A/N: I decided I was too bored to study for my exams so I decided to write instead lol.
Man, that review glitch from earlier in the weekend really screwed things around, didn't it? Thank God it got fixed. I was able to get most of them in my email, but some of those notifications didn't show up til almost a week after. Yeesh.
Anyways, thank you guys for the kind reviews! I hope to keep delivering to your expectations! To answer a few questions from reviewers:
Mary does know who she was in the past, including her name. She's deliberately keeping it in the dark for now, though not for the reason you'd think :)
People do know that a tragedy did happen at Freddy's and that five children went missing, but that's about it. The fact that they were murdered isn't even a ubiquitously known certainty, although most people believe that they were killed anyway.
Mike does not explicitly have any magical powers. However, that doesn't mean he doesn't have innate abilities or characteristics that are greater than average for a human.
Hope that cleared up some things, and let's move on to the next chapter! We're going back to a lighthearted family atmosphere, think there's been enough dark and intense stuff for now 😊
Chapter 15 – Thoughts Under the Sky
"Hey, Susie? Do you think a Mac or a Dell would be better?" Jeremy wondered.
"How would I know, Jeremy? I barely know more than you do!"
The six children had been crowded over Mike's laptop throughout the evening, searching through various websites looking for different laptops. A week after Mike had shared his past with them, he had told them to their shock and joy that he was going to buy each of them a laptop so that they didn't have to crowd around one.
"But…isn't that going to cost you a fortune?" Fritz had incredulously after his dad had made the announcement.
Mike smirked. "Fritz, buddy, what part of 5 million + dollars chilling in my bank account did you not understand? Besides, I'm setting a price limit of 1000 dollars for each laptop anyway."
"Just curious, is there a reason why you're setting that price limit? You didn't run into some money issues, did you?" Gabe asked, worried.
Mike waved him off. "It's more along the lines of "why the hell do you need a laptop that costs more than 1000 dollars when you're not using it for anything other than personal entertainment?"" he replied. "Anyways, I'm going to be out in the backyard if you need me. So get to it!"
The ghosts didn't need further encouraging and immediately started scrambling around Mike's computer as he left the room. As always, the Marionette was watching them from behind. She'd already gotten her laptop from Mike several months ago, so she was there mainly for her friends and siblings more than anything.
"So, uh, what do you think?" Liz asked Mary.
Mary shrugged. "I'm not sure. I honestly don't know all that much about computers. I know there's a couple of memes about Dell being terrible, but I honestly never had any major problems with the one I have so far. It's up to you, really."
Gabe sighed. He knew that Mary was just being honest and trying not give bad advice, but her words right now weren't really helping all that much. "Well, we could always just buy a couple of different kinds just to be safe," he muttered as he clicked open another website. "Or we can ask Dad for advice."
"What do you think he's even doing?" Cassidy asked with a raised eyebrow.
Fritz shrugged. "No clue, Cass. Maybe we should ask him, it's not like he isn't around or anything. We're just shifting through laptops right now without any clue about what we ACTUALLY want to get."
"Sounds good to me," Gabe replied. He gestured to the ghosts to follow him out to where Mike had left. They phased through the back door and through a small atrium to a large backyard area surrounded by a stone wall, with a rectangular swimming pool placed in the very center. The mansion that he had bought was somewhat further away from the main part of the suburbs that he lived in, and the kids could see sprawling fields and hills beyond the boundary that marked Mike's property. The man himself was laying in a pool chair he had set up, staring up at the night sky while holding a glass with a drink in his hand.
"This is the life," he sighed contentedly as he absent-mindedly swirled the drink around. "A serene summer night where I can just sit back, relax, and think." He took a sip from the glass. "I should probably get the kids out here to enjoy this with me in a bit, but for now I'll just bask in the solitude."
The ghosts quickly backed off to make sure Mike hadn't seen them. "Maybe we should give him a couple of minutes," Liz suggested.
"Yeah, I don't want to bother him," Susie agreed, as did the rest of the ghosts. They quickly sneaked back inside, and a few minutes later Mike came in to call them out to the backyard.
"By the way, I did notice you guys over there," he commented as he guided them out. "But thanks for the privacy."
The children blushed. "No problem, dad," Gabe replied as they started manipulating other pool chairs on either side of Mike, "but I thought for sure we didn't make a sound."
Mike shrugged. "Call it heightened reflexes or whatever, but I can sense when other people are around me. He got back onto his pool chair. "So, did you guys find laptops that you want to get?"
"Uh…" Jeremy muttered, "to be honest we really have no clue which ones are the best. Dell, Apple, none of it makes any sense to us. Even Mary couldn't give us much help."
Mike brushed it off. "We can talk about it later," he replied. "For now, let's just take a moment to look at the night sky."
The ghosts all leaned into their pool chairs and gazed silently at the sky for several moments, each of them reflecting on everything that had happened and how they'd gotten to the point they were at now.
"I can't remember the last time I saw something like this…" Cassidy finally broke the silence. "This is…beautiful…"
"It certainly is," Mike agreed. "Too bad we're a bit too close to a city, though. The light pollution messes with the sky a bit and blocks out a lot of the stars. I went camping to foresty areas far away from cities a few times while I was in college, and the sky is just chock full of stars. It's something truly beautiful, I can tell you."
"We'll definitely take your word for it!" Jeremy replied as Mike took a casual sip of his drink.
"Maybe I might take you guys out once, once we figure out the issue of how to get you out of the house without causing a mass panic," he suggested. "Would any of you guys be down?"
"Heck yeah, I'd be down!" Fritz enthusiastically agreed, with several of the other ghosts voicing their agreement. Then Susie suddenly noticed the cup Mike was holding and the drink inside it.
"That's not…alcohol…is it?" she asked, worried. "Isn't that what…" she trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.
Mike shook his head. "While I think people are better off not drinking alcohol at all, drinking alcohol isn't the problem in and of itself. The problem is when you start drinking too much of it. That's when it starts screwing with you and ruining your entire life. And no, Susie, this isn't alcoholic. It's just a mix of sodas I made real quick before coming out here. I only drink alcohol in incredibly rare circumstances, like champagne at someone's wedding or something."
"So what were you doing out here?" Gabe asked. He was pretty sure he already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it directly.
"Just thinking, is all," Mike explained. "I think everyone needs some time to themselves once in a while. Though something like this can easily be shared with other people too."
"Hey…Dad?" Jeremy asked. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Fire away."
He hesitated, then decided to just continue. "How…how did you know about the hallucinations? Like…when did you have the time to look at the time? Back when you were the Night Guard, it sounded like you just ignored them to focus on us."
Mike sighed. "To be honest, I still have dreams about that pizzeria sometimes. Being in that office, blocking out the animatronics. I left that pizzeria when I was still in my teens, but it's followed me in my dreams to this day."
Every ghost instantly tensed up, the same question racing through all their minds: had their actions ended up torturing their adoptive father in his dreams for years?
Then, to everyone's surprise, Mike burst out laughing. "It sounds like something out of a recurring nightmare, isn't it? I guess normally it would be, except for the fact that I'm a lucid dreamer."
"Lucid dreaming?" Liz asked, confused. "What does that mean?"
"It means I can control what happens in my dreams," Mike explained, and the children's eyes widened in awe. "So I can control how aggressive the dream animatronics are, and that includes making them completely harmless."
"That is AWESOME!" Fritz exclaimed.
Mike laughed appreciatively. "Usually I just used my nights at Freddy's as reflex practice, and if one of them somehow caught me I could just reset the night. A couple of times, however, I stopped them from working entirely so that I could do some research into those hallucinations. For some reason, the exact hallucinations that showed up in the actual pizzeria reappeared in those dreams, which always made me wonder if there was something more going on. Either way, I was able to memorize most of what I saw and draw them out, though I had to look up the articles in the library."
"That explains a lot," Gabe said, now fully understanding why Mike had seemed so in-the-know with regards to the hidden horror within the Fazbear franchise compared to the other Night Guards.
"I never really dwelled on it all that much, to be honest. The pizzeria closed down soon after my shift ended, and by that point I was moving on to bigger and better things."
"And here we are now…" Mary murmured as she looked back up at the sky. "All of us here, our fates brought together in a way nobody could have expected."
"How very true…" Mike agreed, and for several moments none of them spoke. Then, Susie decided to end the silence this time.
"I wonder…do you guys think Freddy's will ever come back again?" she asked.
Mike shook his head. "No way in Hell, Susie," he firmly answered. "There's just been way, WAY too much bad shit that's happened around Freddy's for it to ever come back. Between what happened to you and what happened to the night guards, there's just way too much tragedy and hidden horror. There's a reason why somebody thought it would be a good idea to make a horror attraction out of the restaurant, even though we all think that was pretty stupid."
"That's…kind of a shame, really…" Gabe sighed. "Before all the terrible stuff happened, Freddy's was a fun and happy place for kids to enjoy themselves. We used to go there all the time, and the day we were murdered…one of us was celebrating a birthday. I don't remember who anymore, but still…it was fun."
"Well, we all know who to blame for ruining everything," Fritz growled.
"I don't really remember much about Freddy's," Liz spoke up, "but Circus Baby's Pizza World or Rental were never as popular as Freddy's was. And good riddance. Considering that it was a hidden death trap for children, the Baby's franchise can rot in obscurity for all I care."
"Circus Baby's is probably even more dead than Freddy's," Mike commented. "All of the animatronics took themselves apart to form Ennard, right? And Ennard, or Molten Freddy, or whatever the hell you want to call him, he's just a pile of incinerated scrap now. There's no performers left to revive the franchise with."
"The major animatronics are all gone, yeah," Liz confirmed. "There were also a couple of smaller ones, like the Minireenas, Bidybab, and Bonbon…I don't know what happened to them. They weren't part of Ennard like the rest of us were. But yeah, I agree with you, dad."
"It still makes me sad to think that the franchise my father made has been tainted so horribly," Mary sighed, "but in the end, it's rather fitting that he was the one to end the nightmare forever. As he said in his final message, the memory and agony of every tragedy should fade away in time."
"I'm honestly shocked that you're still in the Puppet," Gabe shifted in his chair to look at her. "How did you even escape the fire, and why did you choose to stay behind?"
"Springtrap escaped one fire already, and I needed to make absolutely sure that he was dead for good," Mary explained. "My caution turned out to be unnecessary, since my father very carefully and specifically designed his trap to bring about Springtrap's final doom. All that's left of every animatronic are unrecognizable piles of scrap and ashes. And considering who I met afterwards, I would say everything worked out beautifully in the end." She suddenly smirked. "Besides, I got to see Mike personally stomp on Springtrap's remains. That alone made staying in the living world worth it," she added, earning grins from the ghosts as Mike lazily gave her a thumbs up while taking another sip of his drink. "And as for how I escaped…I used my powers to teleport myself out before I was destroyed."
"Wait, WHAT?" Jeremy spluttered. "You can TELEPORT?"
Mary shrugged. "It's something that I have very limited experience with, it takes a lot of energy, and it's something I can only do very infrequently. There's a reason why you never saw me do it." She looked over at Cassidy. "Actually, when I brought Golden Freddy to life, I can't help but wonder if I transferred most of my capability with that specific power to you by accident."
"Well, we'll never know now."
"Wait, what happened to that Lefty suit?" Liz asked curiously. "Did it get destroyed in the fire?"
"Nah," Mike answered. "We took it home with us. It took me a couple of days to fix the fire damage in my workshop and make a couple of other adjustments, but right now it's sitting around in the basement somewhere. There's no endoskeleton in it or anything, it's basically a statue." He thought for a moment. "Actually, that thing makes for pretty decent armor, now that I think about it. I mean, I know Mary's powerful, but she isn't exactly meant for good ol' fisticuffs like pretty much every other animatronic I've ever seen."
"I think that was part of the reason why my father designed it the way he did," Mary added. "To give me a way to fight back in case I ran into any of the others and they tried to attack me." Liz flinched at this, but everyone else was too busy looking at Mary to notice.
Mike chuckled. "I guess I'm the proud owner of the last known Freddy Fazbear animatronic. I'm not even surprised that I'm the one who ended up with it at this point."
Everyone leaned back and watched the sky in silence for several more moments, and then Gabriel spoke up. "You know, the funny things is…I actually didn't mind being an animatronic."
Mike shot up from his chair. "Really!" he exclaimed, clearly surprised. "That was NOT what I was expecting to hear you say!"
"Let me rephrase and explain. Don't get me wrong, Mike. Our existence was absolutely horrible," Gabe explained. "The fact that we'd never be able to see our families again, we could never talk to other kids and could only watch them from the stage, being trapped in a pizzeria without ever seeing the outside world for years and years…terrible doesn't begin to describe that. But that's the thing. It was being trapped in so many ways that made things so horrible. Not being an animatronic in and of itself. Heck, back when I was still alive, there were times when I wished I could be Freddy, be the child's entertainer." His face took on a dark look. "Though I guess what they say true is true…be careful what you wish for."
Liz shuddered. "Sorry, Gabe, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one," she countered. "There's just way too many bad memories for me."
Fritz shook his head. "You had it a LOT worse than the rest of us, Liz. Not much of a surprise that you're against it so much, especially given what the animatronic you ended up possessing did to you. But, to be honest…I can kind of see where Gabe is going with this. I did enjoy entertaining kids as Foxy before I went out-of-order," he admitted. "We did sleep most of the time in the suits during the day, but when we were awake we could actually control what the animatronics said and did, at least a little bit." He shrugged and smiled sheepishly. "What can I say? I liked being a pirate."
"So…let me get this straight," Mike clarified. "Assuming that absolutely nothing went wrong, if you could enter and leave a given suit freely without having your soul stuck in it, and you weren't limited at all with what you could do, you wouldn't mind being like Mary once in a while."
"Yeah," Gabe confirmed. "Mary's the perfect definition of what I'm talking about, actually."
"Huh," Mike raised an eyebrow. "That's really interesting to hear you say that. And what about the rest of you guys?"
"If we assumed that nothing went wrong, I'd give it a shot," Jeremy decided. "We'd be able to actually interact with the physical world instead of manipulating things the way we currently do. It just isn't the same."
Susie shrugged. "What Jeremy said."
Cassidy fidgeted slightly. "I don't think you can really consider Golden Freddy a regular animatronic, to be honest," she commented. "It didn't have an endoskeleton, and I had to move around the thing's arms and legs directly instead of doing it with an endo. Heck, I don't think I'd have been able to move around very much if I couldn't teleport. I've gotta admit…I've always been a bit curious as to what it was like for the rest of you guys."
Mike shook his head. "I don't know if I should be happy or disturbed that everything you've been through hasn't ruined your perspective on being animatronics again." He sighed. "As interesting as this conversation is, at the end of the day this won't be anything more than speculation. The Freddy's franchise is dead for good, and I don't know where there could possibly be any more Freddy's animatronics with how much bad rep the franchise has."
The ghosts all made varying noises except for Mary, who was lost in thought. "Could my father have…no…maybe…could he?"
"Mary?"
"Nothing," she quickly brushed off her thoughts. "It's nothing."
"If you say so…" Mike decided to leave it be. After a few seconds, he remembered something. "So, did you guys pick your laptops yet?"
"I completely forgot about those!" Liz exclaimed. "That's actually why we wanted to come out here, dad. We don't know which ones are the best ones to buy."
Mike smiled. "Well, Liz, here's what I'd personally suggest…"
/
Just some bonding between Mike and the ghosts under a warm and relaxing summer night sky :) A couple of surprises have popped up for both sides, though, to be sure.
I honestly have no clue whatsoever which laptops are the best, you can just put in whatever you think is the best computer in for Mike's advice.
Mary's little talk about how she survived the events of FNAF6 is basically to fill in some plot holes for anyone who hasn't read my other fic "A Legacy Laid to Rest."
Hope you enjoyed!
