A/N: Don't really have much to say here. Only that Nightmare is by far the biggest challenge that Mike's family will ever face, though not for the reasons that you may think.
A couple of you asked if Nightmare's arrival to Mike's house was tied to Elizabeth. These questions make me smile as a writer, since it confirms to me that none of you so far have guessed what I have planned towards the end of Nightmare's arc. And as you'll soon find out, Nightmare isn't here specifically for Elizabeth…but that doesn't mean she's safe either.
Again, some minor Christian themes in this chapter. There's a bit more here compared to last chapter, but again, this chapter is not even closely meant to be a work in theology or anything like that.
Chapter 21 – Herald of Black Truths
Nightmare eyed the family predatorily as they huddled together, as if their physical proximity could somehow repulse him. "DID YOU ENJOY THE LITTLE PRELUDE I ARRANGED PRIOR TO MY ARRIVAL?" he asked. "I COULD HAVE SIMPLY STORMED MY WAY THROUGH YOUR HOME AND CAPTURED YOU DIRECTLY. BUT I'VE ALWAYS FOUND A SUBTLE APPROACH TO BE FAR MORE…ENTERTAINING."
Mike's eyes narrowed. "So it was you," he growled. "You were the one torturing my kids with those nightmares."
Nightmare grinned. "OF COURSE IT WAS ME. THE HUMAN MIND IS TRULY FASCINATING, ISN'T IT? ALL THE DARKNESS THAT LURKS WITHIN, THE FEARS, THE SUFFERING BORNE FROM THE PAST. A SHADOW LURKS IN EVERY HEART, EVEN IN THE MOST ORDINARY OF MEN. AND YOUR LITTLE CHILDREN ARE ANYTHING BUT ORDINARY, AREN'T THEY?"
"These kids have been through enough without scum like you making things worse," Mike retorted. "All I see is a coward preying on their fear."
Gabe tapped his dad's arm. "Dad…" he muttered worryingly. "Maybe you shouldn't do anything to piss this guy off…"
Nightmare only laughed in response. "DO YOU HONESTLY BELIEVE THAT THE PETTY INSULTS OF AN OLD MAN MEAN ANYTHING TO ME?" he sneered. If he was angered by Mike's insult, he was hiding it incredibly well. "AND AS FOR PREYING ON THEIR FEAR, THAT ALONE WOULD BE A COMPLETE WASTE OF MY TIME AND EFFORT. IT WOULD BE ALL TOO EASY FOR ME TO DO, AND IF WHAT I HAVE HEARD ABOUT YOU IS TRUE, EASY FOR YOU TO COUNTER. NO, I HAVE SOMETHING ELSE IN MIND. SOMETHING THAT NONE OF YOU WILL BE ABLE TO CHALLENGE SO EASILY."
He turned his eyes on the ghostly children, and all of them shrank beneath his menacing gaze. "SO, MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS AFTER THE TRAGEDY OF FREDDY FAZBEAR'S PIZZERIA BEGAN, YOU HAVE FINALLY FOUND A PLACE TO CALL A HOME, AND ONE TO CALL FATHER. ALLOW ME TO OFFER YOU MY CONGRATULATIONS," his voice was dripping with a complete lack of sincerity that he didn't bother to hide. "AND NOW YOU GET TO ALL LIVE TOGETHER, AS THOUGH YOU WERE A NORMAL FAMILY, LIVING TOGETHER IN HAPPINESS. FINALLY ABLE TO PUT THE PAST BEHIND YOU."
Nightmare's mouth curled into a grin. "IF ONLY IT WERE THAT SIMPLE." His eyes blazed scarlet, like they had before when he'd summoned the walls of hellfire, and immediately black smoke began to appear from around him. Everyone yelped in surprise and fear as the smoke began to consume the entire room, surrounding them until all that they could see were themselves and the monster who had summoned it.
"What's going on?" Fritz asked frantically. "What the hell is this?"
"I'm scared…" Cassidy whimpered fearfully.
"Stay away from the smoke," Mary ordered. "We don't know if breathing it in will hurt or corrupt us or anything!"
Nightmare sneered. "CORRUPTION? BAH. YOU DISPLAY A PITIFUL IGNORANCE OF THE AFTERLIFE, PUPPET GIRL. THOUGH I SUPPOSE THAT IS OF NO SURPRISE, CONSIDERING THAT UNLIKE THE REST OF YOUR FRIENDS, YOU NEVER EVEN TEMPORARILY PASSED ON. NO HIGHER POWER, WHETHER DEMONIC OR DIVINE, CAN INTERFERE WITH THE FREE WILL OF THE LIVING. THE SMOKE ITSELF WILL DO NOTHING TO YOU."
"Why does that not make me feel better in the slightest?" Gabe muttered.
"BECAUSE IT IS WHAT I PLAN TO DO WITH THIS SMOKE THAT YOU SHOULD FEAR," Nightmare replied coolly. A faint glow began to appear in the smoke, an image starting to form. As the ghosts watched it solidify and brighten, they gasped when they realized they were seeing the inside of the '85 pizzeria, with them inside it when they were still alive. The image then shifted to a different group of kids in the pizzeria, around the same age. Both groups of children were laughing and playing, an image of innocence from an era when the Fazbear franchise was untainted.
"To think that things could have gone so terribly wrong…" Mary murmured.
The image shifted back to their past selves, and the ghosts could only watch fearfully as the Purple Man lured them into the back room of the pizzeria one at a time and brutally slaughtered them. Cassidy shuddered – it was the exact same memory that she had been forced to witness in her traumatic flashback.
"Why are you showing us this?" Jeremy demanded.
"TO PROVE A POINT, YOU LITTLE BRAT," Nightmare sneered. The image shifted back to one of the other children that they had never seen before, only now that child was in his late-teens or early adulthood. The young adult was merrily humming one of the many tunes the Freddy Fazbear band played as he walked into the '93 Freddy Fazbear's location…in the middle of the night.
"Oh my God…" Gabe was the first to realize what they were seeing, and his eyes widened in horror. "This is…no…"
"He's a Night Guard…" Susie could barely choke the words out. "A Night Guard when we…when we…"
The image changed to the Office, where the man was scrambling to slam the doors on Bonnie. But he was too slow, and the animatronic barged into the Office with a bloodcurdling scream.
"Why?" the man yelled desperately at Bonnie as the animatronic grabbed him and dragged him out of the Office. "You were my friends! You were my best friends! Did my entire childhood mean nothing to you? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?"
"I'm sorry!" Jeremy shouted futilely at the vision, tears flowing down his cheeks. "It wasn't you, it was never you! You didn't deserve this!"
Nightmare only laughed cruelly, a sound that echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once. "DID YOU REALLY THINK THAT YOU COULD ESCAPE THE CRIMES OF YOUR PAST SO EASILY? THAT YOU COULD SIMPLY APPEAR ON THE DOORSTEP OF ONE OF YOUR VICTIMS LUCKY ENOUGH TO SURVIVE AND PRETEND THAT EVERYTHING IS FINALLY ALL RIGHT? HE WAS MERELY THE FIRST OF YOUR VICTIMS. LET US BEAR WITNESS TO YOUR SINS, SINS THAT YOU HAVE TRIED SO HARD TO CAST ASIDE!"
Images of different Night Guards appeared in the smoke, every person that the Freddy Fazbear animatronics had terrorized. Some of them desperately questioned why the animatronics were attacking them, as the first victim had done. Others hurled curses and insults at whichever animatronic caught them, "monsters" and "liars" being the foremost among them. With every victim and each death Nightmare showed, the hearts of the ghosts sank lower and lower. Mary could only watch sadly as they started crying tears of regret and guilt – she might technically have less blood on her hands from only one or two Night Guards she had killed in the '87 location, but this…this had happened because she had failed to pacify their rage. She was just as responsible for those deaths as they were.
"YOU DESPISE WILLIAM AFTON FOR THE ATROCITIES HE INFLICTED UPON YOU," Nightmare hissed, "AND YET YOU HAVE SACRIFICED MORE INNOCENTS UPON YOUR ALTAR OF VENGEANCE THAN HE HAS EVER KILLED. YOU SEE THE TRUTH NOW, DON'T YOU? YOU ARE MURDERERS, ONE AND ALL, NO BETTER THAN THE ONE WHO KILLED YOU."
"That's a load of bullshit!" Mike shot back, but before he could say anything Gabe raised a hand to stop him.
"No, Dad…he's right," he admitted, his voice shaky but with a glimmer of resolve in his voice. "We ARE murderers. God more or less told us the same thing when we stood before Him, and when both Heaven and Hell agree on something you know it's the truth. We were so consumed by our own rage that we couldn't tell the difference between the person who was truly guilty and people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Purple Guy might have caused us to become this in the first place…but we were the ones who made the decision to kill the Night Guards. We can't blame the Purple Guy for everything."
Gabe forced himself to look Nightmare straight in the eye. "None of us are going to deny what you said, Nightmare, or that what we did was wrong. Whether we're forgiven or not, we'll have to live with the fact that innocent blood is on our hands for the rest of eternity. We can't change that. But we can change what we can do now and in the future. That's why we're here. To change even one life for the better to make up for the many that we destroyed."
The ghosts cheered Gabe on, feeling inspiration return with every word he spoke. "You bet we are!" Jeremy exclaimed. "And we're going to give this everything we have!"
"You said it!" Susie fervently agreed. "Dad deserves it more than anyone!"
Mike smiled as he saw hope return to the ghosts, but before he could voice his support, Nightmare cut them off with an unsettling chuckle.
"What's so funny?" Fritz asked, suddenly feeling nervous.
"YOU SPEAK AS THOUGH IMPROVING THE LIFE OF ONE OLD MAN WILL MAKE UP FOR THE LIVES THAT YOU SLAUGHTERED," Nightmare growled.
Gabe glared at Nightmare. "That's what God told us to do to fully earn forgiveness," he retorted, relieved that he finally had a proper answer to one of Nightmare's taunts. "I'll take His word over yours any day."
"OH, I'M WELL AWARE OF THAT," the demon sneered. "NO MATTER HOW MUCH I CAN DISAGREE WITH THE HEAVENLY FATHER," he spoke the title as mockingly as possible, "I CANNOT INFLUENCE WHAT HE DECIDES. BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT I FIND SO FUNNY.
"Then what?"
"WHAT I FIND TRULY AMUSING IS HOW UTTERLY WORTHLESS YOUR SO-CALLED REDEMPTION ACTUALLY IS!" Nightmare declared as he roared with laughter.
The ghosts looked at each other in shock. "But we've…we did what God told us to…" Cassidy murmured confusedly.
"THE MAN WHO ADOPTED YOU, A MAN YOU ATTEMPTED TO MURDER FOR 20 DAYS IN A ROW AND WHO OWED YOU ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, WELCOMED YOU INTO HIS HOME AND SHOWERED YOU WITH KINDNESS AFTER KINDNESS," Nightmare hissed. "SO TELL ME THIS. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO REPAY THAT KINDNESS? WHAT STEPS DID YOU TAKE TO ACTUALLY ATONE FOR THE SINS OF YOUR PAST?"
The ghosts opened their mouths, but no words came out. They looked at each other, desperately trying to come up with some way they had helped Mike in a meaningful way. But deep inside, they all knew the truth.
"CAN'T ANSWER THE QUESTION?" Nightmare sneered. "THEN LET ME ANSWER IT FOR YOU. YOU. HAVE. DONE. NOTHING!" he roared the last word. "NOTHING TO SHOW THAT YOU HAVE ATONED FOR YOUR CRIMES, NOTHING TO SHOW THAT YOU DESERVE ETERNAL PEACE AFTER ALL THE BLOOD YOU HAVE SHED!"
"We…" Gabe looked helplessly over at his friends. "We…"
"Give them a fucking break!" Mike finally got in a chance to speak, and there was an anger that the ghosts hadn't seen from him before. "They've only been here for like, what, a couple of weeks? These kids are going to be hanging around here for the rest of my life! They've got all the time in the world to redeem themselves, if that's what you're so hung up about!"
"IF THEY WERE HONEST AND TRUE IN THEIR REDEMPTION, THOSE LITTLE BRATS YOU ARE DEFENDING WOULD HAVE GONE OUT OF THEIR WAY AND DONE EVERYTHING THEY COULD TO HELP YOU THROUGH YOUR LIFE. THEY HAVEN'T EVEN TOLD YOU THE FULL TRUTH ABOUT WHY THEY WERE SENT HERE!" Nightmare retorted.
"I…wait…what?" Mike turned to Gabe. "What is he talking about?"
He was shocked to see a guilty look appear on Gabe's face and the face of all the other ghosts, except for Liz, who looked just as confused as he did. "Gabe…what is he talking about?"
Gabe waited several long seconds before answering. "We were told to improve your life, dad," he reluctantly explained. "We never lied to you about anything. But God…He wanted us to be more…active…in how we went about that."
"Almost like a servant," Mike filled in the detail Gabe left out.
Gabe nodded guiltily. "Back then…we were afraid. We were afraid that if you knew about that from the beginning, you'd abuse us and make our afterlives a Hell again, like William Afton. After everything he put us through, we just couldn't bring ourselves to trust another adult again, at least not at first."
Mike shook his head. He knew what that felt like more than anyone, in the streets where survival dictated suspicion and distrust. Heck, the only reason he'd trusted Oskar because the old man was too frail to hurt him in a physical way. "I hope I managed to convince you that I'm not like him," he said sadly.
"You did!" Susie insisted. "You definitely, definitely did, dad! It's just that, before we trusted you, we were afraid. And after, we were so settled into your home and our family that we…forgot that we were meant to serve you too." She sighed. "After thirty years of misery, the first time we could feel happiness consistently was so overwhelming, it blocked out everything else from our minds." She lowered her head. "I'm sorry, dad…we should have told you this earlier."
"YOU SHOULD HAVE," Nightmare mockingly agreed, "BUT YOU DIDN'T. AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH HE HAS SACRIFICED ON YOUR BEHALF."
"And what, exactly, have I sacrificed?" Mike snapped. "A couple of hours every day, hours that I would have spent doing random crap in my workshop, playing video games, or otherwise screwing around? Spending a couple of hours with these kids is called basic parenting, and if that's the best you can come up with then I've already given you more credit than you actually deserve."
Nightmare's amused look vanished, and the ghosts were torn between fear for Mike's safety and hope that the demon had been successfully challenged. Then, the grin returned.
"YOU ARE A VERY CONVINCING LIAR, MIKE SCHMIDT," Nightmare commented. "I ALMOST BELIEVE YOU. A PITY FOR YOU THAT I HAVE THE EVIDENCE TO PROVE OTHERWISE, EVIDENCE THAT YOU CANNOT DENY."
Images began to form in the smoke again, and to her surprise Liz recognized herself standing outside of Mike's study. It was the day that she had first arrived at Mike's house, and she saw herself leave and go back downstairs, leaving Mike to enter his study alone. The man had turned on his computer and was filing through something, when his cell phone suddenly rang.
"Hey, Mike!" even though Mike had been holding up the phone to his ear normally, everyone could hear what the man was saying. "How's it going?"
"I'm doing fine, Chris, thanks for asking," the man replied.
"I wish you could come over to my birthday party, Mike, but I know you're going to be all the way in the Caribbean by then."
"Well, you better make room for one more person, Chris, cause I'm coming over to your party after all," Mike said as he clicked on something.
"Wait…WHAT?" Chris exclaimed. "But what about your vacation?"
"I'm cancelling the whole thing as we speak, Chris," Mike explained calmly. "Every plane ticket, every hotel booking, all kaput. I'm staying right here this summer."
"Mike, what the hell is wrong with you?" his friend asked, half-furious and half-worried. "Ever since we graduated from college, you've been working your ass off from Day 1 at that engineering job. You never took any actual time off for yourself in the days I've known you, and only NOW do you finally have the chance to truly relax and enjoy yourself like you deserve. And you're throwing that all away! That's thousands of dollars and one of the biggest opportunities to really explore the world going down the drain for no reason, Mike! What the hell are you thinking!"
"There's more important things than what I want, Chris," Mike answered calmly. "Besides, I thought you'd be happy hearing that I'd be showing up at your birthday party after all," he joked, though neither of them found it funny.
"Not when I think one of my closest friends is screwing himself over like this!" Chris retorted, before sighing heavily. "I still have no idea why the hell you're ruining your entire summer, but whatever it is, I hope it's worth giving it up."
The image faded, and the ghosts looked at Mike in renewed horror. He'd given up THAT much for them, from the very beginning?
"THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS SQUANDERED," Nightmare repeated. "AN OPPORTUNITY TO EXPLORE THE WORLD FOREVER LOST. DO YOU SEE NOW JUST HOW LITTLE YOU HAVE ACTUALLY DONE IN YOUR QUEST, JUST HOW MEANINGLESS YOUR REDEMPTION ACTUALLY IS?"
"Dad…I…I…" Fritz couldn't even make a full sentence.
"I'm sorry…" Gabe managed to finish his words. "We never wanted you to go through this much trouble for a bunch of ungrateful brats who tried to murder you over and over again."
"It's all right, guys," Mike interrupted him gently. "I'd be a terrible parent if I just up and left for months after you just arrived. What I need to do is more important to me than what I want to do. And you're not ungrateful brats. I kept this a secret for a reason, and I don't even remotely regret what I did."
"SUCH A GOOD PARENT," Nightmare mockingly complimented. "LOYAL AND TRUE. BUT YOU WERE NOT ALWAYS KIND TO THESE CHILDREN, CONSIDERING THAT YOU CONTRIBUTED TO THEIR SUFFERING AS WELL."
Mike glared at him. "All right, NOW I'm calling bullshit!" he shouted. "Everything you said up until now might have been the truth, perverted and twisted, but still the truth. But this? This is the first lie you've thrown at us, and I'm not going to stand here and take it! I didn't know these kids existed until the day they showed up in my bedroom, begging me to create a new family with them. How DARE you accuse me of making their lives worse, when I've done everything in my power to make them better from Day 1!"
The ghosts nervously looked over at Nightmare, half-expecting him to explode into a vengeful rage at Mike's attack. But to their surprise and growing fear, Nightmare only laughed again. "I CAN ACCUSE YOU AS MUCH AS I WANT, MORTAL, BECAUSE IT IS THE TRUTH. OBSERVE."
An image began to appear in the smoke again, this time back in the '93 pizzeria. The animatronics were standing motionlessly on the stage, and to his surprise, Mike recognized himself standing there, eyes narrowed in cold determination. He and the children watched as Mike tampered with the AI of every animatronic, plunging them all straight down to zero.
"ALLOW ME TO OFFER YOU MY CONGRATULATIONS, MICHAEL SCHMIDT," Nightmare offered. "BY SETTING THE ANIMATRONICS' AI TO ZERO, YOU ENSURED THAT THE FEW NIGHT GUARDS THAT WOULD COME AFTER YOU COULD SURVIVE UNTIL THE PIZZERIA CLOSED DOWN AND THE ANIMATRONICS WERE LEFT TO ROT."
The demon grinned. "BUT BY DOING SO, YOU ALSO PROVIDED AID TO ANOTHER PERSON. ONE THAT I AM SURE YOU ARE ALL FAMILIAR WITH. HEH HEH HEH HEH HEH…."
The image shifted again to the pizzeria, only now it was completely abandoned except for the animatronics. Mike and the children watched as a figure that all of them immediately recognized as William Afton stepped into the pizzeria, holding an axe in his hand. The animatronics' eyes instantly blinked open and narrowed hatefully at the murderer, but when they tried to pursue him, the animatronics' movements were all sluggish and clumsy, as though they were struggling to move.
Mike's eyes widened as he realized what Nightmare was showing. "No…" he breathed, for the first time showing weakness in his stalwart persona. "That can't be…"
Smiling cruelly at them, William Afton beckoned mockingly at them to follow him into the safe room adjacent to the bathroom hallway. The animatronics were too slow to move at him any faster than one at a time, and with their weakened AIs, they could barely protect themselves as Afton hacked them all to pieces with his axe.
The image vanished, and Nightmare laughed. "IF YOU HAD NOT INFLUENCED THE AI OF THE ANIMATRONICS, THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO MOVE SWIFTLY AND DESTROY WILLIAM AFTON WITH THEIR BARE HANDS," Nightmare explained, reveling in Mike's growing horror. "BUT BECAUSE YOU TAMPERED WITH THEM, AFTON WAS ABLE TO DESTROY THEM INSTEAD WITH EASE. AND WHILE THEY COULD STILL TAKE REVENGE ON THE ONE WHO MURDERED THEM BY FORCING HIM TO BECOME SPRINGTRAP, THEY REMAINED BOUND TO THEIR SUITS. ONLY NOW, THEY WERE EVEN MORE TRAPPED THAN BEFORE, UNABLE TO SO MUCH AS MOVE FOR YEARS." He grinned. "THEY WERE LEFT AT THE MERCY OF FATE AND CHANCE, MORE HELPLESS THAN THEY HAD EVER BEEN BEFORE. ALL BECAUSE OF YOU."
Mike flinched and he looked at the ghost children in horror. "Oh my God…" he barely choked out. "I…I…"
Gabe knew he had to act fast. He rushed forward and grabbed his dad by the shoulders. "Get a hold of yourself, dad!" he shouted. "That is NOT your fault. You heard what Nightmare said about us earlier! How we were murderers who killed innocents for the sake of revenge! We NEEDED to be stopped! And you were the one to stop us! You didn't do anything wrong!"
Mary nodded gratefully at Gabe and took over. "You did not know these children existed," she added fervently. "Any responsibility you have for these children existed only when you accepted them into your home, and not one second before. You are the hero who saved countless Night Guards during and after your shift, and that is ALL you are."
Mike took several deep breaths to calm himself down. Once he was done, Gabe wrapped his dad in a hug. "Even if what you did was wrong, which it wasn't, we don't have any right to call you out on that, dad. Nightmare's just trying to screw with your head. You did what you did to save the innocents we tried to kill, and we deserved every terrible thing that happened to us after the 90s. We still love you, dad. This doesn't change anything."
Mike ruffled his adoptive son's hair. "We've all made mistakes, Gabe. Some worse than others. All these visions, all these truths, all in a past that we can't change no matter how much we want to. But that's the thing. The only way the past can hurt us is if we let it hurt us. And I won't let that happen."
Gabe smiled, and so did the other ghosts. "Neither will we, dad," they proclaimed as one.
Mike got up from the floor and turned to his face Nightmare. The kind fatherly look was gone, replaced with the cold determination of a warrior ready to defend everything he cared about. "You think I don't know what you're trying to do, Nightmare?" he growled. "You think I can't see you trying to tear our family apart, trying to break these kids with the crimes of the past, trying to set us at each other's throats with every mistake or hurt that we made against each other, intentional or otherwise? What did you think I was going to do to these kids? Kick them out of my house? Enslave them and force them to do whatever I want?" His eyes narrowed and he glared at the demon with as much contempt as he could muster. "The way you try to bastardize the truth not only makes me physically sick, it's a personal insult to me and every principle and value that Oskar taught me and that I believe in. So let me make this clear, here and now. You. Have. Changed. NOTHING. Whatever goal you had in mind, you've failed. Now GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!" he roared with a fury the ghosts had never seen before.
The ghosts all cheered at this, but the happy smiles vanished as Nightmare's eyes blazed with rage and a blast of infernal fire spewed out of his mouth. "YOU THINK THIS IS OVER…" he hissed, before his voice erupted into a furious roar. "YOU DARE TO SPEAK TO ME WITH SUCH INSOLENCE! I WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER FOR YOUR ARROGANCE!"
He extended a hand, and Mike suddenly gasped as the shadows began to wrap around his body and neck, binding and trapping him. Nightmare's eyes flashed, and they began to drag Mike's struggling body towards him. The ghosts all let out various exclamations of horror as they tried to chase after him, only to be blasted backward by a wave of dark power. The ghosts stumbled as they got to their feet, but Nightmare's counter-attack had left them all exhausted and weakened, and now they were helpless to stop him from dragging their father to what would surely be a brutal death.
All except for one. The one person who Nightmare had ignored throughout the entirety of his condemnation. Liz had quietly snuck away from the rest of the ghosts and circled around Nightmare from behind, waiting for the chance to attack the demon that had threatened the safety and integrity of her new family.
Liz knew that if she wanted to save her family, then she would have to reveal a secret that she'd kept from the very beginning. A secret that could end up destroying the relationship and the trust that she had worked so hard to build ever since Mike and Mary had welcomed her with open arms. But that didn't matter, not now. Mike and the other children had made it clear that they would defend and protect each other to the end. Did she even deserve to be a part of this family if she couldn't do the same?
Ever since she'd been killed and trapped inside Baby, her entire afterlife had been defined by wrong choices and terrible mistakes. Mistakes that had gotten three people killed, mistakes that had ruined the fragile friendships she had formed with the other Sister Location animatronics. Mistakes that had nearly turned her into a monster as bad as her former father. But now, finally, her mind was completely her own. Finally, she could make the right choice. Finally, she could make a difference in a good way.
And she was going to take it, no matter the risks to herself.
Liz didn't remember the details of what had happened in the final trap pizzeria. But she could still remember the last sentence she had spoken before the world had turned to ashes. Back then, she hadn't fully understood what she was saying. But this time, as she watched Mike struggle against Nightmare's shadows, she knew exactly what those words meant, and she knew exactly what she was going to do.
"I will make you proud, daddy."
/
A/N: Gotta love a good cliffhanger, eh? :D And hey, remember those minor details earlier about "adult paperwork crap" and Mike setting those AIs to 0 at the end of his night shift. Suddenly those details aren't so minor anymore, are they?
Ah, Nightmare. People look at him and look at FNAF4, and immediately see him as a physical threat. Not surprising, when you look at those fangs and claws. But I never intended my version of Nightmare to be a physical danger. That would require me to either reduce his credibility as a threat as the family ultimately defeats him, or turn this into a Tragedy/Horror fic. Needless to say, neither option was acceptable.
No, I think that Nightmare would be much more uniquely threatening as a psychological danger. Don't get me wrong, the physical danger is still very much there, He still has all those sharp thingies, and he kicked Mary's ass already without even trying. But I wanted my version of Nightmare to be as cunning as he is cruel. He knows the fears and past sins of the ghost children more than they knew themselves, and he tried to break them with that knowledge. Hell, he was able to take Mike's past actions, actions that by themselves were harmless or even heroic, and use them as weapons against his victims.
And do you know what I think is the scariest thing about him? It isn't the fact that he's a powerful demon. It isn't the fact that he's a terrifying monstrosity with way too many sharp things on his body. It isn't even the fact that he can get into your head like he did.
It's the fact that none of what he says is fundamentally wrong.
Go ahead, read through his dialogue again. I challenge you to find one statement he made that is a straight-up falsehood. If I did my job properly as a writer, you won't. If the ghosts or even Mike had stood alone against Nightmare's condemnations, they might have cracked. Their unity and love gave them the strength to endure.
But if you thought that Mike's final speech in this chapter against Nightmare was the end, you are very, VERY wrong. Nightmare isn't even close to being done yet. As you probably noticed, one ghost managed to escape his attention.
That state of affairs…will not last for long. Heh heh heh heh heh…
