This is my art sideblog I upload to.... once in a blue moon. Feel free to support me by donating to my ko-fi [ https://ko-fi.com/lairdelampblack ] or commissioning me for art! Main blog is @miscmangos-wonderland, AO3 is LairdeLampblack, you can read my writing there, and my bluesky is also @lairdelampblack. Feel free to ask or submit anything for these aus, I crave validaition.
New commission post yall for updated prices and terms of use.
For more information or examples, you can reach out to me in dms here, @/lairdelampblack on discord, at my email [email protected], my ko-fi or even my furaffinity where im gonna stsrt posting art to also! i am now taking furry and some nsfw commissions as well so if you wanna take a stab at it, please hit me up!
Prices under the cut like before
TERMS OF COMMISSIONING
Please no extreme violence.
The artist has the right to deny any fetish for any reason
The buyer can share art anywhere so long as proper credit is attributed
There is a meeting had about Freddy, and Jeremy says a little more than he means to about the situation. And of course, everyone wants to knkw more.
Including the CEO.
Chapter 4
First <== Previous <===> Next
Jeremy fought hard to maintain his professionalism despite his mental turmoil. What he had seen in Freddy's files and memory banks haunted him like the ghost they should have belonged to. He was in a meeting with the other technicians - software and hardware and even R&D - had been packed into a box of cranky sardines because Freddy's behavior was giving upper management questions.
Jeremy had answers. Some, anyways. Suspicions at worst. Because for all that ultra-advanced AI was never worth babysitting, there was something more there beyond a simple glitch. But those answers would have to come from addressing the one person in memory that Jeremy would refuse to acknowledge.
He was not proud of the person he had been when he was friends with Michael Afton.
Behind the Bonnie mask, he was a bully at best and outright cruel at worst. Blood was on his hands, still, after all of these years, and it took all of his effort to leave that part of himself behind. And honestly, it hadn't even just been the video that raised his suspicions. Not the accent in the video, not the death circumstances matching up with Michael's disappearance, not the long rambling text document.
No, it had been the password hiding that all away from the world.
Arthur Afton. Michael's unfortunate younger brother he had helped to kill.
Michael had never quite been the same since the Bite, as the town had taken to calling it. Yes, he'd become the town pariah, but he'd made no efforts to contest it. On the rare occasions Jeremy had been forced to interact with Michael, he'd barely been there, like he was the ghost instead of his brother. Compared to how he had acted before, it was like seeing a star collapse in person. It would have hurt to see if it weren't for the circumstances surrounding it. Michael had always complained about babysitting his siblings - even long before he was of babysitting age himself - but Jeremy doubted that he actually enjoyed getting his wish in the end.
Hah. Look at them now. Michael missing and long gone, and Jeremy sticking his nose into a dead man's business. Michael had barely even been a man.
Part of Jeremy was convinced that Michael had deserved it.
But if that line of thought was any indication, it would have to presuppose that ghosts were, in fact, real, which Jeremy was loathe to even consider because of what it would mean for the other Afton children. And anyways, how would Michael have ended up anywhere near the Pizzaplex? Circus Baby's was nowhere near them. Not the original location, at any rate. But even so...
The times lined up. 1987 was the last time anyone had seen hide or hair of Michael, and it had taken years before anyone even bothered to file a missing person's report, especially since he had gotten that job at his dad's place. Hell, Freddy's video file corroborated with that, even. And while it had scared him in the moment, the way Freddy begged them to not watch other videos, like he knew something worse was waiting beyond a gruesome death. The folder from 1983 nicknamed as the Bite .
And all of the folders simply captioned with Father .
As much as Jeremy wanted to deny it, the only real possibility was that-
- A Fazbear higher-up walked into the room. Jeremy perked up, belatedly realizing his scribbling on his notepad was beginning to resemble some long-forgotten nightmare of Fredbear's teeth gnashing in the night. He quickly crumpled the page to toss it aside as the higher-up walked by. Fear struck deep in his soul as he recognized the higher up as the current CEO walking into the room with a severe expression on his face.
Samuel Emily was very much his father's child, if the reports were to be believed, though he had been raised by his mother in the wake of a nasty divorce and the following Fazbear tragedies. He was built short and stocky, but had bright green eyes that burnt into you like an angel on Judgement Day. He of all people would recognize when history was repeating itself.
"Good day, everyone." he greeted crisply, getting the low murmur of conversation to die instantly. "I heard that there was an issue in one of our animatronics that mirrored some previous issues animatronics have had." he stated simply. "If you all have the time, I'd like you all to write down some issues you all had noticed and when you recall them starting." Samuel smiled politely at the room. "Every detail counts. I don't want another incident to happen here, after all."
Every technician in the room quickly put their heads to the paper, but Jeremy floundered for a moment, not knowing where else to start and suddenly recalling the old rumors.
... Had all the other animatronics been haunted too? If so, then by who? Jeremy tapped the blunt end of his pen against the pad of paper contemplatively as he dimly observed Mr. Emily approach.
"Mister Bonnibel, you aren't writing anything down." Samuel's voice quietly pipes in the silence of the room, dragging all eyes to him. "Can you really not think of anything?"
Jeremy swallowed dryly. "I can think of a lot actually. I'm just trying to think of what order to put them in, especially since I got to take a look at Freddy's files recently." Whispers chased around the room at that, and Jeremy felt an explanation silently demand itself. "Freddy had reported a bug where he wasn't responding to his name properly, so Sander and I had tried looking through the files and software, and... there was a folder there that wasn't supposed to be there. It was password locked against even the master password, and opening it we'd found a ton of files." Sweat beaded on his brow at the thought of it. "They were organized by nicknames and dates, with all sorts of videos and images and text files. All of them were in the first person. And-and I know it sounds crazy, but I think I knew the person that the files from the point of view on. Because when Sander and I opened a random audio file, it was some kind of speech from... one of the founders." He cast a furtive glance at Mr. Emily at that. "And in another, the year the last time that person was seen alive, was a first person view of how that person died."
The words chased themselves out in turn. The eyes bearing in on Jeremy felt unbearable, but he had to continue. "And Freddy acted oddly the whole time we were looking through them, even though he should have been completely shut down. Shuddering, making weird static noises, having the weird missing eye thing older animatronics had. And he asked us to not watch any of the other videos."
He pressed his lips into a thin line as Samuel Emily's ambivalent stare turned sharp and pointed. "What was the name of the person you recognized?"
"Michael." Was Jeremy's thin response, not wanting the last name to damn the discussion.
It was recognition that sparked in Samuel's eyes. After all, there weren't too many Michaels relevant to the history of the company. He knew exactly who Jeremy was talking about.
"So you think it's related to old rumors of hauntings." It wasn't a question.
"I can even show you the exact files Sander and I looked at directly." Jeremy responds. "I wrote all the file paths."
"Did you find what was causing the name bug?"
"Freddy's AI was referencing the mystery folder instead of the default repositories for a lot of his behaviors. He still acts mostly normal, which is weird, but it's like someone injected a new data set and made Freddy retrain all his behavior based on that. I'm not a programmer, though, so I could be wrong."
Jessica Lapins, head of Programming, piped up. "I wanna see the files too."
Before Jeremy knew it, he was leading the gaggle of technicians through the building to the location of one animatronic bear. Thankfully, they were closed for maintenance for the day so no one could really stare at them. Knock, knock, knock on Freddy's window. The bear turned, surprised at the sudden knock, but still smiled and waved at the group. "Hello, everyone!" he greeted warmly, before confusion colored his features. "What brings so many technicians to my room?"
Jeremy rolled his shoulders before sighing. "Remember when Sander and I were looking at your files?"
Freddy tilted his head. "Vaguely..."
"Remember you asking us to not look at any more files after one of the videos?"
Alarm splashed across Freddy's plastic face. "No, I do not. Was I not shut down for that?"
Jeremy grimaced. "You were, yeah. You still asked anyways." Freddy looked at the technicians now with renewed concern. Â
"Did you find something that could have caused my name reaction bug?" he asked, voice wary, and Jeremy sighed again.
"We found a lot that could have potentially contributed to a lot of your bugs. I was going to show everyone else here, as a matter of fact, so we can try thinking of a way to fix it." It wasn't even strictly a lie, even if the release of tension in Freddy's shoulders made Jeremy feel sick. Â
"I see... I can also provide you a directory of bugs I have noticed and logged myself, then, if that would help." Freddy's voice turned oddly serious, and Jeremy found himself impressed again at the complexity of the Glamrock AI. He wasn't even given that many pre-recorded voice lines, and yet he's making his own vocal tones without even thinking about it. He hadn't even seen the other Glamrock models doing that. Jeremy still smiled tiredly at Freddy. Â
"I'd appreciate that, Fredbear."
For some reason, Freddy seemed to flinch a bit at the affectionate nickname, but seemed to get a bit confused at his own reaction. Nonetheless, the bear gingerly wrote the path for his BugReport.FAZ file on Jeremy's list of other filepaths. He hesitated on giving the pad of paper back for a moment, seeming to read the other directories for a moment. "Are these the other files you found?" Freddy asked, voice low and halting, reminding Jeremy of the day Sander quit. Jeremy nodded in response, nonetheless.
"We think that there was a folder of foreign files deposited into your repositories and prompted your programming to start referencing the foreign data for your behaviors. Can you think of any time that could have caused that to happen?" Jeremy asked. Figured getting the bear's account would be helpful if he did remember.
The plastic features on the bear's face seemed to pinch a bit in thought before sloping in disappointment. "I believe that information may have been lost in the first few data wipes that attempted to fix my errors. I only faintly recall... someone saying my name." His expression pinched a bit again. "It was a man's voice, I think, though I do not remember much more beyond that. I believe it was directly before some kind of crash, as the timing in my memories is directly before a catastrophic crash in my logs." Freddy's ears suddenly perked up in realization. "If any moment were to be the moment foreign data were to be introduced, I believe that log would be the one to show it. Crash logs do not get deleted in data wipes, correct?"
And Jeremy was impressed all over again, at the fact that Freddy could remember that much through memory purges and that he even knew he crashed and where the logs generated. "Erm, yeah, that's exactly right. Thank you, Freddy." he couldn't help the smile crossing his face, forgetting there was an audience. "Let's get down to Parts and Service to confirm that, then."
It was child's play to go back to the files in question, with a dozen pairs of eyes on him making him sweat as he showed the file paths and explained how he'd figured out the passcode to the locked folders.
"Mr. Bonnibel," Samuel prompted. "Could we hear the audio file of a founder you'd mentioned?"
It was just as haunting the second time, and Jeremy could so clearly see the expression on thw CEO's face mixed with a whole cocktail of emotions. Â
Nobody said anything for a bit before someone asked to see one of the folders.
'83.
Jeremy immediately denied it, and when Julien tried to usurp control of the terminal-
Freddy let out a static scream, bucking against his restraints. " Don't look there! " the bear practically wailed, despite again definitely triple checked to be turned off completely.
Jeremy had kicked them all out after that. No meant no , and he refused to dig out forty year old dirty laundry of both a dead man and himself.
Jeremy knew that they'd still be listening, but he didn't care.
"I'm sorry." Freddy wheezed haltingly. "No one should have to see what happened in 1983."
Jeremy appraised the animatronic bear for a few moments, trying to imagine Michael stuck inside. Michael the teen, Michael the adult, Michael the corpse.
Somehow, it just didn't fit. Not completely.
"And yet you do know what happened." the tech lightly pointed out despite the guilt heavy on his tongue. "Why?"
White pinprick dots locked with Jeremy's eyes. "I can't remember." Freddy candidly responded. "I can't remember much. There's what's in the folder, but..." he drifted off. "... Something's keeping me from knowing, exactly. And the angles cut me when I think too hard about it."
Jeremy nodded slowly. "Why don't you remember what happens when you're in... this state?"
"My memory is not actively recording this interaction. It self-sustains short term, but it is not committed to long term memory."
Something about that stuck out to Jeremy. "Then why do you remember it now?"
Freddy faltered. "I... do not know," he admitted. "Much of what's happening to me is as much a mystery to you as it is to me."
Jeremy took a deep breath before biting the bullet.
"Does the name Michael mean anything to you?"
Freddy responded with a full body twitch and his head sharply inclined at an angle in its own sort of flinch. "Under the Pizzaplex." Freddy hoarsely whispered. "That's where I found me."
Jeremy's brows furrowed. "Pardon?"
"It's where everything should have burned ." Freddy wheezed. "Samuel, why couldn't you have let dead dogs rest?"
Jeremy didn't quite know what to say to that. There was silence for several minutes.
"Jeremy," there was an odd lilt to Freddy's voice now, "Please turn me back on. I don't think being like this is good for me."
Jeremy wordlessly obliged, seeing the pinprick lights fade back to silver, and the haggard 'breathing' fading away to a simple, staticky drone.
The bear blinked a few times as if disoriented. "Where is everyone else?" Freddy asked after a moment. Â
"I had to ask them to step out. They were crowding us." Jeremy explained. Freddy's brows seemed to furrow.
"Did I... talk in my sleep again, for lack of better phrasing?" Jeremy nodded at that.
"Had to kick 'em out since they refused to follow your excellent advice."
Another bewildered blink. "I see." And another beat of silence. "Did you get everything you needed from me despite that, then? I hope the logs I provided will be sufficient enough data to go off of."
Jeremy smiled despite himself. "We've got plenty of data, big guy," He avoided his usual nickname. "Thanks for the information."
And Freddy's ears wiggled a bit in pleasure. "I am happy I could have helped! If you need anything else to resolve this issue I will do my best to cooperate."
"You're the only one that does cooperate, Fredster." Jeremy chuckled, unhooking the animatronic again. "Now go, be free."
"Freedom... the greatest treasure," Freddy joked. "And thank you again for helping so urgently, Jeremy. I understand a lot may keep you busy here as it is."
"It's my job to take care of you guys, Freddy. If you have a problem, I try to listen and do what I can to help." Jeremy found himself smiling. "Now go treat yourself, maybe teach yourself a swear or two."
The bear's laughter made Jeremy's heart ache in his chest in longing for times long dead and long gone, despite how he hated his behavior during them. Freddy wandered off, and the rest of the technician's eavesdropping club walked up behind him.
"No bones about it. He's haunted as hell." Jessica stated flatly from where they all decided to convene. She eyed Jeremy suspiciously. "What's in 1983?"
"A tragedy," he stated in response simply. "One of the first."
New commission post yall for updated prices and terms of use.
For more information or examples, you can reach out to me in dms here, @/lairdelampblack on discord, at my email [email protected], my ko-fi or even my furaffinity where im gonna stsrt posting art to also! i am now taking furry and some nsfw commissions as well so if you wanna take a stab at it, please hit me up!
Prices under the cut like before
TERMS OF COMMISSIONING
Please no extreme violence.
The artist has the right to deny any fetish for any reason
The buyer can share art anywhere so long as proper credit is attributed
Being haunted is bound to cause its computer troubles
Chapter 3
First <== Previous <===> Next
Sander sighed as he stared at the shut down robot laying on the metal examination table. Freddy had discovered a strange glitch where he wouldn't really respond properly to his name or its diminutives earlier that day. He'd noticed himself responding to another name just fine, but was unable to pinpoint which name exactly. Utterly baffling. At least he'd suggested repairs himself, unlike SOME bots.
Sander was running the initial diagnostics on the flat version of the VANNI network while waiting on the head technician to come in. Everything was looking fine on an initial runthrough, which made everything equal parts easier and harder. He wasn't allowed to touch any of the actual program files, which was fine by him. The file structures, however, were fair game. So Sander was being a nosy bitch. The Glamrock programming structures were fascinating to inspect up close, and it was always a treat to get a close look. He'd looked at them before in the past on previous inspections. and he enjoyed seeing ways the self-learning software would improve itself.
It looked much of the same compared to the last few times he'd seen a Glamrock's files. There was one folder he'd never seen before inside one of the backups, the title some Wingdings schlock. He took a few moments to translate it to 'FWQMAVE', which. Okay. Sure. Tell him nothing, king. He tried a few unscrambling methods to no avail.
Eh, whatever. It probably wasn't even that important anyways. Sander discarded the idea of the folder and kept snooping around Freddy's files out of curiosity, peeping through file structures. It looked like Freddy had started keeping his own copies of backups, apparently, and the folder containing them was password locked. This normally wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that the master admin password didn't work whatsoever. Â
"What the fuck, Fredbear." Sander muttered, missing the way Freddy's eyelids fluttered at his name.
Instead, he kept on rooting. The nonsense name file was also password protected, and the encoded letters weren't the password in secret. Bullshit. He did find a stray file that wasn't behind the password protection lock that was missing its name. Not even a punctuation mark as a placeholder. Sander was immediately intrigued and opened to investigate. It definitely wasn't a system file, so it was under that 'free reign' umbrella he'd been wielding like a cudgel.
The file was... strange. It was a long string of letters and numbers that seemed largely incomprehensible until he realized he could pick out words and phrases.
arthurmay forgiveme but icannot
... Pardon? Sander reskimmed the file slowly to try deciphering the text only to realize it read out like a long stream of consciousness text. Even as he watched, he saw more letters type themselves into the document, seeming to directly observe and reference what Sander was doing.
"Bro, that is creepy ." the tech remarked, only for the text to promptly respond with iveseenworse .
"... Stop flexing on me."
"Who are you talking to?" a second voice piped up, causing Sander to shriek and recoil violently.
"Jerebear!" the technician whined as he recovered quickly. "You scared me!"
The man in his mid-fifties deadpanned at his equal. "You're older than me, Sandy, act like it."
The older man pouted.
Jeremy leaned to the side and raised a brow at the self-updating text document, side eyeing Sander.
"Everything looked fine except for some weird files and folders that were out of place," Sander explained. "A good chunk of them were admin-locked in a way that we couldn't use the master password, but that file wasn't. No name, but it looks like a self updating stream of consciousness text."
Now Jeremy looked skeptical, at which Sander gestured for the other man to take a look. Jeremy investigated the file for a few moments, skepticism converting into confusion.
"Wait, this is directly responding to what we're saying," Jeremy began. "Did you boot him into maintenance mode?"
Sander shook his head. "Completely shut him down. Freddy should be dead to the world."
Jeremy scrolled through the document for a few more moments before closing it and making a note of which folder it lived in. He navigated around, writing down the directories of the unusual folders and files as a whole before opening up the gibberish wingdings folder Sander had found earlier.
Up popped the password screen. Jeremy tried a couple passwords Freddy would have chosen to no avail. Both men's brows crinkled in thought and confusion. Â
Jeremy huffed and navigated to the program file that dictated Freddy's behavior and slowly scrolled through it.
"There's your problem," Sander pointed out. "The program is referencing the weirdly named folder for basic information instead of the main repositories."
Jeremy nodded in agreement, attempting to edit the file, but it reverted after saving. "Ugh, I dont want to have to do a program recovery. What's even in that folder?..."
He returned to it and attempted to open it, being barred by the password window again.
After a few thoughtful moments, Jeremy opened a second file exploration window to reopen the unnamed text document and scrolled through it, typing in words or names that seemed to have importance in varying different combinations.
It was the name Arthur in all caps that unlocked it. Â
Freddy's head twitched violently in response as he started letting out a quiet, pulsing drone of static, and the two techs jumped in surprise. Was it just Sander, or did it sound like Freddy was... trying to breathe ? He stepped back just a bit from the bear warily, uncertain. Jeremy dug into the folder investigatively, thoroughly distracted from the task at hand. There were various text documents named randomly, including one labeled 'too far' and another a string of seemingly random numbers that looked like binary. There were several folders too, named after years and incidents collectively. Several were simply captioned with 'father', but there were a few standouts.
1983 - the Bite. 1987 - Ennard. 2016 - Henry. Â
One forwent a year altogether, simply labeled my y with the name of a popular soap opera that seemed out of place entirely.
The names were bizarre, almost reminders for certain events. Jeremy darted in and out of various folders to take notes on the contents and naming from there. The Bite folder had a single video in it, at least 20 minutes long, and the thumbnail a solid red rectangle. The Ennard one had several images and videos seeming to span across a week, curiously enough. That vampire soap opera folder just had wholesale pirated episodes of the show.  Several of the files captioned with 'father' looked like several incidents recorded in the first person cataloging a bad home life.
The one from 2016 looked like another week at an establishment, one Sander realized with a start was Freddy Fazbear's Pizza Place. He abruptly took the mouse to Jeremy's chagrin and opened up the sole audio file titled 'connection terminated'.
The voice of one of Freddy's co-founders beginning the recording with the name of the file made them both freeze up. Neither of them could move as they heard Henry Emily's voice drift throughout the room.
" I'm sorry Elizabeth, if you still even remember that name, but I'm afraid you've been misinformed. "
Sander and Jeremy slowly turned to share a look as Henry's voice intensely spoke on, describing an apparent plan to gather things into one place and hold them in a labyrinth. Of how he planned to stay there and die nearby.
Of his regrets to his daughter, at being unable to save her.
Neither of the men knew everything that Henry was talking about, a lot of it went over their heads, but the condemnation of his old friend had to mean only one thing.
The fire of the last location had been no accident. It had been arson on the part of the owner.
And they had built their own right on top of an apparent mass burial site.
The audio file ended and closed itself. With shaky hands, Jeremy navigated back to the Ennard folder, and Sander realized he recognized the name. Weren't they going to use that character in that canceled VR game? He had no idea where it came from, only that Fazbear Entertainment started using it randomly.
Jeremy opened the video file from the end of the week, before the odd long gaps between video dates. It started in an industrial elevator, the robotic voice the two men recognized as the automatic announcer of the Pizzaplex talking to what seemed like the point of view person, describing some kind of end of the week bonus. The hands shakily tried typing in a response to the 'bot, which autocorrected to something seemingly random that made Sander chuckle thinly. He took mental note of the strip of masking tape with the name Mike written on it at the top of the rudimentary tablet as it folded away. Â
'Mike' (Sander assumed) crawled through the vent, and the announcer walked the person through on checking the animatronics. Shining the light on the show stages as directed revealed a chilling sight.
Suspended over the stage, the figure of a human dangled limply from what looked like a metal cable. The shadows cast over the face didn't reveal much, and the person was too far away to make out many details, but the bright orange hair stood out in the otherwise dark room. The point of view person stumbled back, and there was a quiet gasp.
" M-Mr. Kennedy?... " The voice was soft, dogged with a light English accent, which was weird since most Freddy's locations lived and died in the middle of Utah. Â
The speaker scrambles to the other side of the room before the robotic voice can prompt him, and there's another hanging body in the auditorium, dangling lifelessly in the dim light. Distinct floral patterns snake up the partially lit arms of the dead technician, discernible even from the viewer's distance.
" A-and Dave too.. ." mournful horror mumbled its way out through the speakers.
Freddy let out another staticked wheeze, and Sander slowly turned to stare with wide eyes.
" Great! It looks like everything is as it should be in Ballora Gallery- Funtime Auditorium- gr-gr-gr- " the robotic voice stuttered before resuming its droning as if nothing had happened. It briefly described something being wrong with Circus Baby, and just like that, 'Mike' was through the vent and scurrying blindly through complete darkness, with the occasional flash from a whining device to briefly reveal the room. Â
Nothing stopped him. If the animatronics weren't on stage, where were they? 'Mike's' hands scrambled blindly at the door to Parts & Service before he pulled out a flashlight as he finally let himself in. He glanced around before entering, as if expecting opposition. The silver beam of light glanced off of stark white and candy red of an animatronic shell. This must have been Circus Baby. A soft, sweet voice crooned to 'Mike'.
"C an you hear me? "
The vision bobbed as 'Mike' nodded, vision trailing up to look the animatronic in the missing eyes.
" I'm pretending. Remember how I said I could pretend? "
Sander glanced at Jeremy, sensing the focused man shivering.
The two techs watched the video in absolute silence, listening to Circus Baby quietly instruct 'Mike' on how to safely traverse through the dark to avoid Ballora. Sander couldn't understand how 'Mike' trusted Baby with his life like this. There was a point where it seemed like Ballora got in his way but was... suspiciously easy to convince to move.
The announcer warned 'Mike' about the dangerous area he was entering, but Circus Baby cut the warning off.
" You are in the scooping room now. "
Dim lights glinted from a window cordoning the room off from a control panel, a tall silhouette behind the dark glass staring at 'Mike' with pinprick eyes. The struggling light cast its cold white glow across the room, covered in sleek metal and sporting a massive, wicked hydraulic machine of some sort. The metal casings of the Funtime line of animatronics scattered across the floor of the room carelessly, as if shed like dead carapaces.
"Wait a second..." Jeremy muttered, squinting at the glass in the background.
" Funtime Foxy has already been here today. " There was a quiet clicking noise as the door locked behind the viewer. Â
" Funtime Freddy has already been here today. " Wires snaked across the room, grabbing and pinning 'Mike' to the door. 'Mike' struggled against his bindings.
" Ballora has already been here today. " Freddy made another drone of static, rattling himself against his restraints as if mirroring the point of view's actions.
" Circus Baby has already been here today. "
Sander turned to look at Freddy again, noting the very much open eyes exposing a pair of black pits rather than the animatronic eyes that should have been there.
He ignored the soft waxing voice of Baby and the video as he watched Freddy freak out unnaturally behind the two techs. Even so, one particular line got his attention.
" The scooper only hurts for a moment. "
Sander didn't dare look as the tinny blaring of an alarm blew out the laptop's speakers, quickly followed by the sound of metal scraping against metal over the ripping and squelching of meat and bone. As he watched, he say Freddy arch his back and practically howl a horrendous, metallic sound that made his ears hurt as if the bear were directly reacting to what the video was playing. Â
Sander returned his gaze to the video, figuring the worst was over. He was treated to the viewer's body dragging itself oddly up using an emergency sink with a mirror. A face shrouded in shadow but still barely visible stared into the 'camera', small hooks at the corners of the mouth pulling the limp lips into a taut mockery of a smile. Sander felt sick as he realized he could see bundles of squirming cables and blinking eyes stare out of the hole in the bloodied midsection in the video's reflection. A pair of glassy purple eyes rolled in a slightly walleyed manner in excitement. " You won't die, " the girlish voice prompted ill-fittingly as a hand robotically reached up to tousle the dark curls that were made up entirely of flyaways. " But we need this more than you. "
The video faded out at that, as if passing out.
Sander felt sick.
And then the shut-down Freddy started to talk.
"I'm... sorry... you had to see that..." crackled out hauntingly, the head turning to look directly at the techs with black pit eyes and white pinprick dots. "Please... don't wat...ch the... others."
It was as if Freddy had just learned how to speak again
While shut down.
The two grown men screamed bloody murder and dropped everything to go scrambling out of the room as quickly as feasibly possible. After a solid five minutes of bolting through the endoskeleton storage, they both stopped to catch their breath. Sander felt like he couldn't breathe whatsoever.
"What the fuck was that?" Jeremy hissed.
"I do not know," Sander wheezed. "I do know that he was fucking not designed to talk while functionally dead."
"Yeah, I didn't sign up for some random analogue horror bullshit, Jere," he snapped harsher than he meant to. "I'm out on this."
He unceremoniously unbuckled his tool belt and let it drop to the floor before stalking out of the room.
Freddy deals with the repurcussions of becoming a Haunted Ass Bear (not that he knows this) and learns a bit about the Aftons.
Vanessa could stand to be a bit nicer about this, though
Chapter 2
First <== Previous <===> Next
Freddy had no idea what happened to him. His systems suddenly crashed like a satellite from orbit, leaving him reeling and confused as to what was going on in his programming. He could practically feel his AI scrambling to rewrite itself around something , but what he couldn't tell. He was too preoccupied with his vision flickering in shades of red and black and giving the sudden appearance of an oddly familiar treeline, which by all accounts should have been impossible. His simulated haptics were going mad around his midsection for some reason, and his fans whined from the sudden stress and RAM usage increase. His audio receptors flipped out too, feeling like someone was screaming through a fan directly into them. The clearest view he could get was by looking down at himself, and that was basically staring into a void with a dozen purple eyes staring right back into him. Not really much of an option, doubly so as he needed to see .
He needed to get a grip.
He stumbled a bit, gyros just barely functioning and positional systems telling him he was staggering around like a drunken buffoon. He couldn't help the way he was quietly panicking, fans working overdrive and not feeling like enough to help. He started systematically rebooting his systems one by one, forcing everything to shut down fully at least once no matter how it affected his other systems. Pain simulation went first, but nothing seemed to work no matter what he did.
Freddy warily set down what he was holding - it was that corpse, right? It had to be - in order to not drop it roughly while rebooting. Warily, he forced the shutdown command through his system.
For some reason, he found himself still a bit aware despite being shut down. He felt every moment of the BIOS starting him back up. Thankfully, a full reset seemed to do the trick. Perhaps he needed to purge a nasty sensory bug. Part of him wondered what would have even caused such a violent bug. Static still haunted the edges of his audio until he realized that part of his code was trying to push air through his voice box. It took a concerted effort to make himself stop, and he wondered what the hell even happened to cause that sort of behavior. He didn't even need to breathe! That didn't even go into the odd blue tinge reduction in his optics, one he hadn't even noticed until it was gone.
He'd only had a few blissful moments of peace before a process in his system ticked on, making his joints seize up and his pain simulators ramping themselves up to twenty on a scale of ten again. He ran a quick scan as his systems fought off the sudden attack. Purple chased around his vision, glitching out his UI and sending his coolant system into overdrive.
The culprits seemed to be two different processes seemingly warring for priority, an oddly familiar program named MimicAft and an indecipherable string of letters and numbers that matched nothing on Freddy's serial number logs.
He didn't dare shut himself down again, in case it gave the warring programs extra purchase while starting back up. Especially so if one of them was a virus.
It seemed like the not-quite-serialed program won out, squashing the Mimic-whatever almost as soon as it started up, and everything in his programming seemed to relax.
He marked a flag for the techs there. That could not be a good sign, honestly.
When he was well and certain of the fact that the program conflict would not be rearing its ugly head for the next little while at least, he took a moment to reassess the situation. Â
He was at the bottom of a sinkhole, in the burnt remains of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza Place, sitting on the grimy floor as a result of his internal code throwing a hissy fit for some reason. He had found a burnt corpse - an impossible corpse due to the lack of organs - in an office in the basement of the basement. He had been intending to bring the corpse to Vanessa for assessment due to the man having circutboards and endoskeleton material she might be able to work with.
Ah yes, Vanessa! He opened up his log for a moment to take a look at the ping history, only to see about eighty from Vanessa alone from at least the past 15 minutes. Had his glitching really taken that long?
He was about to respond to the pings, realizing it was strangely weak at the moment for some reason, when he felt a tapping on his back. He didn't do much to hide his yelp of surprise and whirling on a very upset Vanessa, just barely stopping himself from reacting by punching her, which shouldn't have even been an option. What was going on with him?! Â
"Freddy, where have you been?! " Vanessa demanded, green eyes looking unsettlingly purple in the dim light. "I've been trying to get in touch with you for twenty minutes, and I find you here slacking off on me! What the hell is going on here?"
Freddy imitated the sound of clearing his throat, chastised into sheepishness. "Ah, Officer Vanessa. I had a catastrophic bug crash my system during the time you were looking for me. But I did find something useful to hopefully make up for the lost time!" he attempted to amend, gesturing towards the nearly mummified corpse. "On a scan, I discovered that this body contains endoskeleton material and has some usable motherboards and circuitry we could salvage! Perhaps he can be of help to us."
Vanessa appraised the corpse critically before glaring at Freddy again. "You seem fine now despite a catastrophic crash ," she accused, and Freddy felt sheepish again. Â
"Ah, yes. It took approximately fifteen minutes to clear up, admittedly. I had to force a reboot at least once."
Vanessa groaned at that. "Will you need to see the techs?"
"Hopefully not, but I did flag a potential virus or two for my next routine inspection."
That assessment seemed to make Vanessa relax. "As long as nothing happens tonight to interrupt this all. We really need all we can get here."
"I will do what I can, Officer Vanessa," Freddy promised.
Vanessa didn't respond to that, deciding to turn on the dead man and start desecr- disassembling him. For some reason, watching her tear apart the corpse so roughly made Freddy feel a bit uneasy, so he turned away before he could think too hard about how the hole in the chest was too old to be a result of the excursion here (he must have noted the schism on the scans and not noted it due to everything else) or the lump of plastic melted into the actual body. He instead dedicated his time to inspecting this room further. There were thick, half-melted cables mottled black strewn across the room and scattering their way back up the makeshift staircase made of debris Freddy had climbed earlier. There had been a mass of melted animatronics there earlier, he remembered. It had nearly taken his head off to approach, so he'd instead erred on the side of caution to get down here safely.
Had it been... guarding these tunnels? It felt almost unfathomable, honestly, such an uncoordinated mass having a goal like that, but the corpse shed things in a slightly different light now. Perhaps it had been protecting his final resting place for some reason, perhaps it was simply territorial. Part of him was tempted to approach again, to get a better look and try getting a solid answer of some sort.
Something clonked against the back of his head, making him jump again.
"Stop spacing out and scan these chips for me, or I'll throw another finger at you," Vanessa threatened, making Freddy shiver at the mental image. He opened his chest compartment, reminding himself of the motherboard scanners temporarily installed inside and starting them up before taking the chips with twice the care Vanessa seemed to have and slotting them into the reader.
They were still in pristine condition, miraculously. Perhaps the corpse had unwittingly protected it? Whatever the case, while the drivers worked agonizingly slowly he took the time to run a facial recognition scan on the corpse, just to get some idea of who he used to be while Vanessa kept rummaging disrespectfully.
According to the internet, several different databases pinged at the general facial structure. The first alarmed him a bit, a couple of criminal database profiles from Hurricane, Utah for two different Aftons, one released due to a lack of evidence and the other being a short duration in Juvenile Detention during a criminal negligence case on the part of Fazbear Entertainment in its earliest stages. Later ones soothed his nerves a bit, employee histories across the company as well as a missing person's report.
Part of Freddy felt a bit bad for poor Michael Afton. Involved in a case regarding the death of his brother at the age of 14 and disappearing himself only four years later, during the interim his father would be accused of child murder and his sister also going missing. He couldn't imagine how that poor boy must have felt. The guilt at his siblings' fates must have been all-consuming.
Unseeing eyes tracked what Vanessa was doing, subliminally cataloging the information for review while Freddy was distracted, and part of his system fritzed out at the sight of a frankly ancient-looking pair of dolls haphazardly tossed out of the chest cavity. Freddy blinked back to himself at the sudden glitching and found himself pointing them out to ask, "Where did those two come from? They seem rather old, do they not? This is not a safe place for such old toys."
"Dude had them in his chest hole," Vanessa shrugged. "Not like I'm psychic with the dead, y'know?"
Freddy quietly scanned the dolls, barely acknowledging Vanessa with his sudden confusing fixation on the dolls. Â
One was a plush toy of Fredbear, the lack of a tag being a marker that it must have been part of the very first line of plush toys made based on the franchise. It was once a bright golden color, but evidently turned a dirty almost-brown due to dirt and age. It was well-loved, visible threadbear sections just barely visible under the nearly black stains that were unsettlingly close to the color red for Freddy's tastes. Its tophat and bowtie still held a slight satin sheen, and black beady eyes still glinted as brightly as ever under all the layers of muck and grime. It looked as if it could have used a good washing or repair, but was too old to really patch up or clean, but was too precious to simply discard. The idea made Freddy's chest cavity clench painfully. There were signs of it being used as some form of comfort toy, based on the wear, but was at some point handled like glass.
The other toy of the two that Vanessa tossed aside resembled the old line of Raggedy Ann dolls that were popular once upon a time, yarn hair pulled up into a pair of pigtails and a red ribbon tourniquet tied around one arm with one end frayed as if pulled through a door jamb. It was remarkably untouched, as if the original owner had simply set it down one day and never picked it back up afterwards. He got a sinking feeling in his false stomach at the idea behind why.
He slowly crept towards them, ignored by Vanessa and ignor ing the ping from the finished scan. Gingerly, he picked up the Fredbear doll, scarcely wanting to in case his plastic claws accidentally ripped into the cloth and stuffing flesh of the much smaller bear. Idly he wondered why Michael - if the corpse really was Michael - still had these ancient dolls. They were at least forty years old apiece, if not older. He knew based on old family photos that they likely belonged to Michaels long-dead or long-missing siblings, but Michael himself was missing for at least thirty-six years himself... before mysteriously turning up as a withering corpse in the shell of a long-dead restaurant. Freddy did a quick Trajillion Search for Michael for any insight as to his whereabouts from the time he went missing to the semi-recent burning down of the Pizza Place.
Not much was forthcoming. Some conspiracy theory boards speculating about the disappearances surrounding Freddy's in general, some unsavory accusations about the death of his brother, but there was... one result that caught his eye.
It was an ancient home video, trained on a blurry purple figure. Â
Freddy picked that option and watched the video closely, not wanting to miss a moment. The resolution was terrible, low-quality, but that was to be expected in - Freddy checked the date in the corner - 1987. The purple figure was nearly identical to the one on the ground, just less burnt and a bit fresher. He lurched his way down the street from what was almost certainly the old Afton house, looking as if he were being puppeteered from the inside with every bruised inch of skin looking about ready to fall off. He took himself to the storm drain before collapsing on the ground. The blurry video zoomed in to watch keenly as what looked like a formless mass of cables, eyes, and silver metal violently ripped itself from Michael's mouth and retreated down the nearest street drain. The abandoned corpse seemed to lay there for several moments before shakily drawing itself back up and staring right into the camera with vibrant white dots before it cut itself off hastily.
That was the last purported sighting of Michael Afton anywhere. It was perplexing.
Vanessa interrupted Freddy's contemplation by grabbing and twisting one of his mechanical ears. "Pay fucking attention you stupid bear."
Freddy took a moment to internally curse his internal pain receptors before sighing. "Sorry, Vanessa. This place has a lot to pick through," he attempted to excuse, finally digging into the files on the motherboard chips, subconsciously guarding the Fredbear plush closely as he did so. Â
He found, first and foremost, incredibly rudimentary AI base programs. Not too complex, just for running a specific signal, some basic game testing, and (by far the most complex processes) legal paperwork filing . It was truly bizarre.
"These chips seem to belong to... what was the original Helpy model from what I can glean. Game testing, lawsuit balancing... even some basic disability accommodations." Freddy explained. He spotted some of the audio files and spotted a perfect opportunity for some petty vengeance. Freddy was not normally the type for mischief, but he figured now was the perfect time for a good joke. "I am also seeing an audio file here. The name is rather nonindicative, however, simply win dot o-g-g ."
As expected, Vanessa glared at him. "I don't-"
Freddy played it before she could finish, drowning her out with an airhorn recording so loud it nearly blew out the speakers on Freddy's voicebox from the sheer force of the sound. It made Freddy's jaw ache from how it was forced open in sync, and he mocked sheepishness while massaging his jaw as Vanessa glared at him because of the noise. Â
"Like I was trying to say, I don't think you should play that. "
Freddy considered himself very convincing at pretending to be apologetic. He had to fake apologize for the terrible prizes children would occasionally get all the time. Even so, it was a physical struggle to not laugh at Vanessa's expression. He made sure to back up all of the Helpy files to a folder he'd found earlier that day that he didn't entirely recall having but figured he might as well use to backup the events of the day regardless. It was admin-locked with a password Freddy was fairly certain he would need to change soon.
"Well, your mystery corpse was a bust," Vanessa scoffed in distaste, kicking the dead man at her feet. "You better find something else to make this all worth my while before I get upset."
Vanessa already seemed fairly upset in Freddy's opinion, but he knew not to push his luck much more as far as retorts went. He simply nodded in response as his attention returned to the old toys.
A black wire tangle offered him the old Raggedy Ann plush with the clumsy care of a young child. Gingerly, he took it alongside the Fredbear and hastily hid them in his stomach hatch while Vanessa had her back turned, hoping to find them a better hiding spot later. He didn't think he could forgive himself if he let them get left behind or forgotten. Â
For some reason, he got the sinking suspicion that he was the only one left that cared what happened to them.
It was supposed to be their bittersweet ending, the cleansing fires that burnt away his father's sins. But Michael couldn't rest, not yet, not until he proves to others and especially himself that he DESERVES that almost-happy ending.
It's sheer luck that ends up with squashing copycat rabbits further down the line.
A true Afton family reunion may be on the horizon, but Michael really just wants to cash in his afterlife vacation days.
Chapter 1
First <== Previous <===> Next
Somehow, it always came back to the taste of pizza for Michael. Given his history and choices in employment, it was bound to happen, but as it stood the cloying taste of tomato and cheese grease clung to the back of his rotting throat as the temperature rose ever higher, reminding him of simpler if not equally as terrible times.
He couldn't even tell if the grease on his tongue was from his last, shitty meal or simply from the fire cooking him alive.
[When Officer Vanessa had asked the Glamrock Animatronics for help clearing out a sinkhole discovered under the indoor go kart tracks, Freddy was uncertain about her request. Upon being actually lead there and traversing down carefully, however, he knew immediately why the animatronics were called down.]
He briefly wondered what exactly had led him to being here, but the answer was fairly obvious. He'd seen a help wanted advertisement about the Fazbear Entertainment's franchising scheme and had applied, immediately getting it. From there, he'd heard Uncle Henry on the tapes for the past week, and had been guided by a small assistant animatronic dubbed Helpy who also watched over him in his tiny vent-exposed office and assisted with testing out all the games. Michael had been fairly certain he was the one and only franchisee and that assumption had been more than confirmed at the end of the week, when Uncle Henry finally spoke up as the fires started.
This is where your story ends , he'd said. And Michael was honestly alright with that. He was tired .
Whatever the case may be, it wouldn't matter soon. He'd made the absolutely bright decision to clamp the small figure of Helpy on top of the computer to his chest where the metal and plastic warped and melted to fuse with his already mutilated flesh. He couldn't stop the tears from boiling tracks into his face as the roaring barely missed drowning out the pained and enraged howling of the animatronics trapped with him. He pressed his lips into a thin line, enough that he might never open his mouth again from his decaying adipose tissue and muscle melting and melding shut, not that he would otherwise anyways.
The heat, the pain, the volume, it all reached such a cacophonous crescendo that it was genuinely difficult to parse when it all just... stopped.
[The pizzeria below the sinkhole was far beyond repair, according to Freddy's assessments. Mold on top of scorch marks on top of general food debris made him almost wish he had a stomach with which to retch at the stench.
He supposed that was why Officer Vanessa asked them to help clean up some. He didn't know why they were cleaning the abandoned and long buried place, but when asked all Vanessa would tell him was that they were 'salvaging'. For some reason that word made him feel uneasy, as if they were robbing a grave.]
Michael took a solid thirty seconds to register the fact that things had gone deathly silent and the pain had passed. It took him another thirty for his grilled grey matter to process where exactly he'd been dumped.
He found himself somewhere completely black with some strange, fuzzy lines to sect reality into what resembled television scan lines, granted even more prominence with the odd red trees trimming his line of sight short. He looked around the area a bit, brow knitting in confusion as he realized he had no idea where he was.
[He had picked his way around the debris carefully, melted wires fused into broken fractals as he maneuvered his way down into the oddly spacious vent system beneath the main building. The room he'd entered into seemed like it was full of debris. He shook his head and moved chunks of metal out of the way, gritting his plastic teeth with the effort as he excavated what looked like a strange, small office. Freddy froze at what he found.]
"Michael."
The sound of someone calling his name made him jump as he whirled to look behind himself. There sat a bleedingly red lake, and a darker red figure seemingly fishing in it. The figure was vaguely humanoid, if not a bit fuzzy at the edges, and Michael couldn't help but be a bit on edge.
"Come have a seat."
The figure seemed to be wearing a long duster and a massive, wide-brimmed hat not unlike the Spanish La Catrina was often depicted with. They turned their head, revealing a long, flat snout and jaw characteristic of cartoony alligators, and a piercing white pupil shone out of the otherwise pitch black eye from behind a pair of circular glasses. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't human.
Michael was getting quite a bit sick of things that looked human enough to throw him off. Incredibly so.
[It looked like someone had been in the office when the old pizza place had burnt down, unfortunately so. All that remained was a mummified, torched corpse with its face trapped in the rictus of a fearful scream, some kind of melted mass of metal and burnt plastic practically hugged to its chest. It seemed to sit in front of what at a glance resembled a desk with an ancient CRT computer monitor that must have run MS-DOS at the most up to date. The chair under it was warped and drooping, but not fused to the flesh of the body at the very least.
It looked utterly gruesome.]
"We have much to discuss."
Not quite knowing how to respond, he tucked some hair behind his ear as a reenacting of a long-dead habit. "I'm... sorry, what ? W-who-?" he cut himself off as he realized he's in the state he'd been in right before he got scooped. Small mercies, he supposed, but it was enough to stun him into silence. He fought the urge to double check himself over to confirm this, keeping his eyes trained on the unknown variable instead. Ignoring such urges was what kept him sort-of-alive, after all.
The gator person chuckled, and something about the sound was familiar as the figure in front of him turned fully towards Michael, looming yet sheepish. "I guess you wouldn't recognize me like this." The face seemed to warp and contort, as if a glitch had chased its way to reality, and Michael couldn't hold back his gasp that interrupted the next sentence he hadn't caught.
"Uncle Henry?" Michael hated how small his voice sounded, despite the sad yet warm smile that crossed the other man's face.
"It's nice to see you again, Michael." the engineer greeted with a mournful smile.
[For a brief moment, Freddy scanned the computer for anything useful, but it was beyond salvaging. It was a wonder it was recognizable at all. There was a flicker of red on the screen for a brief moment, but Freddy discarded the idea as simply a glitch.]
The Afton recoiled a few steps. "What is this?!" he snapped despite himself. Henry's smile dropped, as if too tired for the facade.
"Most have a choice, to roam the earth for atonement or sit with the old man of Consequences Lake - with me - for a time until they're ready to brave either the forest or the lake alone. The just are guided through the woods to greener pastures, the wicked are dragged into the lake, and the lost are trapped like the ones neither evil nor pure. And yet you, Michael, are all and none of these."
"And how-how did you end up as the... the old man Consequences ?" Michael challenged, confused and scared. The look Henry leveled him with was far more chilling than any haunted animatronic could dare recreate.
[Freddy hesitated, taking in the peculiar sight beneath him. It could have been just the lighting or scorch marks, but was the person... literally purple?...
It really should have been impossible, yet here he was staring down at what looked like exactly that.]
"I always have been. Always would have been. Would have always destined to be." Henry pinched the bridge of his nose. "Which is... confusing, I know. But imagine if the boatman of the underworld hired a substitute to learn what it felt like to be human. Only to have that human life ruined by a man becoming a self-made monster. That's the long and short of... well, me."
His eyes softened at Michael. "I hadn't even known until being back here brought me back to myself. If I had known, I'd have told you much sooner."
Michael swayed on his feet, rocked by the knowledge that his father's former best friend had secretly been a ferryman of death in the afterlife this whole time living life as a human as a vacation trip.
Michael had seen and felt his fair share of strange things - being a ghost haunting his own corpse would do that to a person - but this felt like almost too much .
"Then this is it. I'm really dead for good." Michael thinly mumbled. "And my father is too, finally. And I'm going crazy and imagining that death is my honorary Uncle and has been all along."
Henry nodded slowly, a small smile perking the corners of his lips. "Yes. Now, you can finally rest as you deserve to, Michael. Sound of mind, may I add, as I very much am your Uncle Henry despite the apparent secret double life not even I knew about."
[For a moment, Freddy's curiosity almost won out over his directives as he reached down for the strange corpse, but was halted by a ping by the guard, freezing as if trapped between two warring sides of himself and unsure which set of orders to follow.]
Michael bit his lip. "Do I really deserve it?" he asked. "With the blood and ashes on my hands, am I really deserving of a peaceful rest?"
Henry ambled closer to Michael, looming over him in a way he had never done before. "Does a single act of cruelty in a long lived life doom a soul eternally, Michael?" he asked softly. "Does the mistake of a child permanently condemn the old man he becomes later? Or is life too complex a tapestry for one single action or moment to define a whole life?"
"But-"
"What happened to your brother was by all intents and purposes an accident. The mechanisms of the animatronic were far too strong for their intended purpose, and they should not have been capable of doing that. And I know I wouldn't have overkilled the hydraulics like that."
[Freddy conducted a scan, looking for any reason to stay that Vanessa would approve of.
There was still some usable circutboards and data in the lump of mangled material pressed into the corpse's chest, miraculously. Perhaps that can be used in the Pizzaplex or for Vanessa's side project!
Ignoring the more insistent pinging, he pushed aside the metal to move it out of his way and approached the corpse with intent, still scanning to satiate his curiosity.]
"I know." Michael basically whispered. "I just... I ignored the way he begged, I ignored his fear and tears and just wanted to make him struggle . And he died because of that negligence." His vision blurred with tears. "I've done my best to atone for it and fix my mistakes for the rest of my life, but can any atonement outweigh my guilt?"
"What will you do now, though, with your father gone?" Henry probed. "With no clear purpose in mind?"
"I don't know." Michael whispered in admission. "I've spent so much of myself on fixing my mistakes and my father's sins, I don't know what's left of me. I thought I was ready to move on, but-but faced with having to make a choice about it, I don't know if I feel like I can take it without feeling like something's left behind."
Henry seemed to appraise Michael, expression grim and searching. "You got such a rotten hand dealt to you, Michael," he eventually sighed. "Cosmologically, you've done enough good to earn yourself a fresh new life to lead from scratch. You've freed so many trapped children's souls, including your siblings, and brought your father to justice."
"There-there's a difference between doing good and being forgiven." Michael responded, voice getting wetter and more wretched by the moment. He sniffled and wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand.
"Your brother forgives you." Henry quietly responded, words weighty as if he knew the emotional load of his very diction. "He's seen how hard you've worked, how much you've given up to try fixing your mistakes. How much you suffered at your father's hand."
Michael couldn't stop the increase in his tears, fully descending into a blubbering mess while subconsciously hugging himself and curling to double over and drop to his knees as if gravity had become too much for him to bear. Henry knelt down and pulled him into a hug into which Michael let himself break down fully for the first time in who knew how long.
[On the more in-depth scans, Freddy found himself noticing even more metal interlaced throughout the human's body as if several surgeries had been performed, and a complete lack of bones or organs, and hadn't had any for so long that the whole body was completely gangrenous.
How had this person survived that long enough to die here?]
"You can't let yourself rest, can you Michael?" Henry asked mournfully. "No matter how much you do, you'll never feel worthy enough to rest like the others?"
Michael simply whimpered back, half wanting to sink into the lake as he substituted that with his uncle's comforting embrace. Henry pulled back a little to look Michael in the eye.
"If you cannot rest yet, then..." Henry cut himself off with a sigh, a sad twinkle in his eye. "Charlie, um..." the older man's voice noticeably cracked, and he cleared his throat.
"Charlie had a gift for you. For a scenario like this. Where she wouldn't be able to help." He smiled fondly for a moment. "She'll be apprenticing with me soon, actually. But that's besides the point. She gave me the task of offering it to you."
Henry pulled a large if still pocket-sized present out of his coat to hand it to Michael. "It's as small as it is because she didn't need to also call your ghost. It's just meant to guide you where you need to go."
Inside innocently sat... something, clearly a plush toy of some kind that frazzled and changed shape now and again. Rabbit, bear, canine, gator, like it couldn't decide. A roulette wheel of animatronics.
Henry matched Michael's curious if wary gaze.
[Freddy gently cradled the corpse in his arms, easily prying it from the remains of the drooping office chair. He pinged Vanessa back with the signal that he'd found something interesting, and she finally relented. He didn't notice the wires in the corpse's head and neck slowly drawing the corpse's face up slightly, or the release of the slightest final exhalation.]
"It's your choice, Michael."
Michael grimaced. "But is it the right choice?"
Henry's eyes crinkled fondly. "Hell if I know."
Michael hesitated a moment longer.
He reached into the box, grabbing the plush as it spasmed for a moment and froze on the sunny orange bear marked with bright cyan lightning bolts. He lifted the doll to stare at it with a squint, utterly baffled by the character choice Charlie had made for him.
"... Freddy ?"
[Freddy froze. Did someone say his name? He could have sworn, somewhere in the back of his head where his code didn't quite reach, he felt a sort of strange sensation.]
"Freddy Fazbear ."
[He looked around in confusion. Who was calling for him? What sat in the back of his head was an odd pulling sensation, trying to draw his attention to something and away from the programming guiding his actions.]
"Uncle Henry, I-I don't-" he looked up to the reaper only to feel a sudden sensation of vertigo as the color bled out of the world.
[Freddy stumbled backward a few steps when he'd turned completely back towards the office as his sense of balance suddenly bucked as if his internal gyros had done a backflip, his vision glitching out suddenly with bright streaks of red. He ended up hugging the corpse tightly to his chest, almost as if to swallow it into his body. All at once,
It was supposed to be their bittersweet ending, the cleansing fires that burnt away his father's sins. But Michael couldn't rest, not yet, not until he proves to others and especially himself that he DESERVES that almost-happy ending.
It's sheer luck that ends up with squashing copycat rabbits further down the line.
A true Afton family reunion may be on the horizon, but Michael really just wants to cash in his afterlife vacation days.
Chapter 1
First <== Previous <===> Next
Somehow, it always came back to the taste of pizza for Michael. Given his history and choices in employment, it was bound to happen, but as it stood the cloying taste of tomato and cheese grease clung to the back of his rotting throat as the temperature rose ever higher, reminding him of simpler if not equally as terrible times.
He couldn't even tell if the grease on his tongue was from his last, shitty meal or simply from the fire cooking him alive.
[When Officer Vanessa had asked the Glamrock Animatronics for help clearing out a sinkhole discovered under the indoor go kart tracks, Freddy was uncertain about her request. Upon being actually lead there and traversing down carefully, however, he knew immediately why the animatronics were called down.]
He briefly wondered what exactly had led him to being here, but the answer was fairly obvious. He'd seen a help wanted advertisement about the Fazbear Entertainment's franchising scheme and had applied, immediately getting it. From there, he'd heard Uncle Henry on the tapes for the past week, and had been guided by a small assistant animatronic dubbed Helpy who also watched over him in his tiny vent-exposed office and assisted with testing out all the games. Michael had been fairly certain he was the one and only franchisee and that assumption had been more than confirmed at the end of the week, when Uncle Henry finally spoke up as the fires started.
This is where your story ends , he'd said. And Michael was honestly alright with that. He was tired .
Whatever the case may be, it wouldn't matter soon. He'd made the absolutely bright decision to clamp the small figure of Helpy on top of the computer to his chest where the metal and plastic warped and melted to fuse with his already mutilated flesh. He couldn't stop the tears from boiling tracks into his face as the roaring barely missed drowning out the pained and enraged howling of the animatronics trapped with him. He pressed his lips into a thin line, enough that he might never open his mouth again from his decaying adipose tissue and muscle melting and melding shut, not that he would otherwise anyways.
The heat, the pain, the volume, it all reached such a cacophonous crescendo that it was genuinely difficult to parse when it all just... stopped.
[The pizzeria below the sinkhole was far beyond repair, according to Freddy's assessments. Mold on top of scorch marks on top of general food debris made him almost wish he had a stomach with which to retch at the stench.
He supposed that was why Officer Vanessa asked them to help clean up some. He didn't know why they were cleaning the abandoned and long buried place, but when asked all Vanessa would tell him was that they were 'salvaging'. For some reason that word made him feel uneasy, as if they were robbing a grave.]
Michael took a solid thirty seconds to register the fact that things had gone deathly silent and the pain had passed. It took him another thirty for his grilled grey matter to process where exactly he'd been dumped.
He found himself somewhere completely black with some strange, fuzzy lines to sect reality into what resembled television scan lines, granted even more prominence with the odd red trees trimming his line of sight short. He looked around the area a bit, brow knitting in confusion as he realized he had no idea where he was.
[He had picked his way around the debris carefully, melted wires fused into broken fractals as he maneuvered his way down into the oddly spacious vent system beneath the main building. The room he'd entered into seemed like it was full of debris. He shook his head and moved chunks of metal out of the way, gritting his plastic teeth with the effort as he excavated what looked like a strange, small office. Freddy froze at what he found.]
"Michael."
The sound of someone calling his name made him jump as he whirled to look behind himself. There sat a bleedingly red lake, and a darker red figure seemingly fishing in it. The figure was vaguely humanoid, if not a bit fuzzy at the edges, and Michael couldn't help but be a bit on edge.
"Come have a seat."
The figure seemed to be wearing a long duster and a massive, wide-brimmed hat not unlike the Spanish La Catrina was often depicted with. They turned their head, revealing a long, flat snout and jaw characteristic of cartoony alligators, and a piercing white pupil shone out of the otherwise pitch black eye from behind a pair of circular glasses. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't human.
Michael was getting quite a bit sick of things that looked human enough to throw him off. Incredibly so.
[It looked like someone had been in the office when the old pizza place had burnt down, unfortunately so. All that remained was a mummified, torched corpse with its face trapped in the rictus of a fearful scream, some kind of melted mass of metal and burnt plastic practically hugged to its chest. It seemed to sit in front of what at a glance resembled a desk with an ancient CRT computer monitor that must have run MS-DOS at the most up to date. The chair under it was warped and drooping, but not fused to the flesh of the body at the very least.
It looked utterly gruesome.]
"We have much to discuss."
Not quite knowing how to respond, he tucked some hair behind his ear as a reenacting of a long-dead habit. "I'm... sorry, what ? W-who-?" he cut himself off as he realized he's in the state he'd been in right before he got scooped. Small mercies, he supposed, but it was enough to stun him into silence. He fought the urge to double check himself over to confirm this, keeping his eyes trained on the unknown variable instead. Ignoring such urges was what kept him sort-of-alive, after all.
The gator person chuckled, and something about the sound was familiar as the figure in front of him turned fully towards Michael, looming yet sheepish. "I guess you wouldn't recognize me like this." The face seemed to warp and contort, as if a glitch had chased its way to reality, and Michael couldn't hold back his gasp that interrupted the next sentence he hadn't caught.
"Uncle Henry?" Michael hated how small his voice sounded, despite the sad yet warm smile that crossed the other man's face.
"It's nice to see you again, Michael." the engineer greeted with a mournful smile.
[For a brief moment, Freddy scanned the computer for anything useful, but it was beyond salvaging. It was a wonder it was recognizable at all. There was a flicker of red on the screen for a brief moment, but Freddy discarded the idea as simply a glitch.]
The Afton recoiled a few steps. "What is this?!" he snapped despite himself. Henry's smile dropped, as if too tired for the facade.
"Most have a choice, to roam the earth for atonement or sit with the old man of Consequences Lake - with me - for a time until they're ready to brave either the forest or the lake alone. The just are guided through the woods to greener pastures, the wicked are dragged into the lake, and the lost are trapped like the ones neither evil nor pure. And yet you, Michael, are all and none of these."
"And how-how did you end up as the... the old man Consequences ?" Michael challenged, confused and scared. The look Henry leveled him with was far more chilling than any haunted animatronic could dare recreate.
[Freddy hesitated, taking in the peculiar sight beneath him. It could have been just the lighting or scorch marks, but was the person... literally purple?...
It really should have been impossible, yet here he was staring down at what looked like exactly that.]
"I always have been. Always would have been. Would have always destined to be." Henry pinched the bridge of his nose. "Which is... confusing, I know. But imagine if the boatman of the underworld hired a substitute to learn what it felt like to be human. Only to have that human life ruined by a man becoming a self-made monster. That's the long and short of... well, me."
His eyes softened at Michael. "I hadn't even known until being back here brought me back to myself. If I had known, I'd have told you much sooner."
Michael swayed on his feet, rocked by the knowledge that his father's former best friend had secretly been a ferryman of death in the afterlife this whole time living life as a human as a vacation trip.
Michael had seen and felt his fair share of strange things - being a ghost haunting his own corpse would do that to a person - but this felt like almost too much .
"Then this is it. I'm really dead for good." Michael thinly mumbled. "And my father is too, finally. And I'm going crazy and imagining that death is my honorary Uncle and has been all along."
Henry nodded slowly, a small smile perking the corners of his lips. "Yes. Now, you can finally rest as you deserve to, Michael. Sound of mind, may I add, as I very much am your Uncle Henry despite the apparent secret double life not even I knew about."
[For a moment, Freddy's curiosity almost won out over his directives as he reached down for the strange corpse, but was halted by a ping by the guard, freezing as if trapped between two warring sides of himself and unsure which set of orders to follow.]
Michael bit his lip. "Do I really deserve it?" he asked. "With the blood and ashes on my hands, am I really deserving of a peaceful rest?"
Henry ambled closer to Michael, looming over him in a way he had never done before. "Does a single act of cruelty in a long lived life doom a soul eternally, Michael?" he asked softly. "Does the mistake of a child permanently condemn the old man he becomes later? Or is life too complex a tapestry for one single action or moment to define a whole life?"
"But-"
"What happened to your brother was by all intents and purposes an accident. The mechanisms of the animatronic were far too strong for their intended purpose, and they should not have been capable of doing that. And I know I wouldn't have overkilled the hydraulics like that."
[Freddy conducted a scan, looking for any reason to stay that Vanessa would approve of.
There was still some usable circutboards and data in the lump of mangled material pressed into the corpse's chest, miraculously. Perhaps that can be used in the Pizzaplex or for Vanessa's side project!
Ignoring the more insistent pinging, he pushed aside the metal to move it out of his way and approached the corpse with intent, still scanning to satiate his curiosity.]
"I know." Michael basically whispered. "I just... I ignored the way he begged, I ignored his fear and tears and just wanted to make him struggle . And he died because of that negligence." His vision blurred with tears. "I've done my best to atone for it and fix my mistakes for the rest of my life, but can any atonement outweigh my guilt?"
"What will you do now, though, with your father gone?" Henry probed. "With no clear purpose in mind?"
"I don't know." Michael whispered in admission. "I've spent so much of myself on fixing my mistakes and my father's sins, I don't know what's left of me. I thought I was ready to move on, but-but faced with having to make a choice about it, I don't know if I feel like I can take it without feeling like something's left behind."
Henry seemed to appraise Michael, expression grim and searching. "You got such a rotten hand dealt to you, Michael," he eventually sighed. "Cosmologically, you've done enough good to earn yourself a fresh new life to lead from scratch. You've freed so many trapped children's souls, including your siblings, and brought your father to justice."
"There-there's a difference between doing good and being forgiven." Michael responded, voice getting wetter and more wretched by the moment. He sniffled and wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand.
"Your brother forgives you." Henry quietly responded, words weighty as if he knew the emotional load of his very diction. "He's seen how hard you've worked, how much you've given up to try fixing your mistakes. How much you suffered at your father's hand."
Michael couldn't stop the increase in his tears, fully descending into a blubbering mess while subconsciously hugging himself and curling to double over and drop to his knees as if gravity had become too much for him to bear. Henry knelt down and pulled him into a hug into which Michael let himself break down fully for the first time in who knew how long.
[On the more in-depth scans, Freddy found himself noticing even more metal interlaced throughout the human's body as if several surgeries had been performed, and a complete lack of bones or organs, and hadn't had any for so long that the whole body was completely gangrenous.
How had this person survived that long enough to die here?]
"You can't let yourself rest, can you Michael?" Henry asked mournfully. "No matter how much you do, you'll never feel worthy enough to rest like the others?"
Michael simply whimpered back, half wanting to sink into the lake as he substituted that with his uncle's comforting embrace. Henry pulled back a little to look Michael in the eye.
"If you cannot rest yet, then..." Henry cut himself off with a sigh, a sad twinkle in his eye. "Charlie, um..." the older man's voice noticeably cracked, and he cleared his throat.
"Charlie had a gift for you. For a scenario like this. Where she wouldn't be able to help." He smiled fondly for a moment. "She'll be apprenticing with me soon, actually. But that's besides the point. She gave me the task of offering it to you."
Henry pulled a large if still pocket-sized present out of his coat to hand it to Michael. "It's as small as it is because she didn't need to also call your ghost. It's just meant to guide you where you need to go."
Inside innocently sat... something, clearly a plush toy of some kind that frazzled and changed shape now and again. Rabbit, bear, canine, gator, like it couldn't decide. A roulette wheel of animatronics.
Henry matched Michael's curious if wary gaze.
[Freddy gently cradled the corpse in his arms, easily prying it from the remains of the drooping office chair. He pinged Vanessa back with the signal that he'd found something interesting, and she finally relented. He didn't notice the wires in the corpse's head and neck slowly drawing the corpse's face up slightly, or the release of the slightest final exhalation.]
"It's your choice, Michael."
Michael grimaced. "But is it the right choice?"
Henry's eyes crinkled fondly. "Hell if I know."
Michael hesitated a moment longer.
He reached into the box, grabbing the plush as it spasmed for a moment and froze on the sunny orange bear marked with bright cyan lightning bolts. He lifted the doll to stare at it with a squint, utterly baffled by the character choice Charlie had made for him.
"... Freddy ?"
[Freddy froze. Did someone say his name? He could have sworn, somewhere in the back of his head where his code didn't quite reach, he felt a sort of strange sensation.]
"Freddy Fazbear ."
[He looked around in confusion. Who was calling for him? What sat in the back of his head was an odd pulling sensation, trying to draw his attention to something and away from the programming guiding his actions.]
"Uncle Henry, I-I don't-" he looked up to the reaper only to feel a sudden sensation of vertigo as the color bled out of the world.
[Freddy stumbled backward a few steps when he'd turned completely back towards the office as his sense of balance suddenly bucked as if his internal gyros had done a backflip, his vision glitching out suddenly with bright streaks of red. He ended up hugging the corpse tightly to his chest, almost as if to swallow it into his body. All at once,
finally checked that poll i made and it looks like yall wanna see my fics! i'll do chiefly my glammike fic because that one's one of the few solo fics ive got
New commission post yall for updated prices and terms of use.
For more information or examples, you can reach out to me in dms here, @/lairdelampblack on discord, at my email [email protected], my ko-fi or even my furaffinity where im gonna stsrt posting art to also! i am now taking furry and some nsfw commissions as well so if you wanna take a stab at it, please hit me up!
Prices under the cut like before
TERMS OF COMMISSIONING
Please no extreme violence.
The artist has the right to deny any fetish for any reason
The buyer can share art anywhere so long as proper credit is attributed
What’s the difference between fulbody and hi res poster-?
a high res poster will be print ready at a higher DPI and more detail packed in, while a fullbody is a bit more basic with the standard internet viewing settings of 72DPI. the color profile for the poster may also be different
New commission post yall for updated prices and terms of use.
For more information or examples, you can reach out to me in dms here, @/lairdelampblack on discord, at my email [email protected], my ko-fi or even my furaffinity where im gonna stsrt posting art to also! i am now taking furry and some nsfw commissions as well so if you wanna take a stab at it, please hit me up!
Prices under the cut like before
TERMS OF COMMISSIONING
Please no extreme violence.
The artist has the right to deny any fetish for any reason
The buyer can share art anywhere so long as proper credit is attributed
