Today was the day.
In just a few minutes, the nightmare of three decades would reach its imminent, fiery, and glorious end. Everything would finally be over.
Michael Afton was sitting in the most uncomfortable office chair the Fazbear corporation had ever managed to manufacture in its history, but at that moment, it felt like a throne to him. He had full faith that Uncle Henry understood his silent desire to end his miserable existence. And, frankly, even if the old man didn't understand, there was no way to stop the hell that was about to break loose underground.
Michael was going to die here today. That was, by an overwhelming margin, the most comforting idea he had harbored in his rotten head in the last thirty years.
For over three decades, he had wandered the world as a walking corpse. A purple, putrid shell, held together only by the dark science of Remnant, his own stubbornness, and a ridiculous amount of peppermint gum to hide the smell of death. He had spent his adult "life" dodging awkward questions, living in the shadows, and battling literal ghosts and robotic aberrations that defied the laws of physics and common sense.
But today, Michael could finally rest.
Leaning back in the chair, its springs creaking under his unnatural weight, he waited patiently for the ventilation systems to shut down once and for all and the whole place to blow to pieces. Everything was in sepulchral silence, except for the rhythmic and annoying hum of the air conditioning and the flicker of the CRT monitor screen in front of him.
Michael turned his head, the dry tendons crackling in protest, to look at his little co-pilot. Helpy. A miniature animatronic he had built and modified himself in his spare time to help him with the administrative tasks of this fake restaurant. He had poured into that little white bear all the disgusting amount of robotics knowledge he had acquired over the years. Unfortunately, he wasn't at all proud of having inherited that technical genius from his father, William. But well, he consoled himself by thinking that as long as he didn't use those talents to create machines designed to kidnap infants and crush them, his karma stayed at an acceptable level.
Static.
A sudden, sharp electrical crackle broke the monotony of the room. It came from the intercom system in the labyrinthine hallways surrounding his office.
Michael's eyes widened, or at least, the metallic, whitish orbs that now occupied his sockets. The moment had arrived.
Henry was finally closing the trap. Michael didn't know whether to let out a hysterical laugh or cry with relief. He probably couldn't do either; his tear ducts had dried up in the nineties, and his lungs barely worked.
However, when the voice echoed through the poor-quality speakers, Michael's non-existent stomach lurched. It wasn't the deep, tired voice of Henry Emily.
"You played right into our hands. Did you really think this job just fell out of the sky for you?"
No. This couldn't be.
Michael frowned, his pale, skeletal fingers gripping the edge of the desk. It had to be a sick joke from the universe.
"No. This was a gift. For us. You brought them all together, in one place. Just like he asked you to. All those little souls, in one place. Just for us. A gift."
It was Scrap Baby's voice. Her voice, clear as crystal, dripping with a grotesque mixture of childish innocence and psychopathic bloodlust.
Michael sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers. Had Elizabeth managed to intercept the building's network system, or had she just hacked the main intercom? More importantly, had she done anything to hurt Henry?
He sincerely hoped not. Much of this elaborate and stupid plan depended on Henry being alive and crazy enough to press the button that would start the purifying fire. Michael had spent the last week surviving on stale coffee, enduring constant attacks from three murderous robots thirsty for his blood (or whatever little was left of it). Molten Freddy, an amalgamation of wires and fury; Springtrap —his damned father—; and his own sister, Elizabeth.
The only one who hadn't tried to rip his head off was Lefty. Charlie. Bless her gentle soul, even trapped in that one-eyed black bear, she still had more humanity than the rest of her biological family combined.
If Henry was dead, Michael would have to start the fire himself. The only drawback to that Plan B was that he would have to crawl through the ventilation ducts to the main control room. That wouldn't be easy with three two-meter-tall metal monsters patrolling the hallways. Michael was, literally, the only piece of meat standing between them and the elevator leading to the surface.
"Now, we can do what we were created for. And be complete. I'll make you proud, Daddy."
Of course. Michael rolled his eyes. It always came back to William Afton. Everything orbited around that black hole of human misery.
He couldn't entirely blame Elizabeth for her delusional fanaticism. Agony and remnant corrupted the mind, distorting memories and amplifying the worst obsessions until they became unshakable guidelines. Elizabeth was nothing more than a scared little girl seeking approval from a monster. She always came back to that damn son of a bitch, William.
"Watch, listen, and feel whole."
The static returned, this time much louder, like a metallic screech that pierced eardrums. Michael had to cover his ears with his hands, feeling the sound vibrate the fragile shell of his own body.
And then, it stopped abruptly.
"Connection terminated."
The voice that followed was like a balm to Michael's tortured psyche. Deep, solemn, heavy with the weight of countless regrets and an unshakable determination. It was Henry.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you, Elizabeth. If you even still remember that name. But I'm afraid you've been misinformed."
Michael's tense shoulders fell. He let out a long sigh, a raspy sound like crushed dry leaves. He didn't have to improvise. He wouldn't have to crawl on the floor like a rat to light a match.
He was immensely grateful he didn't have to face those robots head-on. Even with the strange resistance properties granted by being a corpse possessed by his own soul, he wasn't sure he could win a hand-to-hand fight against solid steel animatronics in hallways barely a meter wide.
Still, cynicism dictated that he should never let his guard down. Michael kept the Taser firmly gripped in his right hand. With the illegal modifications he'd made the night before, that thing could send a rhinoceros into cardiac arrest. If any of them managed to break down the metal door, at least he'd give them one last shock before burning.
He settled into his chair, noticing for the first time that the air conditioning had stopped humming. In its place, a dull, heavy heat began to seep through the floor vents. The fire had started.
Almost immediately, his body reacted. The Remnant and Agony holding his dead tissues together began to vibrate violently, sending panic signals to his primitive brain. His survival instinct screamed at him to get up, to run, to smash the door and flee the death trap.
But Michael ignored his instincts. For the second time in his miserable existence, he pushed them aside.
The first time he ignored that knot in his stomach, he went down the elevator to Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental and ended up being gutted by a giant mechanical scoop to be used as a skinsuit by a spaghetti of robotic wires. Since that incident, he had blindly trusted his paranoia.
But this time... this time was different. Michael wanted to die. He was at peace with it. He could feel the heat licking the soles of his shoes and, for the first time in decades, he felt truly warm. He was happy.
"You are not here to receive a gift," Henry continued, his voice resonating with an almost biblical authority. "Nor have you been called here by the individual you assume. Although, you have indeed been called. You have all been called here. Into a labyrinth of sounds and smells, misdirection and misfortune. A labyrinth with no exit. A maze with no prize. You don't even realize you are trapped."
A dull, metallic thud shook the office. Reinforced steel doors fell like guillotines in every corridor of the building, sealing off any possible escape route. The monsters were locked in.
Michael, ironically, knew the override code for his own section. He could open his office door, run to the staff emergency exit, and maybe get out with third-degree burns. But he wouldn't.
This was his end. His destiny. He had gone from a cocky teenager to an accidental murderer, to a walking corpse, to a janitor hunting monsters. It was time he stopped being a mere anomaly in the natural world.
"Your thirst for blood has led you in endless circles. Chasing the cries of children in some invisible chamber, that always seems so close, and yet, somehow, out of reach. But you will never find them. None of you will. This is where your story ends."
Smoke began to seep under the office door. It smelled of melted plastic, burnt oil, and something stale, like old carpet. The fire was undeniable now. It crackled from the lower levels, slowly consuming the soundproofed walls. Michael could feel the scattered metal endoskeleton parts around the office beginning to radiate heat.
Overwhelmed by the suffocating temperature, he raised his hands and took off the white bear mask he used to hide his repulsive, disfigured face. He placed it gently on the desk, right next to the flickering monitor showing that the building's temperature had just exceeded one hundred degrees Celsius.
Michael, technically, didn't feel pain the way a normal human would. His superficial sense of touch had died long ago. But he felt a deep discomfort, a kind of itch in his soul. His Remnant was boiling, terrified of the imminent purification by fire.
"And to you, my brave volunteer," Henry's voice suddenly softened, losing its harshness and filling with a melancholy that broke what little heart Michael had left. "Who somehow found this job listing that wasn't intended for you. Although there was an escape planned for you... I have a feeling that's not what you want. I have a feeling you are exactly where you want to be."
Michael smiled, a twisted grimace on his purple face. He was right. Henry understood him. The old man had always been more perceptive than William.
He'd have to thank Henry later, if by some cosmic coincidence they ended up meeting on the other side. Although Michael highly doubted it. All he could wish for was that Henry's soul would finally rest in peace, alongside his daughter. If anyone deserved to go to heaven, it was that poor, tortured old man.
As for Michael? He was pretty sure he had a first-class ticket on the express train straight to hell. Not only for causing his little brother's death, Evan, in a stupid attempt to be funny, but for all the indirect lives he'd shattered by not stopping his father in time. He accepted his damnation.
"I will stay too," Henry confessed, his tone indicating an accepted fate. "I am close. This place will not be remembered, and the memory of everything that started this can finally begin to fade. As it should for the agony of every tragedy."
The speakers crackled again.
"And to you, monsters trapped in the halls: be still and give up your spirits. They don't belong to you. For most of you, I believe there is peace, and perhaps warmth, waiting for you after the smoke clears."
Through the thick walls, Michael could hear the distant, high-pitched screech of twisting metal. It was Molten Freddy, and shortly after, the distorted, furious scream of Scrap Baby echoed from some infernal hallway of that labyrinth. The fire had reached them.
He listened, sharpening his unnatural hearing, but he heard nothing from Lefty. If Charlie was still there, she made no sound. Michael suspected that she, like him, had understood what was happening from the start and was simply sitting in silence, waiting for release.
"Although, for one of you..." Henry's voice turned icy, dripping with a pure, concentrated hatred that made the falling ashes from the ceiling tremble. "The darkest pit of Hell has opened to swallow you whole. So, don't keep the Devil waiting, old friend."
For the first time in several decades, Michael laughed.
It wasn't a nervous giggle, but a hoarse, guttural, genuine guffaw that tore through his dry throat. He was surprised he still had the capacity to make that sound. He guessed a small part of his human personality was still there, buried under layers of trauma and rot.
He really hoped William Afton would rot in the deepest, hottest pit the Underworld had to offer. He wanted his father to feel a fraction of the agony he had inflicted on all those innocent souls. He no longer held personal resentment towards his father as a son to a parent; he had transcended that. He simply felt disgust. An absolute contempt for the actions of an irredeemable psychopath.
For a fleeting second, he wondered if his father would have been different if Elizabeth hadn't died. Or if Evan hadn't been crushed by Fredbear's jaws.
But he shook his head, brushing the smoke from his face. Who was he kidding? Obviously, the man was already a functional monster long before the tragedies fell upon his family. Why else would a normal family man build underground entertainment robots equipped with child storage tanks and isolation sensors?
Michael sighed again. Not worth thinking about. The fire would cleanse it all.
"My daughter," Henry's voice broke for the first time, barely a whisper through the burning speakers. "If you can hear me, I knew you would return as well. It's in your nature to protect the innocent. I'm sorry that on that day... the day you were left to die, no one was there to lift you up in their arms, the way you lifted others in yours. And then, what you became... I should have known. You wouldn't be content to disappear. Not my daughter. I couldn't save you then."
The fire had completely engulfed the office door and side walls by this point. Sparks rained from the ceiling. The intercom system itself was melting, dripping black plastic, and yet, Michael was amazed that Henry's words still rang out with perfect clarity. It was as if God himself, or whatever deity was watching this disaster, had paused the destruction just long enough to allow this father to say his last words.
And he did, speaking for the last time in his life.
"So, let me save you now. It's time to rest, for you, and for those you have carried in your arms... This ends. For all of us. End of communication."
The monitor screen exploded in a shower of glass sparks. The lights went out completely, leaving the room illuminated only by the fierce orange and red glow of the flames that now devoured the desk and climbed up Michael's legs.
He closed his eyes.
He was ready. Ready to stop walking in this cursed body. Ready to end the stain of the Afton family on the world. And, in a small, desperate corner of his mind, ready to see his brother and his mother again.
Sitting in his chair, the flames embracing him like old friends, Michael ignored the agonizing scream of his own dark Agony that resisted fading away. He embraced it. He let the fire strip away the inert flesh and purify his bones.
His last coherent thought, before the heat consumed his ghostly nervous system, was a fleeting and amusing curiosity about what it would be like to reincarnate into a normal life, maybe as a boring accountant or a baker.
Then, the flames devoured him completely, and everything, finally, went black.
Silence.
A floating, peaceful void.
No beeping monitors, no ghostly wails, no smell of rusted blood or reheated plastic. Michael felt he was adrift in an ocean of stillness. "So this is the end," he thought. "Not bad."
And then, he opened his eyes.
Disappointment hit him harder than the mechanical Scoop.
The first thing that assaulted his vision wasn't pearly gates or white clouds, nor was it infernal sulfur pits. Instead, he found himself standing before a two-dimensional landscape, strangely pixelated yet tangible at the same time. The sky above him was a sickly scarlet red, the trees looked like crimson cardboard cutouts, and the grass beneath his... boots?... was absolute coal black.
Before him stretched an immense lake that wasn't filled with water, but with a thick, bubbling, shimmering liquid that looked like arterial blood, yet gave off a subtle digital glow.
Michael recognized where he was immediately. He had been in a similar plane before, in the deepest corners of his lucid nightmares when his mind brushed against the code of the spirit world.
He hated this place. He hated it with every non-existent fiber of his being.
"Hello, Anomaly," said a deep, raspy, monotonous voice, which sounded like stones grinding at the bottom of a cavern. "I apologize for summoning you this way, disturbing your well-deserved end, but what I have to tell you is of utmost importance."
Michael slowly turned his head, feeling a mixture of existential fatigue and extreme annoyance. A few meters away, sitting calmly on the shore of the lake of blood with a fishing rod in his hands, was a figure. A giant, red, crudely polygonal crocodile.
It was Old Man Consequences. The guardian of the depths, the janitor of the digital purgatory, or whatever that cosmic entity wanted to be called.
Michael frowned. It had been a long time since anyone called him "Anomaly." Although he found it an incredibly pretentious nickname, he never corrected it because, let's face it, it sounded a bit mysterious and intimidating, and Michael liked to maintain a certain tough-guy aesthetic in front of supernatural entities.
Without saying a word, Michael simply raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms and silently demanding that the giant lizard explain himself.
Old Man Consequences fished for a few more seconds before sighing, a sound that rippled the red lake.
"What's with your favoritism for staying silent?" the Old Man complained, without taking his eyes off the water. "You could say hello. It's rude to ignore the host."
"What's with you and your terrible sense of timing for critical messages?" Michael retorted instantly, his voice sounding strangely human and clear, free from the harshness of his burned vocal cords.
He was a bit surprised to hear himself, but maintained his defensive posture. In general, he didn't like to talk; he didn't see the point when he was a walking corpse that scared anyone just by opening his mouth. Besides, silence always made him look cooler in front of entities.
Old Man Consequences let out a dry chuckle, a vibration that sounded like low static.
"Good point, kid. Touche."
Seeing that Michael was still staring at him with a look of wanting to kill him a second time, the Old Man tugged on his rod and continued.
"I know you thought it was all over. You thought you could finally rest. But, unfortunately, your soul has refused to move on, despite your conscious wishes."
"My soul?" Michael tilted his head, squinting. He raised a hand and looked at it. To his surprise, he wasn't a purple corpse, but looked like himself before the mechanical scooping. Young, alive, human. "What are you talking about, lizard? I was ready for the abyss."
"Yes. Your mind accepted it, your body was gladly destroyed, but your soul felt something... a pull. It felt the job wasn't finished. So you remained inactive, yet active at the same time in the intermediate plane."
"Excuse me?" Michael rubbed his temples. He'd been dead barely a minute and his cosmic head already ached. "Are you speaking to me in Zen riddles on purpose? What does it mean to be active and inactive at the same time? Am I Schrödinger's Cat now?"
Old Man Consequences didn't seem to find the irony amusing. His pixelated eyes fixed on Michael with a gravity that chilled the blood.
"There was a disturbance. Something your soul felt before crossing. It felt someone."
"Felt who?" Michael asked, and a pit of ice settled in his chest. He hoped, prayed to any available god, that he wasn't referring to...
"Him," Old Man Consequences confirmed. "Your father, Michael."
The ice turned to fire. Tension invaded Michael's shoulders, and a familiar, burning rage began to fill his spiritual form. His fists clenched until his metaphorical knuckles turned white.
"What the hell do you mean?" Michael spat, taking a threatening step toward the entity. "My father died! He burned in that damn trap Henry and I set! I checked the hallway cameras! There was no way he could escape that reinforced steel labyrinth! We made sure of that. That nightmare was supposed to end once and for all!"
Old Man Consequences nodded slowly, like a disappointed father giving bad news to his son.
"And it would have been. If it weren't for Cassidy's reckless intervention."
Michael stopped dead. He blinked. "Cassidy?"
"Yes. Her." The Old Man sounded genuinely tired, as if he'd dealt with too many bureaucratic problems in purgatory. "Before your father's soul could sink into the final abyss, where he would be truly judged and punished, she grabbed him. That child's thirst for vengeance is... insatiable. Her hatred for William blinded her. Instead of letting him go to the real hell, she held onto his soul and built her own pocket hell for him. A personalized torment, where she has absolute control."
Michael brought his hands to his face and let out a strangled groan of pure frustration.
Cassidy? Sure. The girl who shared the Golden Freddy suit with his little brother. He always knew that brat had unresolved anger issues, but this was taking it to another level.
"I... I thought she and my brother had found peace when I burned Fazbear's Fright years ago. Along with the rest of the missing children. I freed their souls, for God's sake!"
"You did, largely," the Old Man conceded. "But the attachment to suffering is powerful. Cassidy refused to let go of the grudge. I tried to reason with her. I told her to leave the demon to his demons, that she herself would become a monster if she stayed. But she didn't listen. And in the end, her hubris cost us dearly... He escaped from her little torture prison."
Despite the blinding rage he felt at this crappy revelation, that all his sacrifice had literally been for nothing, only one thought managed to pierce the red mist in Michael's mind.
"Wait..." Michael looked up, panic and guilt corroding his chest. "What happened to my brother's soul? Is Evan... is he trapped with her torturing our father?"
That thought sickened him. That his sweet, crybaby little brother was trapped helping in the eternal torture cycle of William. That's why Michael had chosen to die in that labyrinth; to ensure everyone was safe. If there was the slightest chance Evan was still suffering...
"Peace, boy." Old Man Consequences raised a hand to calm him. "Your brother's soul found true rest long ago. He moved on towards the light, as did your sister Elizabeth, when the flames of the labyrinth consumed their metal prisons. And your mother did too, long ago."
Michael let out a tremulous sigh. The knot in his throat loosened significantly. At least that had gone right.
But then, something clicked in his mind. He frowned in extreme confusion.
"My mother?" he repeated, staring at him. "What the hell does my mother have to do with this? She died of an illness when I was a teenager. She wasn't in any suit."
Old Man Consequences looked away towards the lake, shaking his head slightly with an evasive gesture that Michael didn't like at all.
"It's of no importance now. They are threads of fate that have already unraveled. What matters is the present, Michael."
The Old Man sighed deeply, the fishing rod disappearing from his hands in a shower of pixels.
"By escaping Cassidy's clutches, your father's fragmented soul managed to slip through the cracks in the digital code. It fled into the Fazbear system network and rebuilt itself as an extremely aggressive computer virus. An anomaly that took control of the new generation of animatronics on the surface."
Michael massaged the bridge of his nose. His cynicism reached stratospheric levels.
"Are you telling me... that my serial killer father turned into a cheap, pathetic knockoff of Marvel's Ultron, and his grand plan for global domination is restricted to the wifi of a damn pizzeria?" Michael let out a bitter laugh. "The universe is a bad joke."
"You could say that," the Old Man admitted. "We tried to stop him again. Me, from the shadows, along with a remorseful Cassidy who tried to fix her mistake, and with the unexpected help of a brave boy from the living world and his own animatronic, who was strangely immune to the corruption. It was chaos. But, at the end of that battle... something unexpected happened."
Michael's frown deepened. He didn't like how this sounded at all. Nothing about the word "unexpected" boded well when it came to his father.
"What happened next?" Michael asked, letting the weariness of a hundred lives seep into every syllable of his voice. "Just tell me already, lizard. It seems the universe physically refuses to let me die in peace. If it weren't for that spoiled little girl with an executioner complex, William would be one hundred percent dead and roasting on Satan's grill right now."
"Before William could be destroyed and his code wiped in a massive structural fire for the third time," the Old Man explained, emphasizing the ridiculousness of the situation, "he escaped through a threshold that I cannot cross."
That took Michael by surprise, replacing his momentary fatigue with genuine concern. As far as he knew in his time studying forced occultism and Remnant, Old Man Consequences was something akin to a universal deity. He could reach and fish out any soul, in any dark corner of the underworld. It was strange and alarming that the Old Man admitted there was a place outside his jurisdiction.
The Old Man couldn't interfere directly in the world of the living mortals, true. But once a soul had no physical body, or in William's case, had become a disembodied virus, Old Man Consequences should be able to hunt him easily.
"I don't like where this conversation is going, old man," Michael growled, crossing his arms again, adopting a rigid posture.
"Listen to me carefully. I need your help to capture William definitively. I need the help of my best anomaly," Old Man Consequences said with crushing seriousness. "Perhaps I cannot interfere or cross into this... different mortal plane, but you, as a human soul that has already demonstrated its ability to cling to the material world, can."
Michael squinted, slowly processing the information. He sighed.
"I see." Then he blinked repeatedly, his brain catching up with what he'd just heard. "Wait... did you say a different mortal plane? What are you talking about? Did he jump to Europe or something?"
"To a plane parallel to ours," the Old Man clarified. "That's why I can't catch his rotten soul. Because he escaped to a world similar to ours, but with slightly different fundamental rules and laws. A parallel universe."
Michael stared at the entity with total disbelief. His jaw went slightly slack.
"Are you talking to me about damn alternate universes?" he exclaimed with biting skepticism. "Are you telling me the multiverse exists and my father is using it to flee from his tax crimes and murders?"
Old Man Consequences let out another amused chuckle, the sound echoing in the red void.
"Do you think possessed robotic bears, soul juice that grants immortality, and digital purgatories are possible, but the theory of multiple universes seems far-fetched to you?"
Michael didn't find the comment funny. It was true he wasn't that skeptical after all the supernatural crap he'd survived. He knew about possessions, haunted circuits, and the dark science behind his family's horrors. But he always believed they were contained within their own small, miserable world. The idea that his father was now a multiversal plague was depressing.
"Whatever." Michael waved a hand dismissively, surrendering to cosmic stupidity. "Do what you have to do. Send me where you have to send me, lizard. I just want to finish this crap once and for all so my stupid, exhausted soul can finally sleep."
"I'm pretty sure that, once your task is done, you won't want to rest so quickly," the Old Man commented enigmatically, his eyes gleaming with a wisdom that gave Michael chills.
Michael frowned with deep revulsion, disgusted by the vague statements.
"What is that supposed to mean? I hate it when you get all mysterious."
"Don't worry about the details now." Old Man Consequences looked up at the crimson sky, his eyes narrowing as if he could see through the pixels into the fabric of the universe. "I'll only give you two vital warnings before you depart to this new world. First: the specific situation I'm going to place you in will probably not be to your liking at first, but you must know it is the only and most efficient way we can infiltrate you into this world to stop your father."
"And the second?" Michael asked, impatient.
"Please, don't be hostile or sarcastic with the raven girl," the Old Man said, looking at him sternly. "She is an entity like me, the local deity of that world. We had... negotiations to allow you entry. She has a peculiar temperament."
Michael Afton raised an unimpressed eyebrow, though deep down his morbid curiosity was piqued.
"Oh, great, local gods. What could be worse than being a walking corpse spitting out wires?" he asked rhetorically, rolling his eyes. "Don't worry, old man. I have no intention of angering a feathered entity that can probably wipe me from the face of the multiverse with a snap. I'm cynical, not stupid."
The Old Man laughed, a strangely warm sound. "She's not that bad. She just has an affinity for drama. You'll have to interact with her eventually to find out for yourself. Anyway, good luck, kid. And... I sincerely apologize in advance for dragging you back to the night shift, so to speak. I owed you one."
Michael shook his head, his expression softening slightly into grim determination.
"It's okay. This time, I'm going to finish him. I'll drag my father kicking and screaming back to hell myself. I promise. For all those souls he murdered. For Evan. For Elizabeth. And for my own rest."
The Old Man nodded sadly. "I hope so, Anomaly... I really hope so." Then he looked intently at Michael. "Are you ready?"
"Just do it already. And cut the damn drama, old man," Michael responded impatiently, mentally preparing to be sucked into a black hole or something similar.
Nodding, Old Man Consequences stood up. He raised a huge clawed hand and the bright red glow of the lake reflected intensely on his scaly face. Slowly, he brought the slightly irregular tip of his index claw and barely touched Michael's forehead.
The sensation was indescribable. It was like an absolute ice pick being driven into his brain, followed by a tsunami of glacial, icy waters that washed away every particle of his spiritual being.
Michael gasped sharply, barely able to contain the shiver that convulsed and enveloped his entire SOUL. His knees buckled.
In an instant, the oppressive, pixelated red light of that underworld was replaced. A white, pure, blinding light covered his entire field of vision. It suddenly smelled of... sun. Fresh grass and clean ozone. Spirals of luminous energy began to travel around his spectral body, spinning and coiling like bright, tight springs, joining and compacting him.
Michael's eyes flew wide open, stunned and fascinated by the majestic and terrifying spectacle of lights. He couldn't move, he was paralyzed at the core of the interdimensional transfer.
Old Man Consequences took a step back, lazily swishing his crocodile tail from side to side. Then, with a reaction that seemed shockingly casual for the critical moment they were living through, he gave a little hop in place.
"Oh! I almost forgot!" the entity exclaimed.
Still impressed by the colossal display of pure power the Old Man was exerting to tear the fabric of the universe, Michael barely managed to let out a hoarse grunt in acknowledgment. His mind was focused on not disintegrating.
"I'm going to send someone else to help you find William in that world," the Old Man informed casually, raising the volume of his voice over the hum of space magic. "They'll be waiting for you. Although they'll be very far from the insertion point where I'm placing you for a good while."
Immediately, Michael's internal alarm went off. He managed to move his neck with great effort to shoot a furious and surprised glare into the Old Man's eyes. "Huh?" he managed to croak. They were giving him a cosmic babysitter?
"It's for your own protection, you know?" the Old Man continued as if commenting on the weather. "That world is peculiar. The aura of reincarnation is heavy."
"Wait, I don't... I work alone!" Michael tried to shout, but the deafening noise of the white light was drowning him out.
"I know you'll probably be very angry about what she did, ruining your master plan in the labyrinth, but please don't hold a grudge when you meet, okay?" The Old Man winked a pixelated eye. "She is deeply remorseful for her past actions and swore by the River Styx not to cause any more trouble than strictly necessary. It's her form of redemption. So give her a little leeway, yes?"
Michael's eyes widened so much he thought they'd pop out of their spiritual sockets. Cassidy?! That traitorous lizard was sending the vengeful, psychotic brat as his teammate?!
"...I don't need anyone! Least of all a vengeful child...!" Michael roared, but his words were already fading into the echo of the void.
"Ah! And you won't have to worry about the language barrier in that country! I adjusted your cognitive parameters. Anyway, save your complaints for when you're walking, Anomaly. Bon voyage!"
"OLD MAN CONSEQUENCES, YOU SON OF A...!"
Before he could unleash the string of profane insults he had on the tip of his tongue, the radiance surrounding him collapsed upon him. An invisible, brutal gravitational force dragged him towards the sky beneath him. A warm, suffocating, sticky light enveloped his body, propelling him at dizzying speed through the ether.
Michael's mind was a hurricane of discordant emotions. He felt the residual sadness of his death, a volcanic rage towards Cassidy for messing up his sacrifice, fury at Old Man Consequences for being an epic dimensional troll, and a firm, cold determination to find William and burn every one of his cells from the face of the earth.
But above all, he felt... confusion. Everything was spinning too fast.
And suddenly, the movement stopped.
The first and most overwhelming thought that assaulted Michael's consciousness upon waking was that he felt like absolute and reverend crap.
His entire being ached. He was tired, exhausted to the marrow, as if he'd been pushed through a tube that was too narrow for hours. He felt a strange pressure in his skull and his limbs were painfully weak, numb, and uncoordinated. He didn't feel cold like in the janitor suit, but he felt a different kind of cold, exposed, as if he lacked clothing.
He tried to take stock of his situation. His analytical mind switched on, seeking to evaluate his body. He tried to flex his fingers, but barely felt a spasmodic movement. He tried to breathe, and that was the most shocking: he felt air filling two functional lungs, the frantic, undeniable beat of a living heart in his chest. A heart pumping real blood, not rancid oil.
But what jolted his mind out of its post-interdimensional-travel stupor and put it completely online, on maximum alert, were the cries.
And not any kind of ghostly wailing from the underworld. They were the shrill, biologically demanding, high-pitched screams of a baby. In fact, of two very noisy babies.
Michael tried to open his eyelids to see what kind of hellish nursery this was, but noticed his eyes were sticky, heavy, blinded by an overwhelming hospital white light.
He felt weak, useless. He tried to groan a complaint, try to articulate the word "silence," but realized with horror that his throat did not respond to the commands of an adult. From his own lips escaped an involuntary, high-pitched sound, a vibrant whimper that quickly turned into a full-blown cry.
He was crying. Involuntarily. Michael Afton, the animatronic hunter, was squealing like... well, like a baby.
What the hell did that overrated crocodile do to me? After a few seconds of pathetic struggle, using pure willpower and spite, Michael finally managed to open his blurry eyes. The focus took a while to adjust, the light from the fluorescent tubes above momentarily blinding him.
When he finally managed to focus, what he saw left him paralyzed with confusion.
"Oh, you finally opened your beautiful eyes," said a voice. It was soft, melodic, and strangely reverent.
Michael blinked, focusing his vision upwards. He found himself staring at the face of a giant young woman who was holding him very close, cradling him against her chest with an overwhelming delicacy.
She had asymmetric streaks of dark and purple hair falling over her face with a perfectly disheveled fringe. Her skin was pale and flawless, and she wore a radiant, warm, exhausted smile that lit up the clinical room.
But the most striking thing, the thing that made Michael's cynical mind stop completely, were her eyes. They were a deep pinkish-violet, and in the center of each pupil, a bright, perfectly defined six-pointed star shone.
To Michael, it seemed like the most ridiculous and anatomically impossible character design he had ever seen in his life, but somehow, on her, it seemed hypnotizing. Honestly, Michael had forgotten that such a genuine, trauma-free human smile existed.
"And you were born with mommy's visual genes, I see. You should be very proud," the giant woman whispered, the stars in her eyes beginning to shine with tears of pure joy.
Michael tensed completely, his tiny muscles locking up. His mind spun at a thousand miles an hour, desperately trying to rationalize what the hell was happening.
His fight-or-flight instincts, honed over thirty years of dodging mechanical claws in the dark, fired instantly. He wasn't used to anyone touching him, let alone an unknown giant hugging him in such an intimate and oppressive way. He wanted to take out his Taser, but his hands wouldn't respond.
"So, you're the last to arrive, a little late, huh?" the woman laughed softly, a friendly sound that bounced around the hospital room. Carefully, she raised a delicate hand and playfully touched Michael's nose, adjusting her protective grip. "But mommy doesn't mind that at all... my dear little Charoite."
Michael's brain made a scratched record sound.
Charoite?
Mommy?
In an act of pure panic, Michael looked down with the little neck strength he had. He looked at his own arms, wrapped in a soft blanket.
They were chubby little arms. Tiny, uncoordinated hands. No burn scars, no Remnant seams, no rotting purple skin.
They were the arms of a baby.
Damn it. Baby arms.
He had reincarnated as a vulnerable biological infant! Old Man Consequences hadn't sent him as a spirit to possess a strong body, nor had he given him a new adult body. He had inserted him at the beginning of the damn life cycle!
And worst of all... the name. "Charoite." A dark purple gemstone. Was this for real? Was it some kind of cruel cosmic joke for having been "the purple guy" in his past life?
Didn't this young and beautiful purple-haired mother know that naming a child that was basically asking for him to be bullied in high school? Charoite. Sounded like a brand of French detergent, or a bad stripper name, Michael thought bitterly.
Before his adult mind could even try to collapse into a well-deserved panic attack over this strange and humiliating situation, two small moving lumps caught his peripheral vision.
The giant woman—his supposed "mother"—turned slightly, bringing Michael closer to two adjacent hospital cribs from which the other cries were coming. Michael slowly turned his head towards the figures and was greeted by the sight of two other newborn babies. One with dark blonde hair and the other with strangely bright light blonde hair, both staring at him with an unusual curiosity, almost unnatural for infants who were minutes old.
"Aquamarine, Ruby, look!" the young mother proclaimed with immense pride, her voice dripping with a love that gave Michael a strange emotional indigestion. "Your little brother finally opened his eyes. Look at Charoite, your little brother, your triplet."
Michael stared wide-eyed at the two babies. His dazed mind finally grasped what the stranger with the starry eye had just said.
Triplets? These noisy babies with stupid geological names were his biological siblings?
Michael felt a sudden and overwhelming need to vomit the milk he hadn't yet consumed. He was trapped. Trapped in a useless body that soiled itself, with an anime teenage mother and two brothers he'd share diapers with. And all in a foreign country to hunt a computer virus possessed by his father.
Before any other logical, analytical, or strategic thought could form on how he would survive infancy for the second time in his miserable existence, a single thought screamed in his conscious mind, echoing across the multiverse with the fury of a thousand burning suns:
OLD MAN CONSEQUENCES!... YOU PIECE OF SHIT!