A/N: Thank you so much for all your kind reviews! I'm blown away by how much enthusiasm you guys have for my fic! I have received your video game requests and will take them into consideration (as well as start doing my research on them when I have time because my video game pool is depressingly low) in future chapters. Keep in mind that the video games you have suggested may not necessarily feature in their own "Fun with Video Games" chapter.

Whenever I don't have time or am running dry on ideas that could fit the scope of an entire chapter, I will write "Misc. Family Moments" chapters instead. Given the nature of my schedule, I can say with confidence that this is the best type of chapter for me to write in a pinch.

Shoutout to smilesforeverhappy to burying my review page with reviews and getting me very close to an average of 8 reviews per chapter 😊

Polemo: Are you so sure all the FNAF-related events are over? 😉 I do agree with you that ten chapters in a row of the family doing random stuff would be boring as hell (I don't think I even have enough ideas at a time to cover a streak that long), and I still have quite a few ideas left both in terms of good times and bad/serious times, though not all the serious events will be related to FNAF.

Chapter 47 – Misc. Family Moments 2

Don't Call Your Sister Fat

"Hey, guys!"

Jeremy, Gabe, and Fritz paused their game. "What's up, Liz?" Gabe called out to the hallway. "Did you need something?"

"Yeah," Liz affirmed as she floated into the living room. "I found this dress online and I wanted to try and use it as a new look. What do you guys think?"

The three looked over at their sister. She wasn't wearing the normal pink shirt and purple skirt that she normally did in their day-to-day life. Instead, she was wearing a red glittering minidress that extended all the way down to her knees.

Jeremy gave his sister an approving look. "Matches really well with your hair!" he offered.

Gabe smiled at her. "That dress looks great on you," he added.

"Looking great, Liz!" Fritz gave her a thumbs-up.

Liz beamed at them. "Thanks, guys!" she replied appreciatively. "I'm going to go ask Cassidy and Susie what they think." She turned around and left the living room.

Fritz looked down the hallway to make sure she was gone before turning back to his brothers. "I, uh, I was kinda...I didn't exactly tell her the truth."

Gabe raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Fritz shuffled around uncomfortably. "Well, to be honest…I think that dress kinda…made her look fat," he admitted.

Jeremy whistled. "You are really lucky that Liz wasn't around to hear that."

Fritz chuckled. "Don't I know it? I mean, imagine if she heard me say that her dress made her look fat. Heh heh heh…"

He was so caught up in his own joke that he didn't notice the horrified and fearful looks on Jeremy's and Gabe's faces until it was far, far too late. "Uh, Fritz…" Gabe feebly tried to stop him far, far too late.

Fritz saw the looks on their faces and the grin on his face froze. "She…she's right behind me, isn't she…" he muttered.

"I look fat, do I?" Liz's voice menacingly repeated behind him, causing the former Foxy inhabitant to start shivering. "You think this dress makes me look ugly. Is that right?"

"Uh…uh…uh…I didn't say that!" Fritz feebly protested.

"Okay, then…" her voice was now filled with a poisoned sweetness that did nothing to assure her brother about how much trouble he had landed himself in. "If you don't like my minidress, then why don't you tell me what you think about this look instead."

Fritz slowly turned around, hoping that maybe his sister was giving him an out…straight into the face of Scrap Baby. The boy outright squealed in fear as Scrap Baby glared straight into the depths of her brother's soul with her glowing green eyes and snapped her claw twice, a gesture that made it very clear just how screwed Fritz was. "G…g…guys…" he desperately called out to his brothers. "A…a little help here!"

Jeremy shook his head. "Not really anything I can do here."

"You're on your own, buddy," Gabe agreed.

Fritz began to slowly back away…only to phase straight through Mike's body as he entered the living room. "Oh, thank God!" he cried out in relief. Gabe, Jeremy, and Liz all shared a disappointed look…it looked like they weren't about to see Liz kick Fritz's ass after all. "Dad, I need help!"

"Uh…about what?" Mike asked. He had no idea what was going on in the living room, not the least of which because Liz was in her Scrap Baby form.

"Do you have any advice on calling girls fat?" Fritz asked desperately.

"Yeah," Mike replied dryly, causing the boy's eyes to look up hopefully. "It's real simple, actually." He returned the gaze with a piercing stare of his own. "Don't."

Fritz's face fell. "But what if you've…"

"He called me fat, daddy!" Liz cut him off. Mike's eyes turned to his daughter. "I asked him about a new red minidress I was trying out, and he said it made me look fat!"

"Wait, you've already called your sister fat?" the man gave Fritz a disapproving and incredulous look.

"To be fair, I didn't know she was there!" Fritz protested. "I was talking to Gabe and Jeremy!"

Mike shook his head and palmed his face. "Well, now you're just fucked, then," he muttered.

"Thanks dad, you're such a great help…" Fritz dryly replied. A third snapping sound brought his attention back to Scrap Baby and heightened his fear anew. "Can't you just…"

"Oh hell no, I'm not getting involved in this. You got yourself into this mess, you get yourself out," Mike retorted, a smirk growing on his lips. "Besides, I think this'll be a good lesson for you on how to talk to girls in the future." The smirk faded and was replaced by a pensive look. "I mean, I doubt you'll get a girlfriend anytime soon since you're a ghost, but you get the idea."

"Your ass is mine, pirate boy!" Liz declared, Scrap Baby's fanged grin only adding to the menacing effect. Fritz screamed in terror and fled the living room, Liz giving chase to teach her brother a lesson. Gabe and Jeremy meanwhile had collapsed into hilarity and Mike had sat down on the couch to collect himself from his laughter at watching the equivalent of a cartoon in his very household.

"Try not to break my stuff!" Mike called out after them with an amused smirk on his face.

"Do you think maybe we should do something to help Fritz?" Jeremy asked once he had recovered.

Mike shook his head with a chuckle. They all knew that Liz wouldn't actually do anything to hurt the brother she was closest to, and he couldn't resist the opportunity to allow a few shenanigans to keep things lively in the household every so often. "Eh, he'll be fine."

A Taste of Life

"This pizza is top-tier stuff, Susie!" Mike praised as he eagerly devoured a slice. The ghost girl had asked her father what kind of pizza he liked the most, and the man had off-handedly replied with Meat-Lovers before carrying on with his business. He hadn't expected Susie to go out of her way to make an entire pie for him.

"Thanks, dad!" Susie almost positively glowed with happiness from the praise. "I wanted to make my best for you!"

To Mike's confusion, Jeremy started snickering. "Yeah, Sus, with YOUR experience, there's no way you could have POSSIBLY managed to screw this one up," he snarked.

Susie gave him an annoyed look. "And what is THAT supposed to mean?" she demanded.

"You know exactly what he means," Gabe remarked, his expression almost as smug as Jeremy's. "Even after all these years, we still haven't forgotten about your…ahem…obsession."

Mike made a time-out gesture with his hands. "I'm sorry, what?" he asked blankly. "Am I missing something here?"

Gabe grinned at his father. "Back when we were still in the animatronics, Susie was completely obsessed with pizzas," he explained. "When we could still free roam and whenever we weren't trying to kill Night Guards, she would go into the kitchen all the time and make pizza after pizza after pizza." He laughed. "Sometimes the day shift workers would open the pantry to find it full of pizzas. They never figured out what was going on!"

Susie slapped him lightly on the arm. "Shut up!" she complained. "It is NOT an addiction!"

"Oh, really?" Jeremy smirked, before shifting his voice to a higher pitch to imitate Susie. "Pizza is the best food ever!" he mimicked. "I wonder if they have any pizzas in Heaven! My bib says LET'S EAT, so I have to keep making pizzas!"

Susie groaned and buried her face as Mike watched, nonplussed. "She doesn't seem THAT obsessed with pizzas," he tried to throw her a bone.

The girl gave her father a grateful look, but her brothers weren't done. "That's because you haven't seen just how bad it could get," Gabe answered dryly. "Susie's pretty much gotten over it now, but you have no idea just how bad it got sometimes. What do you think she was doing in the kitchen while you were blocking us off in the night shift?"

"Who cares about getting revenge on Night Guards when I can be making PIZZAS?" Jeremy helpfully added.

"You actually said that?" Mike asked incredulously. When Susie nodded ever so slightly after several seconds of motionless silence, he shook his head in disbelief. "I don't know if I should be happy that you got sidetracked away from killing night guards or if I should facepalm at how skewed your priorities were," he commented. He looked down at the pizza. "Still, as long as the pizza's good, at least all that experience didn't go to waste."

Susie watched in anticipation as Mike cut out a slice and lifted it to his mouth. Just as his jaws closed on the pizza, he suddenly felt a chill and a presence partially enter his own body. "Ack!" he exclaimed, his voice slightly muffled by the small piece of pizza inside. "What the heck?"

"I'm sorry, dad!" Cassidy exclaimed as she hastily sped out of her father's body. "I was practicing teleporting but I didn't realize you were here and…" her voice trailed off as her eyes widened in shock.

Mike didn't notice at first. "Don't worry about it," he waved it off. "I'm just glad you weren't still in Golden Freddy when you tried that cause otherwise I'd be a pancake right now." Cassidy remained silent, finally catching Mike's attention while Jeremy, Gabe, and Susie looked on in confusion. "Uh, Cass?" he prompted, worried that he might have triggered her again. "You all right?"

"I…tasted it…" Cassidy faintly replied, barely registering the rest of her family's presence.

"What?" Mike asked blankly.

"I…I tasted it!" Cassidy repeated, this time with more force as her eyes slowly came back into focus. "The pizza! The one that you were eating! I tasted it!"

"Are you sure you weren't just imagining it?" Susie asked, with a twinge of sympathy and concern. None of the ghosts had ever eaten anything since their deaths, so she thought that maybe her sister had let the smell of the pizza get to her head.

"I didn't imagine it!" Cassidy insisted. "I tasted crust, ham, sausage, cheese, all of it! It happened when I…"

"It happened when a part of you was in Dad's body for that little bit of time," Gabe finished, eyes widening.

"Holy shit…" Mike breathed, the piece of pizza all but forgotten in his hand. "This is huge." He whirled his head towards them. "What are you waiting for?" he asked. "Get the rest of them in here!"

The ghosts rushed off to collect the rest of their siblings, and Mike could hear the excited and shocked exclamations of the others as they realized what was going on. Not even 10 seconds had passed before all seven ghosts were back in the dining room.

"If what Cass just experienced was the real deal, then you guys might be able to taste food again," Mike said as he stared down at the pizza slice he had been munching on seconds earlier. "Only one way to test, I guess. To make this fair…" he put his hands behind his back, "guess a number between one and ten."

"Seven! Five! Three! Four!" the ghosts began shouting random numbers.

"Eight!" Gabe called, and Mike grinned as he showed them his 8 fingers.

"Got it," the man declared, and the boy eagerly approached his father. "Okay, so I don't know how this really works. Just stay at about the same place Cassidy was, part in and part out. Otherwise you might accidentally possess me, cause my body to have a bad reaction or something, I dunno."

Gabe and the other ghosts shuddered at the idea. "I'll be careful, dad," he promised. He slowly approached his father and positioned himself until he was around the same place Cass had been when she'd accidentally teleported into her father. Mike slowly picked up the pizza he had been eating earlier and took another bite.

It was as if a tidal wave of sensation hit Gabe's mouth. He could taste it all, the cheese, the crust, the sausage, ham, and onion. In life, he had always been ambivalent towards pizza at best. But after having been denied the ability to eat anything for decades, the pizza that Susie had made for their father seemed like a meal straight out of Heaven itself.

"Cass was right!" the former Freddy inhabitant exclaimed. "I really can taste Susie's pizza!" He laughed joyfully. "I can actually taste food again!"

Hearing their brother's words, the ghosts began floating towards Mike eagerly. "I want to try some!" Jeremy exclaimed.

"I want some too!" Fritz added.

"Hey, it's my pizza!" Susie challenged. "If anything, I should be the one to get a bite!"

"Wait wait wait!" Mike protested as he waved his hands in the air to try and calm them down, but he was too slow. The eager ghosts all rushed at him to experience the same sensation Gabe had, and the combined force of their charge ended up pushing Mike and his chair backward. "Ack!" he exclaimed as he toppled backward and fell to the ground. "Oof…"

The ghosts' eyes widened in horror as they realized what they had just done. "Oh my God…" Liz guiltily murmured.

"I'm so sorry, dad…" Jeremy apologized.

"We didn't mean to!" Fritz frantically babbled out.

Mike waved their apologies off. "Don't worry about it," he replied dismissively as Charlie helped Mike up off the ground, giving her siblings a look of clear annoyance in the process. "The bad spaghetti I had a few days ago hit harder than that." He righted his chair and sat back down on it. "But we're going to do this nice and organized," he declared, invoking his full authority as a parent. "Susie, you get to have the next bite. This was your pizza, after all."

The yellow-haired ghost girl gave her father a grateful smile. "Thanks, dad!"

The man smirked. "You guys are lucky I forgot to each lunch today, because otherwise I wouldn't be starving enough to eat an entire pizza. Now, after I eat a piece for Susie, all of you get in a line to my right and we'll do this one at a time. We'll figure out a long-term plan later for who'll get to enjoy my food on what days. Sounds good?"

The ghosts all excitedly agreed, Susie taking Gabe's place as Mike's temporary inhabitant while the others got in line as Mike ordered. Charlie shook her head in amazement as Mike took another bite.

"I thought I'd seen everything, but clearly I was wrong," the girl inside the Puppet thought as Susie's eyes glazed over in wonder as she finally got a taste of the pizzas that she had been making for so long. "It's amazing just what you can learn and what you can do from a happy accident."

An Artistic Exercise in Fantasy

Gabe's eyes narrowed as he carefully thought out his battle plan. Vigarde was sitting on a throne with two Druids on either side of him, both of which were carrying Berserk staves that could seriously throw a wrench in his attack plan.

"You remembered to keep a magic user with a Restore staff on each side, right?" Cassidy asked as Gabe started the game.

"You don't have to tell me twice," Gabe replied with a groan. The first time he'd tried this level, he'd been so eager to face Vigarde and cut through everything in his path that he'd completely forgotten to scan the enemy units…which had promptly led to Ephraim getting Berserked and killing Franz. Needless to say, Gabe had reset the game immediately afterwards.

"These guys have it easy," Fritz muttered as he watched Gabe play the Fire Emblem 8 game their dad had downloaded for him on his computer's emulator. Mike had been interested to see how well the kids would be able to handle a higher-level strategy game. Gabe had volunteered to be the one to actually play, while the other ghosts watched and took turns giving him suggestions on how to play through the levels. "Whenever they die, you can just reset the game and BAM! They're good as new, and the only sign that you screwed up is a count on a unit's Loss stat." He sighed. "Not that I can blame you, though. There's something about this game that just makes me want to keep everyone alive, no matter what."

"No kidding," Jeremy agreed as Gabe started advancing through Grado Keep with his two sub-armies. "Whoever made this game did a really good job making every character feel like their own person. Especially with the Supports."

"I'm still amazed at how you can pair characters together to get special endings for them," Susie commented with a smile. In her mind's eye, she was already pairing Eirika and Seth together, Ephraim and Tana, Artur and Lute, among others. "Imagine your two favorite characters getting married!"

"You can have fun with that," Gabe remarked as Fritz rolled his eyes. He'd support-paired Susie's suggestions just to humor her, but he was more interested in the main story and game itself. The kids all watched as Gabe's armies tore through Grado's defenses and bust into the inner hall while he sent Ephraim to recruit Rennac and the Rogue looted all the chests. It was Cormag who got Berserked this time around once the army got in range of the Druids, but Gabe had seen it coming and used a Restore staff to remove the potentially disastrous condition. Soon, all that was left was Vigarde himself, the General sitting on his throne with a Spear in his hand. Gabe sent Ephraim up to face Vigarde with Reginleif in tow, and thanks to a lucky crit he got on his second attack, Ephraim was able to best the Silent Emperor.

"Nice going!" Fritz cheered as Ephraim claimed the throne. "I always love it when we kill bosses in this game with those badass crit animations!"

"That is definitely one of the most satisfying ways to beat a boss, no question," Liz agreed as Gabe proceeded to go through the post-chapter story. All seven ghosts were surprised and not a little disturbed to learn that Vigarde had been nothing but a corpse manipulated by his son the entire time. "Something's really not right about this Lyon guy…" she muttered.

"You'll soon find out," a voice called from the door to Gabe and Jeremy's bedroom. All six of the ghosts looked up to see Mike standing there. "But before you guys go on with the next chapter, I thought we could do a little fun activity together."

That instantly got the ghosts' attention. "Ooh, like what?" Susie asked eagerly.

"Well, I thought we could get together and do a little drawing exercise," Mike explained. "But not just any drawing exercise. By now, you've seen a lot of different Fire Emblem characters and classes. So here's my question. What class would YOU be as a Fire Emblem character? That's what I want you guys to draw. You guys up for it?"

"Sure!" the ghosts abandoned the game (Gabe remembering to save of course) and everyone moved to the living room, where Charlie already had pens, pencils, and crayons out for them to use.

"This kind of remind me of character creation for our Pathfinder game," Susie commented as she picked up a pen.

Mike shrugged. "You've got your similarities and differences," he replied as he left the hallway with his own set of utensils. "I'll be showing my drawing last, and I think mine will be a surprise, so no peeking!"

The ghosts diligently and animatedly began drawing different characters on their papers. Thanks to Gabe opening up the selection of FE sprites on his laptop, it wasn't very hard for them to copy the basic shape of the Fire Emblem classes and make their own additions, even if some of them had a rough start without having done this in a while.

It wasn't until several minutes later that the kids were finished and Mike returned. "All right!" he declared. "Let's see what you've got! I hope you didn't just copy and paste your D&D characters."

"I didn't," Susie replied as she revealed her drawing first: a blonde young woman wearing glittering gold and blue armor and flying on a majestic winged horse, holding a spear in her hand. "I want to be a Falcoknight!" she explained with a wistful smile. "Pegasi are so beautiful and majestic and badass, I'd love to have one." She sighed. "Too bad winged horses like this don't exist in real life."

"That's really beautiful, Sus!" Cassidy exclaimed, with the other ghosts making various noises of agreement. "I wouldn't want to fight you in the air!"

"Death from above, huh?" Mike nodded approvingly. "I like it!" As he said that, his mind flashed back to the hallucination he had seen of the children in their final living moments. "You must really like animals, don't you, Susie?"

Susie's eyes widened in shock and her jaw dropped. "How did you know?" she asked, stunned.

Mike smirked. "I have my ways."

Susie sighed. "I do like animals. Especially horses and dogs. I used to own a dog back when I was still alive, but then…" her eyes began to mist up.

Not wanting to force Susie to relive dark moments, Mike quickly interrupted. "I'm sure your character would be great to add into any army," he inwardly sighed with relief as Susie's eyes cleared and she smiled gratefully at her father. "Anyways, next?"

Fritz revealed his drawing, a Berserker with a red menacing helmet and a crimson axe. "Berserkers are the promoted version of Pirates, and I love being a Pirate!" he declared proudly. "I'll beat the crap out of anything with my axe!"

Mike chuckled. "Somehow this doesn't surprise me in the slightest."

"Hit hard and hit fast," Jeremy smirked. "Yep, that's you all right."

"Hey if it works for you, it works for me," Mike shrugged. "I do love the crit animation for Berserkers, though. Flip your axe into the air then WHAM."

Fritz grew starry-eyed at the description. "I need to see that," he breathed, already planning on asking Gabe to give Ross the Pirate an Ocean Seal.

Jeremy decided to show his drawing next. Unlike the others, his character was clad in heavy armor that completely covered his face and body. The General gave off the imposing impression of impenetrable defense, as if he could take any all attacks aimed his way for days to come. In his hands he carried a mighty chain-spear, ready to skewer and take down all enemies who dared to challenge him. "You're not taking this guy down anytime soon!" he proudly challenged.

"Dang, that General really looks like a hardcore badass," Mike commented, earning a grin from his son. "I know hardcore players don't like Generals for their ranked-runs, but personally I don't give a crap about that. Not when you have one of the most absurdly epic critical hit animations in the game."

"Oh yeah, I saw that!" Jeremy exclaimed. "Spinning a giant axe, spear, or sword around and then ramming it straight in the enemy's face. It's just so cool!"

"I always have fun using Generals for some reason even if I know they're slow," Gabe admitted. "That crit animation definitely helps."

"You're playing this game casual, have as much fun as you want however you want!" Mike advised. "Anyways, who's next?"

"I'll go!" Cassidy offered as she showed her picture. She had drawn a black-haired girl in ornate black and golden robes, holding a book in her hand as she let loose a devastating thunderbolt on an unseen enemy. "I'm a Sage!"

"So this is basically your D&D character," Fritz commented dryly. Cassidy gave him a dirty look.

"Hey!" she protested. "Magic users are awesome! I don't see YOU being able to teleport around."

Fritz raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture, resisting the urge to shiver as he remembered what had happened the LAST time he had pissed off a sister. "Hey, I didn't say it was bad!" he countered. "Sages are amazing, they can do so many things in the game except ride and Darkness!"

"And being able to use magic would be so cool!" Cassidy gushed. "Casting fireballs, shooting lightning, healing people who get hurt. Heck, the only real magic powers I have right now that the rest of you don't are teleporting and illusions, but even those are really fun to play around with!" She gave Charlie an envious look. "Still doesn't come to anything you can do though," she admitted.

Charlie shrugged. "I'm a bit of a weird case."

"No kidding," Mike replied dryly. "Anyways, who's next?"

Gabe revealed his drawing, a Hero. The brown-haired man wore dark blue armor with spiked pauldrons. In his left hand he carried a similarly colored shield, while in his right hand he carried a shining silver sword.

"A Hero!" Mike realized. He nodded in approval. "Heroes can easily be some of the best units in the game. Whenever I think of the classic adventurers, the Hero class is one of the ones that easily come to mind."

Gabe smiled and shrugged. "I guess I like sticking with the classics," he remarked. "I'd be able to do a lot of things right as a Hero and I wouldn't have any major weaknesses."

"When it comes to fighting practicality, there aren't a lot of classes that beat Heroes," Mike complimented. "I wouldn't want to meet you on the battlefield."

"I'd be the one kicking ass right next to you, dad!" Gabe declared, a sentiment that was echoed by the other ghosts.

"We really would be a badass army with everything we have so far," Mike commented with a distant smile as his mind conjured up the image of his family as a Fire Emblem army kicking ass with ease. "So who wants to go next?"

Liz and Charlie looked at each other uncertainly. Shrugging, Charlie decided to go first. Her character was (perhaps unsurprisingly) a Bishop, but her character was dressed in holy robes colored black and white. Odd colors to an outsider, but everyone could tell that she had colored her character based on the Marionette's motif. However, her character's face was surprisingly normal instead of wearing the Puppet's mask like everyone expected, showing a brown-haired brown-eyed young woman with kindness in her eyes as her staff glowed faintly with heavenly power. "Do I really need to say it?" Charlie asked with a twinkle in her eyelights.

"This surprises me even less than Fritz being a Berserker," Jeremy deadpanned.

"I honestly couldn't see Charlie being anything other than the stereotypical healing class," Liz added good-humoredly.

"Like I told you guys before, I don't like seeing people sad or in pain," Charlie shrugged. "Healing, curing status conditions, saving you from certain death at the hands of enemies, lighting up the darkness, whatever you need me to do, I'll take care of business."

Mike patted Charlie's head lightly and smiled at her. "That's Charlie, all right. And I wouldn't want it any other way." All the ghosts cheered to the girl's faint embarrassment.

There was only one person left. "Guess it's my turn now," Liz said as she flipped over her FE character picture.

"Whoa…" Fritz gasped. The drawing was, in some ways, not too different from Susie's. Like Susie's Falcoknight, Liz's character was wearing resplendent armor, albeit colored golden-red and with red-orange hair instead. However, instead of sitting upon a Pegasus, Liz was sitting upon a magnificent white stallion and wielding both a shining silver sword and a magnificent red shield with a golden cross engraved upon it.

"Dang…" Mike whistled. "That's a really good drawing!"

"A Paladin?" Cassidy asked. "Wow, I was NOT expecting that!"

"I'm curious to know why you chose a Paladin too," Susie admitted.

Liz smiled wistfully. "This is the type of person I want to be," she explained. "A hero who fights evil and protects the innocent. Especially the people I care about. And I really like I would be this kind of person as a Paladin more than any other class."

"A true Knight in Shining Armor, in other words," Mike finished, realizing that the Paladin that Liz had drawn was a representation of the new "her" that she was trying to become.

"Judging by what we've seen of Paladins from Seth, I think you've hit the nail right on the head, Liz," Gabe praised, and Liz hugged him lightly on the side in response.

All eyes now turned to Mike. "What about you, dad?" Charlie asked. "We've shown all of ours, now you need to show us yours!"

"That's right," Mike conceded, "it's time I showed you my own fantasy character. I have to admit, I kind of cheated, because this isn't really based on an FE character class."

"Who cares?" Fritz brushed it off. "I want to see it!"

"Me too!" Liz agreed, and the other ghosts made similar noises.

"I think you'll be surprised," Mike promised, and with that he showed his artwork to them.

The ghosts fell in stunned silence as their minds processed what they were seeing. They had expected Mike to be a knight in shining armor like Liz, or a wielder of holy magic like Charlie. A true paragon of light, justice, virtue, and everything that made them feel good.

What they saw instead…looked like the exact opposite.

Mike's character was wearing black robes with shades of dark blue and purple, with the Fire Emblem sigil of darkness inscribed on the center. In both of his hands, he carried two hand-scythes of black metal with heads fashioned in the shape of skulls, blades lit aflame with purple and black flames of dark magic. But what really shocked the ghosts was the fact that Mike's entire body, what little they could see of it, was covered entirely in shadow and darkness. The only feature they could see were two glowing red eyes that wouldn't have looked out of place on an evil overlord or terrifying monster.

"This is…this is…really scary…" Cassidy was the first to break the silence.

"This looks like something that would come out of a horror movie," Fritz added, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

"I don't…I don't get it…" Jeremy looked up at his dad, utterly confused. "Just…why? This looks like the Grim Reaper, or something straight out of a horror movie!"

"Don't get me wrong, this character would still be a good guy," Mike quickly asserted. The ghosts looked a little reassured at this, but not by much. He sighed. "The thing is, I've never really been comfortable in the spotlight. Shadows and darkness have always been more of my thing. It's what I lived in through most of my early life, things that I had to adapt to and take advantage of to survive. I might have grown out of it in college and especially once I started working at Eisensteel, but I still feel and probably will always be more comfortable in the shadows, even if I don't act like it nowadays."

"Besides," the corners of his lips twitched upward in a wry smile. "I find heroes and good characters associated with darkness far more interesting and fun than your typical light heroes. Not gonna lie, but dark magic and darkness-themed characters can be really cool and awesome in ways that light heroes just can't, and my ideal character would be one who uses darkness and shadows while still being a good guy."

Liz's eyes widened in realization. "It's like my Scrap Baby form," she realized. "Something dark and scary but still a force for good now that I'm the one in control of it."

Mike grinned and ruffled his daughter's hair. "That's right, Liz," he agreed. "Not everything associated with darkness has to be evil." In the back of his mind, he saw again the shadowy versions of Freddy and Bonnie that he had seen in the 1987 pizzeria. "Anyways, I think we've spent enough time here." He got up off the floor. "I interrupted you guys from doing one of the hardest chapters in the game, and I'm interested to see how many times it takes for you to beat that massive desert level with the two bosses. Have fun!"

"Looking forward to it, dad," Gabe replied, half-sarcastically. As Mike left, all the ghosts stared at the shadowy reaper-like figure that their father had created. They didn't doubt their father's words that the character WAS a good person at heart like he was, even if he was scarier than most things they had ever seen. But the way his menacing red eyes positively glared out into the open just like they had when he had snarled his oath of vengeance against William Afton, the way his scythes blazed with shadowy flames...

None of the ghosts could shake off the feeling that the dark hero Mike had created represented a side of their father that was best left hidden and undisturbed.

/

A/N: Ooh, that last one suddenly took a turn for the spooky, didn't it? I didn't expect the third Misc. Family Moment to carry on so much longer than the other two. Also, I apologize if the Fire Emblem Drawing moment was a little too like the D&D chapters, I tried my best to make it distinct and I thought it would be fun for the kids to engage in a little art activity since I haven't covered them doing any of the arts yet in detail.

I chose FE8 since it has a reputation for being one of the easier games and one that the kids could probably handle the easiest for their first time playing Fire Emblem.

That shadowy reaper character that Mike drew to represent himself is quite the unexpected and interesting one, isn't it? What do you think it means? I'm curious to see what your impressions are, and what relevance you think this character has for the future.

I'll either do another lighthearted moment next chapter (possibly with Alex/Meghan or Melody) or get into the next major event, depending on how much time I have and what sort of inspiration hits me. There will be a time skip of quite a few months if I do dive into the major event next, though right now I'm thinking one more lighthearted chapter and THEN the next major event would be the best course of action for the moment.

Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed!