokes about it being crap and boring and all that."
"Has its ups and downs," Meghan answered. "As Alex just said, he had an absolute hell of a week with all his tests and it doesn't get much worse than that, and yeah it can be pretty boring at times, but otherwise it's not too bad. We both do a couple of extracurriculars like music to make things more fun."
"Upside to having a mass test week is that I don't have any homework this week," Alex smirked. "Neither does Meghan, though in her case she just lucked out. And thank God for that, because talking with you guys is so much more fun than trying to solve a bunch of math problems."
The ghosts all grinned at the praise. "You should definitely play some music for us sometime," Jeremy insisted. "What do you guys play anyway?"
"Alex plays a saxophone and I play the violin," Meghan replied. "We don't do it hardcore like some of our friends, but it's still a nice way to pass the time."
"Hey, we've all got to have hobbies of some kind," Alex added, receiving general agreement from everyone. "Otherwise life is gonna be nothing but a giant slog."
"Speaking of friends, college was when your dad met our dad, right?" Cassidy asked.
"Yup!" Alex grinned. "The two of them were best buds in college and still keep in touch regularly to this day. They sometimes hang out together on the weekends, though the last time we saw Mr. Schmidt was when we were really young so neither of us remember much about him."
"Wasn't Mr. Schmidt the one who recommended to Dad that we take that vacation over to the Grand Canyon and all those National Parks?" Meghan asked her brother. "I think he was!"
"Wait, what?" Susie interrupted them. "He helped your dad plan a vacation?"
"Oh, yeah!" Alex explained. "A few weeks ago we took a trip over to the western part of the United States. We saw so many cool…things…" his eagerness faded as he realized he was talking to an audience that might never get to see them. "…I'll shut up now."
"No, go on!" Gabe pressed. "It's not like we're trapped here forever. After Mike figures out how to get us out of the house without causing a mass panic, we'll be able to see everything that you saw eventually. It won't happen now, and maybe not even for a while. But someday we will. We trust Mike to make it happen and we'll do everything we can to help him. And the more places we get a glimpse of before, the more places we can explore once everything's said and done."
Meghan smiled. It was amazing just how much confidence he had in a man that he had known for only a week. "In that case, Gabe, we'll be happy to show you." She took out her smartphone and began looking up pictures. "This is the Grand Canyon," she showed them a picture of her, her brother, and her father smiling happily at the edge of the mighty rock formation. All the ghosts stared at the picture in awe.
"That looks amazing!" Cassidy exclaimed. "It looks like it stretches forever!"
"What's all the way down there?" Susie asked curiously, referring to the bottom.
Alex shrugged. "No idea. I've heard there's trails and even a river you can raft on, but we're too inexperienced for that and I'm not sure Dad could handle it anyway." She filtered through a couple pictures she had taken of just the Canyon itself, before shifting over to other pictures that the Marshall family had taken at Bryce Canyon, Yosemite National Park, Zion National Park, and Yellowstone. Each of these natural landmarks had a unique appearance and atmosphere that separated them from each other, but all of them possessed an incredible grandeur that represented Mother Nature at its most beautiful. About a third of the pictures had Alex, Meghan, and/or Ryan on them, while the rest were simply of the parks themselves. Gabe had gotten a pencil and paper to start jotting down the names of the locations. Ironically, the two Marshall siblings were now the ones being bombarded with questions about what each park and canyon was like.
As Alex answered a question about what they did between park visits ("Not much. It's kind of funny, but a lot of that state is just a single long road in the middle of nowhere that stretches for miles. Can get pretty boring, but it makes the destinations even more awesome in comparison."), Fritz noticed that Liz was looking somewhat gloomy despite her awe at the pictures that the Marshalls had taken. Nobody else had apparently noticed, so he sidled closer to her. "What's wrong, Liz?" he asked.
Liz sighed. "It's just…I see Alex and Meghan smiling happily in those pictures, and…I miss my brothers," she confessed. "I can barely remember their faces anymore. I know that you guys are my new family now, and I'll always be grateful and happy about that. But I can't help but think about my old family…"
"What were they like?" Fritz asked, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"I had two," Liz explained, trying to repress a sniffle. " Evan was younger than I was. I don't remember much about him, but I…I found his grave when I searched around the town after I was freed from Scrap Baby." She wiped the tears that were threatening to form in her eyes. "It wasn't fair…he died so young."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Fritz murmured sympathetically.
Liz took a few seconds to collect herself before continuing. "And Mike…Mikey…was my older brother."
"Mike?" Fritz repeated. "Huh…he has the exact same name as dad."
The corners of Liz's mouth twitched upward. "Yeah. Mikey was someone I was really close to before everything fell apart. It's strange. He didn't like my younger brother very much, but he was always much nicer to me and knew how to make me smile." Her face fell. "Then, I died…and I haven't heard anything from him since. I tried to look for him on my own after I was freed from Baby and before I came here, but I never found him."
"Maybe you could ask Dad to help?" Fritz asked.
Liz shook her head. "Even if he had any idea on where to start, he already has enough to deal with without me adding more to his plate as it is, Fritz. Besides," she suddenly smiled. "I have a new family now. With Dad and you guys, the present and the future are so much brighter than the past ever was."
Fritz smiled back, but his next words were spoken in an unusually serious tone. "Doesn't mean you should just ditch your brother, though. We don't make him any less important."
"Maybe someday…" she mused absent-mindedly.
"Hey!" Alex's voice suddenly called out to them. "You guys all right?"
Both of them quickly moved towards the rest of their friends and family. "Yeah, sorry," Fritz quickly replied, "Liz and I got sidetracked for a bit. We're cool. Whatcha showin' us?"
Meghan showed them an exotic city filled with bright lights and exotic-looking buildings. The picture she was currently showing them was of herself and Alex smiling happily in front of a gigantic building with Roman architecture. "This is Las Vegas. There are so many casinos there it isn't even funny. We stayed at this for a few nights, it's called Caesar's Palace."
"That is SO COOL!" Susie gushed.
"Definitely," Alex agreed, "but we only stayed there for only a few days. That was enough time for us to see most of the buildings of interest there, and according to Dad the place gets boring if you stay there too long. Lots of adult games there, if you have the money to gamble it."
"Gamble?" Liz asked. "What does that mean?"
"Betting money on a game. If you win, you get more money. If you lose, you lose what you bet," Meghan clarified. "You can't play if you're too young, though. Dad was actually pretty lucky, he won enough money to cover the cost of the entire vacation. It's rigged so that you're more likely to lose, though."
"Anybody here want to see Dad try a few rounds?" Fritz asked, and the rest of the ghosts had to admit that it would be exciting to watch Mike try his luck.
Alex shrugged. "Depends on whether he's the kind of guy that likes to bet money," he said as Meghan put away her phone. "So what'd you think?"
"We SO need to convince Mike to take us all on a vacation out there," Jeremy insisted, then added as an afterthought, "once we figure out all the kinks."
"I still think Disneyworld would be so much better though," Cassidy argued. "I mean, Alex and Meghan showed us so many cool amusement parks there from their vacation the year before they went to the West! We saw those Disney movies, how could you NOT want to see the closest thing there is to seeing them in real life?"
Sensing a potential argument about to start, Mary quickly stepped in. "I am fairly certain that Mike will be fully accommodating of whatever we present to him," she interrupted them. "But first we need to make sure we can do it without scaring the public."
"Good luck to you and him on that," Alex replied. His eyes caught the shelf of games and they suddenly bulged. "NO WAY!" He rushed over to the shelf and took out a game. "Mr. Schmidt has Super Mario Odyssey AND Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy? How does he have all the newest games and systems?"
"Super Mario? Crash Bandicoot? Wha…?" the ghosts mouthed in confusion.
"Wait, you've never heard of them? Crash Bandicoot? Mario? Nintendo? Any of those?" Alex asked in shock.
The ghosts all shook their head. "Well, I mean, Mr. Schmidt mentioned Mario a few times for Mario Party, Mario Kart, and Super Smash Bros., but that was pretty much it," Susie replied.
"We're way behind when it comes to things that kids like nowadays," Jeremy admitted. "Dad was pretty freaked when he learned that we'd never heard of things like Harry Potter, although he did try to hide it."
Alex and Meghan stared at each other in horror. Their new friends had never heard of any of these childhood staples? Just what had happened to them? An unspoken agreement was struck between the two siblings: they needed to fix this, and they needed to fix it now.
"Every kid needs to see and/or read Harry Potter," Meghan began. "Normally, reading the books for things like fantasy is strictly better since the movies more often than not screw up a lot of the storyline, but in this case I'd say both the books and the movies are great in their own ways. You'll have to ask Mr. Schmidt about the books, but we CAN start with the movies. For whatever reason, your dad has all of them here on the shelf even though nowadays most people buy movies online."
"What's Harry Potter about?" Liz asked curiously. The ghost kids were eager to expand the childhood experience that they had lost until recently, and the fact that they now had living children as friends to experience it with made things even better.
Alex grinned. "You'll see," he promised as he started the movie.
/
As the children began watching the first movie, Ryan and Mike were busy watching a football game from their own college. Both of them cheered as one of their team's players intercepted the ball unexpectedly and rushed to the enemy goal, earning an unexpected touchdown.
"NICE!" Ryan declared approvingly as they won the extra kick point right after, spreading their already significant lead even further. "Team's doing just as good as they ever did."
Mike smirked. "I wouldn't know," he chuckled, "I rarely went to any of these things."
"You should've, man," Ryan replied. "These things were great fun, and a great way to hang out when you're not studying."
Mike shrugged. "Whenever I personally showed up to these things, our team ended up losing most of the time. Me not showing up was me doing a public service on behalf of our school."
Ryan held up a glass of Pepsi. "Let's hear it for Mike Schmidt, unsung hero of our college football team!" Both of them laughed as they drank their sodas.
"Hey, Ryan?" Mike's joking expression suddenly turned into something a lot more serious. "You know you can't tell anyone about the ghosts, right? I don't want to go into the details, but they've been through a lot of shit and exposing them to the rest of the world will make things even harder for them."
Ryan sighed. "Mike, if I told anybody that there were seven ghosts in your house, they'd throw me into the nuthouse the next day," he said half-jokingly, and then his voice took a more solemn tone, "and we both know that neither of us would do anything to ever hurt each other or our families. Besides, I've kept the secret of your dark past completely under wraps for over 25 years now."
"For which I'm eternally grateful.".
"Mike, the way you saved my ass when we were in college probably helped me out to this day." Ryan replied. "Keeping my mouth shut is such a small favor to ask in return that it might as well be nothing."
"Means a lot to me, old friend," Mike replied with a grateful smile. He shut the TV off; and looked back towards the stairs leading up to the main house. "Wanna go check up on the kids?"
"Sure thing, buddy," Ryan grinned. "If the way we turned out is any indication, their new friendship will be just as close as ours."
Mike laughed. "Wouldn't have it any other way."
/
A/N: And that's part 2! Mike's and Ryan's kids really hit it off, didn't they? Of course, you'd be eager to make friends too if you were alone in a place for 30 years without ever being able to talk to anyone. Hope you enjoyed the friendship between the Marshalls and the (adopted) Schmidts!
I've dropped quite a few hints regarding the past in this chapter, and more than just hints with regards to the past of the Aftons. Oh, poor Elizabeth…you have no idea just what happened to your brother, do you? And I already feel really bad for what I'm going to put her through when the day she finds out finally comes…the only thing I'll say now is that things will get worse before they get better.
The next few chapters are going right back into dark, trigger-warning-worthy material. If you're reading this fic because you wanted me to write darker stuff, you won't have long to wait anymore. As Ryan mentioned, Mike's past is not much happier than the ghost kids', even if he did endure and survive it in the end. And yes, this will indeed include Mike's experiences as a Night Guard during the first FNAF game. Hope you're as excited as I am!
