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paigelts05 · 4 months ago

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[GORE] Providence [FNAF, Renegade AU]

Artwork: https://www.deviantart.com/paigelts05/art/1072138114

Story: https://www.deviantart.com/paigelts05/art/GORE-Providence-FNAF-Renegade-AU-1072145816

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57190219

Published: Jul 7, 2024

The investigation into the megaplex have yielded many answers, and only one area is left to search: underneath the raceway.

Made more precarious by the explosions caused by ruptured gas canisters just after the Breach, only a fraction of the large troupe who investigated the megaplex decide to stay for this final stretch. With those participating ready to go and those not participating safely evacuated, the investigators who remain descend into the deepest depths of the megaplex, ready to storm a sanctuary of villainy in hopes of finding the missing construction workers and putting an end to William's plans.

But it's not going to be easy.

When dealing with the execs of Faz-Ent, It never is.

For chapter 1, Luis is kidnapped by Adelaide during the decent, and nobody knows if he's still alive, but they press on anyway. They already know that he would have been taken to the heart of this underground Faz-haven.

They just need to be prepared for who they might be greeted by once they arrive.

For chapter 2, With Luis found alive but critically injured due to Adelaide's control devices, Ness taps into what she learned from William being inside of her brain in order to disable them and hopefully save Luis. When William realises she's down here so tries to posess her from wherever she is, a staffbot rolls up and is able to thwart the possession attempt.

The bot is clearly possessed. Why by is the dire question on everyone's lips.

For chapter 3, With the fate of the construction crew confirmed to be grim, the investigation teams plans to storm the underground diner where an old enemy is lying in wait. They plan to storm in waves, a first wave of six, and a second wave of anyone who can wield a gun. Everyone else remains outside until it's clear to keep some backup just in case things go south.

And who would they meet is none other than the old manager of Location C.

For chapter four, With the old manager out of the picture, the investigation can continue, though the room is sombre as the deaths of the construction crew need to be investigated, and the bodies need to be brought up to the surface. Yet Mike struggles to focus, as he knew the construction crew personally, and knowing that they are dead made him feel like a failure; he couldn't save the construction crew: how many more people will he fail?

But Sylvia is more than ready to deal with the fallout and remind him that he's done more than enough already and that this outcome was unpredictable.

=°•.🌹 Story 🌹.•°=

°°•°°•°°•°°•°°•°°•🌹•°°•°°•°°•°°•°°•°°

[🌹 Adelaide's assassin 🌹]

"Alright. It's six thirty AM, every inch of this megaplex has been searched, and we've found everything there is to find." Mike spoke to a crowd of miscellaneous folk sitting in the construction zone known as Roxy raceway.

Everyone there had been up all night, but Mike seemed to still be fine - another thing to put down to years on night shifts. He took a deep breath before continuing.

"Fritz over there's made sure the systems have been checked over and kept the front shutters open for the past six and a half hours, thank you Fritz you're a star, so if anyone wants to evacuate early, you can. There's already a group in the car park, and from the deductions we have, we don't want to bring hundreds of people down there. There is no rush, so Sylvia and I can escort anyone who doesn't want to go underground to the safety of the car park. We've also went around picking up anything that may have sentimental value and labeled it with where we got it from - that's if the person it belonged to didn't immediately show up, so if you've lost anything, it'll be with Oxana's squad in the car park.

A few hands went up, and when Mike asked the first one what thier question was, they said "I want to leave."

"Just stand by the shutter," Mike smiled, "no need to ask. In a minute, we'll begin escorting in groups of five, I'll take five, Syl will take five, until everyone who wants to leave has left. PT, Verity and Vincent are in charge of protecting everyone, so you're in good hands if one of the animatronics dares to show up."

After Mike asked if there were any more questions, there were none, and people begun to shuffle themselves about, those who wanted to leave standing near the shutter, those who wanted to stay standing anywhere but.

The 'stay' group was by no means large or small. Squads A, B, and C stayed in whole, alongside subsets of people from the other teams.

Squad A was the smallest by far and consisted of Ness, Sylvia, Cass, Mike, and Gregory. Squads B and C were mostly blended at this point but contained Luis, PT, Fritz, PI Jeremy, beta tester Jeremy, Krasnyy, John, Charlie, May, Gaz, Patty, Danielle, and Vincent. The remains of D team were Verity, Carl, and Julian. The only remaining members of E team were Mina, Phina, and Marla. F team had not thinned it's ranks at all and contained Sadie, Morcant, Andromeda, Anna, Raha, Steve, Dan, Mark, Charles, Izzy, Nora, and Tristan.

There were a handful of people from teams H and onwards who appeared indecisive, but Mike opted to save the exact head count for after the evacuation. Many members of D team and onwards had exited the building throughout the night, weather due to fear or injury, but it was a relief that the only casualties that they had taken were still alive to tell the tale, with the most greviois injuries surprisingly enough being acquired by A team.

After escorting a rag tag group of a gothic woman who seemed to have had her fill of thrill for the day, a woman whose nickname was 'Theseus's Cyborg', a janitor, and a pair of ex-guards to the car park, he gave himself a moment to breathe. Today had been rough, so a moment of fresh air was a luxury he needed right now to get the stench of blood out of his nose.

Sylvia soon also exited the building with a group consisting of the 'sound guys', Rachel, her grandpa, and another ex-guard. Mike still remembered how the duo of sound techs smiled when they retrieved the plushies they had left behind in the sound booth, and it let him remember that even if the underground yields negative results, the amount of small victories achieved in information gained and lost items found had already made this raid worth it, because no matter what was down there, this megaplex was doomed to close either way.

'These people who opted to leave made a damn good decision and absolutely deserve a break. Too bad for me that my work's not done yet.'

After a deep breath, he and Sylvia headed back inside - making sure to not break the self-enforced rule of never traveling alone unless dire. He wasn't about to let himself get blindsided by a mangled machine at the last moment again. That thought took him back to his days as a night guard, full of last minute tricks and near-misses. His legs couldn't take being snapped again.

After a few more rounds of escorting groups to the safety of the car park, only those willing to investigate the depths of the raceway remained.

Mike knew it would be no easy task, but he was surprised that so many had stayed.

Then again, those who remained all seemed to have one final peice of unfinished business down there.

One last truth.

The truth behind the disappearance of the electricians, the truth behind the twisted animatronics, the truth behind themselves, the truth behind a case they've been trying to crack for years, the truth behind the suffering they endured, the truth behind the mistaken identities, the truth behind the death of a friend or family member or even themselves.

Mike took a head count of everyone who remained, and he noticed that amongst everyone, Audrey was here too. He was surprised that she'd walk back into the place she almost burned to death inside, but that's Auds for you.

"I guess this is all 38 of us." Mike said, addressing the much smaller crowd, "if you really don't want to go under the raceway, please speak up. You don't have to if you don't want to."

People heard him, but nobody wanted to leave. Everyone seemed to be happy to take on the most risky task yet.

"Ok. I guess we're all going down. Let's watch eachothers backs and try to not get grabbed."

The group then proceeded towards the employees only door that lead down to under the foundations. A cyclone gate blocked the way forward. Gregory would have used Freddy, but as Freddy was once again a head in a bag due to an incident on the roof earlier this night, they didn't have Monty's claws. A head in a bag that Oxana requested earlier, so he didn't even have Freddy right now.

But what they did have was Syl's bolt cutters.

Sylvia made quick work of the yellow chain that held the gate closed, and as they closed the small gap between this and the second gate, they heard what sounded like a dove's call, and Ness had turned pure white.

A gap in the crowd remained where Luis previously stood.

The crowd descended into a cocophony of voices, Mike's included.

"It was so fast."

"Damnit! How could I have let this happen!"

"How the hell were we supposed to counter that thing?"

"Is he dead?"

"Are you kidding? He's going to get used as blackmail to make Ness work for him again."

"I don't want to think about what's happening to him."

After the voiced died down, Ness, despite her shaking and porcelain white face, she was able to speak.

"I know where he was taken. He'll have been taken to the underground restaurant."

"At least that's where we're headed." Gaz said, "maybe dad will be there too."

Ness became silent.

"Well, here's hoping." Gaz spoke to himself before smashing the voice box lock on the next gate, which let him slide the locking mechanism inside and open the gate.

As everyone funneled through, something else was missing from Gregory's past-based premonitions.

"And the elevator's gone." Sylvia sighed before looking down into the pit where it would have taken them to. "I guess it dropped after the explosion in the nearby storage rooms."

"Dad told me it wasn't in the best condition when his team found it." Gaz shook his head, "it was the last message he sent to me: whilst his team sent a construction update, he sent me a text. I think he knew that he wasn't going to come back up any time soon…"

An eerie silence filled the air, and Mike was the one to break it. After all, they had to press forward.

"We have to get down there somehow. …" Mike swayed from side to side as he thought and vocalised his suggestions, "have any of you ever heard of abseiling?"

Setting up the abseiling equipment took ten minutes. Getting everyone down took another thirty.

Mike knew first hand that this was more than enough time for a robot to break someone. And a robot with Adelaide at the helm? He dreaded to think about what she was doing to him.

Thirty seven people descended into the depths.

They had every hope that more than that would come back out.

The way forward was surprisingly spacious, even Gregory remarked on how this corridor felt so much larger in real life. He assumed it'd be cramped, yet here they all were, at the site of the crashed elevator with space to spare, and more space along the darkened path ahead.

As the group trecked onwards, Ness found herself instinctively flicking on the generators that littered the trail they walked, unsure as to why and scared of the answer.

They hadn't even seen the restaurant Gregory had mentioned yet before the tell-tale sounds of activated endoskeletons rung out around them.

Despite the close quarters, everyone assumed a fighting stance. They outnumbered the endos, so this was a winnable fight.

Split into teams of three or four, endos fell, but more descended from the ceiling to take thier place. Whilst some squads handled the onslaught well, some were struggling, yet nobody could turn thier attention away from thier own ever replaced foe lest they be overwhelmed. But luck seemed to be on thier side.

A mysterious figure swooped in from the shadows and begun to dispatch the endoskeletons with the speed and skill of a trained assassin.

Eventually the endoskeletons stopped dropping in and Mike turned to thank the stranger. Yet the mysterious figure didn't seem to hear as he turned his attention to the investigation team, seemingly looking for someone.

Immediately and without warning, the mystery man leaped up into the darkness, only to dive back down and attack Ness. His blade carved its mark on her shoulder, blood spilling from the wound as Ness dodged another stab. One that would have been lethal if she hadn't dodged it.

Despite being worse for wear, she launched a counterattack, tackling the mystery man to the ground.

He didn't even try to get back up.

It was almost too easy.

The investigation team were only then able to get a good look at who this aid and assailant was.

Ness almost didn't believe her eyes.

It was Luis Cabrera.

[🌹 The sewer bot 🌹]

Thousands of questions raced through everyone's minds, some voiced, some left unsaid.

Yet Ness's mind was empty, echoing only the grim truth.

"Adelaide did this to him."

The words fell out of her mouth as she held Luis's bloodied and unconscious form in her arms.

A cocophony of questions arose; one or two didn't know who Adelaide was - reasonable, seeing as she primarily operated outside of Utah - yet the majority who knew of the woman had the same question: how did Ness know that the thing that grabbed Luis was in fact Adelaide.

The question was phrased in many ways, but the answer was the same.

No words came out of her mouth. Even though nobody was suspicious of her - if anything, the questions had an air of sympathy - she felt a stab of guilt whenever she divulged anything she had learned in her time trapped in this place.

"Look, if you guys want to know how Ness knows this stuff, William trapped her in this megaplex for about a month. She knows a lot about this place that she'd rather not." Ness was thankful that Mike was explaining this on her behalf. Whilst she was fit to burst into tears, he still kept a level head as he gave the quick once-over of Ness's situation.

But talking about what she knew wouldn't fix the problem at hand.

Luis was unconscious, bloodied and bruised, but alive. She didn't know how long he'd hold out for.

She let herself examine him. Maybe she'd be able to find out what drove him to do what he did.

The sight was purely harrowing. She hadn't felt this way since the Riot.

As she checked Luis's pulse, she felt something wrong in her own head; a hint of beauty in the scene before her. That was enough to tell her that William's hideout was nearby, and that he wanted her back as his subject. She couldn't stop herself from shaking as the thought plauged her mind.

The more she looked at Luis, the more she felt her heart break for him. What had Adelaide put him through? Was this William's way of trying to force her back to his side? Would Luis ever wake up? If he did wake up, would he be the same?

As she ran her hands down Luis's back and chest, she finally forced herself to pay attention to the things that she had refused to acknowledge: A circular device between his collarbones, glowing pink with the insignia of a bear; around the device, wires bored into Luis's skin. She moved him to look at his back, and found what looked like a robotic spine over his own, each long vertabre with a glowing pink core.

But one of the cores were dim. Did she do that when she tackled him to the ground? Is that why he wasn't waking up? Even if it was, Luis was alive, and that's what mattered. She needed to steady her thoughts.

She instinctively knew that the devices that Adelaide had surgically implanted onto Luis would function much like the masks that Mark and Anna had been forced to wear during the aptly named Adelaide Incident, so Adelaide had to have been using her tech to mind control him. Yet she was concerned that there was another layer of control that she couldn't see; something that would persist even after the devices were removed, if they could even be removed.

Ness looked over her shoulder and saw the two doctors hovering nearby.

"We've been here since about two minutes ago. We opted to give the two of you some space. From a medical perspective, I somewhat understand what you are going through, but it would be best for you to let us handle him now." May spoke in her usual clinical manner, "I will dress his wounds and see what I can do regarding the devices, and Marla will see to your wounds."

"Right." Ness reluctantly backed away from Luis as Dr May got to work patching up Luis's wounds.

She didn't pay any attention to herself, all she could focus on was if Luis was alright. It was somewhat ironic: back in the east arcade, the night of the Riot, the night he had tried and failed to free her, she had attacked him and he had been scared to hurt her out of fear that it'd kill her.

"This feeling…" Ness mumbled to herself, "it's what you felt back there. Wasn't it?"

Minutes passed as Marla patched up Ness's wounds, but it felt like hours before May approached Ness to tell her the diagnosis.

"He's alive, and will recover. He has been partially brainwashed; no symptoms of possession, no signs of a digital consciousness transfer, no signs of melding." May seemed so deadpan and calm delivering the news, but then again, as May is a doctor, Ness figured that she was numb to delivering news, no matter how good, bad, or mixed, "However, there are traces of remnant, likely coming from the devices. Your results after you were rescued showed William was using similar trace amounts to keep you in check, so it should be nothing to worry about. He's just been badly broken psychologically with a handful of controlled wounds, that's all. Nothing I haven't seen before, except for the devices themselves. The only time I've seen anything remotely like this was those masks from the Adelaide Incident, but this is far clunkier. It almost feels like a step back in technology… Especially where she is concerned…"

That just confirmed her suspicions: Adelaide had broken him and implanted those devices on him. Some kind of last ditch effort to give William a new reluctant follower to torment.

"Can we remove the devices?" Ness asked, moving back over to where Luis lay. She looked to May for an answer.

"I don't know. The devices seem to have been implanted by a master surgeon - you were right to think this was Adelaide's work - so removing the devices may prove fatal without the correct tools." Her tone was clinical, as always, "Our alternative is restraining him, as if he wakes up, there is an eighty three percent chance that he will still be under the control of Adelaide, so he is liable to attack us again."

Ness turned from May to look at Luis.

"What if I try?"

May stared at Ness in shock.

"What?"

"What if I try?" Ness reiterated, "When I was Vanny, I instinctively knew how to do a lot of surgical things and how to use a lot of the devices that the Aftons had made. I could probably put that knowledge to use to at least neutralise the device."

"If you wish." May said, "just be careful."

"I will!" Ness smiled as she lowered herself so she was eye level with Luis's chest.

She didn't see anything at first, but as she touched the device, she felt as if she saw it in a whole new light. It was as if a sealed door in her mind had been reopened.

She knew what this was. It was one of Adelaide's creations: something she had made for William out of salvageable scraps down here. The man had explained the device and it's functions to her once - she did not remember if it was an offer or a threat, as that didn't matter: she knew and could see how the devices were connected together, how they functioned, and enough to remove the important parts.

The device on Luis's chest had two parts: a 'socket' that was physically attached to Luis, and a 'plug' that attached to and covered the socket.

The socket, she knew she could not remove. It was bored into Luis's flesh, and if the blood loss wouldn't kill him, infection certainly would.

The plug, that was the module that contained all the components used to cause the mind control: remnant, code, and way more fragile components she did not quite understand anymore.

But she did know that this module could be removed.

It had been designed to be removable for the sake of modifications and repairs, and as a contingency plan lest the device be turned on it's creators. Ness figured that William, along with the rest of Fazbear Entertainment, now thought twice before making a death machine with no safety switch. This module could be removed safely, and that was what counted.

A near invisible seam showed itself to her, and all she needed to do was twist the device clockwise, and she'd be able to pull it out safely.

Ness hesitated, however.

'What if William took back control?'

She couldn't just sit in worry. She had to have a plan. In fact, her own contingency plan was all around her.

"I'm worried that William may try and take control of me again. On my signal, please, do not hesitate to pin me to the ground so he doesn't make me hurt anyone. I know he's no longer melded to me, but he could still try and possess me normally."

The words didn't come easy, but they were necessary. She wasn't as resistant to possession as everyone else: in part to her family's past, and in part to how her little strength to resist had been eroded from the torment she endured.

Already well aware of the severity of the situation, Mike nodded, albeit with a distressed swallow. "Alright. Just give the signal."

Sylvia also nodded. "Will do. Is there a signal for when he's gone?"

"No." Ness shook her head. "He would just be able to use it. I can't make that kind of signal without that risk. I'm sure you'll be able to tell when it's over though. I'm counting on you."

Mike and Sylvia nodded and stood on standby.

Ness examined the device that had been implanted into Luis once more. The wires from the device bored through his skin around it, and she was scared of how deep the mechanical components dug. The almost invisible seam wrapped around the side of the shallow cylinder like a flush lid. She rested a hand on the device and took a deep breath.

A memory that wasn't hers entered her mind, a scientist woman whose form seemed to be an illusion showing the person whose memory she was recalling how the top layer of the device could be separated from the lower half for emergencies and maintenance. This was one of William's own memories, she was sure.

Opening her eyes and taking a deep breath, she twisted the top layer of the device and tugged.

The module clicked off and pulled away in her hands, the lights in the device powered down, and Luis's eyes opened. He gasped to take in a breath of whatever air he could get before looking around the room, shaking and trying to figure out what was going on.

"Ness? My memory is fuzzy, and you're bleeding. What happened? Are you ok?"

Ness was taken aback by Luis being more concerned over her wound than his own state, but she estimated that what he remembered after getting grabbed was not something he wanted to share. He knew what had happened to himself, but he didn't know what had happened to her, so the reason for his concern was more than obvious. She figured that she was already bleeding through the bandages too, which made things look quite a bit worse.

"I'm fine." Ness replied, feeling a headache brew from the centre of her mind, "I…"

The slight headache exploded into a full blown migraine and she felt the control she had over her body slipping. This was William's work. He was trying to possess her, just as she predicted. But unlike the sly creeping process she had experienced when melded, this time, it felt more forceful. Less like a snake slipping into its hole and more like ramming a jackhammer into a brick wall.

This must be what it feels like for a normal person to be unwillingly posessed.

Pain seared on her neck and throughout her body, the possession bestowing upon her the pain of William's first death: a springlock failure.

She felt weak and ill, sweat dripped from her skin as her body tried to process the pain that wasn't hers. But she had to give the signal.

Mustering up the last of her strength, she raised her hands to her head, fingertips to the sky and wrist perched on her head, like a pair of rabbit ears.

"That's the signal!" Mike yelled as he and Sylvia rushed towards Ness. She had convulsed and collapsed in front of them, and it was only a matter of time before William would pull her to her feet.

They wouldn't let this happen.

As per Ness's own instruction, they pinned her to the ground, and just in time too as she begun to growl like a rabid wolf as she thrashed to escape.

Her head craned around as she thrashed about, hissing and attempting to bite, and whilst her attempts were unsuccessful, Mike could now see her eyes: they were completely bloodshot, as if she was suffering from severe eight ball fracture, and her pupils glowed a deep shade of bright pink.

"She's posessed." Mike grimaced as he shook his head, "Anything that could work, get it over here."

Krasnyy dashed forward from the group with a flashlight; the same one he used to stave of Gerald Taylor's possession back in '97. But as he tested it, it was out of batteries.

"There goes that," the journalist grimaced as he rummaged through his bag for any spare batteries, but before he could fish the replacements out of his bag, a staffbot rolled up, gently pushing through the crowd, it's beeps and boops implying an apology whenever it nudged anyone.

The staffbot was green from moss and rust, and had a chunk of its face missing about the mouth which gave the impression of a gas mask. It moved towards Ness and examined her. After nodding to himself, the staffbot shone his torch in Ness's eyes.

As pink glow in her eyes faded, Ness's movements slowed, and soon her thrashing about stopped entirely. Her breathing remained heavy, and she let herself relax. If it wasn't for her eyes being open, everyone would have thought she was asleep. It had worked.

Krasnyy had a hunch that the bot did this, not because Krasnyy tried but couldn't due to a dead torch, but because it independently knew that this was a method of staving off early stage unwilling possession. But if it knew, it had to be human once. So who was it?

He turned to the staffbot and thanked it, but it had already begun to roll back to where it came from.

As Mike and Sylvia were gently helping Ness up, Krasnyy chased after the 'sewer staffbot' and Gaz followed suit.

Krasnyy and Gaz soon found the staffbot roaming in circles in front of the diner, and now that Gaz had gotten a good look at the animatronic, Krasnyy saw the light fade from the young guards eyes.

"Dad?" Gaz's whole body shook as he approached the animatronic, reaching out to it.

The staffbot rolled closer. It wasn't something physical that had Gaz seen in the animatronic, but spectral that gave away it's identity. Something Krasnyy could only bearly see, but Gaz seemed to see it clearly. A hazy manifestation around the staffbot, as if the ghost of a man was standing in it's place.

The ghost seemed to look around before smiling as his form became more visible, as if he was comfortable enough with the company of those around him to manifest without concern. Krasnyy could now see who this ghost was; an electrician with olive skin who looked very similar to Gaz. This ghost was beyond a shadow of a doubt Sean, the missing electrician; Gaz's father.

Teary eyed, Gaz dropped to his knees and hugged the staffbot, sobbing and wailing. Krasnyy found himself crying as well. After all, he knew what it was like to lose a parent to this corporation, and the sight of Gaz hugging the staffbot as if it would bring his dad back bore a striking resemblance to how he he did the same when his own dad was bleeding to death inside the death trap known as a spring-lock suit back in '84.

Sean and Philip weren't too different, and neither were Gaz and Krasnyy.

It felt like a while before the rest of the group finally approached the diner to be met with a sight in the distance of Gaz sobbing as he hugged the sewer staffbot.

Krasnyy gave the group a quick 'do not advance' signal as he jogged to meet them half way. "The sewer staffbot is posessed by Sean. The missing electrician. Let the kid have his reunion: we're not in any rush."

"Right," Mike nodded, "anything else to report or just that."

"Nothing." Krasnyy replied. Whilst he had intended to stick with the rest of the group, Philip signaled him back over to where Gaz and the sewer bot were.

Upon returning to Gaz and the sewer bot, the guard stood up and turned to Krasnyy. No words were spoken, but none needed to be: they both knew the same grief, they both understood. With a nod, Gaz begun to walk back towards the rest of the group, and Krasnyy followed.

As the two humans and two spirits returned to the group, Gaz stood in place, still a fair distance from the rest of the group, and took deep breaths as he tried to organise his thoughts.

"You know," he said, "My dad and his brother, my uncle, were veteran guards of Freddy's. They worked together since the early 80's, taking evening and filler shifts. In the early 90's, they had a bad night shift, and my uncle was killed by the animatronics. But even being dead didn't stop my uncle: him and his brother kept working together, trying to figure out what made the animatronics tick and how to thwart possession. Uncle wound up working with the head of security to develop that technique he used on Ness back there. He didn't tell me much else… I should probably ask him sometime. And as my uncle died before I was born back in the late 90's, I've only ever known him as a ghost. I also share my uncles name."

Krasnyy nodded and smiled. He vaugely remembered some of the evening staff and distinctly remembered a pair of brothers, but such tragedies were so common with Freddy's locations, he didn't want to jump to conclusions just yet.

They then continued walking and returned to the main group.

Once they had returned, Ness approached the staffbot to thank him for helping her and to ask about what happened.

"Thank you. I'm surprised that actually worked," she said, "I tried that technique back when I was first posessed, but it didn't work. It didn't work for Jeremy, sis, or Cass either - he wound up cutting his face off, Cass was able to segment and remove him from sis's mind, but Cass gouged an eye out getting him out of her own head. They're ok, but… This doesn't make any sense."

"It's not going to make sense." Gaz gave a melancholy smile, "William no longer had his backdoor of the VR headset, so he could be forced out by standard means this time. My dad, he's called Sean by the way, figured that if it was nipped in the bud early enough, it may just work. Besides, William is much weaker now than he was back then."

Ness nodded. She had regained most of her energy, which culminated in feeling a wave of relief; after today, she was finally going to be free of William. Him possessing her didn't revert her to being 'Vanny'; he tried and failed to possess her. William's failure gave her hope that she would be able to defeat him after all. Whilst she was worried that it would be a temporary victory, it would be a victory nonetheless.

Gaz then turned to Sean, who had been talking to Krasnyy. Being perpetually posessed by Philip, Krasnyy was able to speak to Sean as if he were a ghost himself, so it didn't suprise Gaz that he didn't hear the conversation they'd had.

"When you talked about your dad and your uncle, I had a hunch about something and wanted to clear it up with Sean himself." Krasnyy smiled, "I wondered if your uncle was one of the ghost guards who helped me get out of being 'the voice of the animatronics' back at location C. My guess seems to have been correct: your uncle did work with Vincent to show me what my situation looked like to an outsider and use an arcade as a means of finding out how to thwart Gerald's possession attempt. If you see him, please tell him I said thanks. I never actually saw him to thank him myself."

Gaz nodded, "I will. And I've already thanked your dad for helping me come to terms with what happened to mine, so when I tell uncle you said thanks, we'll be even."

The duo nodded before Krasnyy gave the 'advance' signal to the team, the diner being the next objective. As everyone approached the building, they all looked up at the oddly in-tact structure in this dump that was otherwise a complete ruin.

"Well, it's certainly not as damaged as I first thought…" Audrey grimaced as she looked up at the building. This was the place where she had almost been burned to death within for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That building had burned down and fell into a sinkhole, but here it stood once again.

"No, it is as broken as you thought. The burned ruins around this building and the foundations above are the restaurant you almost died in," Carl pointed up at the charred underside of the building foundations that acted as a ceiling to the cavernous ruins they were in, "A survey of the site after the fire showed a replica restaurant underneath the ground, under the foundation of the burned restaurant. Later scans showed labs below that duplicate, but it's reasonable to say that this restaurant in front of us is also a lab; it just doesn't look like one at first glance. The restaurant you knew and the vent maze all burned down and the robots inside took heavy damage as a result. This is the highest floor of the labs, finally unearthed, and the foundations above us are the destroyed restaurants original foundations, not the megaplex's."

"I see," Audrey replied, "It makes sense. Fazbear Entertainment chose the plots, so if William had any idea as to Henry's plan, he would have chosen to only show up at the restaurant with the laboratories underneath. That way, he'd be able to escape the fires. Well, he won't this time. I'm sure of it."

"But do we even know if he's down here still? After botching that possession attempt, he may have decided to evacuate. There was a hidden shaft in that first restaurant, I wouldn't put it beyond doubt for there to be another." Carl replied, "actually, I'll see what Sean has to say. He's been down here long enough."

Carl then approached Krasnyy, Gaz, and Sean.

"Sean, I understand if you don't know, but is William Afton inside the restaurant beyond those doors?"

Sean replied with a series of beeps and blips combined with ghostly static. Krasnyy noted down the reply, whilst Carl was too shocked to make notes. Gaz was just happy he could understand what was being said, even if it was dangerous news.

The only way out was the way the team came in. William had not attempted to evacuate his laboratory stronghold in the basement. Said basement was heavily guarded by something not human, but on the upper floor, there was a lone silver haired human.

As Carl and Krasnyy made notes on the descriptions Sean gave them, people started discussing how they should advance through the restaurant and how to deal with whatever defenses William had stationed, as well as trying to figure out who this person would be.

Some muttered that it may be an executive, others muttered that it may be a clone of Ness. Only those who could hear and understand Sean knew that this individual was actually -

"Daniel Discord never left this building after the construction crew died. He's still in there and never left. Unless he's been eating flesh, he's not human any more, but either way, he's more powerful than you think! If we try to just storm him we'll die!" A panicked voice rose up from the team.

"Mina! You could hear Sean from back there?" Krasnyy looked away from the staffbot that Sean posessed and turned to face Mina who had just ran from the back of the crowd to the restaurant doors.

"Actually, the cards told me. Actually, no, it's safe to say what it really is here: Dunn and I deduced it." Mina clutched her tarot deck close to her chest. Her 'divinations' were always a mix of her and Dunn's gut instincts and deductions made using tarot cards to guide thier thoughts into something more coherent, but they were simply called such as to not draw suspicion to whom should be just an unassuming office clerk. Around this crowd, however, she could call it whatever she liked; these people already knew she was posessed by the dead cop anyway, "I didn't hear a word of what Sean said. But we've deduced that Daniel Discord has to be in there. We have record of him entering the megaplex, and none of him leaving. We've also deduced that he's become incredibly powerful in one way or another, like when William became Springtrap. If we all head in, we'll be wiped out. We don't need numbers, we need specialists."

"You're right about that. Sean told me that the person inside the building is beyond a doubt Daniel Discord, the old C location manager. Seeing as he'd be probably at least seventy by now, and that's low-balling it, I was hoping that he was weak, but I trust yours and Dunn's deductions," Krasnyy replied, making his own deductions by combining what Mina deduced and what Sean had told him. Putting the pieces together, he deduced what had to have happened to the electricians, "So I'm beginning to think that William is not the only mutated monster in the shadows of this establishment. There's no way someone could pack a lunch that'd last as long as he's been down here."

The gas mask bot Sean posessed beeped and booped in an urgent tone. Krasnyy, Carl, Mina, and Gaz listened intently to what he had to say.

"He's saying that that old manager was mutated, he didn't look human that's for sure, and he killed him and his colleagues. He does not remember exactly how he was killed, but a throwing knife was involved," Carl spoke as he noted down Sean's account of what happened that day, "that's confirmation on the 'no longer human' part at least."

"And the knife was never thrown," Krasnyy added as he made his own notes, "whether it was only used as a threat or was used to kill is still something he can't quite recall."

"The man also had claws," Gaz continued the translation, "they worked as an additional weapon, but were a part of his body and not an external weapon. Chalk up three in the 'mutant manager' column."

"It looks like he's far more corrupted by the remnant than we thought. Not just longevity, but built-in weapons? I've only ever seen robots like that before…" Mina delivered the deduction and took a deep breath before suggesting what to do next. "Which settles it. We need our specialists to be agile and already knowledgeable on how he fights."

Mike, who had been tending to Ness's injuries which she had incurred as a result of the possession, strode up to the restaurant door.

"Mina, Krasnyy, you seem to have a pretty good grasp of the situation inside the restaurant. Who should we send?"

"We need to form a small task force to deal with Daniel. We don't want a repeat of the endo situation from earlier." Krasnyy already seemed to have a team in mind and this pre-cursor explanation was more of a formality "So I say we send in myself, PT, you, Vincent, Jeremy, Fritz, and Danni."

Mike nodded. "You, PT, me, Vincent, Jeremy, Fritz, and Danni? Right. Makes sense seeing as we have a score to settle with the bastard."

"And immediately risk most of our specialists on only getting rid of that bastard?" Danni had approached whilst everyone was busy talking, and it seemed she wasn't happy with the team composition. "I'll stay out here. Sure, I may have a score to settle, but if you somehow get injured, which knowing you lot you will, you'll need to be able to safely fall back and we need to have enough firepower left to deal with both William and possibly Adelaide, and keeping one of us who knows Daniel away from the fight means that, not if, but when you guys do get injured, we'll still have a specialist remaining to mop up. Gaz can take my place. He deserves a shot at the guy who killed his pop, and besides, knowledge goes both ways: old man Daniel D. knows how we fight; we've gotta have a wild card to throw him off."

"Alright," Mike nodded before turning to Gaz. "Gaz? Do you want to be a part of task force?"

"Yes." Gaz stared intently at the door, his fists were clenched by his sides, and he was ready to tear a man appart. He'd already grabbed a metal pipe as a weapon, so seemed as prepared as he'll ever be.

Vincent, Jeremy, and Fritz had made their way to the restaurant doors, and PT joined them moments later, shoving an electrical diagram of the megaplex that had been modified to add this underground area that the four of them had been working on into her bag.

"We're all here," PT smiled as she held her axe, itching and ready for a fight.

Verity stepped forward with Morcant and Andromeda following close behind "Myself, Danni, Morcant, and Andromeda will be just outside as the backup task force. Shout if you require assistance or lethal force."

"If I have to, I will." Mike nodded, his face was neutral and sombre, full of grim determination; a far stretch from his usual smile, "Keep an ear out. I'd rather take him alive to get answers out of him, but If he's as far gone as William, we will need your help."

"So that's the plan, hu?" Jeremy cracked his knuckles and smirked, "Then let's stop wasting time and head in. We've got an old enemy to kill."

[🌹 The old manager 🌹]

The small task force consisting of Mike, Krasnyy, Jeremy, Fritz, PT, Vincent, and Gaz burst through the doors of the restaurant and stormed the dining area. Sean tagged along behind.

What met them was a grizzly sight.

An old man was seated on a pile of corpses as if it was a throne. He was clad in a blood speckled white long sleeved dress shirt, a black waistcoat, black slacks, black shoes, and a red tie. He had wiry and thin silver hair that went down to his shoulders, and he had one red eye.

A deep laugh penetrated the air as the man stood up, and as he approached the task force, it was clear he was no longer human. Just the way he approached and the way he acted about the corpses that littered this room told everyone as much.

As he got closer, everyone could see the old manager better, and it got worse the closer he got. From the elbows down to his fingertips on his right arm was mutated, the sleeve had split to make room for his now larger forearm, and the fingers on his right hand were no longer finger, but blood stained claws. The right side of the man's face looked as if it had been burned by a constant injection of chemicals, creating a web of deep scars that followed the path of his blood vessels. These scars were a sure sign that he had been injected with remnant - Carl's chest and Sylvia's arm bore the same horrific markings.

Knowing this man, the procedures were clearly the silver haired man's own choice and a self inflicted surgery.

It was obvious what this man had been doing down here. And it was obvious why there were this many corpses.

"Hello," the man, Daniel Discord, opened his arms in a way that would have seemed friendly if not for the context of why both he and everyone else were in this horrid place, "did you miss me?"

The task force stayed silent, the more experienced in disgust, and Gaz in fear.

Daniel D. strode towards the task force and made a grandioise gesture pointing towards the pile of corpses he had used as a throne. He had one foot far in front of the other, the furthest back arm swung back to guide unwilling eyes, and for the closest he placed his hand on his hip; anyone would think from his pose alone that he was showing off a trophy or evidence of wealth and fortune.

But that was probably what that pile of corpses was to the man.

"I assume you recognise the faces of these people," the old manager's face was plastered with a sadistic grin, "especially you, boy."

He then strode back over to the pile of corpses and pulled out one with grey hair with some olive green streaks, wearing a blue coat, a bloodied button up shirt, standard electricians slacks, and black workman's boots.

It didn't take a genius to identify the body.

Jeremy had to grab Gaz's wrist to stop the guard from running towards Sean's corpse, and hardly a second later, Daniel D. was right where Gaz would have been, holding a knife where Gaz's neck would have been if the young guard had been allowed to run ahead.

Daniel D. gave a dissatisfied "hmf," before swiftly moving back to his throne. "I'm going to assume you missed me and have been wondering, 'where did that charming criminal genius, Daniel Discord, run off to' ever since the night I vanished from my cell almost two decades ago. Well, I've been stalking you all from the shadows, waiting for an opportunity to continue my research. And when that oaf, Henry Emily, burned down that facade of a restaurant back in, say, was that 2004, 2006, or somewhere in between, I don't recall, he graciously and generously - or was it truly inadvertently - concealed the labs we had hidden underneath that place from the eyes of all for years to come; I decided that my research would continue there. Getting in and out of here has been a chore since the Pizzaplex opened, but a chore worth the pain; just look at all the resources available to me!"

Daniel D. stood up and made a grandiose gesture once again, sweeping his arm across the room to present all of the mechanisms and carnage within.

The task force couldn't help but feel a fresh wave of nausea and hatred towards the old manager.

"I may only have one eye, but I have eyes everywhere. Even though we haven't crossed paths in years, I know exactly what you've been up to, and needless to say, I'm impressed. You've prevented Fazbear Entertainment from becoming a mega conglomerate and emptied the insane asylums of those I sent there to rot." Daniel D. laughed as he gave a slow, jaded applause. The man may have been foiled in the past, but his confidence in his current plan was suffocating. "But we still managed to open our greatest site yet, and his plans are almost complete. Despite the minor setbacks, soon, William will be truly resurrected and no longer need a recharge station to keep him alive. Immortality is within reach. We just need a few more corpses."

As the old manager ended his monologue, the fight begun, yet nobody moved: they all only braced themselves to retaliate to attacks.

The room seemed locked in an unmoving stalemate. No-one dared attack first, lest they be on the receiving end of a more powerful counter.

Nobody had noticed Mike's face pale at the sight of the corpses, and nobody had noticed him clenching his fists and mumbling under his breath, and in a split second, the room was alight with a hail of bullets, all trained on Daniel Discord. One shot of the gun for each corpse in the room, completely emptying the gun of all it's ammunition. The usually sweet and placid officer's face was cold and distant, a mix of fear, anger, and pure distress.

Whilst the old manager had evaded some of the bullets, most of the shots had hit thier mark, yet that monster didn't fall.

A laugh cracked through the room, and despite the grotesque wounds, Daniel Discord carried on as if nothing had happened, now clearly preparing a counter attack as he laughed.

Mike, on the other hand, was still shaking in a snapped rage. "You BASTARD! You'll pay for what you did to them. You hear me?"

The old manager laughed at the threat, "well well well, I guess the good officer turned-"

"Shut up!" Mike shrieked, his words hardly comprehendable, "they. Were. My. FRIENDS."

The air around Mike became too thin to safely breathe, but the old manager was unaffected. Mike took a step towards Daniel D. before turning to Gaz.

"I know how he fights. That's why I can rush in like this."

'Rush' was not the typical and expected word, as there seemed to be no such rush in Mike's cold and calculated strides towards the old manager.

On the other hand, the speed at which Daniel D. attacked was astounding. The old man was moving faster then what Gaz could track, but Mike seemed to have no problems with evading every single blow.

The double standard on Mike telling Gaz to stay back whilst going in to attack themselves was clearly justified. Sure, Gaz was a trained fighter, but this was above his level.

Besides, Mike and co had been fighting against Faz Ent for longer than Gaz had been alive.

Gaz teamed with Fritz in a supporting role to trace cable and generator locations to use them against the manager, but he did keep an eye on Mike and the actual fight.

Everyone seemed to be letting Mike fight on his own, and by how the air was so thin around him, the reason why was clear.

Whilst Daniel D. dashed about, trying to use his mutated form to land any one of a flurry of blows, Mike's strategy was one of persistence, and it paid off when Mike was finally able to catch the manager off guard, grabbing the man's wrists instead of simply deflecting an attack.

It wasn't entirely clear whom this maneuver benefitted as the old manager attempted to toss Mike, but Mike was able to hold on long enough for the attempted throw to backfire, as he was able to kick the manager square in the face before letting go and landing cleanly with the rest of the group, the air around him now breathable.

Whilst Daniel was reeling, Mike, Krasnyy, Jeremy, PT, and Vincent begun the real attack.

And as they fought, they spoke so casually, as if fighting was hardly as much of a chore as walking. As Gaz listened in as he helped Fritz set up some traps, he didn't want to know what these former Freddy's employees had gone through for combat to be so second nature to them.

"A lot of those builders and electricians were police moles," Mike said between swings of his combat knife before swiftly switching to a hammer, catching the old manager old guard and landing a square blow to his temple, yet the damage didn't seem to have much effect, "I knew them well. They were basically friends. So I hope you know what came over me when I saw them like this, but, I'm worried I wrecked our chances due to snapping like that, since the gunfire has stressed out our team's main muscle."

"It's alright!" PT replied as she swung her axe at the old manager, the blow being taken by the beast as if it were nothing, yet the blow had rendered flecks of flesh like a circular saw through wood. There had never been a good time to actually talk about Ryley's death, even after all the information came out in 97 revealing that it was more of a hostage situation resulting in his murder than it was the 'situation' that everyone had assumed. The revelation had been implicit. PT hacked at the manager again with her axe, the heavy blows rending more flesh in the memory of the young tracker that the monstrous manager had murdered back in 1993. "Sure it freaked me out a bit but I've had to adapt to keep fighting like this. I've had to grow around it; it was that or die. I'd have said something years ago about my progress but there's no good time to talk about what that bastard did to the tracker. Unless I'm trying to draw agro by mentioning Ryley in front of the old coot."

PT used her axe to block incoming blows; scratches from the manager's mutated hands and swings of his knife defecting off of the axe head and sending sparks flying. Bringing up Ryley, even briefly, had worked to draw the manager's attention, and revealing that it was a lure in the same breath had riled the old man up even more, letting PT keep the agro as planned whilst the phantom fox dashed between the blind spots in everyone's vision, letting everyone know that that even Ryley himself had joined the fray.

"That old man is clearly no longer human; he's gloating about committing double digit counts of first degree homicide and mutilation of corpses. Is that human to you?" Jeremy added as he jabbed his spear at the manager, landing several clean shots but causing little recoil from the man, "If you wouldn't have shot him, I would have, but it'll take more than just a few bullets, so sticking to melee might be the plan here."

"Right," Mike nodded as he alternated between attacking with his combat knife and hammer. The tactic was enough to keep Daniel D. on edge, but it was clear that it was still a stalemate.

It only needed to be a stalemate.

Gaz could see that clearly. Him and Fritz were sneaking around the sidelines, tampering with the construction equipment. Turning the room itself into a weapon to use against the manager, and it was this that would grant the upper hand. So everyone else just needed to hold out until the tide could be turned.

Gaz wondered how many of Mike and co's fights were won this way? Through taking the attention for long enough for Fritz to turn the environment into a superweapon.

"Here!" Fritz shouted a whisper to Gaz.

Gaz looked over and saw Fritz holding out a wrench.

"Get these bolts undone, I'll deal with the rest." Fritz said as he handed Gaz the wrench and pointed to a structure near the pit. It looked like it had been assembled very recently with a mix of scrap metal and new parts, with said new parts being bolts that glinted in the dim light.

Gaz nodded, and took advantage of Mike and co keeping the old manager in a brawl in order to make it to the structure undetected. It looked like some kind of make shift distillery, and most of the metal made up a shielding of sorts, likely to protect it from the occasional stone of concrete that may drop from the ceiling or as temperature regulation, as the matter seemed organic in nature and the structure was incredibly cold.

As he wrenched the bolts off of the structure, he couldn't help but watch as Mike deftly dodged attacks and hit back, alternating between a knife and hammer, still keeping the manager on his toes with the same tricks, he watched as PT swung hefty blows of her axe about as if it weighed nothing, causing significant damage with each hit and shattering tiles or wood on a miss, but always being able to pull back in time to use the large axe head as a shield, he watched as Jeremy jabbed with his spear with such ferocity that the old manager seemed to be strategising nearly exclusively around keeping distance from the PI, he watched as Vincent elegantly slashed with his katana and absorbed hits as if they were nothing, with most hits bouncing off, yet a gash on his face that seemed to be from earlier didn't leak blood, but something else, and he watched as Krasnyy moved at inhuman speeds, mixing it up with clawed gauntlets, a combat knife, and a phone head that was definitely fake and made out of cast iron that he spun about on a coiled cable as a flail.

As the last bolt dropped, Gaz gave Fritz the all clear.

Fritz nodded back.

Vincent nodded as well, seeming to catch the unspoken signal.

Vincent threw all his rage at the old manager into a ferocious volley of swings, his face twisted into a rare occurrence of emotion, a deep scowl with nothing but fire behind the eyes. He felt rage. Rage at the man who had ruined his life and had caused his death; he wanted nothing more than for the man who had doomed him from day one to become a walking corpse to taste death for himself for once in his pathetic life. He hacked away with ferocity that would kill a normal man, yet the old manager still stood as the blade cleaved through him, and the bastard's next attack was aimed for a point on Vincent's body that was not covered by the metal of a melted springlock suit: his neck.

The manager carved a deep gash, one near identical to the wound Krasnyy sustained in 1993 during the 'Night 4 incident', into Vincent's neck, causing Vincent to stumble back and collapse.

Vincent's face shifted to another, more familiar emotion to himself: fear.

He scurried out of the way of the fight as to not become a hazard to his allies before assessing his injuries. As he didn't bleed blood anymore, he couldn't use the saline or blood IV's they had packed in the first aid kits to patch himself up. All he could do was bandage himself up and hope the wound healed on its own. He tried to grab his katana and rejoin the fray, but he collapsed again. He knew he had lost too much of his blood substitute to keep fighting.

He then watched as Mike pressed something in his pocket before taking a slash to his side that sent him tumbling across the floor. Attempting to apply pressure to the wound in his side whilst cradling his injured arm, he scurried to the sidelines as well. Instead of patching himself up, he intently watched Daniel Discord's location, holding his thumb in line with equipment unseen to gauge the man's proximity to Fritz's setup.

Knowing what Mike was doing, Vincent patched Mike up, being careful as to not nudge him.

"NOW!" Mike yelled as the manager stepped near the edge of the pit.

In a pre-coordinated manner, a series of events played out like a dance.

The doors flung open.

Verity, Danni, and Carl rushed in.

PT, Jeremy, and Krasnyy dove out of the way.

Fritz released the mechanism and a wrecking ball's worth of scrap slammed into the old manager, knocking him off balance and causing significant wounds where the metal had penetrated his skin, causing the wounds to leak what looked like a mix of blood and mercury.

Verity, Danni, and Carl unleashed a hail of bullets upon the old manager.

Whilst the manager only acted as if he was being pelted with pebbles, that was the point.

He stepped back a little too far and his ankle twisted about the tiles on the edge of the pit. The fragment of tile cracked beneath him, and he was sent plummeting into the depths below.

The gaping hole in the floor seemed to swallow him whole.

Mike, Krasnyy, Jeremy, Fritz, Vincent, PT, and Gaz rushed to the edge to see what had become of the old manager, and all they saw was a glimpse of his limp body getting dragged away by metal tendrils.

Verity, Danni, and Carl looked down just too late to spot it.

Whether Adelaide would kill him or not or whether he died from the fall or not was not anyone's concern.

As it became apparent that this fight was over, Mike droped down to his knees and cried.

[🌹 Turning results 🌹]

As Sylvia sat down to write her investigation report, May patched up the injuries that had been sustained during the fight against the C location manager, and everyone else begun to document and analyse the evidence. Everyone but Mike. He didn't want to look at the corpse pile.

"I knew them…" Mike choked between tears, "I knew all of them. I should have protected them better. … I'm a failure."

Sylvia looked up mid report.

"You're not a failure," She stated. Despite only knowing Mike since she was 16, he had practically raised her since then. She seemed to have adopted his plight too, as she had felt the same way whenever any of the megaplex's night guards became injured. But this was worse; people who Mike had trained had died. "You trained them well. Dude, I trained Gaz, and he told me about how he was out of his depth in the fight against the manager in there. This place is just worse than we could have ever imagined."

"I should have predicted this. I should have predicted him being here," Mike stared at the floor as pools of tears were absorbed into the fabric of his jeans.

"How. Look. Look at me." Sylvia placed her hands around Mike's face and forced her to look at him, "These past few weeks, you've updated me on the VR environment that you infiltrated and the results of the clone 46 experiments, you've updated me on on the special delivery investigations, and you've prepared the raid. You may be an ace Investigator who can turn almost anyone to your side, but you're just that: a master of solving what has been, and using LOGIC to figure out what could be. Seeing the future to the degree that would have been needed to figure this out pre-riot wasn't your job. Fuck, it wasn't anyone's. Faz Ent has NEVER attempted mass homicide on that level before. Five people is one thing. The attempted murder of about 200 people and the successful murder of 30 is another. May I remind you that our resident seer, Gregory, whose skills as a seer has let us find things he or any it us logically shouldn't have known about, wasn't able to predict even half of this crap. Even with the info from this Raid so far. Also, two days after the breach, I basically fed him all the Riot camera feeds. And he still didn't think that something like THIS would be going on down here. He's ran predictions of this place from the breach incident, and whilst we were setting up the abseiling equipment, he ran the predictions again for a present prediction. Not one of his predictions saw ANY of this. He wasn't even able to predict Adelaide turning Luis into a ferral assassin. And that's with you bringing him up to date with C location's incidents. That old manager has been down here since before the Riot. Given that none of Gregory's predictions involved that man, well, then there's something more to this that we've never been able to realise."

"Like, some kind of mental block on the true nature of this place?" Mike questioned. When he was analysing evidence, he wasn't crying, so Sylvia just had to keep him busy.

"Yeah. Evan is an Afton, so it makes sense that William would be able to somewhat taint his son's deductions to focus on him and only him," Sylvia replied, "after all, he didn't predict me catching up to him in the prize counter, or the daycare attendant getting Freddy, and he apparently dealt with everything he did after six, getting the message evidence and saving my sister, all in one shot - or so he says. Whilst startlingly accurate, he knows that it's not the be all and end all."

"So I need to deduce… What… Happened…" Mike's face sunk and froze. He begun to shake.

He felt as if he couldn't take it.

Sylvia didn't want him spiraling. She whacked him on the back and yelled "Snap out of it dad! It's going to be alright! We've got an investigation and a raid to finish."

Sylvia had seen Mike as a surrogate father since she ran away from home as a teenager. Thanks to Joy putting Mike down as a legal guardian and there being a warrant out for Bill's arrest, Mike had been able to keep Sylvia from having to go back to Bill's house when some goons tried to cite the divorce proceedings to try and drag her back to that abusive dumpster fire.

Even over a decade later, Sylvia had considered Mike to be more deserving of the title of dad than Bill ever was.

She didn't want to see him like this.

"Right," Mike pulled himself together as much as he could for his surrogate daughter's sake. Everything was eating away at his psyche, but he could address that later. He had to do what he did back when he worked at Freddy's: push away the mental breakdown for later and focus on surviving.

"That's the spirit!" Sylvia grinned before she resumed writing her reports.

Mike nodded and approached the staffbot that Sean posessed. With a deep breath, he asked, "Excuse me, Sean? could you tell me how you died?"

"I'd love to tell you, but remembering it is… Difficult," Sean's ghost gave a grim expression. It was clear that it wasn't the whole pain of dying thing that was what was making it hard to remember, but something else. "You see, I remember my death being… Particularly bloody. But that conflicts with what's in here."

Mike gave a solemn nod. "Just tell me what you remember."

"Well," Sean answered, "we came down here and saw that restaurant, and the doors were open. We figured that because we were in the sinkhole, there really wasn't anything to worry about." Sean sighed and sat next to the staffbot. "I was so fucking naive. We walked inside, and that man was standing there. I recognised him as the old manager of the Freddy's location that I used to work at, so I ordered everyone to run back to the elevator. But by then, the doors to this restaurant were already locked. We couldn't get out. I tried to buy time whilst everyone else tried to get the door open, but the generators outside were holding it shut. Then, he threw his knife at me. It landed in my shoulder. I tried to grab it so I could fight back, but he was on top of me within a second…"

Mike could hear Sean's voice shake as he spoke. Mike didn't know what to say, so he crouched down so he was eye level with Sean's ghost and placed a hand on his shoulder - more accurately, Frederico locked Mike's arm and wrist once his hand touched the ghost's shoulder, but it was the thought that counted.

Sean took a deep breath, despite being dead and having no lungs to breathe with anymore. "He stabbed me, repeatedly. You saw my body. But I don't get how no blood got on the floor. I don't remember a tarp. I'm… Not even sure if that memory is real or if this staffbot had enough remnant crammed into it to fuck up the one thing I had left: my memories."

Mike thought about what Sean had said. "How did you know the generators were holding the door shut."

"Figured it out in post," Sean replied, "after I woke up dead in this staffbot, I found that the generators were hooked up to the thing that was keeping the door shut from the outside. We didn't know what was keeping it shut before we died."

"Noted," Mike nodded, "anything else?"

"Not really," Sean shook his head, "I don't remember much else. But something I know is that I couldn't turn the generators on myself. These robots have noodle limbs and the amount of loose wires? Believe me, I tried…" Sean then shuddered. "I heard the others screaming. I couldn't open the doors."

Mike wanted to try and comfort Sean, but couldn't think of anything to say. He couldn't tell him it was going to be OK, because Sean was already dead. Tears pricked at his eyes as he said the only comforting truth he COULD say. "I'll… Make sure you and everyone else gets a proper burial, and that your family gets answers."

Mike then felt a tap on his shoulder.

"I was identifying the bodies, and I found something odd about some of them," Dr May Schmidt stated, "Bite marks."

"Bite marks?" Mike was concerned and slightly horrified.

May nodded. "And one body that was at the bottom of the pile has a pulse, and seems to have some bizarre mutations."

"Someone survived?!" Sean exclaimed and looked over at the pile of bodies. Most had been respectfully laid in body bags, yet some were still in the open.

May hesitated. "It's best if I showed you them."

May walked over towards one of the bodies. Sean moved as fast as the staffbot that his ghost was tethered to could go, and Mike followed behind.

The body in question was easily identifiable from the rest.

It was the only body hooked up to an IV drip.

Veins could be identified through the silver lines that snaked across the skin. The individual's chest was broad, and their arms matched. Tearing on the clothes showed that this physique was part of their mutation. Their fingernails seemed to have mutated into claws. Half their face looked like a burn scar.

"Remnant…" Mike grimaced as he looked at the individual.

"These are not the same sort of symptoms that Carl, Gregory, or Sylvia demonstrated…" May stated before looking to her brother for input, as he seemed to hold a look of recognition towards these mutations.

"But they DO match Daniel Discord." Mike completed his sister's statement.

May nodded.

"These are the symptoms of extended use. One injection stays with someone forever; it's main impact may vary depending on the individual, but it but doesn't cause mutations; only the silvering of veins around the injection site." May showed Sean a diagram in a paper she authored on the effects of remnant on individuals based on interviews from people she'd managed to contact who had been kidnapped by Faz Ent and subsequently injected with the stuff. "But multiple over a long stretch of time… I have reason to believe that the temporary effects remnant offers, healing and making more remnant, is what causes these mutations. She must have had a lot of remnant put into her bloodstream in a short period of time…"

"She?" Sean asked. He didn't seem confused: he seemed horrified.

May nodded, "she best matches the description of the youngest member of the construction team. Female, early twenties." May traced the silver veins of the mutated woman to multiple open wounds and to her mouth. "From what we know, the bodies were initially injected with remnant so that they'd produce more remnant than normal. That must have saved her life in the first place. Then after, she must have ingested a lot of it through the bites and from remnant leaking from the others into her open wounds. From what I've gathered, she had to resort to discreetly cannibalising the bodies that were on top of her to survive."

"Lilain?" Sean's ghost crouched by the woman's side. The hulking body seemed to stir.

May stumbled backwards as the hulking woman sat bolt upright upon opening her eyes. Well, eye. One of Lilain's eyes was covered in scar tissue that had been mostly obscured by her auburn hair. She seemed terrified, yet calm.

Carl looked up from the documents he had found, took one look at the woman, and froze.

Krasnyy looked up from pouring over his own pile of pilfered documents and furrowed his brow in a quizzical manner. "Remnant ghosts? Not remnant visions?"

"Remnant ghosts," Carl nodded. He could see the entire construction team huddled around Lilain. The only reason why he could see them was the remnant in his chest from the Micheal Brooks MCI kids. Over the years, it had let him see many things he wasn't supposed to. Mostly remnant and any ghosts that were bound to the remnant though.

Krasnyy, on the other hand, whose body was not full of remnant, contrary to what the porcelain-like scab that covered one of his forearms may lead one to assume, could only see a distortion that was a suggestion of ghosts hovering around Lilain.

"Could you show yourselves? We're friendly." Krasnyy yelled across the room to the ghosts.

Everyone in the room was now looking at Lilain and the ghosts of the rest of the construction crew.These ghosts were now confirmed to be the last signals from the CNS made external, bound to the remains of their memories that leaked from their bodies as they died. Ghosts that were both remnant and electrical. Remnant ghosts.

Hence why no second 'ghost' of Sean was among them. These were not visions of the memories stored within the remnant. These were the actual ghosts of the construction crew, bound to the remnant that was ingested by Lilain.

These were not remnant visions, memories from the construction crew made visible through remnant.

These were thier actual electrical ghosts, bound to remnant. Just like almost every single MCI.

This was confirmation that they were all completely dead.

"You guys are going to want to look at this," PI Jeremy Fitzgerald grimaced as he took a file covered in rubble dust over to Lilain. He'd found the file alongside a key behind the hole in the diner floor. "I believe that they intended this to happen to you."

The file contained few documents, all hastily written in the old manager's handwriting. The ink was dry, and on second glance, looked like dry blood. The blood was as old as the corpses in the room. It detailed recreating the transformation that happened to that old manager on 'any of the construction crew who survive', and going on to say 'If being killed and injected with remnant doesn't kill them, then the condition of the corpse pile they'll be in will be sure to cause them to transform'.

It was some fucked up shit.

"The old fuck was trying to recreate what he'd done to himself," Jeremy glared at the hole in the floor as if to glare at the old manager, "trying to recreate things is about the only thing he ever did."

"So what you're saying is that he killed them to not only create a bulk load of super potent remnant, but to try and recreate a mutation process?" Carl inquired into the PI's line of thought. Whilst Carl was more familiar with William's original work, he knew that every other location was wildly different in both motive and methods. It was clear that the 'C' used to denote the location that Jeremy and his close friends worked at was not only a location signifier, but also short for 'Copycat'. With that new information, a lot of documents that Jeremy had found during and after the warehouse and Pizzeria Simulator incidents in the mid 2000's that he'd handed over to him with little to no context suddenly made a lot more sense. "Now the security guard host club comment on that bit of paperwork makes sense."

"Yes, and," Jeremy's brow furrowed at the host club mention, "can we not talk about the old manager's cover story he gave to the investors as to why the only visible difference between 0 and C locations was an increase in guard/patron interaction. I get it, it's funny, but this is a serious situation can we drop it."

"I found information about the glamrocks original plans!" Julian announced, as if on cue to dispell the awkward situation. "This also has plans that talk about the mass layoffs and how they wanted to handle it."

"What does it say!" Krasnyy beamed at his kid finding a new lead.

"Well, they wanted to kill some staff specifically to put souls inside the glamrocks. Rachel Collins grandfather was going to be killed for Freddy, Leo would have been killed for Glamrock Bonnie, … And that lady was supposed to become chica…. And for Monty…. Let's see…. Wow… Elsa and Jenkins were supposed to be on the chopping block too as backup plans for if any of the other guys were fired or escaped… And … Whoa, MY name's on here too?! What so you think made them back out? Normally if you're named in a document like this, you're dead."

"Do - do any of us know Grandpa's name?" Sylvia asked, slightly embarrassed.

"Nope," Julian shook his head, "he's in the system as just Grandpa as his first name and Collins as his surname."

"Right, well, they tried to kill Leo. Long after Bonnie got annihilated," Sylvia answered Julian's first question, "and as for why they didn't, I think I know why: William had a hard enough time getting Ness to function as his meat puppet. Putting souls in the Glamrocks would have meant there would be something in there that could override his code. So keeping the animatronics as code with a side of remnant made controlling the animatronics easier and meant that he wouldn't have to deal with four or five extra souls competing to piss him off. What about the meeting?"

"Right, the meeting notes!" Julian exclaimed before skimming them. "They were going to shoot Des and hoped that the staffbots and endos would be able to overpower the entire staff force."

"Well that was a pathetic plan." Sylvia cringed at how incompetent Faz Ent was. She was kinda glad for it, but the thought that this much pain and suffering was caused by incompetent bufoons who don't even know what humans will do to survive somehow made it feel even worse.

"I want to get deciphering these ASAP!" Julian was practically dancing in place, feral with a burning need to figure out everything these documents had contained within them.

"I found something regarding what Faz Ent wanted to do with my maintenance firm, but I can wait," Anna said, "I have to face off against that pair of bastards behind all of this."

"I can make a start…" Nora stated, far meeker than her usual brash self. The fact that she looked as if she was boiling alive definitely had everything to do with it though, "I found some documents that link what they wanted to do with us to what they wanted to do to you, and if I don't get outa here soon, I'm going to burn up from the inside."

"That'd be great," Anna said as she handed Nora the documents, "and make sure you hike the BACK of your shirt up BEFORE you remove the fireproof vest. You've already lost half your wardrobe that way."

"Yeah, I'll remember," Nora begun leaning on Tristan a bit for support. Mike knew she was on the verge of passing out, and Mike was one of a few people privy to why due to her tipping him off about the more cultish side of Faz Ent, so he knew that it was about time to enact the third phase.

"Right," Mike announced, "everyone, you each have a choice. You can either help bring up evidence, or stay for the final fight. If you bring evidence up and out, you cannot come back down, so all of it needs to go up at once."

"Sadie, Andy, and I will be getting the bodies to the surface," Morcant stated.

"So if anyone else is coming up with, bring as many documents as you can. I have plastic wallets." Andromeda added as she placed a bunch of plastic wallets on the floor.

"Lilain? Are you coming with us?" Sadie asked the sole survivor of the construction worker massacre.

Lilain shook her head. She seemed to have unfinished business down here.

"Right," Sadie replied, "do you have anything you can't carry on your person easily that you would like us to take up?"

Lilain shook her head again.

"Ok," Sadie nodded and smiled, "good luck!"

"Well, I've got everything I need," Patty said as she had filled her entire jacket with who-knows-what and likely so much documentation about how staffbots worked that it was untrue.

"I will head up also," Verity said, "the risks of me facing off against the likes of William is something I have considered, and I don't want to risk being forced by him to turn my weapons on you guys. I assume that's why Morcant and Andromeda wanted to head up too, is that correct?"

"Yeah," Morcant replied.

Over the next few minutes, everyone else decided if they were staying or going.

Mike, Jeremy, Krasnyy, Fritz, PT, Vincent, Ness, Sylvia, Gregory, Mina, Anna, and Luis amongst others stayed.

Morcant, Sadie, Andromeda, Patty, Julian, Verity, Nora, Tristan, Izzy, and Charles amongst others begun to clear the room of evidence and corpses until it was more empty than Gregory's deductions of the room had it be.

"I trust you and your crew have this under control," Charles signed to Anna before leaving with a coat full of evidence.

"More than under control," Anna replied as she watched him and many others evacuate the premises, leaving no scrap of evidence behind.

Once the room was cleared out and only those ready to face William head-on remained, Mike got a ping on his phone despite the lack of signal.

"Oxana here. Got the update from Syl. We've repaired and are deploying the bear. He should be able to help you in the upcoming fight. It'll be a mental one, I can tell, one based on ghost power and shit. You'll need him to at least take the heat. Hope your squad's good at resisting possession, or if they're not maybe they're good at this 'reverse control theory' idea of hers.

And as for Ness, I'm detecting a specific signal from the pit below you. Phantom BB should be there, so Ness may stand a chance against William if they can cooperate fast. You don't need to worry about that heirloom of hers either, as it's long been destroyed. I'll explain what it was when you're back up here. Pretty interesting stuff.

Toodles!"

Familiar metal footsteps echoed, and Gregory rushed up to meet them.

"Freddy!"

As Freddy and Gregory reunited outside of his peripheral vision, Mike looked down into the giant hole in the floor, and he figured that this was going to be a very long morning.

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