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She did it. Cassidy did it. After years of following that horrible man, of watching his heinous crimes and being unable to stop him, of having him slip from her fingers, she finally has him right where she wanted him. Helpless, kept prisoner by her will and her will alone. And that’s exactly how it’ll be, forever and ever and ever. She could move on, sure, but she’s not going to do that, especially not now that she has it all almost ready to go. She will keep him here, she will hold him here, and he will suffer for what he’s done for the rest of eternity. It will never end. His torture will never end. He will pay. He will not leave, he will not rest, he-
“Goddammit, just how many bloody dead children are here?”
-is right there. How? How is that even possible? She had it all planned out, all ready to go, and it was supposed to be perfect!
She stands up, furious. “You!”
The rotten man has the audacity to blink, as if he were confused. “Me?”
“I don’t know how you managed to get out but if you think that you’ll ever be able to escape then you are sorely mistaken,” she informs him, shaking with righteous fury and pointing an accusatory finger towards him.
“What.”
She pounces on him before he has the chance to speak again. He’s way bigger than her, on account of dying as an actual adult, but that doesn’t matter, not here in this not-place that’s nowhere at all. They’re both spirits in the end, and in here he’s weak compared to her. He doesn’t have time to step away from her attack and so they both go tumbling down to the not-floor where they continue to struggle. He tries to get away, but she’s all hatred and fury and vitriol and refuses to let him go even for a moment.
“You will not escape,” she spits out. “I will never let you escape. You will pay for what you’ve done, for all the lives you’ve taken. You will pay for what you’ve done to me.”
“Wow, wow, wow! Calm down for a second, you got the wrong Afton! I’m not the lunatic running around in a rabbit suit, I’m his son!”
Cassidy stops her attack and narrows her eyes. She takes him by the hair-
“Rude.”
-and turns his face one way and the other, analyzing him. He… does look different. A bit. Younger than she’s ever seen him for sure, but most importantly- well.
“You look like life chewed you and spit you out.”
“Rude.”
She shrugs and drops his head, which falls on the not-floor. He curses about it but she’s pretty sure he’s just being dramatic. There wasn’t even a thud or anything. “If you’re not him, then who are you?”
He shimmies on the not-floor until he’s no longer trapped under her, which sucks because she kinda liked looking down at him, like her cat used to do when Cassidy was alive and trying to sleep. She sits cross-legged but he stays laying down for some reason. “I’m Michael, Michael Afton. Most people call me Mike.”
She narrows her eyes again. Mike. Now that sounds familiar, where did she hear that name again? She gasps and claps her hands together. “Oh! You’re the Mike from the book!”
“Mike from the-?” he stops and gasps as well, which is the correct reaction thank you very much. “You’re the other ghost! I always wondered who that was.”
“Yes, that was me!” She beams and leans forward. “You know, most people would’ve thrown the book away when ghosts started writing in it.”
“Believe me kid, not the weirdest thing that’s happened to me,” he says, looking at the extensive nothingness above his head.
She gives him another quick once-over and. Well. “Yeah, I can believe that.”
He turns his head to give her a dirty look but she just shrugs and he sighs like this is the worst thing he’s ever had to deal with. He’s quite literally dead, so she doubts it. Mike, the weird guy who’s apparently been through weirder experiences than witnessing two ghosts trying to communicate, goes back to looking into the big nothing that’s above them and he’s so stubborn about looking up when up is the same as down that Cassidy wonders if maybe there is something up there. So she lays down to look up as well.
There is literally nothing in there. She has no idea what he’s doing.
She kicks her legs against the not-floor, and against Odd Guy Mike because his leg happened to be in her way. “You said there were other dead kids around here?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
She sits back up and scoots closer so she can poke his face repeatedly. “Then have you seen my friend? The other spirit on the book. He’s about my age, brown hair, stripped shirt. His name is-”
His face drops. “Uh, yeah, I know him. I mean, I haven’t seen him but-” he clears his throat, “I know who you’re talking about.”
She narrows her eyes a bit, “You know him?”
“He… he was my brother.”
“Oh.” Cassidy no longer wants to be part of this conversation, actually.
At least he looks just as miserable about being a part of this as she is. “Well… You said you were doing something? Something about making my father pay?”
Great! A distraction! “Yes, that’s right. I will keep him trapped, I will torture him, over and over again.”
“Very violent. Good for you.”
She beams. “Thank you!”
“And how are you going to do it?”
“Huh?”
“How are you going to torture him for the rest of eternity?” He asks and he’s looking at her and he seems to be actually curious, but she feels a little under the spot. Should she have prepared for questions? She wasn’t expecting to meet anyone in here!
“I’m going to keep him in this in-between space, and make him experience unfathomable pain until the end of time,” she says with her nose turned high, just like her mom did when she wanted to win an argument. “Maybe I’ll show up in front of him as Golden Freddy, just so he knows who exactly is doing this to him.”
“Golden Freddy, what do you mean Golden Fre- Do you mean Fredbear?” he asks her, so baffled that he sits up to look at her in the eye. Which doesn’t work because he’s much taller than her and is now making her look up, the meanie.
Still, her face drops. “That’s his name?”
“I- yes?” He has the audacity to sound genuinely confused, like someone not knowing the dumb thing’s name is a completely new concept for him.
Cassidy sniffs haughtily and hopes it’s enough to hide the way her face flushes. “And how was I supposed to know that?” She does not whine. This is a reasonable amount of complaining for the situation she’s in, actually. “I just went to that dumb pizzeria once and the one dumb robot I knew was named Freddy! I’m actually being very nice by calling him Golden Freddy and not the yellow bear.”
He puts his hands up in a placating manner, as if she were a wild animal on the verge of attacking. Maybe she is. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have assumed. It’s just-” Suddenly, his whole face goes blank like he just realized something he cannot believe. “You’ll show up as Fredbear,” he repeats.
“Uh, yeah, I suppose.”
“You’re possessing Fredbear.”
“Golden Freddy.”
“Fredbear is possessed.”
“Well, duh, genius. Have you been paying any attention?”
He goes back to the not-floor with a way too over dramatic groan, in Cassidy’s humble opinion. “I thought I was hallucinating that! You scared the shit out of me!”
Cassidy blinks in surprise. “What? When? Were you a night guard?” Then she sucks in a breath, “Oh no, did I kill you?” She hopes not. That would be awkward.
He waves her away, “Nah don’t worry, that was my sister with her killer robot friends. Long story.” Yeah, she would assume. “But jeez, kid. I was having a bad time as it was before you’d show up. I mean, do you know what it’s like being terrorized night after night by a bunch of blood-thirsty animatronics, knowing full well that they are trying to kill you entirely because of what your father did?”
“Not really, no.”
Mike starts to shrug because duh, that’s a weirdly specific situation, but then he stops mid-movement and he gets this glint in his eyes. A glint that she’s very familiar with, one that screams a thirst for vengeance, and he turns to look at her. “Say kid, just how attached are you to this torture plan?”
“So you can’t move. Like at all.”
Mike shakes his head, “Not in the slightest. You just have to sit there and deal with everything happening all at once, and you can’t leave.”
Cassidy smiles. “Oh that’s awful.”
“I know,” he replies, just as giddy as she is. “But at least I could leave after a couple hours. Him?” He chuckles, “Oh, he won’t have that luxury.”
She giggles, clapping her hands together. “How many animatronics should I put in? A lot, right?”
“Absolutely,” he nods. Then he starts chewing on his nail thoughtfully, which is gross and Cassidy’s mom would’ve smacked him in the head if she had seen him. In her memory, Cassidy reaches out to do it but he waves her away before she can. “Let’s see. I had a tough time dealing with ten that one time, so I feel like doubling it is a pretty safe bet.”
“Twenty?” She thinks about it for a second before shaking her head, “No, that’s just not enough. There’s gotta be more, way more.”
“Thirty? Fourty?” He narrows his eyes. “Fifty? I don’t know if there’s enough animatronics for that, kid.”
“Yes there is! There’s the main four- Freddy and Bonnie and Chica and Foxy, and then that shiny version of them from that one pizzeria-”
“Please tell me you’re not putting Balloon Boy in there.”
“Of course he’s going in there! Why wouldn’t he be? You have something against Balloon Boy?” She puts her hands on her hips and leans in accusatorily. She honestly doesn’t have a particular opinion on Balloon Boy, but the way Mike’s eye twitches when she says his name is pretty funny.
“He was an annoying bastard, kept trying to steal my batteries.” He pauses. “Do you know what a bastard is?”
“… yes.”
“No you don’t.” She huffs in annoyance and crosses her arms. Cassidy does know that word, she’s heard it plenty of times! … she’s just not entirely sure what it means, exactly. “He was annoying, and a thief, and he brings out some bad memories.”
“How so?”
He sighs. “Okay, so you know how my father is a horrible person?”
“An experiment chamber?”
Mike nods solemnly. “An experiment chamber.”
“With nightmare versions of Balloon Boy?”
“It was mostly the other animatronics, Balloon Boy and the others just showed up on occasion.”
“On occasion? He had holiday specific nightmare animatronics?” That’s it. She grabs him by the face to look directly into his eyes. “Michael. Mike. I have to put these guys in here.”
“Yeah, okay,” he agrees. She would’ve probably done it even if he hadn’t, but it’s nice that he’s on board. “And I haven’t even told you about the jack-o’-lantern looking Chica.”
“Jack-o’-Chica?!”
And he said they wouldn’t have enough animatronics. This guy is a gold mine.
“Okay so we got the originals, we got the shiny ones, we got those nightmares-”
“Including jack-o’-lantern Chica.”
“Of course we got Jack-o’-Chica! Just look at her!” Cassidy shoves Mike’s drawing of her one and only in his face. It’s a really well done drawing honestly, but the only reason she’s willing to admit it is because Jack-o’-Chica was too great not to do it. “She’s perfect!”
“She looks exactly like the normal nightmare Chica, just burning.”
“And she’s perfect.”
He makes a sound that is very obviously a bad attempt at stiffing his laughter, so she moves to attack him. Obviously. But Michael is a dirty cheater and holds up his also-very-well-made drawing of Nightmare Freddy like a shield. And it works because Nightmare Freddy is also really awesome and she’s not sure she could convince Michael of drawing him again if she destroys the drawing.
“So,” he continues once she is no longer interested in attacking him, “we got all these.” He gestures towards the small pile of drawing they’ve amounted, “That is still very much not fifty, got any more ideas?”
“That’s what I got you here for, Mr. Night guard.” She leans forward to snap her fingers in his face, “C’mon, give me more animatronics.”
He rolls his eyes as he waves her hand away. “I guess we could put it in Circus Baby and the other Funtimes but I don’t know how I’d feel about that. And if we’re really running out of options there’s these guys I hallucinated this one time-” He suddenly stops and blinks. “Oh man, yeah, I managed a pizzeria.”
“With more animatronics?” She prompts. They have forever but they don’t have forever, alright? They have to get moving in here.
“Yeah, the Rockstars and… the other guys.” His eyes get a far away look and Cassidy feels pretty confident in assuming that those guys are also complicated. Party pooper. “Oh, yeah, and the Mediocre Melodies.”
Cassidy swats his arm, unwilling to let go of the opportunity of hitting him justifiably, “Don’t call them mediocre! That’s mean!”
“Wha- that’s their name!” He grabs a blank piece of paper and starts furiously doodling. “They’re some obscure secondary characters that never got traction. It’s supposed to be, I don’t know, ironic? Funny? Whatever.” He hands her the paper. “Here. Have a Happy Frog.”
She stares at the drawing. Stares more. And then some more. Finally she looks up with teary eyes, “Her name is Happy Frog?”
“Uh, yeah.” There’s a long pause. He tentatively reaches for another piece of paper. “… do you want to see her band mates?”
She sniffs, “Yes please.”
He gets to work quickly and she ends up clutching the handful of drawings close to her chest and rubbing her eyes. “Mike.”
“… yeah?”
“These are mine now.”
“Pardon?”
“These. They are mine now. I’m keeping them.”
“The Mediocre Melodies?”
“Yes. They are mine.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again and then closes it again. “Sure. Yeah. Have fun.”
She nods sagely, cradling her Melodies closer, “I will.”
“Alright, that’s it. We’re taking a break.”
She looks up from the drawings scattered on the not-floor, affronted. “What? Why?” She literally just got him to add the killer robots that killed him, they can’t stop now!
“Look, kid. If you want me to make you fifty drawings of different animatronics you have to let me rest, okay? My hand hurts.”
“We’re dead, how can it hurt?”
“It spiritualy hurts.”
“That’s dumb. You’re dumb.”
“Then I guess you don’t want my dumb drawings,” he says, reaching for the ever-increasing pile of drawings spilled on the not-floor.
She swats his hand away. “Fine, take your dumb break. Let’s just rest, all while my murderer goes on to be unpunished.”
“I’m not saying we stop working, I just want to stop drawing for a bit. We can work out the logistics while we’re at it.”
Cassidy crosses her arms. “Yeah? Got any ideas?”
“I think all the animatronics should act differently from one another, have different mechanics. Maybe some conflicting ones.”
“That sounds hard.”
“Exactly.”
That’s- hmm. “You know, you’re actually pretty smart for someone who looks like that.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment, but only because I also think the animatronics should have personalities.”
“Why?”
“So they can have unique one-liners.”
Scrunching her nose, she reaches over to check if he has a a fever. Maybe he’s spiritualy sick or something. Mike does not look impressed and she’s nice enough to let him be. “Why should I do that?”
“Alright. Picture this: my father just spent however long fighting the animatronics, only to lose anyway. He’s trapped for eternity and he’s experiencing pain and suffering again and again, he’s contemplating everything he’s ever done, every mistake and failure that’s brought him to where he is. And then-” He grabs one of the drawings for visual aid, “-here comes Pigpatch with a banjo solo.”
She scrunches her nose and takes the drawing away from him. That’s one of her Melodies and he is not allowed to touch them without her permission, thank you very much. “But why?”
“Listen, kid-” Mike pauses, squinting at her. “What was your name again?”
Oh, yeah. Guess she did kind of forget to introduce herself when she was wringing him for information. Oops. “My name’s Cassidy, hi.”
“Cass- can I call you Cass?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Cassie?”
“Ew.”
“Sid,” he settles on. She ponders on it for a second before deciding it’s acceptable and giving him a nod of approval. He opens his arms, “But Sid, consider this.”
He pauses for dramatic effect. She leans in anticipation.
“It’d be so fucking funny.”
Well, when he puts it like that.