A/N: I'm gonna be real with you guys, I will probably doing a time skip to the start of the "Security Breach" arc proper after a filler chapter or 2. I think I've reached the point that my interests in general have moved on from FNAF. And while I am committed to finishing this fic, I'm now certain more than ever that I don't want to keep prolonging it until the end. I am aware that there are games beyond Ruin that have either been established such as Help Wanted 2 and Sequel of the Mimic. But while I MAY consider incorporating elements of Help Wanted 2, I am definitely not going to incorporate any future games beyond this. I've seen many a story overstay their welcome and deteriorate because of it, and I don't want to make that mistake with "Mike's New Ghostly Family" after the years I've put into it.
With all that being said, this chapter is more of a filler chapter meant to give me a break from FNAF-related stuff for a bit. I've noticed that even after 200 chapters I haven't written too much about Mike's social life outside of his kids, so here's a chapter to address that.
DeathClawProductions: Gonna be real with you, I straight up didn't know about Mr. Burrow's existence as I haven't actually read the Fazbear Frights books. At best, I have cursory knowledge of the stories. And either way, I'm not going to be incorporating them into MNGF, both because I don't think it's right for me to write fics about stories that I don't know much about, and also because of the reasons I listed above.
Chapter 214 – Mike's Night Out
Mike hummed to himself as he put his sweatshirt and blue jeans on. After dealing with all of Fazbear Entertainment's bullshit, he was looking forward to a night where he could enjoy himself without needing to deal with all the responsibilities that came with both taking care of his family and fixing Fazbear Entertainment's fuck-ups.
"God, when was the last time I had a break to myself?" he muttered. "Starting to feel like I'm running on fumes…"
"You're going out, Dad?" Susie called out to him, her head peeking up over the sofa.
"Yeah, I'm taking the night off tonight," Mike confirmed with a wry chuckle. "Much as I love you guys, sometimes I just need some time to myself because otherwise I'd go crazy. Especially with everything we had to deal with over the past few days."
"You're telling me," Jeremy replied as he shook his head. "I still can't believe they messed up the Superstar Daycare THAT badly."
"We'll keep an eye out for if Fazbear Entertainment sends you any messages about whether they agreed to your demands," Gabe promised.
"They better," Fritz added darkly, "cause otherwise Dad's gonna bring the hammer down on them!"
Mike chuckled. "So enthusiastic, Fritz. But yeah, you guys can do whatever you want tonight as long as you don't do something monumentally stupid like burn the house down. You know the usual." He walked over to the front door and swung it open. "Later, guys!"
"Bye, Dad!" The ghosts all chorused as Mike shut the door behind him. He wasted no time in getting in his car and driving into town, stopping at a local diner where he had promised that he would meet up with his friends.
Mike got out of the car and walked into the diner, greeting the waitress at the station near the door. "Hello," he greeted her. "I'm with a group of 6."
"Ah, yes!" the waitress replied cordially. "Some of your friends have already arrived. They're at the back of the diner, I can take you there."
"Perfect," Mike made the "OK" symbol with his hands, and the waitress guided him to the table where some of his old college buddies were waiting for them. Mike could see Ryan among them, and if he knew his friend as well as he did, Ryan was probably having his own night off for similar reasons.
"Hey, there he is!" one of his college friends, a portly, jovial man named Harold called out to him. "How've you been doing, Mike, it feels like forever since the last time I saw you!"
Mike grinned back at him. "Hey, Harold!" he greeted him back. "Been forever since the last time I saw you, huh?"
"I'll say," Harold laughed as Mike joined them at the table. "Honestly, I can't remember the last time we hung out. I feel like nowadays the only person you see on a regular basis is Ryan."
"Yeah, that's probably right," Mike acknowledged. "I've been pretty busy lately."
"Which is pretty surprising, when you think about it," Harold commented thoughtfully. "You retired pretty early from that Eisensteel company a few years back. Honestly, I always thought you'd be sitting on your ass in that fancy house of yours just kicking back, relaxing, and enjoying the rest of your life however you want."
Mike snorted. "That would get boring pretty fast," he commented dryly. "But yeah, in all seriousness, I've been a lot busier lately than I thought I'd have any right to be in retirement."
"Oh yeah, you were on the news a couple of months back," Harold realized as the rest of their friends slowly joined them. They briefly interrupted their conversation to say "Hi" to their friends, including John the police chief, before continuing. "You were helping out Fazbear Entertainment with their animatronic delivery project. Didn't expect you to get caught up in something like THAT, after what you went through back then."
"Why DID you join up with that?" John asked curiously. "I thought you would've hated that company with a passion and refused to have anything to do with them."
Mike shrugged. "Honestly? As much as I hate the company itself, I actually do think there's a legitimate dream behind the Freddy Fazbear franchise. I wanted to give that dream a chance. And you know what they say, if you want something done right…"
"…you've gotta do it yourself," Ryan finished.
Mike nodded. Part of him felt bad about hiding the truth from his friends, but there was no way he could explain the ghost kids to anyone who wasn't Ryan. "Either way, I wrapped that up a while ago. And there haven't been any major accidents I've heard about involving any of the animatronics, so as far as I'm concerned I did my job."
John shrugged. "I haven't gotten any reports about animatronics attacking people, although there's no way in Hell I'd let one of those things near my kids or my wife," he added with a scowl.
"Completely understandable," Harold agreed. "I know my kids find them cute, but I personally think they're creepy as hell. Although that might just be because of that Five Nights at Freddy's game I've seen my kids play. I already made it loud and clear that I wasn't gonna buy one of those animatronics no matter how much they beg me."
"Good decision," Mike supported as they opened up their menus to order some dinner. Ever the fan of irony, Mike chose to order a breakfast with pancakes, scrambled eggs, and sausage, and home fries while the rest of his friends chose a more traditional fried American dinner. Hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken fingers, French fries, the works.
Not that Mike would ever condemn them for their choices. The classics were the classics for a reason, after all…as long as you didn't care about the high cholesterol that came with them.
"Enough about me, though. How are you guys doing?" Mike asked as they waited for their meals.
"Things have been pretty chill at the station, all things considered," John commented. "Not really any major crimes being committed, or at least not anything that I've heard or that's been reported to me."
Mike raised an eyebrow and filed that information away for later. He hadn't been deliberately fishing for information, but John's statement about the lack of crimes seemed to indicate that Glitchtrap and his possession victim, whoever they were, were both still laying low for the time being. No doubt plotting their next evil scheme, as cliché as that sounded. It was good that they hadn't decided to go "fuck it" and start a random kidnapping or killing spree out of nowhere…but it also hinted that they were focusing on the Pizzaplex as the main target of their plans.
There wasn't much he could do about Glitchtrap's plans right now, with the minimal information he currently had. All he could hope for was that cleaning up the messes from Fazbear Entertainment's end would hinder their progress as much as possible.
"What about you, Ryan?" John asked, completely oblivious to Mike's inner thoughts.
Ryan shrugged. "Eh, same old, same old," he replied nonchalantly. "Taking care of the kids, repairing people's cars, the usual." He chuckled dryly. "I think I probably have the most ordinary life out of all of us here, come to think of it."
"Man, I should've gone into engineering instead like you guys," Harold muttered. "Being a doctor is a hell of a lot more complicated than it looks like from the outside."
"No kidding," another one of their friends, a rather thin brown-haired guy named Nick commented. "I looked at that pre-med track when I first went to college and it looked like it sucked ass. Do you even use any of the shit from the pre-med track as a doctor, Harold?'
Harold snorted. "Fuck no. I can't even remember the last time Physics or Organic Chemistry came up once in my medical career. I'm pretty sure the whole point of that track is to weed out the people who can't handle a medical career from the people who can, not to actually teach something relevant to medicine."
"That sounds about right," Ryan deadpanned.
"Well, you're gonna have to talk with your kids about what they wanna do in college at some point, Ryan," Nick advised. "Can't just send them off there without any guidance whatsoever on what they want to do in their future."
"I know," Ryan acknowledged, "but Alex is only in his second year of high school, and Meghan's not even there yet. I can afford to wait a little to have that conversation."
"Just don't take too long," John cautioned, before adding with a laugh, "Mike's the lucky one. He's not married and he doesn't have kids, he doesn't need to have the college talk or pay for his kids' college funds, or any of that shit."
Mike joined his friends in laughing, but for completely different reasons than what they were thinking. "I can't remember the last time I heard a statement where half of that statement was so completely right, and half of that statement was so completely wrong." He briefly looked over to Ryan, who had also caught the irony in that statement but was canny enough not to say anything out loud.
Their meals came, and the friends spent the next several minutes contentedly eating their dinners. "Man, I haven't been here in forever," Mike commented. "I honestly forgot how good the food here really is."
"Yeah, some diners can have some surprisingly good quality food," Ryan agreed. "Perfect for if you want something bigger than just your typical fast-food meal, but not if you want to spend a lot of money eating out a fancy restaurant."
"Well, as good as the food is," Harold remarked with a smirk, "we all know why we're REALLY here, right?"
"Hell, yeah!" Ryan replied with a grin. "Poker night! Just like back at the dorms!"
John rolled his eyes. "I'm not sure I should be approving of gambling in a public location like this, but I supposed I'll let it slide," he added with a wry chuckle.
"Meh, it's not like we're gambling with real money," Nick reassured him. "I brought the poker chips and the cards."
Mike grinned. "Good on you for taking care of that," he complimented as Nick took out the poker chips and the deck of cards. The waitress came back to pick up their plates, and while she gave the soon-to-be poker players a dry look, she didn't do anything to stop them.
In theory, the group knew that they shouldn't have been taking up a table just to play poker when other customers could be waiting for a table. In practice, however, the diner had more than half of its tables opened up and the staff were generally pretty chill about letting people hang out and do whatever unless it wasn't disruptive.
Mike still remembered the last time he had played poker, all the way back in Vegas. That had been in a professional setting, and the stakes had "felt" higher not just because he had been gambling with real money, but also because Nightmare Fredbear had decided to randomly waltz in and join them…for reasons that he could not and did not want to comprehend this very day. The atmosphere here with his friends couldn't have been more different…and it didn't take very long for him to start reliving and acting like he had back when he had hung out with this same group of friends decades ago.
"Oh, come on!" Harold growled as he looked at his hand. "What the hell is this, Nick? Did you even shuffle properly?"
"You literally just saw me shuffle the deck 2 seconds before we started this game!" Nick retorted. "Not my fault your hand sucks!"
"Clearly a skill issue," Mike commented with a smirk as Harold threw his hand onto the table.
"Fuck that, I'm folding," Harold grumbled. "Not gonna waste even a single white chip on that shit."
"Wow, that must've been a terrible hand," Ryan remarked. "Usually you at least stay for the first round."
Nick flipped the first three cards onto the table (a 4 of clubs, an 8 of spades, and a queen of diamonds), and Harold looked at them with a satisfied smirk on his face. "Well, well, well," he drawled, "looks like I made the right decision already."
"Congrats," Mike deadpanned as he tossed in a red chip.
"Throwing in a red chip already, huh?" John asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah, you saw that right," Mike replied with a smirk.
This was enough to convince Ryan to fold, but the others stayed in as Nick revealed the fourth card, a 4 of spades.
"Well, if one of you has pocket 4s, you're probably really happy right now," Harold commented from the sidelines.
"God, I wish," Mike muttered. "Still, I think I'm okay with raising the stakes a second time," he added as he tossed in a second red chip.
"Well damn, your hand must be pretty good, huh?" Ryan asked.
"That or he's just bullshitting us," John pointed out. "It's not like there's anything really at stake here, we can afford to play fast and loose."
"In that case, fuck it!" Ryan declared as he tossed in another red chip. "I'll call your bluff, Mike."
Mike grinned. "Great, it's a lot more interesting that way."
John decided to pitch in another red chip as well, but everyone else folded. Nick flipped the final card of the round, a 7 of clubs.
Mike smirked as he looked at the last card. "Well that made things a little more interesting, huh?" he asked rhetorically.
"No way you actually have the 5 and 6 needed to make a straight," Ryan muttered. "There's no way, the chances of that are just too low!"
Mike grinned as he tossed in TWO red chips. "Why don't we go the full distance and find out?" he asked smugly.
John laughed. "Fuck it, I'm down!" he declared. "Ryan, let's just throw the red chips in at this point, it'd be a shame to fold now!"
Ryan chuckled ruefully. "You're not wrong," he acknowledged as he threw in two more red chips, following John's and Mike's example.
Mike threw down his cards…revealing a 5 of diamonds and a J of spades. "Dammit!" he grumbled. "I was just bluffing the whole time. I was hoping the two of you would fold when I threw in the two red chips in so that I could bullshit my way to a win."
John sighed. "To be honest, my hand wasn't that much better," he admitted. He tossed his cards on the table, revealing a 9 of clubs and a K of diamonds. "I was just kinda fucking around. Although…" he added thoughtfully, "I think I win unless Ryan has a better hand than both of us."
Ryan blinked and placed his cards on the table, a Q of clubs and a 9 of spades. "Holy shit," he mumbled. "Did I actually just win this?"
"I think you just did," Harold confirmed, sounding more impressed than anything else. "Cause you're the only one with a pair."
"Wow," Ryan whistled in disbelief. "I honestly didn't expect this to go anywhere. I was waiting for Mike to just completely clap me with a straight or something."
"Nah," Mike snickered, "I was just fucking around. Congrats on the round 1 win, though."
"I'll take it," Ryan declared as he collected the pile of chips. Nick handed the deck of cards off to him, and for the next hour the group of college friends continued to play out several poker hands and exchange banter while doing so. It honestly felt…liberating, for Mike. For a few hours, he could put aside all his worries and responsibilities. About the Pizzaplex, about Glitchtrap and his possession victim…heck, even about his kids, as much as he loved and cared about them.
Of course, that didn't mean poker night couldn't come up with its own unique frustrations.
"Argh, are you kidding me?" Mike exclaimed as he threw his hand onto the table in disgust. "That's the third dogshit hand I've gotten in a row! Who the hell has been shuffling the deck these past few rounds?"
Ryan raised an eyebrow. "Worse than a 4 and a 9 on different suits?" he asked incredulously.
"Somehow, yes!" Mike answered in frustration. "My luck tonight has been an absolute travesty!"
Nick laughed. "Sucks to suck, Mike. What was that you said earlier? Clearly a skill issue."
"Up yours," Mike retorted as he put up a middle finger towards Nick, causing all of them to burst out laughing (including Mike himself, if only ironically).
Everyone, that is, except for Harold, who seemed more…distracted, than anything else. John was the first to notice. "Hey, Harold?" the police chief called out to him with a concerned look. "You doing okay there, buddy?"
Harold sighed. "Yeah, just kinda distracted a bit."
"What's up?" Ryan asked. "And don't tell us it's nothing, none of us are gonna believe you."
"I know," Harold acknowledged. "It's just that…I feel like I've been drifting apart from my kids lately."
"Oh?" Mike raised an eyebrow. The poker game was almost immediately forgotten as the group of college buddies focused their full attention on Harold. "What makes you say that, Harold?"
"I don't really…connect with them as well as I used to," Harold explained somberly. "Work as a doctor has been really taking up a lot of my time and energy. When I get home, I'm just too exhausted nowadays to really spend time with my kids. I don't really have the energy to really help them with their problems like schoolwork nowadays." He sighed. "I can tell it's getting to them, too. They used to be so much happier to see me, but they're not nearly as enthusiastic as they used to be. I'm lucky if they give me more than a Hi on the weekends."
"Think you're just getting burned out?" John asked sympathetically.
"Honestly, I think I am," Harold admitted. "Don't get me wrong. I love doing my job. I love helping people get better from Insert-X-Medical-Problem-Here. But it's starting to mess with my home and family life, and I think I'm starting to get worn down with it all."
"Sounds like you need a break, Harold," Ryan commiserated.
"I know, I know," Harold sighed. "But taking a vacation could mess up with my patients' schedules. Times like these I wish I went into hospital medicine instead."
"As much of a problem as that might be, Harold, I really think you need to take a week or two off," Nick advised. "Not just for you, but your patients and your kids as well. If you're not at your best, you're gonna start making mistakes and missing things, and that could cause serious problems for your patients down the road."
"Nick's right," Mike agreed. "And that's a lot worse in the long run than just pushing back a couple of appointments for a week so you can get some well-deserved rest, even if it might fuck with your schedule for a bit."
"I know," Harold acknowledged. "Do no harm, and all that. Honestly, I'm more worried about my relationship with my kids going downhill because of all this."
"Then it's even more important for you to take a break," Mike reinforced his friends' suggestions. "Especially for your family. Hell, I think you should take that break and take your family out to a vacation somewhere. Take them to somewhere like Vegas or the Grand Canyon or something, that's always a fun time. Anything to give you some quality time with your kids where you don't have to focus on anything else."
"It has been a while since the last time I went on a vacation with the family," Harold replied thoughtfully.
"Completely agree with Mike here," Ryan supported his friend. "It's amazing just how much bonding time you can get with your kids from a single vacation."
"Heck, you don't even have to physically travel anywhere to reconnect with your kids," Mike continued. "You could just take the vacation time and stay at home. Use that time to help your kids out with their homework, help them with any problems they might have, or even just get an idea of how they're doing and what their interests are like nowadays." He smiled. "I guarantee that if you just take the time to properly spend time with your kids, they'll really appreciate it. I don't know if you can do that all in just 1 week's worth of vacation time, but it's a start that's absolutely worth taking. And the more time you can spend with them, the better."
Harold raised an eyebrow at Mike. "You really think it's as simple as that?" he asked curiously. "I don't need to go out and get some super fancy gifts for them as an apology or something?"
"I mean, those probably wouldn't hurt if the relationship is really going downhill," Mike acknowledged, before continuing, "but I honestly do think just spending more time with them is the most important thing you can do, Harold."
Harold nodded his head and smiled at them. "I think you guys are right," he accepted. "I was honestly thinking about this even before I brought it up, but I think hearing you guys support it was really what I needed to convince myself that taking a break for my kids would be the right decision." He gave them all grateful smiles. "Thanks for telling me what I needed to hear."
"I was actually pretty impressed to hear Mike say all that," Nick commented. "Especially for someone who doesn't have any experience taking care of kids."
"Yeah, that's a good point," John turned to face Mike. "You really sounded like you knew what you were talking about there. Like, on a level of someone who's had personal experience with this kind of thing. How is that even possible?" He wondered. "I know you're not married, and I know you didn't adopt any kids."
It was a good question, and one that Mike couldn't answer honestly. "I've had some experience with taking care of Ryan's kids whenever he needed me to come over and babysit," he lied smoothly. "I know it can't ever really compare to raising kids myself, but hanging out with Alex and Meghan is enough for me to at least figure out a few things on my own."
"Yeah, it's always really nice that Mike is around to watch over the kids whenever Stella and I need to be out of the house for whatever reason," Ryan agreed, giving Mike an inscrutable look as he did so. He had realized that Mike had been lying almost immediately, and although he wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea of Mike using his kids as part of his lie, he understood why Mike had done so.
After all, his interactions with Alex and Meghan were the only really plausible explanation for Mike's sudden and out-of-the-blue wisdom when it came to taking care of kids. And some secrets simply could not be shared no matter how much Mike would've wanted to entrust the hidden existence of his ghost children to his other college buddies aside from Ryan.
"Well, Mike," Harold commented with an encouraging smile, "if you ever do decide to have kids, whether through adoption or by finally getting married to some lucky lady, they'll be lucky to have you as a dad."
Mike chuckled. "You have no idea, Harold," he thought as they finally returned to their poker game. "You have no idea who's entered my life these past few years…and how lucky I am to have them as my kids."
/
A/N: To contrast the last chapter, here's one featuring minor NPCs who AREN'T complete assholes. Don't get too attached to them though, apart from Ryan they're probably not gonna be featured much in future chapters, if at all.
While this filler chapter was mainly written to give myself a bit of a break, it also gave me a bit of opportunity to vent a little about how tough the pre-med track at college and life as a doctor can actually be. Granted, I don't have any kids like Harold does, but I think what I wrote about life in the medical field is still valid for the most part.
Also, friends playing poker is always fun to write, even if it doesn't contribute anything meaningful to the plot.
That's all I have for now. Hope you guys enjoyed!
