Stranger Things x FNAF: The Missing Children's Incident Pt. 2
(Pt. 3 of the Will Never Found Post Rain Fight AU is coming soon!)
TW: Graphic Descriptions of Death and Dead bodies, as well as blood and gore. Readers Discretion is advised.
Also, I refer to our killer as Afton/Creel so you can picture him as either William Afton or Henry Creel, as I couldn't decide which would fit better.
When Lucas failed to show up to their meeting spot the next day, Max and Dustin’s families went into overdrive when it came to protecting them. At this point it was clear their kids were being targeted. Dustin’s mom refused to let him leave the house, not even for school, and Billy insisted mostly the same for Max, only allowing her to go to school on the condition that she go with him every day instead of riding her bike.
Max argued this tooth and nail, saying death would be a better fate than being trapped in a car with Billy two times every single day, and then being trapped in a house with him every single day with no break. But Billy refused. As much as he disliked Max and thought of her as his no good loner sister, that was still his sister, and he wouldn’t let her go out there and get herself killed like the losers she hung out with.
Hopper stationed police guards near both kids houses and the school, rotating shifts so all three locations would be guarded twenty-four seven. Meanwhile, himself and the rest of the police force began doing what they had been when Will first went missing, scouring the town top to bottom for any sign of the missing boys. One missing kid that they couldn’t find any evidence of after a week of searching was one thing. Two of his friends going missing one right after the other a week later? Certainly not a coincidence.
It takes days of arguments and wheedling, but finally Dustin and Max are able to leave the house and join the search, on the condition that they are with Hopper, who agrees, knowing that being trapped in the house was likely killing the kids. He brings them out with him to ‘search areas’ while he talks to locals and hangs up missing posters with the three boys' information and last scene descriptions on them.
One of the stops they make in the afternoon is at Freddy’s. Max and Dustin are free to search around the outside of the area while Hopper goes in to talk to the owner about putting up missing posters on some of the bulletins in the restaurant.
Max and Dustin, particularly Max, were a bit disgruntled by this. They’d spent the whole day just looking around outside of places on some list the cops put together rather than the places they thought best to look. They weren’t even allowed to go inside and scope these places out. It felt like there was so much more they could be doing, more productive things to find their friends.
That is, until Max freezes near the back of the restaurant, not believing her eyes as she calls for Dustin, who comes running. He goes still next to her when he sees what she’s looking at.
Lucas’s bike. Right in the shrubbery where he had left it that fateful night.
After a moment, Max and Dustin shared a look before bolting back to the front of Freddy’s. They waited patiently for Hopper to return from putting up posters, ambushing him the second he came out the front doors and dragging him to where they found the bike.
Hopper immediately takes it for evidence, the trio making fast headway for the police station. Once they get confirmation from the Sinclair’s that it is in fact Lucas’s bike, Hopper makes plans to head for Freddy’s again the next day to once more question their owner. Dustin and Max beg to come with, but Hopper absolutely forbids it.
So instead, Dustin and Max make plans to go there themselves. Dustin would sneak out of his house during the day, biking to Max’s to grab her bike before biking to the school. Max would ask to go to the bathroom at the end of the day, instead sneaking out of the school to meet with Dustin. From there, the two bike all the way to Freddy’s. They make their way through the restaurant and all the way to the back, barging into the office where the police are interrogating Afton/Creel.
Max manages to barge in so suddenly that she’s able to get directly into Afton/Creel’s face before the officers are able to force both her and Dustin back out. Hopper is furious with them, lecturing them about how stupid and dangerous that was, and how that could now interfere with their investigation. Neither kid cares. They’re both so angry and distraught over the consecutive loss of their three best friends that at this point they just want answers. They want to know what happened and they want whoever did it to pay.
Upon arriving home, Max is immediately met by an absolutely furious Billy, and the two get into a screaming match that leads to Max retreating to her room, slamming the door so hard the whole house shakes. And the dam just breaks. She just sobs. She misses her friends. She misses Lucas, and Will, and god even Mike. She knew Freddy’s was tied to their disappearance. There was no way it couldn’t be. Too many things fell into place when that was used as the connecting thread. She just needed something concrete to prove it.
And that’s when the idea hit her, her head suddenly snapping up from where it was buried in her pillow. Proof. If she could go to Freddy’s and find something, anything, that connected it concretely to her friends disappearances, maybe then Hopper could do something. Open a real investigation into not only the pizzeria, but into Afton/Creel. She was certain he had something to do with this.
So that’s exactly what she did. Sneaking out of her house was a breeze. Her mom never paid attention, and once Billy was asleep, sneaking past him was child’s play. She biked the short distance to Freddy’s in an angry daze, practically throwing her bike in her haste to jump off of it. After a moment of scoping out the building, she finds a large rock near the alleyway and chucks it as hard as she can at one of the windows, shattering it instantly.
(Hey, look, a realistic way for a twelve year old to break into a building, who knew?)
The sound of breaking glass startles the three young ghosts that were huddled around the main stage. Lucas and Mike were now much more settled into their ghostly forms than they had been when they’d been killed. And while the actual suit Will possessed wasn’t anywhere near the main stage, Will practically lived there now that that’s where Mike and Lucas were. He couldn’t leave the building, and so far it seemed that neither could Mike or Lucas, but they seemed to have free reign otherwise.
The trio are incredibly shocked to watch Max climb through the window, and they all feel dread consuming their forms. Any time one of them was there after hours, it had ended the same. A dead kid. A new ghost.
The dread grows when Will confirms Afton/Creel is still in the building. The three always watched his every move, waiting for him to leave. It’s like the atmosphere in the restaurant changed whenever he did. Whenever the kids weren’t being forced to share an enclosed space with their killer. Will had never seen him leave, meaning Max was in extreme danger.
They try to warn her. They yell, and scream, and flail. Lucas even tries to push at her to get her attention, but he just falls through her. They’re ghosts. They can’t do anything.
It’s when they actually see Afton/Creel enter the room that all hell breaks loose. Max clearly doesn’t notice him, to invested in whatever it is she’s looking for. The trio’s desperations reaches a high, the three of them doing anything and everything to alert Max, stop Afton/Creel, save their friend, anything.
Which is when Freddy’s arm randomly shoots out, a dim glow lighting up behind his eyes for just a second before fading back to darkness. Max screams at the movement, while all three ghosts turn towards Freddy in alarm. Mike had been right next to the suit that holds his body when the movement occurred.
“D-did I do that?” Mike asks, looking at his shaking transparent hands.
“Do it again!” Lucas calls desperately, running towards the Bonnie suit. While the distraction of Freddy allowed Max to run for just a moment, Afton/Creel had managed to catch her soon enough. He was able to get a hand around her throat, slamming her against the wall between the stage and pirates cove. He’d moved his other hand up to her throat as well, holding her dangling off the ground as he slowly choked her.
Mike and Lucas were now both desperately trying to get their respective animatronics to move to no avail. They’d only been ghosts for a handful of days, not even a full week. They’d barely gotten the basics of being ghosts, and they didn’t even know they could control the animatronics until a few seconds ago. It had been an accident. Mike doesn’t even know how he did it.
Will, meanwhile, is still trying to stop it in his ghostly form. His suit wasn’t here, trapped in a storage room and forgotten. It wasn’t even a proper animatronic, so who knows if he even could do anything if it was here. He was useless to stop his friend getting murdered in front of him, again.
Max’s final words are of angry defiance as she chokes, trying desperately to drag air into her lungs. “I… knew… it…” She gasps out, just for Afton/Creel to tighten his grip on her throat ten fold.
“Don’t waste your breath, little girl.”
Seconds later, and Max’s body goes completely limp, her eyes closing as she falls unconscious. Afton/Creel continues to dangle her body, not releasing his grip until he’s sure that she is good and dead. She drops to the floor unceremoniously as Afton/Creel steps back. He’d already decided the girl would go in Foxy. If she wanted to break his building so much, she’d go in the most warn down animatronic.
Thankfully he didn’t have to clean anything up with her compared to the other nosey brats. Choking her out was the smartest decision he’d made. He got to watch the light drain from the pests' eyes and there was no mess to deal with afterwards.
After he got Max into Foxy, he slowly turned towards the main stage. Bonnie and Chica were still in their rest positions, with Freddy still standing with one arm reached out. He smirked. “Hm. Interesting.” He spoke simply, turning and walking away. “Clever boy.”
The next morning, Dustin immediately sets out to Max’s house in a flurry of panicked motions, not carrying for his mom’s rule of staying in the house anymore than he had the last week. He and Max had been checking in with each other via walkie every morning since they’d been locked down, and Max hadn’t picked up yet. It was immediate cause for concern, and Dustin didn’t wait a second. He was immediately met outside Max’s house by an uneasy looking Billy.
“Hey, freakshow. My baby sis with you?”
“No, dirtbag, she’s not answering her walkie either.”
Dustin’s heart drops, but he refuses to let it stop him. Billy, in his own state of mild panic, immediately beckons Dustin into his car and the two drive straight to the police station, looking for Hopper.
Upon arrival, they are both informed that Hopper is actually already at Freddy’s. Apparently, Afton/Creel had reported a break in and called the police, so Billy and Dustin made their way there next. They hurry in, immediately spotting Afton/Creel talking in the middle of the closed restaurant. They run up to Hopper to tell him they can’t find Max, to which Hopper unfortunately isn’t shocked by. They’d found Max’s bike outside the restaurant.
Afton/Creel actually seems genuinely distressed, explaining to Hopper that he believes someone is trying to frame him and his business for whatever crimes they are committing. That after it had been made public that Will disappeared after being at Freddy’s, the culprit had found a perfect cover story for their murders. That’s why they went so long between Will and Mike’s respective disappearances, and why ever since Mike’s, they seem to be happening consistently. He claims whoever did it purposefully planted Lucas’s bike behind his building, and that they purposefully left Max’s bike outside and purposefully broke his window. All to make him look more suspicious.
He says that Hopper and the police, as well as Dustin and his family and friends, are free to search the place top to bottom, and that he’ll even help them. He wants this guy found just as much as they do. He’s causing himself and his employees endless amounts of stress, and hurting so many innocent families.
Hopper agrees, and even allows Dustin to stay and help just as Afton/Creel offered. Billy, in an uncharacteristic display, offers to go get the other older kids (Jonathan, Nancy, Steve, Robin, and Eddie) to help out as well.
(I imagine in this AU Steve and Robin have been friends since, like, middle school, and that Eddie meets Dustin a little earlier. These are literally just changes made so that Robin and Eddie can know the kids before they all die/disappear.)
They spend the entire day searching Freddy’s top to bottom, and despite the combined efforts of the police force, Afton/Creel, Dustin, and the gaggle of older siblings, they come up empty by the time the sun is setting. It’s then that Afton/Creel sees an opportunity and he absolutely can’t pass it up. He grabs Dustin’s attention, noticing that there is no one else around, and offers the opportunity to search the place again tomorrow before they open for business. He tells Dustin to show up at sunrise, that way they have the most time to search before they open.
Dustin agrees without much thought. Any chance to find anything out about his missing friends, he’ll take. He’s desperate, and not thinking straight. He just wants his friends back. Wants things to go back to normal. Back when they were all having fun at Freddy’s as a group, not going missing.
And so, the next morning, Dustin creeps out of his house, exhausted. It’s much earlier than he’d normally wake up. The sun wasn’t even fully peaking out from the horizon yet as he made his way back to the restaurant. He pulls up, seeing Afton/Creel’s car already there. He gets off his bike, and watches as Afton/Creel gets out of his car. He thanks the man for doing this, expressing his hopes for finding something to help them figure out who’s taken his friends.
Which is when Afton/Creel pulls out a knife and stabs Dustin good and deep in the side. He extracts it quick, watching as Dustin’s eyes widen in clear betrayal as he falls to the ground clutching his side. Afton/Creel just smiles, cleaning off his knife and walking over to Dustin’s bike. He quickly pops the trunk of his car, taking the bike with him like he had with Mike and Will’s. He didn't want to leave behind too much evidence. That would be a little too incriminating.
Once his bike is dealt with, Afton/Creel walks back over to Dustin, who is still alive but rapidly bleeding out, leaving a stain on the ground where he laid. It was all part of his plan. He didn’t want to chance one of the animatronic acting up again like they did the last time he killed one of these brats, so killing Dustin outside was the most logical action. Upon realizing this, he thought it genius to leave a bloodstain behind to continue to spin his framing story. Obviously whoever was trying to frame him purposefully left more incriminating evidence this time in order to get more suspicion on him.
However, he did need Dustin to die faster. The rest of the town would surely be waking up soon, and he needed to get Dustin’s body inside and in the remaining animatronic. It was almost poetic. Five pesky brats for his five animatronics. It was like the universe had made them just for him, had sent him these kids as a gift to satisfy his urges.
Afton/Creel shook out his thoughts and crouched over Dustin and began laying in punch after punch. Some to his face, some to his body, didn’t really matter. He did focus some on his mid-section to force more blood out. He didn’t want to make any more large wounds. He’d already had to clean up the stab wound so he wouldn’t leave a trail of blood when dragging the kid into the pizzeria, he didn’t need more gaping wounds to clean up.
Beating the kid to death would have to do.
Once he was sure Dustin was dead, he quickly patched up his wound to stop the bleeding, leaving behind the pile of blood on the ground. He then quickly carried Dustin’s body into the pizzeria where Chica was waiting for him.
The ghosts' heads whipped up immediately at the front door unlocking and opening. This was much earlier than Afton/Creel was usually here. Will and Mike were usually the only ones awake at this time, but since Max had crossed over, Lucas had insisted on staying awake with her while her spirit adjusted. They didn’t need to sleep as ghosts, but Lucas usually still did out of habit. Will and Mike had both tried at first, but they both just got woken up to horrific nightmares, so they deemed it pointless. Who knew ghosts could still dream?
It worked better for them in the long run. They’d both rather be with each other anyways. Kept them more calm given the circumstances of their respective deaths and crossovers. Mike didn’t want to undermine his own friends' deaths or traumas with the situation, but he had been the only one to actually see a dead decaying body. Will’s dead decaying body. The others had only seen them fresh, and as ghosts. It wasn’t the same. Despite already being dead, sometimes Mike just needed that reminder that he wasn’t alone. That Will was here with him.
Max was the only one who had a visceral reaction to seeing Dustin’s body, screaming and crying like a banshee. Like the others when they first crossed over, she was still incredibly discombobulated, mind not fully settled or there, and emotions all over the place. The others were just… numb at this point. They hated it, but it was the truth. The four of them were already here. None of them were shocked that Dustin was joining them.
Lucas turned away from the sight as Afton/Creel began loading Dustin’s corpse into Chica, eyes squeezed tight and lip trembling. Will just looked down at the ground, sitting on the edge of the stage curled in a ball, fiddling with his fingers as he held back tears of his own. Mike was the opposite, unable to tear his wide-eyed stare away from what was happening on the stage. Though one look into his eyes showed he wasn’t actually there. He was a thousand miles away.
In a few hours, Afton/Creel would show up to work as normal with a handful of his employees, immediately calling the police department to report the bloodstain. Hopper would come running, and Afton/Creel would spin it exactly as he planned, playing the distraught framed business man to a tee. Hopper would invoke a new strategy, asking for four volunteers from the department to work rotating shifts guarding the pizzeria. The teams of two would switch every two days, one person from each team watching the pizzeria for a twelve hour day shift and one for a twelve hour night shift. This would ensure twenty-four hour surveillance of the business, so whoever was using the place as a cover would get caught if they tried anything again.
Truthfully, Hopper doesn’t fully believe Afton/Creel is innocent. The bloodstain makes the whole thing more suspicious, but there isn't enough evidence to prove Afton/Creel is lying, or that he's responsible. There is nothing concrete tying him to the murders, just his place of business. So ultimately, Afton/Creel walks free.
No more disappearances or murders occur after the final disappearance of Dustin Henderson, and the disappearances of William Byers, Michael Wheeler, Lucas Sinclair, Maxine Mayfield, and Dustin Henderson become infamously known as The Missing Children’s Incident.
WOW this whole thing (both parts) was so much longer than I thought XD. Hope y'all like reading. Sorry for any typos, I just finished writing this and it is in fact 4am. Whoops. I hope people enjoy this little AU as much as I do :)
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