A/N: We hit 100 Favs and Follows! Thank you so much for helping me hit that benchmark, you guys are the best! And I promise to keep bringing out high quality chapters! I was originally going to have this be another serious lore exploration chapter, but with my med school final exam week happening this week that just isn't going to be happening unless I half-ass it (and we all know that wouldn't make ANYBODY happy).
So here's this instead. This one isn't going to focus on the ghosts, but instead introduce a new character who has more to do with Mike's life rather than the ghosts'. I'd like to make it clear that she is NOT currently a love interest, and that right now she is only a close friend of Mike's and someone who will enable an important plot element later down the road.
Also, I beat Night 6 on FNAF 2 after HOURS AND HOURS OF TRYING. Yeesh…I'd rather do FNAF1's 4/20 mode a thousand times instead of that crap again. And after so many hours of trying to get the second star, I got the third star with 4/20 mode in just 2 tries. Go figure. Not even gonna TRY to do Golden Freddy mode, Fazbear Fever was bad enough as it is...
Chapter 34 – The Engineer's Successor
"And it looks like Harry's pulled through yet another grand adventure filled with danger," Mary finished as she put the book down. "I have to say, this one surprised me quite a bit."
"I know, right?" Gabe commented. "I had no idea Sirius Black was going to be a GOOD guy at the end of it all."
"At least Harry can go to Hogsmeade without screwing the rules," Fritz snarked as he got off the bed. "I mean, I'm all for a little rule-breaking myself every so often, but even I have to admit that was going a bit too far…"
"Am I the only one who noticed that Voldemort didn't even show up?" Liz asked. "Isn't he supposed to be the main villain of this series?"
Mary shrugged. "He'll be back later," she replied. "In the meantime, I'm going to go quickly scan the house and the workshop to make sure nobody broke into them."
She flipped up the security tablet and began scanning through it. Mike had left the house earlier in the afternoon to go hang out with some old buddies of his. "I love you guys to death and I'll never regret taking you in, but even I need a goddamn break once in a while," was his explanation before he left the house. Even though Mike could easily replace anything that was lost or repair any damage, Mary still felt a responsibility to make sure nothing bad happened to it while he was gone.
"Nothing there…nothing there…nothing there…"
Her jaw dropped, and her eyes flashed. Jeremy, who had been about to leave the room, noticed the change in expression. "What's up?" he asked.
Mary pointed at the tablet. "There's someone inside Mike's workshop," she muttered. "She must have broken in there somehow!" The tablet showed the workshop, fully lit, with a woman looking at different items and picking one or two things up every so often. She looked to be only slightly younger than Mike with long black hair wrapped up in a ponytail behind her head, and she exuded in aura of confidence that the ghosts could see with every step she took.
Susie's eyes flashed angrily. "Look at her!" she snapped. "She's not even trying to be subtle. Turning the lights on, walking around as though she owned the place!"
"I think we should teach her a lesson," Fritz suggested, a sinister grin stretching across his face. "Just like we did with Colm. Show her what happens to people who try to do bad things to our dad!"
"I'm not opposed to that idea by itself, but be careful with how you go about this," Mary warned. "We are not killers anymore. Mike would be severely disappointed with all of you if you ruined your redemption over something as insignificant as this."
"We know," Cassidy gently but firmly assured her. "Believe me, we want our new life to be as different from our old life as possible."
Mary nodded. "I just wanted to make sure," she said, before the mouth of her mask widened and her eye lights glinted. "Let's give this thief an early Halloween scare."
/
Melody couldn't help but marvel not only at how many things Mike had stored in his workshop, but also at how organized everything was. "I guess a lot of the company rubbed off on Mike before he left," she thought as she picked up a couple of mechanical parts. "I have to thank him later for letting me borrow some of these."
She was about to pick up and look at a screwdriver when she suddenly heard a high-pitched giggle come from behind her. Stephanie whirled around to see who was there, but there was nothing. "Did I just hear a kid's laugh?" she thought. "Impossible. Mike doesn't have any kids, he would've told me if he did." She knelt on the floor to check the various screwdrivers that were neatly arranged in an order. "Let's see…I'm going to need a specific one that's not too big or too small, so…"
"You shouldn't be here," the voice of a young boy whispered menacingly into her ear.
Melody felt her blood run cold. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. "Who's there?" she called out.
"His family, that's who," another voice growled, and then suddenly the lights shut off. Melody blinked as she tried to get her eyes to adjust to the darkness. An orange-haired boy wearing a red T-shirt and black sports pants suddenly appeared a few feet away. Melody paled as she realized the boy was glowing, transparent and floating in mid-air.
"Y-you're a…you're a…"
The boy tilted his head. "Ghost?" he finished with an unnatural smile that sent shivers down her spine. "That's right! And it's not just me. We've got a whole family to join us!"
More ghosts began to appear on either side of him, boys and girls of different ages. From behind them, a tall and thin figure emerged, its white mask trapped in a permanent smile as it glared balefully at her. From the way the other ghosts moved aside to let her through, it was clear that she was the leader of the group. "What makes you think you have any right to be here?" it hissed with undisguised hostility, and Melody barely processed the fact that it was a female voice. "You think you can just walk into here, take Mike's hard-earned things, and then leave? You made a grave mistake coming here."
"Wait, WHAT?" Melody exclaimed. "I'm not here to steal anything! Mike gave me permission to take some things from his garage to help me with some projects that I'm in charge of at work!"
A boy with black hair laughed mockingly. "Yeah, right!" he sneered. "Like we have any reason to believe you!"
"I swear it's the truth!" Melody insisted. "You can ask him! Ask him about Melody Park from Eisensteel Robotics! I'm one of his closest friends!"
A girl with yellow hair snorted. "Never heard of you before." But the Marionette suddenly paused.
"That name…it does sound familiar," she admitted. "Mike did mention you a few times, and from what I remember he did think fondly of you." The hostility in her gaze returned. "But why should we trust you?" she challenged. "For all we know, you could be someone pretending to be this Melody."
"I know things about his life that only the few people he trusts would ever know," she replied as she remembered everything Mike had confided to her about his early life. "I know that he was abused as a kid and lived out in the streets for years." The ghosts' eyes widened. "I know that he spent 20 nights in some hellhole of a pizzeria where some animal robots or something were trying to kill him." Out of the corner of her eye, she could have sworn she saw one ghost flinch. "I know that he won the lottery for a thousand dollars a day and that he's one of the richest people in this state."
Melody looked the Puppet straight in her eyes. "And I know that the man who saved him and turned his entire life around was Colonel Oskar Schmidt." She took a deep breath. "So I'm either some crazy stalker pretending to be Melody Park, or I'm one of his closest friends and one of the few people he trusts. It's your call to make."
None of the ghosts made any sound or movement for several seconds. And then, unexpectedly, Mary's cell phone suddenly began to ring, shattering the tense silence. She raised the phone to her face. "Hello?"
"Hello, hello?" Mike's unmistakable voice rang through the workshop. The man chuckled. "Geez, I sound like the guy who taught me how to survive at Freddy's. Anyway, I forgot to tell you this earlier, but there's going to be someone coming around my workshop to pick up a few things. She's an old friend of mine named Melody who works where I used to, we go back a long way. She's a black-haired Asian woman and I've given her full permission to take whatever she needs from my workshop. If you see her in the security tablet, just leave her be, she's not doing anything wrong."
"Uh, Mike?" Mary interrupted.
"Yeah, Mary?"
"Too late," everyone in the room, both living and dead, said in unison. The sound of a hand slapping a face echoed from the receiver of the phone.
"So…you guys saw Melody go into the garage and went after her cause you thought she was a thief."
"Yep," Liz answered.
"And now Melody knows that there's seven ghostly children living with me in my house."
"That's right," the woman confirmed.
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Then Mike, the man who had possessed enough eloquence to challenge a demon lord, uttered only two words.
"Well shit."
/
The ghosts watched sheepishly as Melody put the last of the things she'd needed into her van. Mike had offered to come back from his break day to help her load the materials, but she outright refused to inconvenience him and insisted that she could take care of everything herself. Her original plan had been simply to take what she'd needed from the garage and leave, but now she was far too curious about the ghost kids to simply just let the topic hang there.
"Sorry about trying to scare you earlier," Jeremy apologized. "We weren't ever going to actually hurt you. It's just that…we really don't take kindly to thieves trying to break into Dad's house. Especially since there was one who tried to steal a couple thousand dollars from him a month or so ago."
"Don't worry about it," Melody waved it off. "I'm honestly glad Mike has some company with him. If he stayed isolated in this house for the rest of his life with nobody to talk with in person that would've scared me more. Anyways, I think we got started off on the wrong foot," she held out a hand to the Puppet, the only person whose hand she could physically shake. "My name's Melody Park."
"I'm Mary," she returned the handshake. "Nice to meet you. Would you like to come in?"
"I'd love to," Melody answered, and she followed the ghosts into the house. They guided her over to the living room, and she whistled as she saw the array of video games and movies stacked on the shelves or sprawled on the floor. "Damn!" she commented appreciatively. "I didn't realize Mike was such a video game maniac. I'd come over to play some if I wasn't so busy right now."
The ghosts took the time to introduce themselves as Mary sat down on the couch. Once they did so, Cassidy looked up at Mary. "If Mike and Melody are close friends, why didn't he mention her or why didn't he have any pictures of her in that album we saw?" she asked.
"I can answer the second question for you," Melody offered. "The thing is, I didn't really interact with Mike all that much outside of the workplace, at least no place worth taking a picture in. Most of the time we interacted with each other was at Eisensteel, and they don't let you take pictures there without a good reason. I tried to get the exec board to change their minds when I became head robotics engineer after Mike left, but no dice."
The ghosts' eyes widened. "You and Mike are head engineers?" they gasped.
"Well, Mike WAS head engineer," Melody corrected. "I was working directly under him for a couple of years, and then I took over when Mike retired two years ago." A nostalgic smile appeared on her lips. "Man, we worked on so many machines together, good times, good times."
"As for why Mike never mentioned you to the other kids," Mary continued, "I think it's because when the children arrived, Mike focused all of his attention on getting my brothers and sisters adjusted to a new life here, and everything else took a backseat."
"Knowing what I do about Mike, that makes sense," Melody agreed. "Even though he was nothing short of brilliant, he always preferred to focus on one thing at a time. Sometimes that was a good thing, sometimes it brought what was otherwise an exemplary performance down a peg." She smirked. "I'm guessing that's the reason why he forgot to tell you about my visit."
Some of the ghosts giggled. "I like her already," Susie thought as the woman took a sip of coffee that Mary had offered to her. "What kind of projects did you make?" she asked out loud.
Melody shrugged. "Mostly robots designed to do various things. I could talk about the details, but they'd probably make you fall asleep from boredom so I'll spare you those. Believe me, you do not want a committed engineer to talk about her projects because I could literally go on for hours." She said with a grin as she put her mug down. Then, her expression turned into a wistful smile. "Ever since I first showed up at Eisensteel, Mike was the friend and mentor guiding me every step of the way. From a lowly intern to replacing him as head engineer, I wouldn't have gotten nearly as far as I did in life it wasn't for him. He's one of the smartest people I know and one of the best."
Liz smiled. "That sounds like Dad all right."
"Speaking of dad, Mike never mentioned anything about ghost kids living in his house last time we talked, because I definitely would've remembered something like that if he had. Granted, that was a while ago, but still," Melody sighed. "Then again, I can't exactly blame him for that, considering I probably would've thought he'd gone insane."
The ghosts looked at each other nervously, debating how much they should tell her. Gabe decided to speak up. "We…we were lost souls looking for a place to rest," he said carefully. "We found Mike, and he welcomed us into our home. He's been watching over us ever since, and we've repaid that kindness as much as we can."
The house fell into silence for several moments as Melody processed his words. "You…don't believe me, do you?" Gabe finally asked.
Melody shook her head. "It's not that I don't think you're telling the truth…it's more that I know you're trying to hide things from me," she reluctantly admitted. "One of the subtler skills Mike taught me was how to detect if other people are trying to keep secrets from you. There's a lot of shady business people who would love to try and screw you into a bad deal. I could tell you what I suspect about you…or I can just drop the subject." She glanced around at the ghosts. "I'll let you make the call on that one."
The children looked at each other for several seconds. "What should we do?" Liz asked through their mental link. "Do you think she knows about you guys?"
"I have a feeling she does," Fritz replied grimly.
"I…uh…I flinched when she talked about Freddy's back in the garage," Cassidy admitted. "I'm sorry, I think I gave us away."
"Don't worry about it, Cass," Susie assured her. "She was going to find out eventually."
"I feel like if we try to drop the subject now then she'll have a bad opinion of us," Jeremy said with a sigh. "This is one of Dad's friends we're talking about, and another living person that we could potentially bond with too. I don't want to ruin that before it even got a chance to happen."
"Since I'm sure she already suspects us anyway, we might as well just be honest with her," Gabe finally decided after several moments of thought. "We've already given away a lot as it is."
Melody looked at them in confusion. To her, it just seemed like they had been looking silently at each other for several seconds. "Uh…you guys okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, we were just talking to each other with telepathy," Jeremy assured her, before his smile faded. "The truth is, Melody…we…we weren't always good people," he confessed, "and we didn't always care about Dad like we do now. In fact, we were…kind of the opposite, to be honest."
"You were the ones who tried to kill him back in that pizzeria, weren't you?" Melody asked. It wasn't an accusation, simply a question. "You tried to stuff him in one of those suits. Those rumors and ghost stories were all true, weren't they?"
The ghosts looked down in shame. "We were murdered by someone who looked like a Night Guard," Susie confessed. Melody's eyes widened in horror, but before she could console them the girl had already continued. "We were so, so angry…the only thing we wanted was revenge for our deaths. We thought that every Night Guard was just like the one who took our lives…a heartless murderer…and we tried to kill every Night Guard from that point onward." Tears began to flow from her eyes. "We didn't realize that we were becoming just like the person who murdered us until we had taken far, far too many lives."
"And one of those people you tried to kill was Mike," Melody filled in the unspoken part. "When he was a Night Guard there."
"Yes…" Gabe admitted. "But Dad…he wasn't like the others. He had a plan, he knew what to do. He came up with strategies to counter what we did, took advantage of every weakness we showed him. He survived for 20 days until he found that lottery ticket that changed his life. Out of all the night guards, he lasted by far the longest." He rubbed his eyes. "Thank God we failed. THANK GOD we failed!"
Melody's lips twitched. "That sounds like Mike, all right," she commented, her voice holding only the faintest tinge of dry humor. "He always did have a great mind for planning things out, and he could also adapt quickly whenever, to quote the man himself, things went to shit." That elicited a tiny few giggles out of the ghosts despite the sudden mood change. "He's saved more than one project from going down under, I can tell you that for certain."
"We've learned a long time ago that trying to keep secrets for too long results in a lot more problems down the road," Mary replied. "And it seems like you already knew the truth, or at least had started putting most of the pieces together. We do want to be friends with you, Melody. Even if the chances of that happening now are low because of what we just told you."
Melody sighed and put her cup down. "You know, I didn't think my respect for Mike could get any higher, but this wouldn't be the first time he's surprised me." She looked up at the ghosts. "I'm not going to judge you or hate on you for what you did back in that pizzeria. If I were in your shoes…I honestly don't know if I would have done any better than you have," she reluctantly admitted. "Besides, Mike has more of a right to that than I ever could, and if he forgave you then I'll trust his judgment."
Visible looks of relief appeared on the ghosts' faces, but Melody wasn't done. "That being said…there are some things I need to talk to you about."
"Whatever you want, we'll do our best to answer," Cassidy promised.
"Yeah…I've noticed you guys are awfully close to Mike," Melody observed. "A huge swing from trying to kill him thirty-plus or so years ago. Granted, he's given you a lot of reasons for that, but is there any reason why you're so dedicated and loyal to him aside from love and family?"
"We were sent here to make things right with a survivor of our killing spree," Gabe explained. "Taking care of Mike and being his family is our quest for redemption, so that we can earn eternal peace one day."
"I'm not gonna pretend to know how the afterlife works, but it seems you're doing at least a decent job of it from what I can tell," the head engineer noted. Then, unexpectedly, a sad look crossed her face. "Can I tell you something that's been on my mind for a while?" she asked. "Speaking from friend to family member?"
"Of course!" Susie exclaimed. "We'll be glad to listen to anything you have to tell us!"
"The thing is…I'm worried about Mike," Melody confessed, instantly alarming the ghosts as they leaned forward to hear what she had to say. "One thing that he had a reputation for when he was still at Eisensteel was that he was always a huge workaholic. It was one of the main reasons why he got to the job of head engineer, true, but I can't help but feel like he was always trying to do just too much for his own good." She looked them in the eyes. "Did you know that he almost never took a vacation in the many years he's worked there? He never took breaks for anything longer than a few days at a time, and even those didn't happen very often either."
The ghosts thought back to Nightmare's flashback, and how Mike's friend had protested his decision to cancel his vacation. What Melody said made a disturbing amount of sense.
"To be honest, I was kind of relieved when he retired," Melody continued. "Not because I wanted his job, I'm perfectly happy with where I am, and I have more than enough to keep my daily life going strong. I thought that Mike would finally get to relax and take the rest of his life easy. God knows that he's been through enough shit in his life."
"We know that all too well," Liz mumbled.
"Please don't take what I'm about to say the wrong way, but I have mixed feelings knowing that he's spending his days now taking care of you," the engineer's successor admitted. "Don't get me wrong, it makes me really happy to know that he has people to depend on and that he has a stable, loving family. He should've had that so much earlier in his life. But at the same time, if I know Mike as well as I'm sure I do, he's been devoting all his energy to making sure you guys are happy and safe. And now I can't help but worry again that he'll burn himself out and exhaust himself. He might seem very energetic and ready to take on the world, but he isn't getting any younger. And everyone's going to suffer if he ever reaches that breaking point."
Mary leaned forward and put her hand on Melody's. "We don't want that to happen any more than you do," she assured her, her voice loud and strong.
"Just…please watch over him," she implored. "I'm sure you know this already, but family is a two-way street. Please do everything you can to make his life better and easier, just like I'm sure he's done everything he could to do the same for yours. That's all that I want to ask, as his friend."
Gabe smiled at her. "You didn't need to ask us that for us to do it, Melody."
"Ever since we've come here, we've all done our best to make things easier for Mike," Mary added. "I have a few magical powers that I've used to help calm Mike down and help him sleep easier whenever he's feeling restless, and my friends have all started doing house chores every so often so that Mike doesn't have to deal with it."
"That makes me really happy to hear that, guys," the woman beamed. "But I have a suggestion if you're willing to go one step further. It could only help you with your redemption, and it might be something that fits with your own interests too."
"Let's hear it!" Jeremy declared, and the other ghosts made varying noises of agreement.
"You might want to look up some real-world things that could be helpful to you even as ghosts," Melody continued. "For example, one of you might want to look up how the technology in this house works, and another one of you might want to look up some basic first aid or how to deal with things like the common cold or a bad cut. If, God forbid, something bad happens, Mike won't be the only one who'll know how to handle it." She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Did you guys ever have dreams or ideal jobs when you were still alive? This might be the closest thing you can get to seeing those dreams become real."
The ghosts were silent as they pondered Melody's words. Find more ways to help their dad out while pursuing other interests at the same time? Could they really do that?
Melody shrugged. "It's just a thought, in the end. I'm sure you guys have done a great job taking care of Mike already, and I don't see that changing anytime soon." She got up from the sofa. "Well, I've got to head out," she told them. "I have to take the parts I borrowed from Mike's workshop over to my own station so that I can have everything ready to go when the weekend ends. We're working on a huge project that could make or break us and I have to give this my 100%."
"You're gonna do great," Gabe assured her, "and don't you worry about a thing. We'll make sure we do our part just as much as Dad is doing his."
"Once this project is done I might swing by the house some more," the engineer called over her shoulder as she headed towards the door. "Maybe tell you some more stories about what Mike and I did together. Until then, see ya later!"
"Bye!" all the ghosts chorused as she swung the door shut behind her. "I like her!" Cassidy declared as they heard her van drive away in the distance. "She seems like a really nice lady!"
"I was secretly using my magic to test the truth behind her intentions, just in case," Mary commented, before shaking her head. "I shouldn't have bothered. Every single word she spoke was genuine in both the letter and the spirit."
"Thank God Dad called at just the right time," Fritz added. "If we hadn't, this would've turned into a disaster."
The ghosts fell into silence as they pondered Melody's advice. Out of all the ghosts, only Mary had a solid idea on how she could help Mike out when he ran into trouble, and that was only because she had been staying with him for over a year by the time the rest of them had arrived. "So…does anybody have any interests they want to follow?" Mary asked after several seconds. "I think I have enough internet experience to guide you around to things you might be interested in."
"Well…" Gabe began, "I always wanted to be a doctor…"
/
A/N: Sorry if this chapter isn't as big, intense, or funny as some of the other ones I've written. Med school exams take priority and I do need Melody to enable some plot advancement later down the road.
I do hope that I've effectively portrayed Melody as a likable character and a good friend who's genuinely concerned for Mike's well-being. I figured I should introduce more living characters besides Mike and the Marshalls, cause otherwise the fic would get boring with using the same characters repeatedly. I might also use Melody as a conduit to talk about Mike's old job in the future sometime, since it's not something I've talked about in detail (and to be honest it is a rather minor detail, but still).
Not much to say here. Just want to thank you guys again for all the support you've given me. The next few chapters will be lore exploration again, this time focusing on the Puppet and Henry.
Hope you guys enjoyed!
