Okay, so here we have the final chapter of this installment of Misadventures. Let's get on with the show, then~

Skylar arrived at the pizzeria the next day to see the door locked and a police car in the parking lot, along with her boss's car.

"What's going on?" she asked as soon as she reached Valerie.

Valerie sighed. It had been a long night. "Someone broke into the pizzeria last night," she explained.

"Is Schmidt okay?" she asked, remembering the night guard.

"He's been shot," her boss replied. "He's in the hospital right now. Hopefully, he'll make it."

"I can take the night guard job until he gets back," Skylar offered.

Valerie paused. The girl didn't know the truth about the animatronics, and Valerie preferred to keep as few people knowing this as possible. To her knowledge, only she, Mike, his sister Amanda, and now Vincent knew that the animatronics were alive. "I'll think about it," she eventually said.

X

Mike groaned as he opened his eyes, his chest hurting like hell. Then it came back. He'd been shot.

His eyes shot open. The animatronics. Were they okay? Did they try to kill that guy again after he lost consciousness?

He tried to sit up quickly, but a new wave of sharp pain kept him down.

"Whoa, there, tiger, easy," a woman in scrubs warned him. She must be his doctor. "You know, Mike Schmidt, you're one lucky man. Anyone else would be dead right now."

"Never thought a genetic mutation would come in handy," the brunette joked. "So, uh, how did I get here?"

"Well, you remember being shot?" the doctor asked, earning a nod from the night guard. "Well, your boss arrived at the pizzeria and called 911."

The animatronics must have used the office phone to call her, Mike thought. At least the damn guy's behind bars...

"Now that you're awake, I can let in your visitor," the doctor said with a smile, stepping aside to let Amanda in.

"Amanda!" he said. "How the hell did you hear about this?"

"Your boss called. You've got a pretty badass boss, taking that guy down like that," his sister said.

"She wasn't the one to tie him up," Mike informed her once the doctor left the room. "Freddy and company did."

"Huh," Amanda said. "I'm surprised that's all they did. I mean, isn't he the guy that killed those kids in '87?"

"Yeah, he is. And they were going to, I just managed to stop them before they did," Mike replied.

"Good thing you did," Amanda agreed. "Otherwise, your boss would have a lot of explaining to do."

"I'm going to need you to do me a favor," Mike told her. When she gave him a questioning look, he said, "I need you to call my boss and see if she'll let you take care of my job while I can't."

"Since I already know about the animatronics," Amanda finished. "Got it." She made to leave, but stopped in the doorway. "You know, Mom and Dad aren't going to let this go for a long time."

"Please don't remind me," Mike said, placing his left hand to his face slowly. They already tried hard enough to get him to quit his job. This definitely wouldn't help matters.

X

"Situs inversus?" Chica asked. "What's that?"

Amanda smiled at the chicken, sitting backwards in one of the chairs in the Dining Area. Valerie hadn't had a problem with letting her take her brother's job for awhile. "It's a really rare genetic mutation that mirrors the internal organs."

"I'm not following," Bonnie stated, a little confused.

"Okay, for example, a human heart is usually here." She placed her hand over her heart. "But thanks to situs inversus, Mike's heart is here." She moved her hand to the opposite side of her chest.

"So if he didn't have this thing," Foxy started, "Mike'd be dead?"

"Deader than a doornail," the woman confirmed. The clench in Freddy's fists did not go unnoticed. "But since he did, he's fine. He's going to be gone for a few weeks, recovering, so I'm filling in. But he'll be back before you know it."

"Next time you see him, tell him we said hi," Bonnie requested.

X

Mike pried his gaze from the window when he heard a knock on his door, dreading who it might be. His parents had already come in, first worrying over him and then, predictably, pushing him to get a new second job.

He was slightly surprised to see a head of spiky hot pink hair looking at him.

"How're ya doing, Schmidt?" Lucy asked, stepping into the room.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, stunned. She was his coworker from his day job, and he'd gotten shot only a few nights ago. "How did you even know what happened?"

"It's all over the news," Lucy replied, sitting on the edge of the bed. "The guy gave a full confession about what he did a long time ago, and shooting you. He's behind bars, and I heard they released the guy they had locked up all this time instead."

Mike didn't doubt that that was because he was terrified out of his mind of the animatronics.

"Luckily, you've got a bunch of vacation days built up, so the boss-man isn't making too much of a fuss of you not coming in for awhile," Lucy continued.

"Okay," he said. He was curious, though. "Is the only reason you came, to tell me that?"

"Dude, you're, like, my only friend at work," the teen informed him. "I was worried about you, so I thought I'd come see you."

"Thanks," Mike said with a small smile.

X

He stood outside the door, suddenly wondering if this was a good idea. It would be weird, after all, to have some guy he didn't know just walk in, but he felt like he had to do this.

He ran a hand through his hair, freshly cut and washed clean. It still felt sadly odd to be wearing anything other than an orange jumpsuit, but he couldn't be more grateful. And that gratitude was exactly why he was here.

Deciding to take a chance, he opened the door.

The young man in the bed, Mike Schmidt, according to the papers, turned his head and looked at him, confused.

"I know you don't know me," he began, "but I had to come say thank you." At the even more confused look, he added, "I'm glad they were finally able to get things straight and put that bastard where he belongs."

Mike watched him for a moment, connecting the dots. "You're him, aren't you?" he asked. "The guard that they arrested."

He nodded. "My name's James Hewitt. But you can call me Jimmy." He smiled a little. "It's thanks to you that I'm a free man."

Mike laughed a little before wincing. "All I did was get shot."

"And make friends with the animatronics, right?"

Mike froze. "You know about them?"

"Oh, right, they don't walk around anymore, do they?" Jimmy asked. "Ever since Foxy... Anyway, yeah. I know. They were the ones that tied the guy up, right?"

"Well, I couldn't exactly do that with a hole in my chest," Mike joked.

"So, how are all the animatronics?" Jimmy asked.

"Well, they've definitely been worse," Mike said, referring to the way they felt when they learned what they had done to all of the previous guards. The older man in front of him might not know about that, though, but Mike wasn't about to open that can of worms.

"And Foxy?" the older man asked. "Did they ever find out what made him snap like that?"

"Turns out, that murderer, Vincent, hacked him and set him to snap so he could use him as a distraction to get the kids away from the crowd," Mike informed him. "And even though it's not his fault, he's never forgiven himself for it."

The two men continued to swap stories about the animatronics, from their days of walking around up to 1987 to their antics at night for the next several hours.

And that's the end of Scene of the Crime. I warn you all now, it's probably going to be awhile before I start the next installment, since college has been pretty emotionally rough for me, which is why it took me so long to get to the last chapter. I've been pretty depressed lately, sometimes forgetting what it's like to feel happy, so I need some time to feel better so that my depression doesn't detract from my writing. I hope you all understand, and I'll see you next time (probably in late December, as that's when the fall semester ends).

See you next time~