Author's Note: In the previous chapter, Derrick made several statements that engaging in physical intimacy somehow made one more mature. It was never the author's intention to imply this is true in any way, and the disclaimer "opinions expressed in this fanfiction do not necessarily reflect those of the author" definitely applies.

"Well, at least your kid boss isn't blowing his budget on the facade of this horror house," Jeremy remarked once he and Mike were alone, eyeing the cheap plywood panels leaning against the trailers, their wet paint still glistening in the sole overhead spotlight.

"Trust me, he's doing the best he can with what he has to work with," said Mike, dropping to his knees to study one of the panels that would eventually be bolted over a framework to hide the attraction's humble origins as a jumble of trailers. "His dad was far less than confident about this project from the start, so he's holding him to a pretty tight budget, I imagine to minimize his losses if it doesn't go over well."

"I wasn't knocking the craftsmanship by any means," Jeremy was quick to reassure him, walking along the line of painted panels, most of them featuring menacing animatronics. "Man, this is some amazing airbrush work. If his enterprise doesn't take off for whatever reason, he should give some serious thought to opening his own studio. He could do custom vans, guitars, you name it! Did he attend art school or is he self-taught?"

Mike's face fell. "He told me he took one year of art school, only to quit. I can't tell if it was to spite his father or because he lost faith in his chances of seeing it through. Maybe it was a little of both." His mind drifted to the conversation they'd had the day before, with Randy confessing he had drifted through a myriad of attempts to start his career and yet failed to find anything satisfying, always returning to his father's park as a place of refuge when his other plans fell through. His admission had hit a little too close to home, reminding Mike of himself at the same age and well beyond, minus the built-in safety net.

"Ugh, that's harsh," Jeremy said, recalling his family's lack of faith in his attempts to make it in the cutthroat music industry. They had only come around once he had diverted his efforts to a more practical career of repairing instruments, and even then had done little to disguise their disappointment until his small business had actually taken off.

"I wish he'd reconsider, though, because you have to get a load of this," Jeremy said with a low whistle of appreciation. Hurrying over, Mike's jaw dropped at the painting of a security guard, unmistakably modeled after himself, standing in heroic pose, a defiant grin on his face as he held one hand outstretched toward Freddy Fazbear as if he was blocking the character's approach. Behind him, two young children were depicted peering over his shoulder, smiling and cheering on their brave protector.

"He made you look positively badass, like some kind of comic book character!" Jeremy exclaimed, clapping Mike on the shoulder. "Man, I wouldn't be lying if I said I wasn't at least a little envious by this point. This job's going to be downright sweet for you."

Mike chuckled. "Yeah, at least until the guests find out there aren't any real animatronics in there and that the guy sitting in the fake security office is really just some middle-aged chump in a moldy old work shirt watching the cameras. What a ripoff, right?"

"For crying out loud, can't anyone grow up around here?" Clyde exclaimed in pure annoyance as he arrived with Derrick at the security office for his last day of training only to find their shared desk strewn with multiple small foil packets, as well as copies of the local drive-in's schedule that had been clipped from the newspaper. "What a nice parting gift from all my coworkers," he sighed, his voice dripping with sarcasm, "but I think some people forget this is a children's establishment." Reaching out an arm to sweep the lot into the wastebasket, he halted when Derrick protested, wisecracking about not being wasteful.

"Fine, help yourself. Despite what everybody thinks, it's not like I really have any use for them," the rookie officer frankly admitted, watching Derrick incredulously as he stuffed the pockets of the jacket he'd slung over the desk chair. "Gee, how many do you need? On second thought, don't answer that." He threw his hands up and chuckled unconvincingly, trying to prove his spirits hadn't been broken forever, only to notice his mentor looked deeply unsettled for a change.

"So get this," Derrick said pensively, dropping to the chair and twirling one of the packets between his fingers as if he was studying it in great detail. "That squad car that's parked out front? Those are hardly an uncommon sight around here lately thanks to recent events, but the police chief's been talking to Faz all morning and from what I managed to overhear, they're not so sure old Hermie's their man anymore." He shook his head in disbelief, his long strands of dark hair swaying beneath his ball cap and revealing the faint purple blotches that marred his skin on the rare occasions he grew highly agitated.

"Really?" asked Clyde, feigning surprise. "What do you think made them change their tune?" Before dawn he had met Marjorie at the local donut shop, where she had told him of the police chief's plans to interview their manager about Hermie a second time, at least until the bus that would take her to her first semester of dance school and a new chapter in her life had pulled up outside the restaurant, forcing them to exchange a hasty farewell.

"Beats me, and honestly, even if he walks, it's not like he'd ever darken the doorstep of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza ever again," Derrick said, rubbing the mottled skin on his arms. "I wouldn't blame him for holding an enormous grudge against this place and everyone who has ever worked here; after all, you were the only nutjob who ever entertained the idea he might be innocent. But you realize that this will only put the suspicion back on us?"

"I've got to admit, until you called I never thought I'd see these cretins again," Jeremy said, lifting the eyeless headpiece of BB, his defunct restaurant's cheerful balloon vendor. "At least this little guy was mostly a harmless nuisance once I got used to him." He let the facemask fall back into the box, remembering the childish laugh of the diminutive character as it had echoed through the ventilation ducts, indicating the persistent animatronic had once again mistaken him for a guest in need of a free balloon and was trying to reach his security office by any route possible.

"And then there's you," he continued, gingerly turning over the empty shell that had been part of the restaurant's remade Foxy character, who had been affectionately renamed "Mangle" by his fellow workers. Stripped of its fearsome outer row of formidably sharp teeth and removed from the endoskeleton machinery that had powered the character, Mangle's mask looked as innocuous as any of the others, no more frightening than one might expect to find an anthropomorphic fox character with ruby-red lips, rosy cheeks and a bright pink snout.

"I'm still shocked those were kept this long," Mike said cautiously, watching Jeremy from his seat at the desk and quietly wondering if he had made the right decision to invite his friend along on what was only his second shift. "I guess Randy's planning on moving them into the main attraction eventually, since it hardly makes sense to stow them in the pseudo-office where hardly anybody is going to notice them." His brow furrowed as he cycled through the various camera views on the wall-mounted monitor. "Then again, he insisted he found something far better, though I don't see any sign of whatever that could be."

"Hey, Germ, you okay?" Mike's voice trailed off uncertainly as he noticed his friend's fixed gaze on the vulpine facemask.

"You're going to be okay, Jeremy!"

Clyde's statement had come across as more of a plea than reassurance. As shock set in, Jeremy had collapsed to the ground, one hand clutching at the paper cloth covering the nearest party table, sending uneaten plates of cake and ice cream to spatter the floor around him. In any other circumstance it would have been pure slapstick hilarity, but the skeleton crew of workers left to cover what was to be the concept restaurant's final birthday party had just witnessed nothing but abject horror. The venue's only remaining security guard, pulling a double shift, had fallen victim to their worst nightmares, a malfunctioning animatronic's horrifically mistaken attempt to protect the young party guests from would-be predators.

Jeremy only vaguely remembered the stack of napkins, printed up in the restaurant's energetic "Let's Party!" slogan in bright red ink, being clamped to his forehead and promptly being soaked through while Clyde had fumbled with the cordless phone he toted around more often than not, summoning an ambulance.

"You're right, I'll be a-okay," Jeremy had assured them, even flashing his friend a thumbs-up seconds before everything had gone dark.

Let's Party.

He had not been a-okay, at least for a long time.

"I'm beyond okay," Jeremy said, a triumphant grin spreading across his face. "And we're cool, Mangle. It wasn't your fault anyway." He reverently set the headpiece down in the box amongst the remnants of its comrades.

1984

"You're seriously closing the flagship location instead of that sumphole of a satellite?" Derrick sputtered, confronting Nathan Faz about the rumors that had been making the rounds in recent days.

"I'm no happier than you are about it, but I'm afraid it has to be done, and I might add that it was hardly my decision alone," his manager replied sternly, leaning forward in his desk and rubbing his temples in exhaustion before regarding the security guard standing before him. "This restaurant may have once been the crown jewel in our chain, but we've tried hard for two years to turn around its reputation to no avail and we can hardly afford to hemorrhage money forever. Maybe I shouldn't blame our guests for the decline in patronage; outside of morbid curiosity it's only human nature to avoid places that were the site of tragedy." He watched Derrick's hands curl into white-knuckled fists as he no doubt contemplated the loss of his workplace.

"For that matter, sometimes they downright bulldoze a place that just can't lose the stain of its past, but I can assure you that won't be the case here. We'll at least keep this building as a warehouse for the old animatronics while our team works on the new concept."

Derrick set his mouth in a straight line at the mention of the concept restaurant the company's design crew was supposedly working on. An ambitious project beyond the scope of anything Fazbear Entertainment had undertaken before, it would be years in development and promised to feature an entirely new generation of animatronics, a revamped menu, and a fresh take on children's entertainment.

...None of which really mattered if it meant he would be out of work in the interim, Derrick thought bitterly. "Well, if we're going to be down to one restaurant, I guess I'll put in a bid to work night shift security over there," he said aloud, his jaw dropping when Faz shook his head.

"As much as we appreciate your dedication over the past five years, we've come to a decision, and Clyde's going to stay on the job," he admitted, smiling apologetically. "He runs a pretty tight ship over there and I'm a firm believer in not fixing things that aren't broken, so to speak."

"What about things that are broken?" Derrick growled, leaning forward on the desk supported by both arms. "I've been stuck working night shift for the last two years because the animatronics here have gone completely out of control once the lights go out, but that kid gets to turn the key in the lock every night after closing and head home!"

Faz remained calm in the face of his employee's outburst. "Exactly. The satellite doesn't even require a night guard, and that actually was a factor behind the decision to close this location versus the satellite," he explained patiently. "It's simple economics. Don't tell him I said this, but the characters at his restaurant really are as docile as their caretaker. I still haven't figured out why the band here gets so aggressive once the guests leave." His shoulders fell as he looked down at the desk he would soon be vacating. "Considering how advanced their A.I. is, maybe they really were affected by seeing something terrible the night those kids went missing."

He put a hand on Derrick's shoulder. "You're not the only one left in a lurch by this. It's still going to be at least another two, maybe three years before the concept's truly ready to launch, and I'll need to pick up a day job myself during that time." He cleared his throat, already imagining himself combing through help-wanted advertisements in the newspaper. "If you need me to put in a good word for you when you're applying for work, I'll be happy to do so, and we wouldn't mind having a seasoned veteran like you return once the new restaurant is operational."