Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Foxy was hunched over as he stalked towards the figure sitting in the party seat. His tail slightly lifted from the ground. Y/n was seated in the party seat, absently scrolling through her phone. Another day of hard work ended in the pizzeria, a party filled with toddlers—that was the most stress-inducing day Y/n had ever been through, but she was glad the day had ended—hearing screaming and crying kids for hours can really do a number on someone. Helpy was seated on the table, holding a pencil in his paws as he drew on the paper that was between his stubby legs. 

Foxy neared Y/n, his snout poked at her shoulder. She looks away from her phone and see’s Foxy before smiling. Foxy fixed his posture and smiled down at Y/n. 

“Ah—so she does speak!” Foxy jokes. Y/n sighs but laughs softly, she hadn’t had much time to sit back and talk to Freddy and the others—aside from Bonnie who had come with them to medium last night. With college work actually starting to pile in—and Y/n being able to take night shifts by herself, thanks to Mike. Y/n found herself always busy. Which was a good thing—it was good to be busy. 

“Hey, Foxy.” The guard greets the Fox. 

Foxy’s tail wagged behind him and he hummed a greeting. “I hadn’t scared ya’ too bad last night, had I?” Foxy asks. 

With Y/n taking the shifts by herself, it was—unnerving. Being in a closed building that was dark and quiet for hours on end really could put someone through it. Especially when you have machines taller than you out to attack you with minimum power. But the more she did it, the easier it got to maintain it —with a few tricks from Mike himself—who was very reluctant to have Y/n do a night shift by herself—Y/n was shooting through the nights untouched.

But the only problem she had—was Foxy. 

Unlike the others—Foxy didn’t have a pattern. He would randomly flee from his cove and down the hall. But thankfully Y/n was quick enough to block him off at the door. 

“No, you didn’t. I’m just tired is all.” She placed her phone down onto the table and rubbed at her face—feeling the tension in her eyes. 

“Hm.” He says before fixing his posture and straightening his back. “Ya’ haven’t been gettin’ any rest? Now,  ya’ should know better than that!” Foxy lets out a boisterous laugh before he pats her head, Y/n lets out an airy laugh through her nose—feeling Foxy’s hand in her hair, Y/n swats his hand away before she stood up from the booth, Helpy looks at Y/n—but he didn’t move from his spot—the cub looks back down at the drawing he was making and Y/n placed her phone back into her pocket before she started towards the stage. 

Foxy trailed behind Y/n who had abruptly got up—she heard him humming from behind her and she looked over her shoulder to Foxy. “What has you in a good mood today?”  She asks. Not that Foxy wasn’t in a good mood all the time—his demeanor seemed a lot different compared to other days, Foxy’s ears perked up before he then took two steps and stood next to Y/n. 

“What an odd question.” He says. Y/n sputters as Foxy walks next to her. “You’re the one acting odd.” 

When the two made it to the main stage, Bonnie held his guitar in his hands as Chica was busy watching Mike—five times out of ten, reprimanding Bonnie. 

Bonnie had his eyebrows pushed together as he stared at Mike. 

“And for the last damn time—stop breaking the fucking plates in the kitchen—if I have to hear Fritz complain about that one more time, I’m losing my mind.” Mike massaged his temple—whatever he was complaining about had gotten him tired—which—what more did she expect from Mike? The guy was constantly the one dealing with customer complaints, crying children, and long shifts.

“Man...I can’t wait for you to leave..” Bonnie muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes until they landed on Y/n with Foxy standing beside her. 

“Great, because I won’t have to fucking look at you again.” Mike heard Bonnie’s statement. Y/n slowly shook her head at the two—there was never a day that the two wouldn’t argue with each other—she couldn’t even recall the last time they two even remotely got along. 

Chica’s hands fell to her side as she frowned. “Oh, man…I forgot about that…” Chica proclaimed—Freddy wasn’t on the stage, which was where he usually was—he never actually roamed around the restaurant aside from actually entertaining the kids. 

“Where’s Freddy?” Y/n asks. Bonnie looks at the spot Freddy would have been in before looking back at her. “Gone.” He shrugs. Y/n’s expression deadpans at Bonnie’s not-so-helpful response. 

“Ah—Bonnie you never cease the jokes..” Foxy chuckled under his breath. 

“What else ya’ll expect me to do?” Bonnie boasted, and Mike only shook his head before looking at Y/n. 

“You almost ready to go?” Mike asks—Darius wasn’t at work to pick Y/n up, so Y/n tagged along with Jeremy and Mike—Fritz was taking the night shift for the night, thankfully. Y/n could only imagine the amount of sleep she would get for the night, more than enough. That’s for sure. 

“Yeah, where’s Jeremy?” Y/n asks. Mike motioned towards the kitchen which was across from the room.  “Finishing dishes, I’ll help him out so we can leave.” Mike turned around and walked off, leaving Y/n with the animatronics. Chica walks down from the stage and with full force wrapped Y/n in a tight hug—catching her off guard. 

“You never told me anything about you transferring!” Chica cried out—thankfully she was in her other form—otherwise guaranteed she would have broken something on Y/n. Y/n groans at the tension in her muscles with Chica’s arms wrapped around her.

“What?” Y/n couldn’t catch onto what Chica meant, Chica pulls away and looks at Y/n, dead in her eyes. 

“Well, Mike and the others are transferring to the new location! And I thought you were too!” Chica’s lips waivers and she frowned. So that’s what she meant...

“Is it because of something we did? I swear it won’t happen again! I’m sorry—but if you leave it’s like I'll be losing my best friend and—“ Chica was cut short from her frantic speaking by Bonnie who came down from the stage and grabbed Chica by the shoulders and gently pulled her away from Y/n. 

“Chica, love. Give the girl some space, I’m sure she has a reason.” Bonnie becomes the voice of reason as he smiles down at Chica. Chica looks up at him with a frown before looking at Y/n.

“Who—I—well—I’m not relocating to the new location.” She tells Chica. Chica’s frown twitched and she tilted her head to give Y/n a confused expression. 

“I’m still thinking about it, I don’t wanna leave you guys here.” 

Foxy walks ahead of Y/n and stands next to Bonnie, Foxy laughs softly and swats his head. “Lass, you make it seem like ya’ can’t visit. ‘Sides, I heard the new location’ll be much bigger!“ 

Bonnie rolled his eyes silently as he crossed his arms. “Yeah yeah..go—I’ll be cheering you from all the way the hell over here.” He grumbled. Foxy nudged Bonnie’s arm and furrowed his eyebrows. 

“Stop yer complainin’..”  Foxy grunts. 

Bonnie looks at Foxy with his arms crossed and he then looks at Y/n. “Just jokin’. All jokes here.” 

Y/n deadpans—sometimes Bonnie could be a headache with his ever-changing attitude. Chica takes a step forward and gives Y/n a small smile. 

“You don’t have to wait back here for us Y/n…if Mr. Emily wants to relocate you—it’s probably for a good reason,” Chica claims. Y/n stared at Chica and shuffled on her feet, for the past 2 months she hated bringing up the discussion of her moving to the other location. The second pizzeria would be opening in the next few weeks—meaning that the majority of her friends would be leaving this pizzeria to work at the other. They already got a glance at the new characters and even the size of the building, but Y/n didn’t care to see. 

Henry didn’t rush her nor bring it back up to her. But Mike, Fritz, Darius, Jeremy, and even Alice at times wanted her to tag along. 

But hearing that come from Chica—did catch her attention. “Why would he want me to go there?” She asks Chica. Chica’s shoulders sagged before she furrowed her eyebrows together. “I don’t know.” 

“I’m assuming you guys know he’s retiring?” Y/n asks. Bonnie snorts before nodding. “Yeah.” 

“Never mind that we’re talkin’ about Y/n!” Foxy gets back on track, and he smiled at Y/n—showing the rows of golden and white sharp teeth. 

“I think it would be a fun experience for ya’ lass!”

“You’re actin’ like we’re sendin’ her off on a field trip.” Bonnie puts his hands on his hip. Foxy only smiled. “Maybe it is one..”

“Boys.” Chica quickly cuts through as she gives Foxy and Bonnie a look, Bonnie had his mouth open as if he was about to scold Foxy. But closed his mouth. 

Y/n sighs softly—pressing her lips into a thin line. Bonnie saw her expression before sighing softly. “Yeah…uh…” he raised a hand to the back of his neck and rubbed it slowly. “You should probably go..might be somewhere more safer..” he mutters. 

“Y/n.” Y/n heard William call her name. She looks at the three animatronics—Foxy smiled at her and Chica had her hands behind her back, when her eyes met Y/n she softly smiled at her. 

Bonnie looks away from Y/n and to somewhere else, Y/n nods slowly before she turns around and spots William down the hall. She left the three to go to William and didn’t say anything else. 

Foxy’s smile quickly vanished before he glared at Bonnie. 

“Great job ya’ idiot—ya’ pissed er’ off!” Foxy bellowed. Bonnie’s solemn expression quickly turned into a sneer. 

“Oh—my bad for actually being upset for once—“

“Ya’ tryin’ to persuade her to stay?” Foxy’s question was rhetorical but Bonnie answered it anyway, holding his guitar by the next before he outstretched his arms and motioned towards Y/n—the way she had left. 

“From the looks of it she’s already stayin’ idiot. 

Chica only sighed and shook her head. “Boys..“

-

“Alright here.” When William had walked into the parts and service room, he immediately picked something off of the table, Y/n rounded the other side of the table as her eyes were glued onto what was in his hand. When he reached across the table and passed her whatever it was in his hand, she stared at it and noticed it was a watch. 

With an adorable silicone case of Freddy’s ears, a top hat, and a purple tie, but the color looked different than the Freddy she knew—it was a light honey brown. With an electric symbol on the left side, and a red earring on the right ear. 

“Whoa—-“ Y/n stared at the watch in awe, she took it from his hands—William pressed both of his hands on the table as he watched Y/n tap the watch's screen. It turned on and showed the time and dates 

8/12/11

10:19 PM 

“The new location wanted all the manager guards to have their own FazWatch for easier communication seeing the place is so big. I know you said you were still thinking about transferring, but I still made you one, just in case.” William says. Y/n was tapping away at the FazWatch. There was a tab for cameras—which didn’t seem to be working, logs for reports she can read, and another tab where she could dial one of her co-workers on the watch. In the tab, she could see Mike, Jeremy, Fritz, Darius, and Alice’s names in the log. 

“Which I have been meaning to ask, you’re going, right?” William asks. Again with that question…

Y/n sighed as she fiddled with the watch she had placed around her wrist. She looks at William and thinks for a moment. 

“I was thinking about it. What, are you going to?” She hadn’t thought to ask William that question, everyone she worked with that was deemed—fun, was moving to work at the new location, if William was going, she wouldn’t have anyone else there other than Freddy and the others—but they seemed very adamant about letting Y/n go to the new location. 

“Yeah. Reason why I made the watches.” William’s answer was short but it was a lot for Y/n. She crossed her arms as she stared at William. 

“What’s Mr. Emily’s plan when we all leave then?” Y/n asks. William removed his hand from the table. “Closing this location down, and retiring, from what he told me. A company wanted to buy the name, and they named themselves…Fazbear Entertainment, or something like that.” 

Y/n gently moved her head back like someone threw a brick at her. “Then what’ll happen to Freddy and the others?” Y/n asks. 

“They‘ll be fine, like I said they’re not going to be decommissioned, they’ll be sent back to the warehouse—which I own. And that’s where they’ll stay, kinda like a second home for them.” William reassured..which did put Y/n at ease. 

“We still need them anyway.” His voice adds as she looks back at the watch. Y/n looks away from William and back down to the watch, William moved his gaze back onto her, silently watching as she riddled with the watch but not of entertainment this time, but more out of thoughtfulness.

“You can still transfer,” William adds. He watched as she slowly nodded. “I know..” she muttered under breath.

“Then..what’s stopping you from doing that?” He asks.

“Springtrap.” She finally confesses. As she didn’t really want to leave behind the animatronics as she loved them equally—Springtrap was one of the main ones that stuck out to her the entire time she worked at the pizzeria, he couldn’t adapt to things without her—as prude as that may sound. Springtrap was always following her around—waiting for her next move, waiting for her to come into work the next day. If she left him—who would be there to care for him? Of course Henry would be there, but to Y/n. That’s like leaving behind the closest friend you got in a town to move to an entirely new one to struggle to make friends! 

“He’ll be fine Y/n h-“

Y/n quickly looks at William. “Did you know Springtrap can balance plates on his ears?“ she tells him the random fact. William was silent for a moment. 

“No.”

“See? You don’t know much about Springtrap like I do. If I left him here, who else would understand him the way I do.” She says. William nods slowly. That made…sense in a way. 

“Well…maybe you would change your mind if I told you this.” He straightens his posture and crosses his arms. 

“Springtrap is very proofed—safety and everything. Clearly. He’s not nearly as rambunctious at night as the others. I’ll give you his legal documents. And he’s yours.” William’s statement causes Y/n to open her mouth in shock, her eyebrows almost flying to her hairline.

“Wait what?” She asks. She was confused, why? Why would he do that? Hell yeah she’ll take that fucking deal—a robot that has his own personality?! Any bidder in the state of Utah would pay an arm and a leg to get any of the animatronics from any of the Fazbear restaurants. William being the one they mostly went to as he was the one that was in charge of the small company that made the line of animatronics. 

“Bonnie seemed like a pretty valuable asset to our group. Why not add him and the others to the group? When this restaurant shuts down—I'm going into deep maintenance with the four. That way they won’t have any night incident outside of the pizzeria—mostly for my sake and everyone else’s.” William could see he had Y/n full attention. The guard was fully facing him as she hand her hands on her hips, her eyebrows stitched together in concentration. 

“I’ll…hand over the paper work for ownership for Springtrap. I can’t give you Freddy and the others—I still need to look into putting safety protocols on them so they won’t act out at night anymore. I’ve been researching how to do that for the last 5 years. But seeing Springtrap is pretty much…” he thought for the wording as his eyes danced around the room. 

“Baby proofed,” he adds. 

“And mostly  because you know how to work a springlock suit. But you have to transfer if I’m giving you Springtrap.” 

“So…that means. Freddy and the others will be able to help us with the case?” She quickly asks—looking like a child being presented all the candy in the damn world. 

“And, I get to take Springtrap anywhere I go?” 

William nods. “With a few exceptions.” He says. But that didn’t bother the guard, Y/n then nodded firmly. 

“Deal.“

-

“Okay so..“

Mike leaned back in the office chair lazily as he held the bag of chips in his hand he had been eating—which Y/n was sure that was his only meal of the day—Mike rarely ate much now that she sat back and thought about it. 

Y/n sat on the office table as she looked at the man who was staring up at the ceiling, almost contemplating.

“Does that mean—I’m truly not away from Bonnie.” Of course that was the only thing he could think of. Ever since Y/n told him she was transferring because of a deal William made with her—the only thing Mike could think of was how Bonnie would be there every god damn step of the way.

“Your ass is better off here.” Mike jokes as he looks at Y/n who had cracked a smile and gently kicked his knee. “Shut up.” She says. 

“So. You’re really transferring to the new location though, right?” He asks. And Y/n nods. “Yeah…With Springtrap being under my name, and Freddy and the others coming to help us, I feel a bit better.“ 

Mike nods as he rocks back and forth in the chair, it creaks slightly under his weight everytime he rocks back. 

Soon Jeremy walks into the room, he has his bookbag lazily strapped to his shoulders, he drops the bag onto the ground which gives a heavy thump, he sighs and rolls his shoulders gently. 

“Today was so busy..” he mutters before leaning on the wall. The sole of his shoes squeaked slightly against the tiled floor. 

“William said he wanted to speak to us when Fritz finishes the kitchen.” Jeremy informs. Mike sighs softly, he had been waiting for Jeremy this entire time to finish cleaning, which with Jeremy..in Mike’s head, he took ages to finish mopping the floors. 

“It’s probably about what we just talked about.” Y/n looked at Mike, he had grunted in agreement and Jeremy glanced between the two.

“Talk about what?” Jeremy asks. 

-

“What?!” Jeremy stares at William, who was seated on the edge of the party table in the party room. Bonnie, Chica, Foxy and Freddy all stood next to each other, which all—except for Bonnie appeared to be surprised at William’s statement. 

 Fritz was seated next to Y/n and he wasn’t paying much attention to the conversation until William mentioned the new recruitments of the team.

“Well—I must say, I am honored.” Bonnie placed a hand on his chest with a boastful grin—Mike rolled his eyes.

“And..exactly…how are we supposed to work with them? And what for?” He asks.

“Me personally, I’m using Bonnie as a human shield if anything happens.” Fritz says. Alice seemed to be on the verge of drifting off to sleep but she silently listened to the conversation with crossed arms and droopy eyes.

“Well I’m not getting rid of these guys when we leave this location—and Henry’ll be doing—whatever Henry does, so why not let them tag along? Not to mention. They’re like a fish line for us.” William says as he motioned to the animatronics. 

“I say, we take Freddy, Chica and Foxy and scrap the living shit out of Bonnie, I’m not walking down the same street as him.” Mike adds. A small snort came from Y/n—she tried to swallow her laugh and Bonnie grunted.

“Hell. I’d rather take that than see another day with you.” Bonnie expressed. “Oh, I think it’ll be fun!” Chica cries out. She placed her hands together and rocks back and forth on the balls of her heels, atleast someone seemed fond of the idea.

“But, what about when midnight comes around? We can’t have them out of the building at midnight? Right?” Fritz brings up, bringing the conversation back to the more important part. 

“I’ve been creating a solution for that for the past few years. I’m putting a safety protocol on them that reduces the likelihood for them to switch.” William answered, Jeremy was biting his nails as he stared at William. 

“So..they’ll be tagging along with us when this location closes? Where would they stay? And how are they supposed to move around in public? And where will Springtrap go?” Jeremy asks. 

“Freddy and the gang will be with me. Their animal parts will be scrapped and salvaged.” William motions towards the humanoid entertainers. 

“These are all what we need, easy to move around, looks somewhat like us and less money coming from my pocket to fix them. And Springtrap will be there too.” He says. Springtrap had slowly walked over when he saw everyone congregating over to the table. Standing behind the chair that Y/n was seated in, she looks up at him before looking back at William. 

“Springtrap doesn't have a humanoid form, can he get one?” Fritz asks. William hisses through his teeth and slowly ever so slightly shakes his head. 

“That..would be too expensive..not to mention time consuming.”

Mike stretched in his seat as he started to speak; “I thought you helped put in funds for the animatronics for the new location.” He claims.

Y/n also assumed that William helped create the new animatronics at the new location. He did own a company that had one of the best manufactment in engineering, seeing him decline Mike’s statement did raise questions in not only Y/n—but the rest as well. 

“What..? I thought you helped Fazbear Entertainment.” Jeremy stitched his eyebrows together in confusion. 

“No. I didn’t. They have their own engineers and—techs. Glad they didn’t ask me..I really don’t wanna hunch over a desk for months.” William didn’t seem to care that the other company took the matters in their own hands to create the animatronics, which Y/n could somewhat understand. 

William seemed to still be young, having his uncle’s company on his shoulders was probably like an anchor to him, being lifted from his duties to have someone else do it was probably something William felt so much relief from. 

“I hadn’t seen a company in..” Mike dramatically counts on his fingers. Fritz let’s out a huff and he then laughs, Y/n did as well as she watched Mike count on his fingers. 

“Bout’ 20 years, pull a well built robot for kids that are sentient that isn’t collabed with Afton Robotics. And you mean to tell me, Henry left that process in the hands of a spankin’ new company?” Now that Mike mentioned it, Y/n truely hadn’t seen any company come out with any animatronics like Afton Robotics. Not even Disney—and they were well known for some of their bots in their parks—but they nearly weren’t as sentient as the ones Y/n knew. 

“I hadn’t even talked to the owner of the company, I have no clue what we got in store for us.” William replied, slowly shrugging. 

“Oh yeah, that building isn’t lasting a fucking year.” Mike muttered before slouching back to the position in his seat he once was. Jeremy slowly shook his head. 

“The building isn’t our objective Mike. Finding William is.” Jeremy says. Chica’s purple optics quickly glanced at William. 

“Well..Jeremy dear..William’s right there.” Chica tells him. 

“Not that—it’s—“ Jeremy stammers over himself and sighs, placing a hand on his face, William decides to pick up on Jeremy’s broken words. 

“The reason why we need you all with us to begin with is because we basically need you as security.” He says. Freddy tilts his head slightly in confusion. 

“Long story short—“ Mike looks at William. “His uncle was the one that killed the kids—for some damn reason he’s after us and we need more people with us. There.” Mike explains very vaguely but that seemed to get through Freddy’s attention who had his eyebrows stitched together in confusion before they raised slightly in an understanding motion. 

“Awww, I get to spend time with you all even more!” Chica cooed as she gazed at the humans at the table.

“Oooh!” Foxy suddenly says—his brain finally catching up to the conversation as he silently sat there listening for the most half. 

“Great! At first fer’ a moment I wuss’ thinkin’ I’ll hafta spend the rest of my days in dingy cell!” He says. William chuckles softly and shakes his head. 

“I wouldn’t do that to you guys.” William says.

“So…what exactly are we going to do? if you don’t mind me asking,” Freddy asks, moving his gaze from the table and over to William. 

“You—my good friends. Are no longer entertainers. You’re one of us. A guard.” William answers. 

Foxy’s tail started to wag as he chuckled. “So…what’s first then?” He asks. Immediately getting to the more important meaning of things. This caused the other guards—including Alice to look at William. Ever since leaving the mediums house, they hadn’t exactly went out to do much. 

“That’s a very good question, I been meaning to ask that. You know. With the whole—going to Afton’s house and everything..” Fritz brings up and Y/n nods in agreement. 

“We’ll go there then. Charlie told us to, I’m sure we’ll probably find something there.” William says, that’s..really all they had unless they just pulled an objective out of their asses, which no one seemed to have a clue in the world what else to put out for a lead.

“Are we seriously going to do this? I mean—we don’t even know what we’ll find!” Jeremy immediately declines that idea, going to the murders house? What type of goddamn idea is that?! 

“We’ll be find Jere. There’s like 11 of us going there. We’ll have each other's back—not to mention. Foxy’s got a good nose for danger.” Mike points out, Foxy stood at the end of the table with a goofy large grin. 

Jeremy slowly placed a hand on the top of his head as he stared off with absolute shock. “We’re going to die..” he whispered to himself. Y/n placed a hand on Jeremy’s arm and gave him a comforting smile. He looks at her and his eyebrows gently untensed. He placed a hand on top of Y/n’s and sighs softly. 

“Okay..” 

“So. I’m assuming we’re doing it at night again? What about Freddy and the others, when are you going to install their safety protocols? We don’t know how long we’ll be out there.” Fritz asks William.

“I’ll try to install them next week. Tomorrow night though. That’s our first objective. Search Afton’s house.”

-

“Well shit.” Mike looks at the large group as they all stand outside of the now closed Pizzeria. 

The day had come and gone as if it never even happened, Fritz had just arrived after being at home sleep as a rock. His night shift must have really stressed him out, but Y/n couldn’t blame him, the night shifts here weren't exactly easy, barely escaping with your life…

But the new problem has arisen as everyone stood together—almost like before when they all gathered outside to go visit the medium. 

Chica was busy gazing around the area to really take notice of the minor problem—unlike Bonnie for his first time being out—she seemed infatuated with the world around her. The same as Foxy as the humanoid pirate fox had wandered over to examine a stray cat that had been watching the group—before Foxy could get any closer to the cat, Freddy had gently grabbed him by his tail and tugged him back.

“Who’s riding with who?” Mike asks. William walked over and stood next to him as he then gazed upon their group. 

“Not gonna lie, I feel so much safer now that we have a bigger group.” Darius says he had been leaning on his car ready to go for the past 10 minutes but clearly no one knew who would fit into whose car. 

Mike, Fritz, William and Darius were the ones who would be driving..well over enough space, thank god. 

“I think this’ll be a fun bonding night!” Chica says—she quickly looks away from the flickering light pole she had been examining before walking over to Y/n and placing her hands on her shoulders. 

“Just think about it, a stronger team makes a better one! I’m sure we’ll go there and find our first lead and the rest will fall like dominos.” She then kissed the palm of her hands and waved her fingers in the air as if something was fluttering away. 

“And that’ll be a victory for us.” She gently shakes Y/n’s shoulders, Y/n laughs softly and cracks a smile.

“As much as I do agree with you Chica. But we don’t have a plan…wouldn’t you all think it would be..responsible and more safe to have a plan—it’s always good to have one in situations like these, you need to always expect the unexpected.” Freddy was always that voice of reason. When Freddy spoke, Bonnie made a hand gesture as if he were mocking Freddy.

“And that’s exactly why we need them.” William says as he motioned to Freddy, giving the perfect example. 

“Well.” Fritz says as he taps his foot and looks at Freddy. “What’s your plan? I think we already have everything we need. A location, a specific object we’re supposed to be looking for—“ Fritz pauses for a moment as he looks at everyone. 

“Which is the book.” He reminds before looking back at Freddy who had already been looking at him. 

“What more are we missing?” 

“Flashlights.” Freddy says. 

“…” Y/n raised a hand to her neck as she looked away.

How the fuck did they forget about flashlights? It’s damn near midnight and they don’t have a single thing to look through the dark. 

“First aid—which should always be carried around,  but knowing you all, you wouldn’t have a single bandaid laying around..” Freddy also adds. 

“Damn.” Mike abruptly says before looking at William and furrowing his eyebrows. “You’re supposed to be the smartass. Why didn’t you remember to bring flashlights?” Mike pushes it all on William. A laugh came from Darius in the background. 

“I hadn’t slept in 24 hours..” William mutters—which..is actually a good excuse now that Y/n thought about it.

“Pft!” Foxy snorts as he then walks over—losing interest in whatever he was examining at first. “Who needs those? We go out like real men!” He lets out a boisterous laugh. 

Chica deadpans and nudged Foxy—who immediately stops laughing. “Juss’ kiddin.”

“Welp!” Mike claps his hands and lets out a heavy sigh. “Let’s roll. Guess we gotta head to the store first, since Fazfuck wanna be the father of the group.”

“I was just keeping an eye out.” 

-

It took a little over 30 minutes to find proper seats for everyone in each car—but once that was situated, Y/n found herself standing in front of a shelf with various snacks she was trying not to grab on impulse, her stomach felt like it was gripping, she hadn’t eaten anything all day—as odd as it may be—despite there being a new location opening up, the Pizzeria was still packed as ever, until when Y/n thought about it that the new location hadn’t been revealed to the public yet. 

Foxy stood next to Y/n as he watched her stare at the shelf packed with snacks—from chips, to cookies, to crackers, his yellow eyes switched between the shelf and back to Y/n. There was a kid at the end of the aisle staring at the two—mostly in awe at the humanoid fox—some people didn’t really bat an eye, mostly thinking that the gang were some sort of cosplayers—which Y/n would have thought as well if she were them…

When Y/n didn’t move, Foxy slowly tilted his head as he kept his eyes on her. “Are you goin’ to pick somethin?” He asks her. 

“Yeah..I was just looking to see what I wanted..” She says. The guard placed her hands on her hips, she still had her uniform on so that further told the narrative to passersby that she clearly was up late looking for food to eat. 

Mike then walked over holding a couple of book bags in his hands, his shoes tapping the linoleum floor as he then took a red book bag and handed it to Foxy. 

“This is yours. Don’t lose it.” Mike tells him rather quickly as if he knew Foxy would somehow lose the back in under a few minutes…which Foxy has a tendency to lose things at the pizzeria. One day he took of his eyepatch and placed it on his stage so his left eye could get a maintenance check by William—and when he came back he somehow lost

It and couldn’t remember where he misplaced it. 

To make matters worse Foxy couldn’t really see well as is. “Oh! Thanks!” Foxy grins at the bag and holds it up. Mike then hands Y/n a green and black book bag—the pockets were black and the rest of a bag was a shade of a grassy green, she took it from his gasp—there was a bit of weight to it to signal that there were a few things in it—mostly for the night.

“They’re already paid for. And has everything like flashlights, some bandaids, and an emergency kit.” Mike names off. Y/n unzips the bag and peers in it, seeing a water bottle in it as well, a small red pack—that must have been the emergency pack that Mike was talking about, and a black flashlight. 

“How sweet of you, I didn’t have to waste a dime.” Y/n zips the bag back up and smiles at Mike, who then lets out a laugh. 

“Jokes on you, dipshit. William paid for it. You know he has more cash than everyone combined.” He says—which was true. 

Foxy had been searching through his bag as they walked back to the front of the store, where Chica, Bonnie, Fritz and Jeremy were standing by the cash register. The cashier silently was staring at Bonnie, and Chica, but they didn’t say anything. Chica had been aimlessly touching everything on the shelf—so many candies she had never seen before. 

Bonnie didn’t seem all too interested in his surroundings, when he spotted Y/n his ears perked up ever so slightly. 

Fritz had handed his card to the cashier to confirm the rest of their purchases and Mike handed Bonnie a dark blue bookbag. “Here.” He says. Bonnie reaches to take the bookbag—but abruptly stops, Y/n looks at the two and then at the book bag before looking at Bonnie. Bonnie’s ruby eyes stared at the bookbag before looking at Mike, who had blankly stared at Bonnie.

“Why is it blue?” Bonnie asks through his teeth. The corner of Mike’s lips twitched. “You look nice with blue..” 

“Don’t start.” Chica had stopped the two before they could get any further. Bonnie slowly squinted his eyes at Mike as he snatched the bag from him.

“Hey—it’s a nice welcome gift to the team.” Mike expresses as Bonnie turns his back towards him to walk towards Chica. Y/n looks at Mike and slowly shakes her head, he looks at her before laughing. 

“Okay. Okay. That’s it for the rest of the night..” he says. 

-

“Okay…” William stared at everyone who stood in a circle outside of the store that they all just walked from. Foxy’s tail wagged as he seemed pretty excited about the events that’ll take place. 

“So. We go in, grab the book. Leave.” William tells everyone loud and clear to make sure no one got distracted—which was mostly hinted towards Foxy…as he did also have a tendency to just randomly walk off and get distracted. 

Jeremy slowly nods as he shuffled on his feet, the sole of his shoes scraping the concrete below him. “What if someone’s there?” Y/n asks. 

“I say we tie em’ up and throw them in a river.” Foxy quickly says under his breath—ducking his head slightly near Mike as if he was the one who said it. Mike glanced at Foxy from the corner of his eyes and gently shook his head. 

“Well. I don’t believe anyone should be there, like I said before, the house has been vacant for years now. If someone is there then…” William trailed off as he tried to think. His index finger tapping his hip. 

“Just shoot his ass.” Darius shrugs. Alice contained herself to roll her eyes but she shoved him slightly, Darius only muttered under his breath as if he was right. 

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Until then. We’re just getting a book.” William says. Which everyone agrees with verbally or nodding in agreement. 

“This is such a terrible idea..” Jeremy mutters. Mike was once again about to calm the everlasting voices in Jeremy’s head but..Bonnie stepped in. “Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy.” Bonnie says as he then tsked. Mike slowly shook his head as he watched Bonnie slowly walk over to Jeremy and place a hand on his shoulder. Jeremy looks at Bonnie with a confused look. 

“If you can last hours with me at your door, you can last a few minutes in a vacant house that used to be owned by a bloodthirsty killer.” Bonnie expressed, flicking a piece of lint from Jeremy’s hair as he grins down at him. 

As blunt and—somehow sarcastic as Bonnie seemed, that actually seemed to calm Jeremy down. His shoulders sag slightly before he slowly nods. “Yeah..I guess that makes sense..” Jeremy assured himself. 

Darius then pressed the unlock button on his car's key control and motioned to the cars. “Well. Let’s start heading out.” 

-

Everyone stood next to each other as they gazed at the eldridge house. The grass seemed to not have been touched in years, reaching high in the air, the glistening residue of mildew glimmered from the street light that was a few meters away from it. 

It was a two-story house, the paint of the house seemed to be deteriorating. Showing the naked wood underneath the dull white paint. The sidewalk leading up to the house was cracked—weeds and other vegetation cracking and making its way through to see the crisp airy night. The windows on the first floor were boarded up and the glass seemed to be busted.

The tiles on the roof of the house were peeling, from the years of rain, snow and hail impacting it must have weakened it over time. 

The number address on next to the front door was missing only leaving a faint indentation of where it used to be: 275

“Oh shit…” Mike says. Clearly the atmosphere got to him. 

“How about we do this…when the sun is in the sky.” Mike looks at Fritz then at William. 

“This was a 40 minute drive, Mike.” Y/n quips and William nods in agreement. They weren’t going to make this drive just to back down now. 

“We’ll be fine guys. Come on. We’re going in together.” William starts towards the house, the gravel on the ground crunching under the sole of his boots. Mike followed after him and then Fritz. Chica was standing next to Y/n as she seemed a bit reluctant until everyone else followed in William’s path. 

Once making it into the yard and onto the porch, William placed his hands on the doorknob—Chica immediately wrapped her arms around Y/n’s arms. Which Y/n was glad because a boiling feeling in her stomach was starting to stir—being anxious to walk into the home of a rogue serial killer. 

“Rats and raccoons, mice—anything could be hiding in there.” Darius abruptly tells William who had shoved the door open after the rusted hinges didn’t give in the first push l. “Just don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.” He says as he gently pushed opened the door—a waft of cool chilly air hits everyone, the smell of dank air slips out of the now open door and into the outside world, it was dark until William shined his flashlight inside the house and walked in, the sound of grime and other debri crunching under the sole of his shoe as he walked in. 

Everyone else following after, Jeremy had accidentally stepped on the back of Mike’s shoe—finding comfort to walk close behind him to give him an anchor of his surroundings. 

“Sorry..” Jeremy apologized under his breath—Mike only glanced back at the timid man before looking back straight ahead. 

Y/n took in the area as best she could as she shined her flashlight in the area—they seemed to be in a living room—or what once was a living room. The carpet was peeled—showing the underlay of the beige tattered cushion, some parts of the cushion seemed to be torn through, showing a wooden floorboard, maybe the house was being renovated to be put back in the market sometime later in the year. 

The living room was empty, and dust decorated the carpet floors leaving behind a layer of light dust that looked to be mold if you were paying attention. A few peeling paint here and there from the walls—the lights were still screwed in into the ceiling fan but it had no justice considering 9 times out of 10, the lights had been long turned off. 

Infronf of them was a dark hallway and stairs leading to the second floor. 

“Well, this place isn’t that big, so we’ll be able to find what we’re looking for quickly.” William says as he walks over to the hallway—assuming he had a great feeling that whatever they were looking for would be upstairs. 

“I’ll stay down here and look.” Mike said before moving to the opposite direction—taking a left from the stairs and walking into the dark kitchen, William watched him as he turned around on the stairs. “Alright, well Freddy, no offense guys—“ William starts. 

“I can already feel what he’s about to say.“ Bonnie muttered, causing Y/n to flinch slightly as she felt him right next to her, not knowing that he had gotten so close. 

“Since you can interpret things way better than anyone else, I need you with me in case we do actually find whatever book we’re looking for.” William says, Freddy looks away from the kitchen that Mike had wandered into and nods. 

“Of course.” He says as he walks over to William. 

“He can read?” Mike laughs. Alice hadn’t moved from the door but had finally trailed over to Y/n once inching closer to her every other second. Y/n shines her light at Mike. 

“Why wouldn’t he?” She asks. Mike quickly stops laughing. “Alright damn—I’ll back off.” He says before turning around and walking back into the kitchen. 

“20 minutes, that’s all we need, that’s all we got.” William tells everyone before he walks upstairs, Freddy following afterwards. 

“It’s freezing in here.” Alice finally speaks up. She had a grey jacket on over her uniform. She shined her light around the living room as Darius stood next to her. 

“Don’t worry, we won’t be in here for long.” Y/n tells Alice, who had nodded—the two seemed to communicate with each other perfectly fine, much to Y/n’s surprise, either way—it was nice to not have Alice barking up her tree. 

Foxy was looking through an empty abandoned bookshelf—that had a few screws and dust on it, nothing too important. Bonnie was standing next to Y/n as Alice and Darius wandered off down the hall to investigate. Chica  stood next to Jeremy as the two was looking down a laundry shoot, the place had a basement. 

“Well, it looks like there’s a basement, we should go check down there?” Chica brings up. Y/n looks away from Foxy and over at Chica and Jeremy. Chica had closed the trapdoor to the laundry shoot, and Y/n nods. 

“Yeah, I doubt there’s anything in here anyway.” She says—the living room was pretty much empty, so checking for anything other than dust and possibly roaches—was just a waste of time. 

“Great, Foxy. Sniff it out, will you?” Bonnie had his hands on his hips—not caring to use his flashlight ofher than holding his book bag around his shoulder. Foxy deadpans and gives Bonnie a blank expression. 

“Har Har…arentcha’ just hilarious..”  Foxy grumbled. “Why the basement? What’ll be down there?” Jeremy asks Chica. Chica spotted a door next to the hallway and she twisted the door knob and opened it, the hinges creaked ever so slightly as she shines her flashlight down the staircase. 

“Well we need to check everywhere hun.” She tells Jeremy. Y/n had walked over to Chica and looked over her shoulder to see that the light shredded through the darkness of the basement. A cool chilling air—cooler than what it was in the living room hit her face. The naked floorboards of the stairs had dust covering it and some debri. 

Y/n felt Jeremy slowly walk over and stand behind her, he placed a clammy hand on her shoulder and leaned over to see down the staircase as well. 

Bonnie and Foxy wandered over as well as they all looked down in the basement, Chica took a first step on the steps floorboard, the floor creaked under her weight—but that didn’t concern her as she started walking, Y/n slowly followed after, Jeremy did as well as he seemed to keep a firm grasp onto her shoulders. 

Bonnie followed next and then Foxy. Foxy’s nose twitched at the amount of dust and he let out a huff before rubbing his nose with his hands—thankfully William switched his left hook for a hand. 

“Jeez, can it get any colder in this house?” Jeremy stammers. His eyes bounced from the walls as they advanced down the stairs slowly—mostly because Chica was walking slowly and checking each step with her foot to make sure it didn’t give in—lord knows how long it’s been since this house has been checked in on. 

“I heard hell was cold, that’s probably where we are.” Bonnie jokes, a snort coming from his mouth. Foxy smacked the back of his head with his flashlight—which did cause Y/n to flinch at the thud she heard from behind her. Bonnie hissed in pain and dropped his flashlight, and quickly raised his hand to his head to rub the spot Foxy had hit, the flashlight he dropped rolled down the steps past Chica’s feet and down to the base of the stairs, where it rolled and pointed the opposite direction inside the basement. 

“Guys.” Chica said quickly. She glanced over her shoulder and leaned over to look past Y/n, her yellow eyebrows stitched together in a frustrated manner. Foxy quickly shrugs his shoulders as if saying; ‘I didn’t do it.’ 

And Bonnie just muttered under his breath as he placed his hands to his side. 

Chica continued down the rest of the stairs and picked up Bonnie’s flashlight and was about to hand it to him, but she caught glimpse of the basement, Y/n finished making her way down the stairs and stood next to her as Jeremy stayed glued behind her—as tall as he was, but she didn’t say anything. 

There were papers everywhere stuck to the walls—sticking to every corner and crevice—now all was shown—from different colored post it notes—to some blue paper that seemed to be like blueprints—so some construction paper and printer paper with rushed words written on it. The concrete floor seemed dirty with old mud footprints painted on it—with the amount of wooded areas in the neighborhood it was no doubt the mud came from the various wooded wildlife there. 

But that was concerning In a way as well. 

“I’m not no detective or anything..” Y/n starts as she shined her light around the basement—everywhere she turned it was nothing but paper but words written on it. There was a desk in the back of the room, that seemed pretty much empty. 

“But—this seems pretty suspicious, not gonna lie.” She finished. She felt Bonnie shuffle behind her, she she craned her neck to look at him, to see the humanoid rabbit was looking down at her with a questionable expression. 

“Oh really? I thought it was pretty normal for you humans to place paper everywhere on the walls.” His tone was laced with sarcasm. What more did she expect from him. 

“Pipe down, I’m reading.” Chica had made her way across the room and was shining her light at some of the papers on the wall. Foxy walked past Jeremy and he glanced around the room, not necessarily pointing his flashlight in the right direction but no doubt he could see somewhat in the dark. 

“Ain’t no way someone’s gonna read all uh’ this.” Foxy says in awe. Jeremy surprisingly started walking forward to look at the note-filled room, Y/n trailing after as she walked over to where Foxy was, deciding to look at a blueprint—her flashlight pointing at the set of blue pieces of paper taped to the wall. Foxy moved his gaze from the ceiling, which had the notes taped up there as well. His ears perked up once he noticed the blueprints—something with an actual drawing instead of chicken scratch for words. 

The four characters seemed to resemble much of Bonnie, Freddy and Foxy—the 4th one seemed to be a wolf—but the designs of it seemed..less than friendly. Protruding teeth, lacerations to the chest and face. The maw of a face seemed to be able to open wide—showing a second row of shark needle-like teeth. 

There wasn’t a name for the two—but to Y/n, it looked to be like Bonnie, Freddy and Foxy—but she couldn’t understand the 4th one, as it wasn’t an animatronic she was used to seeing at all. It didn’t help that the white outline of a sketch didn’t have any color to it. But either way, it surely wasn't Chica.

“Who in their right mind would-would draw something like that?” Jeremy had walked over and quickly taken in the sketches. And Bonnie had wandered over as well. Chica was still on the other side of the room reading something. 

“I don’t know, but it looks like Freddy, Bonnie and Foxy.” Y/n says as she then points at the fourth paper with the will—who seemed to be hunched over—almost as if it were prowling after something or someone. 

“I don’t know who that is.” She muttered. Foxy takes a step forward and snatches the four blueprints off the wall. Jeremy's eyes widened. 

“Foxy! What are you doing?!” Jeremy proclaims, watching as Foxy stuffs the papers into his pants pockets. 

“There! Safe keepin’ thank me later.” Foxy gives Y/n and Jeremy a lazy smile. 

“Clearly someone is living here.” Jeremy starts. Y/n slowly starts. “I mean, to be honest, I doubt anyone lives here. It’s too damn cold to even properly and safely sleep in here, maybe they come here on some schedule.” She says but Jeremy huffs before nudging Y/n’s arm to get her to understand him—sometimes he thinks with how long she spends around Bonnie and Foxy, they’ll turn her into an idiot. The effects were already rolling in.

“At the end of the day, someone comes here. Clearly with an objective. We can’t just start taking stuff, I’m sure they’ll know.” Jeremy did raise a good point, one Y/n didn’t think about. 

“It wouldn’t matter—Charlie already told us to take some book, what’s it matter if a few things has been snatched here and there.” Bonnie chuckled. Jeremy sighs and rubs his temple. “We’re all going to die.” 

“I’ve made a discovery of who I truly am, I seek no rebuttal from anyone but myself as I take whole consequences of my actions God may have for me in the afterlife. I’m trying to be a good person, I swear. But it always pulls me back and knocks me down a few pegs—and every time, i'm back where I started. I came here for answers for not only myself, but for the sins he had taken upon himself and intertwined me with. I am that salvation.” Chica read a note in her hand. It was on a yellow lined folded paper. She walked over to them and her eyebrows stitched together in concentration. 

Y/n moves her eyes down the paper to see the wife had been scrawled on it. “Who wrote that?” She asks. Chica flips the paper over to look at the back. 

“Doesn't say, honey.” She says. 

Clearly they were dealing with someone else. Or..this..could be some set up. Who knows? Some teens could have come in and written that note. But the ladder told her otherwise.

“That’s not the only note though.” Chica turns her head towards the wall behind her, in action Y/n and the others look at the wall that had been filled with various notes, covering the entire wall, Y/n and Jeremy shine their lights at the wall, and Jeremy shrinks slightly and furrows his eyebrows. Maybe perhaps…it wasn’t some prank of graffiti art from the locals. Not with the various writing on each note along with small doodles that Y/n didn’t pay much attention to. 

It was like a journal of some sort, a wall diary. 

There were footsteps on the staircase, and Jeremy pointed his light towards the stairs—a light already cascading down as William, Fritz, Freddy, Mike, Darius and Alice wandered down in a line, entering the basement area, in William’s hand was a thick decent sized hand book—which caught the eyes of everyone. 

“Is that the book?” Y/n calls to William—he was about to reply until his eyes landed on the room filled with notes and doodles, his eyebrows furrowed as he shined his light in the room to take a look at the area. 

“Yeah…” He made sure to answer her question but his focus was mainly on the odd room—the rest of the house so cold and naked, no furniture in sight and no decor—but the basement seemed to speak volumes that the house indeed was still being used. 

“What the hell..” Alice says as she shined her light towards Y/n and Jeremy. “What’s all this?” She asks them. Y/n moves her head and takes a look around the room yet again. “I dunno—but we just assumed someone clearly came down here.” She answered her question, Alice could only bask in the odd setting as she stuck beside Darius. 

“No fucking way.” Mike says—he had wandered over to the wall to take a look at the various notes and writings—but really no one could make sense of them—they seemed to be senseless words and sayings just written down. 

“Well..this was the book found.” William slightly raised the book, Y/n looked at the front cover to see no photo but just the title; ‘The Process of Life’ with a Red Cross underneath it. She grimaced slightly as the book sent shivers down her spine. 

“It’s a cult book—written by Author James B. Brown.” Freddy starts—clearly he had information—earlier while he and William were upstairs, he had quickly scanned through the book for at least some valuable information. Clearly that was the main reason why William took Freddy upstairs with him. 

Freddy gently takes the book from William’s hand and opens it. William looks down at the book, and Mike, Darius, and Alice gather around as well—which of course Y/n walks over and stands beside Freddy—peering at the open page he had opened to. The others followed as well—Bonnie being the last to wander over as he was still silently gazing at the wall. 

The page that Freddy opened to seemed much like a history book—countless tiny words and a photo of a renaissance/medieval like photo of men gathering around a body laying on the ground—they all held their hands in the air—in stiff poses as if they were dancing, the man on the ground had his eyes open—but on his naked chest was a Red Cross.

“Back in the early 1800s there were practices of resurrection, not much being told about these practices as they were…I guess you can put it like Amish heretics.” He says. Bonnie huffs. “Oh great, a history lesson.” Bonnie grumbled. Mike shoved Bonnie slightly. 

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Don’t touch me..”

Freddy was silent for a moment but he slowly shook his head at the two before continuing on. “The practices weren’t anything in this realm. Clearly—because what is dead in this world…is gone. The heretics would make practices and rituals with gods—demons to bring life back into a corpse. Timeskip to 100 some odd years later. A cult arises.” 

“Oh hell…” Fritz sighs as he runs his eyes under his glasses. His ginger eyebrows furrowed together as he let out a sigh. 

“The hell is a heretic?” Mike asks. Darius huffs in agreement. 

“Well. To my understanding, it’s someone that praises a different god—someone who believes in what’s best for them. Which brings in the small history of a town of people massacring each other—because their ‘god’ told them to look for the soul of a newborn. Turns out that god was just the priest who let leadership get to his head.” Freddy flipped through the book slowly. Words after words and words flipped by. 

“I can only assume Charlie told you all to find this book because your target was apart of a cult..or believes in these practices to bring life to the dead, or it could be something bigger he had planned. Or..” Freddy was silent for a moment. 

“It could be all three.” He closes the book and turns around to look at the group. Jeremy had his hands in his hair. Gently tugging at his brown locs. 

“Jesus…Christ….this is insane!” Jeremy panics. Mike had his hands on his hip before he looked at Jeremy. “Yeah—I agree. I didn’t expect the fucking guy to be apart of some—fucking holier than thou—breathe life into the dead ass cult loving sicko.” Mike says. 

“What more does he need to do? He’s already dead. Charlie told us that.” Y/n brings up before looking at Freddy. Freddy opened his mouth to speak but slowly shrugged his shoulders stiffly. “That, I don’t know. I—neither had the others encountered him before.” 

“Okay—if we’re talking about breathing life back into the dead, this explains how Charlie says Afton is alive. Whatever..practices or whatever he’s done. It’s working.” Fritz did bring up a good point. But that small thought in the back of her head only caused her to grimace slowly. “Yeah..but..We ourselves never saw Afton with our own eyes. Other than his mugshots. Not that I’m saying Charlie is lying to us or anything.” Y/n brings up. 

Alice slowly nods in agreement. “Well surely ya’ don’t think a mastermind killer is gonna hop from th’ shadows like he’s a super villain.” Foxy chuckles slightly and nudged Y/n’s arm with his elbow as if she told a good joke. 

“Low cover..means no shutters..” Foxy purrs. Mike slowly looks at Foxy and furrows his eyebrows. 

“Shut the fuck up..fuck does that even mean?” He grunts. 

“If ya’ keep a low enough cover, you have no reason to hide. Why else would we still be walkin’ around talkin’ about Afton when Charlie clearly says he wuss’ after ya’ all. The answer probably is right in front of us—subliminally, and I think Henry is the one to be aimin’ eyes fer..” It took a moment to ponder what Foxy meant..but Y/n slowly got the idea that was stirring in that head of his. 

Fritz slowly shook his head. “What about him?” He asks. Freddy didn’t seem to understand what Foxy was getting at either as he silently watched his friend in confusion. Bonnie was busy in the background slowly looking off in the other direction—his ears slowly raised up as he stared at the staircase. 

“The contract. No one else got the contract but you all.” Foxy points out. His eyes mostly danced over, Y/n, Fritz, Jeremy and Mike. Darius and Alice silently stood next to each other. 

“Maybe the new location should be something you should keep an eye out for.” 

“Foxy..I doubt that’s anything to look after.” Jeremy muttered under his breath. “Even a detective looks at the sole prints of a shoe in soil, Jeremy. It wouldn’t matter because thousands of people wear that shoe. But it’s still a clue for their investigation. It’s not like you all er’ runnin’ off of anythin’ else.” Foxy chuckles before shrugging. 

“He’s right.” Fritz says and nods. Mike huffs. “Fuck do you want us to do? Go interrogate Henry? I can’t do that to him—the guy paid my rent out of pocket more times than I want to admit. I’m everything but backstabbing for the guy.” Mike placed his hands in his pocket and shrugs.

“It’s not backstabbing you moron. It’s just questioning the new company taking over.” Alice scoffs. 

“Literally.” Y/n muttered and Alice nodded seeing her agree with her. “We love Henry as much as everyone else. But that doesn't exclude him from being Atleast questioned—he was Afton’s business partner. He clearly has to know Atleast something about Afton.” Y/n tells the guard. Mike was silent for a moment as he slowly nodded. “Yeah..I guess that makes sense.” 

William agreed as well. “Then we’ll take this book to Henry tomorrow. We’ll all enter his office.” 

“Damn. Fuck are we gonna do? Corner the guy.” Darius chuckles. Which did get a small laugh from Y/n and Darius gently nudged her with a small laugh. 

“Shit…well the-“

“Sh!” Bonnie quickly placed a hand on Mike’s mouth to quickly stop him from talking. Mike flinched slightly and furrowed his eyebrows. 

“What is it?” Freddy asks Bonnie once seeing his odd behavior. “Somethin..” Bonnie muttered as his left ear turned towards the staircase. 

“Is upstairs…” his voice lowered. Y/n felt her heart leap into her throat as she slowly neared close to Foxy. Who noticed her slowly easing behind him and he placed a comforting hand on her arm. Jeremy stared at Bonnie for a moment before gazing up at the ceiling. Everyone was silent for a hot minute. 

The creaking of the wooden floor from the ceiling echoed and everyone quickly looked at eachother, another heavy slow cream emits—almost as if whatever was upstairs was slowly trying to walk across the floor in an attempt to not be heard. 

‘…What..’ Fritz silently mouths to everyone. William slowly shook his head and shrugs before looking over everyone to do a headcount. 

Mike, Jeremy, Fritz, Y/n, Freddy, Bonnie, Foxy, Chica, Alice, Darius and himself. Everyone was downstairs meaning no one should be upstairs. 

The sound had stopped shortly after, the house being evaded in a thick tense silence, Jeremy shuffled nervously on his feet. His fist clenching and unclenching as he looks towards the stage. 

“Okay…what the fuck was that?” Darius’s voice was low and quiet, Fritz fixed his glasses and slowly shrugged. “Maybe a draft..” he says. 

“That wasn’t a draft. That was someone walkin.” Bonnie quickly corrected. Y/n hadn’t noticed at first, but Alice hid behind her as she gazed around the room—not that she was complaining she was a bit spooked herself. 

“Okay..well then..” Chica slowly looks away from the staircase and to the others. “What do we do?” She asks. 

William was silent for a moment before he glanced at the staircase. “Let’s go.” He says before he started towards the staircase, Jeremy quickly rushed in front of William and placed a hand on the man’s chest. “Wait, wait, wait—“ Jeremy quickly stammers. 

“We can’t just walk up there, we don’t even know what’s up there.” Jeremy hisses. William runs a hand through his hair. “I’m sure it’s probably a raccoon.” He says—but his words have out more tense than he wanted them to and Mike noticed. “Famous last words.” Mike quickly chuckled. Fritz slowly shook his head. 

“Well we have to leave anyway, we gotta upstairs either way.” Fritz brings up. And surely enough, with them having the book, that’s all they came for and was instructed to do. 

“I’ll go first, just follow me.” William walks past Jeremy and to the staircase, turning his flashlight back on. Y/n felt Alice’s hand grip the back of her shirt. “I’m starting to regret this shit.” Alice says. Y/n huffs. “Me too.” 

Mike had followed after William, then Fritz, Foxy, Bonnie, Jeremy, Chica and Freddy, slowly following William up the staircase. 

“I’ll be in the back, I want you girls in the front.” Darius told Y/n and Alice as he ushered them to the staircase, considering Alice wouldn’t remove herself from behind Y/n, Y/n shuffled on her feet and over to the staircase, her hands immediately falling into Freddy’s back, she looked up at the stairs case and William was up at the top, he gazed down at everyone down the stairs—considering they had formed a train, he placed an index finger onto his lip, signaling everyone to keep quiet. 

He aimed his flashlight towards the ground and lifted his foot from the last stair and into the upper part of the building, everyone followed behind him, Y/n, Darius and Alice being the last to exit the basement. Entering the cool, dank air filled living room, there was nothing out of order. But the front door was wide open—having it being closed upon their arrival. The street light and moon light gently touching the corridor, William shined his flashlight at the front door, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Once everyone was in the living room, they removed themselves from each other and the train they had formed and stood in a semi circle as they glanced around. 

“Shit. Really must have been a raccoon.” Mike says as he glances at Bonnie. “Nice going douchebag, there’s nothing up here.”  Bonnie furrowed his purple eyebrows together and scoffed. 

“I can hear just fine, someone was up here walkin’ around, and I’m positive it wasn’t a rodent.” Bonnie seemed persistent on what he had heard a few moments ago. Foxy placed a hand on Bonnie’s back. 

“Don’t worry, lad, we all hear things at times.” Foxy chuckles. Bonnie moved away from Foxy’s hand and squinted his eyes at him slightly. 

“It’s nearing 11, maybe there’s some effects you guys have before switching over?” Fritz asks Bonnie. 

“No, there are no effects. What do you think we are? Mental patients?” Bonnie grumbled. Mike had crossed his arms and muttered under his breath, probably something slick and distasteful towards Bonnie. 

“Can we please leave? If I stay here for another minute, I’m going to vomit.” Jeremy placed both of his hands onto his face to rub away the stressed tension.

“He..might be telling the truth, your heart is beating a lot quicker than what it should.” Freddy points out. Jeremy lets out a sudden nervous laugh. 

“Oh yeah, maybe it’s because we’re literally in a house that was owned by a serial killer, who is a cultist!“ Jeremy cried out. Chica places a comforting hand on Jeremy’s head and smiles at him gently. 

“Calm down, dear. Don’t worry, we’re all safe and fine.” She tells him. 

“No, this is not okay—guys, this is crazy! We need to tell the police or something, I mean, a bunch of normal people trying to piece together a murder mystery that happened 30 years ago is not for us!” Jeremy tells everyone, Fritz lets out a small sigh. 

“Jeremy. What police do you know that’s going to listen to us rant about how the actual killer is dead, but really isn’t dead, he’s somehow alive, but a murder victim who we found through a oracle told us that he’s alive and is apart of a cult that looks into internal life and resurrection and possibly other crazy things that I don’t even wanna think about.” Fritz brings up. Jeremy sighs through his nose and rubs his temple. 

“God..” he muttered. 

“I mean, ghostbusters would help.” Mike jokes. Freddy looks at Mike and furrows his eyebrows, and Mike quickly stops laughing. “Look, it was a good joke, Jesus.” 

“Jesus, Mike. Do you ever shut the hell up?” Alice scoffs. Mike grunts. 

“Do you?” 

“Don’t start with me!” 

“God shut up.” Bonnie muttered. 

As the three went back and forth and the occasional spoken words from William to shut the three the hell up. Y/n’s eyes slowly wandered towards the front door, the sound around her becoming muffled as if her head were underwater. 

At the angle she was standing, she could see across the street, the golden street light, shining down on a car, cascading it in its ray. Peeking from behind the car was a form—a person. Clad in a navy colored thick button down, tucked into dark pants. Around its face was a dingy white facial orthosis, similar to a burn victim mask. The eye holes seemed to be covered with a black fabric or something along those lines, and there wasn’t a mouth hole, from what Y/n could see, the person didn’t have any shoes on, standing on the concrete street barefoot. 

They were crouched onto the ground, hands on the back of the car as they stared at Y/n. Y/n’s eyebrows slowly furrowed. She had never seen anything like that before—aside from the minor questionable sightings she had seen at the pizzeria—and usually in a blink of an eye they were gone. Y/n blinked her eyes and opened them—to see the figure was still standing there by the car—stiff as a board, Y/n could mistake it as a cardboard cutout with how still it was. It didn’t go away when she blinked. She placed her hand on her eyes to rub away the tension, when she removed her hands from her eyes, she spotted the person slowly raising its hands down back onto the car as if it copied her action. 

Y/n had noticed that and let out a shaky breath. Who the fuck was that? 

“Who is this?” Y/n’s voice broke into the air. Stopping Bonnie and Mike from their bantering. Her hearing finally focused back onto them. Everyone placed their gaze onto Y/n. 

“What?” William asks, he wandered over to her and looked outside where she was looking at. Spotting the person crouched by the car across the street. Everyone else quickly gathered behind William to look as well. And behold, the person was still standing there. 

“What the hell are they wearing?” Darius squinted his eyes. Jeremy slowly opened his mouth to speak and furrowed his eyebrows. 

“That’s creepy..” he whispered. 

“It’s probably some kids tryna get a few screams, you know Halloween’s around the corner.” Mike brushed his shoulder at the matter. 

“It’s only September, I doubt that’s the case.” Y/n tells him. “Maybe? Go speak to them?” Chica brings up. Bonnie sputtered and laughs. “No..look at how it looks, no shoes and a mask on, that’s screamin’ weird.” He says.

The person from across the street, outstretched and arm to its side, the palm facing the sky, then the middle finger connected with its thumb, and snapped its finger, letting out an echoing snap. 

Everyone silenced themselves as they watched the odd behavior, the person snapped its finger the second time, slowly. And then stopped, its hand placed itself back onto the car. 

Everyone was silent as they watched. After a few moments of silence, Mike nervously rubbed the back of his neck. “…the hell was that supposed to m-“

The person quickly slaps the car twice, and ducks behind it, out of their view, the sound and ruffling around—near the windows outside was heard. And everyone immediately turned their gaze to the window. Frantic footsteps of what seemed to be something around echoed from outside, heavy thumps and scratching at walls of the house. Chica quickly grabs onto Bonnie’s arms at the sound, and William—who had been standing next to Y/n, placed an arm around her to gently push her behind him. 

Everyone’s flashlight flickered, the ticking sound of the light emitting from each of them. 

“What the fuck—“ Mike muttered. 

“What was what?” Fritz quickly asked. Jeremy had clutched tightly onto Fritz’s shirt, the red head was too busy glancing over at the window that made the did sound. 

“We’re going to fucking die in here.” Darius at first throughout the night seemed pretty calm, but he now seemed frantic and panicked, the same as Alice but she was more so silent as she eyed her surroundings.

“It was funny at first Darry, but please, shut the hell up.” Y/n quickly shushes her cousin, Darius ran a hand through his hair as he shook at the flashlight to get it to work. 

“Foxy, what’s outside?” William asked Foxy. Foxy slowly squints his eyes before furrowing his eyebrows. 

“Now William, ya know I don’t have that much good eyesight..it’s not like I can look through walls or anythin…” Foxy muttered. Everyone was silent for a moment, mostly trying to listen to their surroundings and keep a hard gaze on the front door—as if someone would somehow just walk through it. 

Y/n had hardly noticed Bonnie slowly ease towards her as his ears stuck up like stilts, he was gazing off towards the kitchen with a stern and attentive expression. 

“Okay…well..it would be best to head back to the car..” William tells everyone in a low tone, he was about to take a step forward but Bonnie quickly placed an arm in front of him. “Stop.” He quickly says. William furrowed his eyebrows and looked at Bonnie. 

“What? We can’t just stand in here.” William tells the purple headed humanoid. “You’ll die if you walk out there.” Bonnie promised. 

“What the fuck is out there?! Are we going to figure that out or stand around and look stupid?!” Alice shouts Stretching her arms out to her sides. Bonnie quickly turned his gaze and glared at her. “Shut it!” 

“No, I agree with her, we can’t just stay in here, what’s out there? What do you hear?” Jeremy quickly asks Bonnie. Chica placed a hand on Bonnie’s back and he turned to look at her. 

“How many are there?” She asks.

“I can hear something breathing but I don’t know where.” Bonnie tells everyone. Freddy slowly nods his head. “Yes…well then..” Freddy’s eyes glanced at the front door. 

“I’d say we make a run for it.” Mike shrugs. Which could work but if only they knew what was outside..

“That’s stupid..” Fritz muttered. Mike huffs and nudges the red head. “Well what’s your plan?” He asks Fritz who then shrugs nonchalantly. “Not that.” 

Jeremy sighs and gently rubs his forehead. “Can we please j-“ 

Y/n couldn’t get a chance the blink before Bonnie had dragged her back with such a force a small grunt escaped her mouth, the hair fleeing her lungs as she heard the sound of something crushing and bursting through the wall, alongside with everyone else moving back and a collective shout of fear and surprise left everyone. 

“Jesus!” Mike shouts as he grabs Jeremy by the arm and tugs him away from whatever fell through the wall, Darius and Alice hopped away as everyone gathered a lot closer to each other, Y/n finally looked over to see a large hunk of grey fur, the sound of something sharp scratched at the carpeted floor, huffing and growling of what can be similar to a tired creature took over the tensed silence. With everyone shining the light at the figure—Y/n mind immediately took back to the blueprint she had just seen down in the basement. 

“What the fuck is that?!” Darius shouts as Alice holds onto him tightly. 

The machine had matted grey fur, and sharp needle like teeth, it slowly rose from the ground, a bellowing growl rumbled the ground. It moved and turned its piercing cold eyes at the ground, its shoulders rose as its chest seemed to lift, as if it was taking in a big deep breath. 

“Jesus fuck…” William whispered. 

The machine then exhaled a loud piercing wail—a roar—Y/n’s hair gently moved as if wind traveled, she felt specks of what she could assume was saliva, land on her face. She squinted her eyes as well as everyone else as they could do was watch in pure horror. 

Jeremy’s breathing had quickened, his chest heaving up and down heavily and his lips waivered ever so gently. He stumbled slightly as if we were going to faint, but Mike held onto him. 

After the machine struck fear into everyone. It was as if everyone had the exact same thought..and it was to run. 

The all ran towards the door and out of the building, Darius had grabbed onto Y/n’s wrist—the first person he could think to keep safe was his cousin, they didn’t even bat an eye towards the building as they heard the sound of heavy footsteps—claws scraping the ground and something heavy breaking, before they could make it across the street, another figure skidded in front of them, the sound of metal claws scratching at the asphalt and sparks emits in the air, the machine that had a very similar look to Foxy lands in front of everyone, towering above them. William skids to a stop and places his arms to his side to stop everyone behind him from running any further into the machine. 

The Foxy look alike lets out a screeching cry and swings it’s arm at William, who backs away quickly. Mike had maneuvered through everyone with a log in his grasp and quickly swung it at the machine; “Move bitch!” The log collides with the fox’s head, the sound of the log cracking against the metal and a cry of pain emits from the machine and it cowers away from Mike, who holds the log above his head and shouts at it. 

“That’s right! Go away! Fuck you!” Mike stands in front of everyone as if protecting his pack—the fox’s eyes focuses solely on Mike, it’s feet shuffling under itself as it faces its body completely towards the man, forming a crouch—Chica knew exactly what that move was, as she saw Foxy do it on a daily to her whenever he felt the need to sneak on her. 

“Mike! Get away from it!” Chica shouts to Mike, Mike slowly backed away from it as Chica said, keeping its eyes on the fox, but it was too late as it then pounced, Chica quickly jerks forward and grabs the tail of the machine and pulls, Mike had jumped away from the fox, thanks to Chica stunning the pounce, the machine quickly turns around to focus its gaze on Chica, Y/n quickly turns around to see the other machine running over—towards her and Darius, she pushed Darius away and quickly pounced back as the wolf missed them by a strand of their hair, Darius stared at Y/n in shock, he hadn’t seen the machine running their way, and was busy looking at Chica, but thankfully with Y/n moving them out of the way, the wolf ran into the fox and the two tumbled onto the ground. 

“Okay! Get in the car!” William quickly ushered everyone towards the sidewalk, which they quickly escaped to, Alice had damn near tossed herself into Darius’s car and cowered in the backseat, the same as Jeremy, hopping into the first confined safe place, which was Darius’s car. 

Mike tossed the log at the two machines that had scurried from the ground, clearly wanting to get a last hit in. William was making sure everyone got in the car first, Chica had grabbed onto Y/n pushed her into the car, which Foxy, Freddy and Bonnie was already in, looking out the window to the machines who had stared at everyone in the car, Mike, William, And Fritz were standing outside the car on the sidewalk,Jeremy sat in the passenger seat, and Darius and Alice were behind William’s parked car in his car also staring ahead where the machines stood.

The fox shook its head and grunt escaped its snout, clearly still affected by the blow that Mike had given him. But what was different when Y/n leaned her body towards the front to look out the dash window. She saw the same person with the mask, hands to their side as if signaling the machines to stop and pause in their actions. 

And as if the person were a god, the machines cowered down and backed away, the person turned around slowly, facing everyone cowering away. Y/n could get a perfect glimpse at the person, the same exact details she saw before, but alas..no details to identify who the person truly was. Instead, the holes of the burn victim mask were a dull glowing red. Which Y/n thought was black from afar, gloved hands raised down to their side as they took a step back, and gently moved their head to place its gaze towards Y/n. 

The two kept contact for the next few seconds. Y/n’s lips waivered, she wanted to keep contact, but the look of the mask and the black red sockets shot shivers down her spine, her eyes flickered away in a fear and nervousness, the person held a strong stature, one of obedience and confidence, standing as straight as a board. They took a step back and slowly nodded towards everyone, almost similar to a short bow—like when someone would nod their head when they were thanked and turned around and to walk off, the machines didn’t spare a second glance as they trailed after the person, as if they didn’t just damn attack the group. 

“I’ll throw somethin’ at the back of that bitches head..” Mike muttered. 

“Shut up.” William muttered under his breath to Mike so silently his mouth didn’t move, afraid if he was even caught speaking they would all be torn to pieces. 

They scared them away to hide, and walked off as if nothing happened…they didn’t enter the house as Y/n would assume they would, instead everything was a wooded area between the house, and vanishing into the brickets. The sound of everyone’s ragged breathing was heard, filling the silence in the car. Jeremy had his head resting on the head of the seat, a tired expression on his face, he was in a daze from what it seemed. Y/n gently placed a hand on the side of his face. Jeremy blinked at and glanced at the hand that touched his cheek before looking at her. 

Mike glanced over at Darius and Alice who was in their car, Darius had his hand on the dashboard, his phone was seen—he had clearly either recorded or taken a picture. And Alice had her hand resting on her forehead in pure shock. 

Foxy slowly leaned back after sitting up to view out the window and Freddy had broken his gaze from the area the attackers left. He glanced at Bonnie who had his eyes furrowed, if it weren’t for Bonnie’s excellent hearing, everyone’s blood would have stained the streets that night. 

William was gently biting at the skin of his lip nervously as he had his head resting in the palm of his hand…he was thinking..they barely made it out with their lives, thank god they weren’t touched, with the help of Mike’s quick thinking with hitting the damn thing with a log..

“What now..” Mike croaks. 

-

The group of 11 sat at a booth at a nearby dinner—it had just turned 11, and pretty much no one ate—well not including Freddy, Foxy, Chica, and Bonnie. 

With the fact that no one spoke a word, Y/n slowly tapped the waffle on the plate with the fork..oddly enough her thoughts weren’t focused on the machines—but more so the person. Who she could deem as a danger, clearly, but it came and stopped the chaos before walking away. The mask..the clothing..the way the stare caused her to cower away, looking away without a second thought, she couldn’t even imagine holding contact with the masked individual. 

Chica gently placed a hand on Y/n’s head. “Dear, you should play with your food.” She tells her. Y/n glanced at Chica and with furrowed eyebrows. Darius was staring at Y/n from across the table, he had been staring at her like a hawk, within the time they arrived, he caught onto her silent behavior and it wasn’t of his own blood to stay quiet for too long. 

Y/n placed the fork onto the place and Chica gently removed her hand from her head, Y/n fixes her posture and Darius blinks before looking at William, who was busy watching Freddy read the book that they thankfully managed to keep intact when they left the abandoned home, ever since they sat down, Freddy had started to read into it to see what he could find to make a better understanding of maybe an motives of Afton..if he was even behind whatever the hell that was back at the home. 

“So what now?” Darius asks. William looks away from Freddy and to Darius before gazing at everyone at the table. Mike was leaned into his seat with his hands in his pockets, Jeremy sat next to him, who had gotten better as time passed on and no longer was in a shocked stage, he wouldn’t even blink on the way to the diner and that actually questioned Y/n if they should have taken him to the ER for it, but he seemed to recover from it. 

“Well…I think first it would be best to make sure everyone is okay.” William says. Bonnie’s eyes quickly glanced at Foxy. “I mean, I caught Foxy with his tails between his legs.” He teased the fox. Foxy looks away from the area he was looking at and gives Bonnie a pointed look. 

“Hilarious…” he grumbled. 

“I think we should have been prepared a lot better.” Chica says and William nods. “I was just going to say that.” He agreed. Mike huffs.

“I mean, who’s first thought is to think they’ll be attacked by a fucking animatronic fox and wolf or whatever the hell that was, and some motherfucker in a mask, not mines, didn’t think that would happen tonight to be honest with you.” He did make a good point but that went back to Freddy’s statement at the beginning of the night; 

“Always expect the unexpected..” Y/n repeated under her breath, and she could see Freddy gently nod his head from across the table, though he had still been focused on the book, he had heard her, but he nodded like a proud father..someone was listening.

Fritz sighed and rubbed his face, his fingers gently lifting his glasses before he looked at William. “Well…it only gets worse from here I’m sure.” 

“I’m damn sure it does.” Mike shrugs. 

“This is insane..” Jeremy muttered, but he didn’t disagree..he didn’t seem to shy away this time and that Y/n was proud of. 

“He mentioned Mr. Emily..why don’t we just talk to him whenever we all have a shift.” Alice reminded everyone. Mentioning earlier Foxy says it would be best to speak to Henry, as he was the closest friend to Afton, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he had some things that maybe he could shed some light on about the guy and his past life. 

“I’m sure we all work tomorrow, we can do it tomorrow afternoon, that’s usually when Mr. Emily isn’t around the building working and he goes to the office for inventory check.” Y/n says, she usually would go in his office at that time to be that bothersome employee, similar to how a child would purposely bother their parents for the fun of it—well lighthearted of course. And everytime Henry enjoyed her presence. 

“Well, I heard tomorrow afternoon that’s when Hanley will visit the pizzeria.” Chica brings up, which knocks everyone off guard. 

“Who?” Fritz asks. He wasn’t aware of anyone visiting the pizzeria by then name of Hanley unless it was some sort of family party…then again why would he really pay attention to that?

“He’s the district administrator and Vice President for the new company.” William informs, clearly he knew considering the fact he was the manager and had to know who would be coming in and out of the pizzeria. 

“There’s going to be more than one pizzeria?” Mike asks and William shakes his head. “No, not that I know of.” 

“Then why is he district administrator then? I thought that was only when there was more than one franchise.” Fritz finished. And William slowly shrugs. “I dunno, I never asked the guy, and to be honest I never really had an actual full fledged conversation with him, Henry more so did that, I just walked off whenever they started to speak.”

Aside from working with William, Y/n had taken notice of William’s nonchalant and careless attitude, he was still young and it made her think, did he truly ever lived out a life where he could be young? With him taking his uncles company in his hands, he matured so quickly for someone his age he started to become careless of various things around him. William was so mysterious yet so out there at times, and that made him the best manager she had ever had. People would say he was brood and mean sometimes, but usually it would take a lot to piss off William, and frankly she had never seen him upset, nor did she plan to. 

“But he’s coming tomorrow at 7, we’re closing early for an employee meet up..or event, or whatever you wanna see it as. The guy is coming in tomorrow to show off the building's layout and the new roles for everyone who has accepted to transfer.” William informs. Y/n slowly rolled her eyes at the thought. Chica noticed. 

“Oh don’t be so sour.” She gently scolds Y/n. William looked at Y/n and the girl slowly shook her head. 

“This is so…dumb. Why do we gotta work at another location?” She complains. “Hey, a deals a deals.” William reminds her of their deal prior to the events of the night. And of course Y/n didn’t forget. 

“So, if Freddy and the others are going to be helping us out, why not let them work with us?” Mike brings up before motioning to Y/n. “And so little miss pouty won’t be in a pissy mood when we start our first shift at the place, which I can already see now.” Mike teased. And Y/n sighs through her nose. 

“No.” Bonnie immediately says. “Seeing you run around the pizzeria? I’d much rather perform and watch from a distance.” 

“Of course..” Freddy says silently to himself. 

“Not a bad idea..” William thinks on the idea Mike had for a moment. Bonnie sputters. “You can’t be serious.” He says. 

“I think it’ll be fun!” Chica smiles. 

“If that’s going to happen I’ll need to create a much safer protection for you guys.” William says. Alice lifts an eyebrow. “What does that mean?” She asks. 

William motioned towards Chica’s chest. “These models run off of a pump that connects electricity through them, like veins. It’s what makes them move and function much more smoothly and quicker than their original models. It acts as their heart.” William motioned around with his hands as if he was teaching a class. 

“And if that heart gets damaged, there’s no way for me to repair them because it cuts all of their power out, basically killing them, and I won’t be able to get them back once transferring all of their codes to his model from their—“

“God damn Will, can you speak English?” Mike grunts. William sighs and gently shakes his head. 

“Basically if anything happens while we’re out and they get damaged when I already salvaged their old models when the location closes, there’s no way I can bring them back. Creating those pumps takes years. The best I can do is create a replacement, but that won’t do anything but make them a walking lifeless corpse.” He then glanced at Chica. “A real robot.”

“Ew..” Chica scoffs, Y/n slowly frowns. “So..how come salvaging their old parts affect them?” 

“Because their old models hold all of their memories in their chip, they have one in these models as well—“ He motioned towards Chica’s temple. 

“But the main one is in their older models, so when I salvage that, I’ll just combine the two to one and there, easy chip with all their personalities and traits and their life.” 

He then looks at the four humanoids. “But when I move forwards to salvage your older models, you will be stuck using this model, which means you four will have to be very careful..like us, you get one life, you mess that up, you are done for. And there’s nothing I can do about it, everything will be lost if you die.” William sounded like he was speaking to children as Chica, Bonnie, Freddy and Foxy gave him their attentive undivided attention.

“Of course, we’ll be ah-hundred percent fine…” Foxy smiles boyishly at William. Bonnie grunts. 

“Yeah, sure..” 

“Damn, won’t be entertainers anymore, and you get kicked out into the real world with the rest of us? You guys are about to get a taste of reality.” Mike laughs. Darius snorts. 

“Hell are you talking about? We all damn near got a taste of reality back in that damn neighborhood.” Darius mentions. And Y/n couldn’t help but chuckle at that. 

“Can’t forget how Mike just ran towards the thing with a branch in his hand and smacked the hell out of it.” Y/n laughs. Which caused Fritz, Mike and Darius to laugh and the occasional chuckle from William and Alice. Jeremy had a small smile on his face.

“I only did that because I think about doing that shit to Bonnie on a nightly basis everytime I clock in.” Mike brings up. Bonnie’s ears perked up and he squinted at Mike.

“Don’t start with me.” 

“I’d say we did pretty good fer’ a team!” Foxy grins brightly and places his arms around Bonnie’s and Mike’s shoulder. 

“Yeah, next time..let’s..just invest in weapons please.” Fritz brings up and Freddy nods. “Finally, someone with common sense.” Freddy grumbled. Mike sputtered. 

“Well damn. You didn’t see me kick ass with that log?” Mike exaggerated.  

“You could have gotten killed Mike, if it weren’t for Chica.” Jeremy scolds the man. Mike only chuckled. 

“Eat.” Chica gently shakes Y/n’s arm and motioned towards her played, lifting her fork back up—Chica often did that whenever she saw Y/n would go very long shifts without eating, she’ll track her down in the pizzeria with a plate of pizza in her hand, it was like she became her own personal eating tracker. 

Y/n gently takes the fork and starts to eat the food that was still warm on her plate and Chica gently pats her back. “You hadn’t eaten anything today honey, don’t think I didn’t notice.” She says Darius was silently listening to the two when he heard Chica respond that Y/n hadn’t eaten. 

“You weren’t hungry today?” He asks her. Y/n looks away from Chica and to Darius and slowly shrugs. “Not entirely, I ate breakfast at home, but after that, I just been working.” She responds 

“So, what’s the plan again?” Bonnie asks. 

“Speak to Henry about Afton, hopefully he has something useful and..let’s not dwell on the touchy subjects everyone.” William says. 

That subject being Henry’s late daughter, Charlie. Who had died a few years ago..and was unfortunately one of the many unfortunate kids to be involved in the killings of the children. Despite having a connection with her from the medium, it was something that still sent shivers up Y/n’s spine. She never really saw Henry get upset over the situation, but he barely ever spoke about his wife and child. 

“Oh yeah, you don’t gotta worry about that.” Mike reassures William. 

“And when we finish speaking with Henry, see what Robert has in store and everything after that..let’s hope it just falls like dominoes, Freddy’ll catch up on the book in the meantime.” 

“Great. Sounds great.” 

“Cool.”

“Alright.” 

“I gotta fucking take a piss.” Of course Mike…

But Y/n couldn’t explain, the group she had with her was everything she looked for…and she knew they had each others back wherever danger might be..

-

Opening the front door, Y/n turned around and waved bye to Darius, who smiled at her from his car and waved back before driving off, walking into the house and closing the door gently behind her, to not make much of a noise considering it had just turned midnight and she was sure her mother was asleep, she gently stalked into the house and spotted the living room light on, slowing down she gently rounded the corner and spotted her mother sitting on the couch, Helpy was seated next to her, a coloring book between his stubby legs as he happily colored onto the page. 

Her mother should have been asleep, but she was up, still in her work clothes, head resting in her head, when she heard shuffling of Y/n’s clothing and footsteps, she looked over at the corridor to see her, she sighs in relief and placed a hand on her chest. 

“Thank god..” she whispered before standing up. 

“I called your phone like 30 damn times.” Her mother hissed before taking a few strides over to Y/n and pinching her arm, Y/n hissed in pain and quickly pulled her arm away and rubbed. 

“Sorry.” She quickly says. Damn…she forgot to check her phone, no wonder why the woman was still up, worrying over where the hell Y/n had been for the last few hours, especially now that it was midnight..

“I thought your shift ended at 10.” Her mother stood in front of her, placing her hands on her hips and furrowed her eyebrows. Y/n inwardly sighed and gently nodded in a defeated manner. 

“It..uh…it did.” She says. Her mother shook her head in a confused manner and sighs. “Then where were you? I mean I don’t mind you going places, I’d just rather know where you are. Especially this late.” She says. Y/n raised a hand to the nape of her neck and nervously curled some hair. “I was out with Darry and my other co-workers, we just went to eat and basically hang out.” Not exactly a lie but not entirely the truth either. 

“Okay…well..” Her mother gently rubbed her forehead and motioned towards the stairs. “I thought you were here the entire time.” She couldn’t seem to let go of the situation, which Y/n could yet again understand, her mothers gaze fell to her daughters shoulder, motioned towards it. 

“Also, clean your uniform before going to bed, you look like you crawled around an abandoned house.” She pressed a kiss to Y/n’s forehead before she turned and walked off, Y/n’s eyebrows furrowed quickly, that was oddly specific, but her mother always pulled jokes, the two would crack shit jokes back and forth all day, but Y/n didn’t feel that one.

“Night.” Y/n says. Watching her mother disappear upstairs. Her gaze then fell on Helpy who was already looking at her. He smiled brightly and waved at her. Helpy had been around the house, her mother often used him to help clean considering at times he would just be in the house while Y/n was out at times, mostly school, so he was pretty acquainted with her mother, speaking of which she suddenly forgot to ask, she wanted to invite her mother to the small event tomorrow night, surely she would find it interesting to see the new location and all they had in store. 

Y/n crawls up the stairs after her mother who she was sure was probably getting ready to finally undress and fall asleep like a rock, upon opening the door, she was met with a dim room, and mother already asleep in bed, the woman was snorting softly, her hand lazily hung out of the bed as her chest heaved up and down. Y/n’s eyebrows furrowed, she couldn’t have fallen asleep that fast, she’s barely even been upstairs for a minute, but then again, it was the middle of the night, and her mother had always had 14 and 15 hour shifts, anyone would be knocked the minute they hit the bed, but that small piece of common sense was telling her that she had been asleep for awhile. Y/n contemplated walking into the room, but after a while she did and hovered above her mother, placing a hand on her shoulder and gently shaking her. 

“Mom.” She says.  Her mother hums softly before gently opening her eyes. “You just fell asleep? I wanted to ask you something but if you’re too tired I can ask tomorrow morning.” She tells her. Her mother hums gently and incoherently. “Tell me..tomorrow..m’tired..'' her mother whispers. Y/n nods before she turned around and exits the room, closing the door behind her and taking a heavy breath. 

She hears small footsteps and looks over to see Helpy waddling over and looking up at her. 

“Man? I have so much to tell you.” 

Helpy smiles and squeaks. “Do you know where Michael is? I haven’t seen him lately.” She starts towards her room and immediately walks in, Helpy quickly waddles in and pushes all his body weight and closes the door as Y/n removes her shirt and starts to switch to her sleep clothing. 

Helpy squeaks and gently shrugs his shoulders, he as well hadn’t seen or heard from Michael in months. After the party—Midnight Madness, the two hadn’t heard from Michael again. Which was confusing and concerning in a way. 

Helpy starts to make grunting and squeaks—something he often did when trying to explain himself, his finger then points towards her dressed and there sat the yellow Freddy plushie, the exact same plushie she hadn’t seen in months. 

Y/n gently placed her uniform in the hamper and stared at the plush and squinted her eyes. Helpy then squeaks and sits on the floor, moving his hand in a way to show that he was coloring—or writing, but considering for the last few weeks he was invested in coloring books, Y/n took the ladder that he was coloring. But then he stood up, and pretended to walk away, and he made a thumping sound with his foot and then turned around and feigned surprisement and motioned towards the Freddy plush, and then he takes a random plushie from Y/n’s collected she had on the bed—lord forbid Helpy probably tore it from the bed to lay on it which she told him not to do before. But then he dropped the plushie onto the ground as if signaling it wasn’t moving and was lifeless and then he placed a hand over his mouth as if being silent and then he shrugged. 

Over time it actually got a lot easier to understand what Helpy was trying to say, Mike would usually tell him to shut the hell up, which Y/n could damn near tear his throat out everytime he said that to him. But Helpy got a lot better at explaining things. And from what she could understand..

“It just appeared when you walked away and you tried to see it was Michael but it would talk?” She says and Helpy nods. And usually the yellow Freddy plush was what Michael used to communicate through to Y/n..then why the hell was it in her room? She hadn’t seen it for months and now it appeared? 

She looks back at the plush and slowly nods her head. “Okay..” she says. 

She walks over to it and picks it up, gazing at it before gently shaking it, she placed it back down on the dresser and furrowed her eyebrows, just as she placed her hand down, she was spotted with a pile of hair and a pair of eyes peeking at her through the window, she lets out a piercing scream and shoots back away from the window, Helpy lets out a silent scream and shuffles to hide under the bed. The person quickly backs away from the window frightened as well from what it seemed, but for a split second that was, the person then placed a hand on the window and motioned for Y/n to open it. 

“It’s me, Michael!” 

“What the fuck?!” Y/n was glued to her spot at the muffled voice speaking. Y/n had her eyebrows stitched together in fear, her heart racing a mile a second. 

“There’s no way, there’s no way, there’s no way.” Y/n repeated and the person  seemed to wait patiently. Y/n slowly inched towards the window to get a better look, the person looked up at Y/n and she could see a man who had to be taller than her, clearly. He wore a black buttoned shirt and jeans, a head of dark hair, but that didn’t catch her attention, his skin was sickly, a pale, bruised purple, as if it was constantly beat on, a pale eyes, it was nothing near human, it couldn’t be. Y/n mouth was gently open as she stared at Michael. He gazed up at her but didn’t move to say anything, afraid he might frighten her again. 

“Michael?” She says. Michael's eyebrows slowly lifted and he nodded. 

“Yes…it’s me..”

Y/n placed her shaky hands on the window sill and gently lifted it up, immediately the cool air hit her skin and the sound of the outside invaded her ears, the sound of the wind in the trees, the crickets of the night, Michael’s chest heaved up and down as he stared up at her. 

“What the fuuuck.” Y/n whispered. He sounded exactly like Michael…

“There’s no way..” Y/n placed a hand in her hair in shock as he stared down at him. 

“Yeah..nice to see you too. I uh…” he looks down to his arms as if motioned to them. “Had a long journey.” 

“I thought you were dead. You told me you were dead.”  Y/n says.

“I am. Look at me, does this look anything like normal?” 

Y/n opened her mouth gently as she gently cowered away from him and he noticed before quickly placing his hand on the window sill. “Listen, listen, listen, listen to me. I saw where you and the others were tonight. I want to help.” He says. Y/n blinks and eyed him. 

“I’m not gonna harm you…”

“C..come on I guess.” She moves away from the window and hears shuffling. Michael crawled into the room and once safely on his feet and let out a heavy sigh before looking at Y/n, he was almost as tall as William,  intimidating for a person that had..severely bruised skin that almost looked purple and inhumane colored eyes. “What the hell happened?” She asks him. Michael opened his mouth gently and gently clenched and unclenched his hands, debating on what to say or what to do. The guard in front of him was still cautious..no doubt. 

Helpy gently peeked from under the bed and up at Michael. 

“I uh..” Michael glanced back out the window and to Y/n. 

“Couple years ago—I…died. But I was still here.” He started, the story seemed to make him lower his voice and Y/n slowly nodded. 

“Wait…so. You’ve technically been around this entire time?” She asks him which Michael had nodded, within months of her waiting to see if Michael would ever show up—she tried to tell herself that maybe he was just apart of her imagination that went rampant with her first few days working at the pizzeria, with the way shifts were going and her first time ever having an understanding how being security guard was, it really sent her head in a whirl, but that part of her kept telling her, it wasn’t her mind making it up, not when Helpy clearly saw Michael as well, and on top of that with herself and some of the others at work experiencing odd sightings, Michael wouldn’t have been excluded from that narrative, but the odd part about him was..he actually spoke to her. 

“The reason why I never responded was because I was watching you and the others. When you first got that document report I wanted to see what you would do.” He says—going back to when both she and Jeremy retrieved the folder from the former investigator—the folder that Fritz actually still had. 

“And I saw that you all formed a team—to go against my father.” Hearing that come from his mouth caused Y/n to furrow her eyebrows gently, what? 

She silently stared at him with a look of confusion but attentiveness, her eyes trailed down his form and back up to his face where Michael remained silent. She vaguely could remembered when she first met him—he didn’t want to explain why he was ‘dead’ 

“You…” she starts. 

“Afton is my father.” He says. Y/n takes a small step back at the comment, was he gonna kill her for even thinking about cracking down on what his father did to those children? He didn’t seem angry but then again the guy wasn’t even alive, he was nothing but a walking mystery. She didn’t know Afton had a son, but then again, she didn’t know anything about the man aside from what William had told him, and the fact that he unfortunately took the lives of children—presumably. Anyone related to the man—besides William himself could be taken for caution…especially someone that’s not..alive. 

Michael slowly shook his head. “I said I was here to help you.” He repeats. 

“What happened to the whole, don’t tell anyone about me and scarcely showing yourself?” She asks, she didn’t want to annoy him with all the questions—but she didn’t have any choice, she had to question him. Being gone for a few months and suddenly coming back was questionable.

“I only said that because..well truthfully I assumed the others were empty minded—“ he stopped for a moment as he stared at Y/n. 

“Dumb.” Clearly he was referring to Mike and the others. 

“But with little time you all managed to get together to stop him, and I’m someone valuable you’ll need. Trust me, I’m his son.” Michael placed a hand on his chest, referring to himself, Y/n’s eyes landed on the back of his hands—a light faint colored scar ran down his hand—starting from between his ring and middle finger, the scar ran down to his wrist and under the long sleeved button up, almost as if his hand had been split in half and had been healing over time. 

She looks back at Michael and her bottom lip gently waivers. 

“I just needed someone to trust.” He adds on in a hush tone.  

“So—that means William’s your cousin.” Y/n tells him. Michael tilts his head for a moment in confusion and Y/n remembers the fact that his fathers name was William as well. 

“The one that’s at the pizzeria.” 

Michael seemed to perk up at that. “Odd, I’ve never met the guy before. But I do remember my aunt having a child I never got to meet.” He explains. She felt like with Michael, they could use him as a window, she didn’t want to use the term, exploit—but, that’s what it felt like. 

That means that Michael was older than William, not that it would matter too much. She started to wonder, how would William react having being able to see he still had At Least some remnant of family left, even if they seemed to still be clinging on to the last bit of life. 

“How come you never told anyone about Afton? If you were able to speak to me?” She asks. Michael gave her a look as if questioning if she even heard herself. 

“No one can see me unless I’m like this, and do you really think..” he motioned to himself. “That anyone would take lightly of me walking about looking like a live action zombie?” Well that made sense…she didn’t think about that.

“Besides, he’s dead. What are they supposed to do? Put a ghost on death row?”

“Okay, okay, damn.” Y/b quickly fell back and stopped questioning his reasoning, yeah, he still had that quick heated mouth of his. 

Y/n then moves and sits on the bed, Helpy was still under the bed, and didn’t seem to want to come out anytime soon, she looks at Michael and motions for him to sit down, which he glanced at the bed and sits down beside her. He had the odd smell of grass—similar to the smell of freshly cut grass on a summer morning. 

“So, you’re dead?” She asks him, looking back at the man, Michael looks away from ahead of him and to her and sighs. 

“Unfortunately.” He voiced.

“I uh. Couple years back prior to meeting you, I was the only Afton left, mom died from a stroke—or from what I was told, I dunno, I left town because I finally had a car and money to my name to do what I wanted.” 

Y/n immediately felt intrigued in whatever story Michael was going to tell, his expression didn’t waiver, almost as if he told the story a thousand times, but it could probably be because it was always something reoccurring to him and his forever eternal life he would forever have to drag his feet through for eternity. 

“I was in Arizona, I wanted to start a new life…can’t say I had a bad childhood, but it wasn’t a lifestyle I wanted to live…I left home just to live a shit life..”

-

November 13th, 1996

“Fuck you! You know that, you know exactly why the fuck I said we should have just left and went down to LA! This is the 3rd notice Michael!” The woman in front of him shouts at the top of her lungs, Michael stood in front of the woman, hands beside him as he blankly stared at her shout fiercely at him—with so much rage and resentment, her hair was frizzed in a manic manner, she slammed her hand on the counter, the glass cups and porcelain plates ratted from the impact, the TV played freely in the background, the muffled sound of commercials playing in the background.

At the time..I think…I was 23? I was with a woman—her name was Debbie, met her on a corner one night when I entered Arizona. I didn't think much because I just wanted someone by my side, so I snatched her up as quickly as I could. Dumbest mistake I’ve made. 

The woman didn’t get a reaction from Michael as he only sighed through his nose and his eyes trailed over to the front door. The golden rays of the morning sun shining down on the door as if the heavens gates reigned its glorious lights on it. 

She wasn’t the woman of anyone's dreams, it was always me who had to pay her my life savings..for her son.

Sitting in the living room was a young boy, no older than the age of 7, eyes glued onto the TV which was now playing early morning cartoons, presumably Looney Tunes, blocking out the loud shrill voice of the woman, something clearly normal for a child. 

The kid wasn’t mine. He was Debbie’s, never got to find out who the actual father was, but clearly someone who didn’t give a rats ass about the kid leaving him with her. 

“We need the money to get out of this town, how do you expect Jonah to get a good education if we’re in this dumb?!” 

She used to always use the excuse of the child to get what she wanted, she didn’t want to live in Arizona, she wanted to move out towards the west coast that had civilization because we were living in a pretty much empty boring town, not the life she wanted for him..or more so for her. 

But it didn’t really matter because I shook her off my shoulder within the next few weeks of me living out there. Lady thing I needed was a woman tailing me about money that I couldn’t get around to pay rent on time myself. 

Michael walked down the sidewalk with his hands stuffed into his pockets of his beige corduroy jacket. The few bystanders he wandered smiled and waved at him.

“Hey Michael!” A man greets, Michael looks away from the ground and smiles at the man, raising a hand and gently waving at him. 

The two continued on their way, and Michael walked a few more blocks before finally coming upon a shop, he opened the door and immediately a chime came from above him, signaling that he entered the store.  The sound of music statically playing on the radio emits from a portable FM radio. A stout man stood behind the counter of the shop, gently adjusting the antenna on the radio for it to play clearly. But upon hearing the door bell, he looked up to gaze upon Michael, the young man stood near the door watching the man, the ever so familiar slim man with dark silk hair and a boyish smile. 

“Michael! Glad you stopped by. Heard you were headin’ back to Utah!” The man announces and Michael nods as he walks over to the counter. 

“Yeah, got a call last week about my..heirloom? If you wanna call it that.” Michael shared, his elbow resting on the counter as he gently scratched at his chin. 

I had only lived in Winslow for about 6 months. Once leaving Salt Lake, I had gotten a call from one of my fathers business partners about him passing away and that his company would be handed down to me, as much as I didn’t want to leave Winslow after making a few occasional friends, I knew my mother would throw a fit if I didn’t keep his company going. Which I didn’t want to do, it wasn’t anything I looked forward to doing in my later life, I wasn't much of an engineer. And he didn’t have any other kids to take it for him, they couldn’t. 

“Ah…I’m assuming you’re gonna be visiting from time to time? Wife says she wants you to visit some time, she said you hadn’t been out like you used to.” The man turned to grab a pack of branded cigarettes from behind him, turning around he placed them down on the counter and gently pushed them towards Michael who’s fingertips then gently tugged them towards him before placing them in his pocket and placing a 5 dollar bill down. 

“I’ll try to make weekly trips out here, I’m sure I won’t be too busy down there.” He says. The man chuckled and nodded his head towards Michael, as if bidding him for his promise. 

My family grew up with the; holier than thou—perspective of the world, mainly because my father was raised that way, everything was about living life to its fullest, and being grateful that you were breathed life into, it always annoyed me because he was always focused on this path to enlightenment—when he met my mother, she was catholic, and they clicked wonderfully.

But I couldn’t wrap my head around my father, he never spoke much about his family—everytime I asked when I was a kid, he’ll just brush it off and say; 

“It’s nothing bothersome, just something I don’t think is important.” The man stood in front of a young boy, Michael gazed up at his father with furrowed eyebrows, his father gazing back down at him as he placed a hand onto his head. 

My father was raised on a farm—from what I found out. He didn’t have any siblings and he was the only child, his father kicked his mother from home, and that’s all I can really remember, his family was really closed off and truly I can tell you, my father wasn’t prude, I don’t think he knew what he would turn into. 

Michael stood in front of the group of family that stood by the casket of his mother. Who was lying peacefully In her casket. 

My mother was the last of our family to pass away, and I was at her funeral one day, when I saw William, he was just a kid at the time. 

The kid sat on a pew as he watched his mother mourn near the casket, the two caught each other's gaze, the child held a transformer toy in his hand, as he stared at Micheal. 

He was named after my father because he too passed away. I didn’t want to come back into town—but turns out the call for the company being passed to my name wasn’t entirely that—it was also a word to me that my mother had passed. I can’t really tell you how I felt at the time—but it certainly wasn’t sadness. 

Micheal’s gaze lingered in the boy for a moment before he looks away and back to his mother. 

Staring at the body that was once filled with life. 

She mourned over two of her lost children that had been killed the same year my father died. 

In a blink of an eye, Michael stood in front of three tombstones, proudly standing in front of him, his eyebrows furrowed gently as the man beside him placed a hand on his shoulder. 

“It’s okay…” the man's words echoed. It was Henry. 

Henry always checked up on me to make sure I was fine..after the incident at the pizzeria, the location was closed for a few months to go under investigation, no one was allowed in, so they made time for Henry to check up on me over time. 

Henry placed a plate of food in front of Michael, Michael gazed down at the plate and looked up at the man. 

Henry lost his child as well, she was his only child, Charlie, of course you know her. But unfortunately she was one of the few kids that were killed in the tragic even at the pizzeria, and I’ve never seen a man push forward in life as much as he could like Henry, even with his daughter gone—his best friend presumably dead, he still kept an eye out on me as if I were one of his own.

“You need to eat, this is the 3rd day you haven't eaten anything but a bowl of cereal.” Henry's voice was light but he had scolded Michael for his lack of eating. 

I was upset. I was, not because of father and mother being away…but the only two things I promised to protect were also gone—at such a young age as well. My sister was killed prior to the incident, an accident with one of my fathers projects, had killed her. And…my brother…

A young boy laid in bed, darkened eyes closed as he was connected to a breathing tube and many IV’s. His chest falling ever so slightly. A dingy gauze wrapped around his head, and covers delicately placed upon him. 

Michael, his mother, his father and sister stood next to each other as they solemnly gazed at the boy. 

He…passed away as well. 

Henry’s wife left him—can’t tell you why, because even I don’t know, but even then, he still checked in on me, and even continued running the pizzeria without William…and I was there to help him as much as I could. I didn’t come back to Utah to work—but for Henry, I wanted to. 

When my sister passed away, my father fell into deep depression, and that’s when he started to look into resurrection practices…and I thought it was all just..fake. Until I found myself in one of the rental warehouses..seeing if I can find her. 

-

Michael stared at Y/n with a concentrated expression. He lets out a shaky sigh as Y/n frowns up at him. 

“I died there…looking for her..I had dreams telling me she was there, but I don’t what the hell led me there, but it killed me and now I’m—“ he motioned towards himself.

“Whatever this is…”

Y/n and Michael fell into deep silence. She gently and slowly pressed her lips together and frowned once more. Helpy had climbed onto the bed overtime as Michael was explaining, and he even gazed up at Michael with a sorrowful expression. 

“…I..” she sighs. 

She didn’t expect Afton to have a family…she expected him to be a prude old man holding resentment towards everyone but not only did he affect the lives of the children, but to everyone else. 

“I don’t know what the hell is going on, because I should be dead, those children should have been…in their afterlife, but they’re still here. That’s why I want to help.” He tells her. And Y/n quickly nods. 

“Tomorrow we’re supposed to be speaking to Henry tomorrow about Afton, after some even with the new owner coming in to talk about the new location? You should come, stay here tonight, and we can leave tomorrow? I don’t have work until the afternoon anyway.” She tells him and Michael agrees. 

“Alright.”

“By the way.” She gently rubs her hands together and Michael looks back at her. 

“You don’t so happen to know anything about…the cult, right? We found a cult book at your old home, and you mentioned he was sorta religious.” She tells him. 

“Father was always interested in what was past life, celestial things, I believe he got that from his father…” Michael trailed off as he then furrowed his eyebrows. 

“Which..which that’s a good start. His father, he never spoke to me about him, I never had contact with the guy, but maybe we can now.” Michael’s brain seemed to set off and Y/n tilts her head. 

“Would the guy be like 80? We don’t know if he’s alive or not.” She says. Michael only shrugs. “It’ll be worth a shot, I’m sure he’s here in Utah, tons of farms here, we can ask Henry about it.” Michael says. All of this was going to throw Henry in a whirl. Y/n was very stern in that..but what other choice did they have? 

She nods slowly and gently pats her legs. 

“Whatever it is, we have to be prepared, we were attacked to-“

“I saw.” 

Y/n made a face. “How long have you been watching me?” She asks. Michael quickly glanced off to the side. “Doesn't matter..?

“Well, since you’re the all swing eye, do you know what the hell that was that attacked us?” She asked him and Michael grimaced before shaking his head. “No, I have never seen anything like that before. Nor do I know much about this new location. Aside from the information I told you, is what I know.” He assured her and Y/n nodded, so it was something to figure out together..

“Well..we got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, I got an extra blanket for you and—“ Y/n started talking as she sat up and Michael watched as she stood up and searched through her closet, Helpy gently examined Michael as he was seated. 

It was getting late and Y/n quickly wanted to get to bed, but wanted to make sure Michael was comfortable, and the minute she hit the bed, she was out. The events of that night drained her dry.

But tomorrow was a new day.