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He held his flashlight tight enough to whiten his knuckles, ears straining for any sound he could hear. Check the closet, shut the left door, turn around to ward off the plushies, he moved as swiftly as he could. He could feel tears, he must be crying but he couldn't stop to wipe them. No time: left door, right door, closet, bed, no time, left door, right door, closet, be-
He messed up. He could feel it’s claws around his neck, lifting him off his feet. It’s glowing red eyes stare into his soul. It ignored his desperate struggles as it drew him closer, opening its huge mouth. He screamed. He screamed and screamed and screamed and screamedandscreamedandscreamedandscrea-
“Boss~ Mikey~ Time to wake up~”
Michael Afton awoke silently in his chair, he didn't reach up to rub the empty sockets that once held his eyes, didn’t stretch out his non-existent muscles, didn’t even yawn, those mortal habits have been lost to him for years now. In fact, if one wasn’t already familiar with the man would have had trouble telling the difference between the corpse’s waking and sleeping states. Fortunately for him then that his current, and only, companion just so happened to be very familiar with him. Said companion giggling at him from the monitor.
“Lolbit, has the compiling finished?” Mike began tapping away the large computer in front of him, only sparing a glance at the orange and white face that had acted as his only company for over thirty years of living in this hole. He was certainly surprised when he crawled his way back to the bunker that had taken his life only to find a laughing, animated funtime foxy in place of the Handunit he was familiar with. Not that Lolbit, for all their jokes, wasn’t infinitely more useful than the barely functioning (and, Mike suspected, maliciously coded) AI that he was expecting.
Michael frowned at the date plastered to the bottom of his screen, three days, not the longest he had slept at once, but far longer than he liked.
“You should have woken me sooner.” He muttered sourly as he began shifting through the accumulated data, thirty years ago none of this would have made sense. Sure, he always had some talent for mechanics, hard not to when both your father and uncle were obsessed with robots, but all the technical stuff would make his head spin. There was something to say however about spending the majority of one’s life in a madman’s workshop with nothing to do but learn everything you could. Mike definitely learned, his father was insane, but he was also very meticulous with his notes. Every disturbing detail, every deranged experiment to come from his father’s twisted quest for immortality, and once he ran out of things to learn, he began to run his own experiments (minus the murder parts of course). Which led him here, staring at a wall of code that, if he did this right, would let him finally, finally, let something good come from the hands of an Afton.
“But Boss, you need all the beauty sleep you can get!~” Lolbit laughed at his complaint, letting their 'body' shift monitors, appearing on Michael’s main screen and shifting themselves from their normal appearance, that of a disembodied foxy head, to a small full-bodied one dancing slightly in the corner of the screen. “Or are you saying you’d had rather spend that time listening to my fabulous jokes?~ Cause I came up with some good ones~” Lolbit laughed as they felt Michael’s cursor grab them. Not one to pass up on a good visual joke, Lolbit graciously let him pick them off and toss them out of the screen, landing in one of the auxiliary monitors in an exaggerated heap before pantomiming dusting themselves off. “Now that was just rude. If I didn’t know better I’d think you didn’t love me anymore~” The exasperated look Michael sent their way, one of the only emotions he never got out of the habit of using thanks to Lolbit’s company, set the AI off on another laughing fit that lasted until after Mike deemed the code satisfactory and saved it.
Michael opened up the internet browser and checked his inbox to see if he had received any new commissions during his nap. Michael didn’t have many monetary needs: he didn’t need food (having no organs will do that to you), clothes (there was an entire storeroom full of unused Afton Robotics uniforms) cleaning supplies, (wasn’t like he or Lolbit had any sense of smell anyways), or even electricity (Michael wasn’t sure where Father got the money to install an entire power generator in his secret child-murdering workshop but he won't complain). He did however have an internet connection, and he’d rather not lose it any time soon. There were only so many things to use to keep one’s sanity in a dimly lit bunker and Michael had run out of them decades ago. So Michael put his hard-fought programming skills to use in various freelancing jobs, soaking in whatever income he could between his personal work and his regular fits of hibernation.
Unfortunately for him, it seemed like he was destined for another dry spell, nothing but a few adverts and one or two updates from online artists he followed. (hey, even zombies needed hobbies.) He was about to write the day off altogether until he took a quick check into the spam. There, buried in countless scams and promotions, was something that drew his attention immediately, otherwise unremarkable if not for the title.
“Freddy Fazbear Entertainment Franchisee: Site owners wanted!”
Michael almost instinctively clicked on it, in shock at seeing that familiar name and logo plastered at the top of the email. He hasn’t seen or heard anything about his father’s old company since that ill-fated attempt to open a horror-themed attraction that burned down before its first day. Yet here it was, bright and colorful and filled to the brim with the familiar corporate jargon that acted as a mainstay in just about every rendition of Freddy’s. The site (which he accessed after running a thorough virus scan) cheerfully explained how it was looking for a “Forward-thinking entrepreneur, eager to take that chance and invest in their future!” or, as Mike found more likely, someone with some money to burn and disinterest in looking up things before they dive in. The stated goal was to begin the franchise’s restart by opening a location right there in Hurricane.
However, the more Michael read into it, the more odd things stood out. More odd than what one would expect from someone wanting to revitalize a franchise best known for pain and loss, only to shuck off the actual job of doing just that to some random person. Suggestions for people with strong nerves and good hearing, warnings about things creeping in through deliveries, and mention about some sort of salvage bonus. Michael was no fool, and he could tell when something was up, even if he couldn’t quite tell what. It was obvious to him that whoever put this ad out had a plan for Freddy’s that was more than just bringing an old pizza joint back. And with that in mind, Michael made a decision.
“Lolbit, how much do we have saved up?”
“WHAT!!” Lolbit exclaimed, their avatar jumping in shock at the question. “You’re not really thinking about taking this up, are you?!” Lolbit moved back to the main monitor and began making a show of trying to damage the website. “On the off chance this isn’t some scam, do ya really want to reattach yourself to that place?” Genuine concern, something rarely shown by the jovial fox, filled their voice as Lolbit stared at Mike something approaching hurt in their look.
Michael mostly ignored his friend’s tantrum, opting instead to begin filling out the application with the fake information he’d been using for the past few years. “Better me than someone else. Besides, something’s off with all this. Whoever set this up has a plan, and I need to find out what it is. Too many people have used Freddy’s for their own machinations for me to just sit back and ignore it.” He tried his best to smile comfortably as his friend wilted, Lolbit knew Michael was right, even if they didn’t like it.
The reply came barely a day later, cheerfully announcing how “he was chosen to head this prestigious opportunity!” Interestingly enough, Michael couldn’t find any mention of just who this mysterious new CEO was. There was no signature anywhere in the document, nor was there anything about any sort of interview, either by call or in person. It was obvious to Michael that whoever was behind this had a reason to not let their name get out into the public, and that could only mean one thing. Whoever set this up knew something was going to happen at this new pizzeria, and either wanted deniability or felt that their name being attached to the project would harm it somehow. Either way, Michael knew he needed to get to the bottom of this. Plus, with a new Freddy’s open, it was possible that Liz- that Ennard could be drawn in, Michael might finally be able to rest if he could just…
Mike stopped that line of thought, even after all those years he couldn’t stand to even think about what he would do if he ever met that abomination again. What he would have to do if he truly wanted to rest. Heat, he knew, could end him, burn the remnant from his body and free his soul once and for all. But could he pass on, knowing his sister was still out there, mad and alone with only the demented voices of murderous AIs for company? No, Michael needs to end this, and this opportunity was his best bet on doing just that, regardless of what his mysterious “benefactor” was planning.
After transferring the money, and being given directions to the decided location, Michael began preparing for his first true trip outside in many years when he realized one small problem in his otherwise perfect, flawless, totally-gonna-work-shup-up-Lolbit plan. Regardless of his hard-fought talents, actually running a successful pizzeria was not one of them. Michael was, plainly stated, entirely crap at managing anything moneywise, much less the other aspects of owning a restaurant: handling shipments, hiring employees, marketing, and god knows what else would be needed to keep the place afloat. Mike racked his metaphorical brain, searching for a solution to his new, last-minute crisis until his vision fell onto the small figure slumped on a table. His project, just about ready to activate but quite forgotten in all the excitement over the restaurant. It was perfect! Michael found himself rushing to his desk, an idea planted firmly in his head.
“Lolbit, I need you to gather as many guides to running a business as you can!” Michael’s hands flew across the keyboard, lines of code springing into existence as Mike’s manic vision took form. He added a space for all the information that needed to be used, as well as the necessary callbacks to allow it to access said information. The rest of what he needed was already there, just needing to be connected to the new lines. By the time he was done, Lolbit had collected plenty of documents on business strategies and guides, and Michael had nothing left to do except plug it all in and hope for the best. He pressed enter and stared at the wires leading from his computer, almost feeling as if he looked hard enough, he could see the data moving down the line into what could either be his magnum opus or the waste of years of work. His eyes now were on the small, white bear sitting on the table as the computer softly dinged to announce the successful transfer of data.
_ _ _
Michael pulled at the collar of his shirt nervously as he sat in his new office. He had managed to find one of his father’s old suits in the bunker, a scratchy old golden and purple set that seemed just the perfect size to be both bulky and restricting at the same time. Looking back he shouldn’t have bothered, there wasn’t anyone there to meet him at his new restaurant, just a key hidden under a mat and a couple of cassette tapes stacked up next to a player that was already old back when he was alive. Alone with his thoughts and the buzzing in his ear that told him his illusion disk was running.
Well, not totally alone. He currently had the company of one small bear swinging its legs while it sat on the table. He only realized that he didn’t give yet unnamed helper any sort of voice after it was too late, but on the plus side its slapdashed management protocol seems to be working, and it expressed an eagerness to help through its writing. Fortunately, it seemed the mysterious CEO had a hunch that their hapless employee might not have been a business major, and made the running part of running a restaurant as easy as possible. Such as limiting his purchases to a few in-house dealerships and having pre-hired staff to work the dayshift. And so, Michael Afton began his first day as the new owner of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Place, and the last week of his life.