V is for Vengeance

I pushed open the mahogany door. Surprisingly, it was unlocked, and no alarms went off. For a nefarious group which branched off from the CIA, they had low standards of security. I guess that was because they were nearly impossible to find through either psychic or physical measures.

Luckily we had found Lukas. As Samantha had said, “He’s constantly dying, and surprisingly, dead people have much higher psychic powers.” I still remember seeing that vivid vision of the utter destruction of Animus in Portsmouth, Massachusetts.

Now our entire rag-tag group was here in the middle of the town. I don’t know how we all managed to not kill each other, but I supposed we had only been together for a few days, so we still had time for that later. I would never imagine I would have to destroy Animus with my enemy, Ares, but I guess it’s true what they say the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

As for Lefty, on the other hand, after all this time, we had finally come to an understanding. This was a chance for us to redeem ourselves, to finally put an end to this painful legacy.

As I walked through the halls making my way over to the front to let the rest in, I passed rows of deformed sets of black armor and stole one of their curved swords. These people were rich, but I guess even that couldn’t save them from their twisted views and tastes. Maybe it was the money that made them this way. I suppose the selfishness that lead to loads of money also lead for the desire to have whatever they want even if it hurts others.

I unlocked the doors and pushed open the wooden panels. “Finally!” Samantha said brandishing the knife she had stolen from the police evidence locker as she brushed past me. Her eyes were that icy blue color that they were when had first found her at her house. I can’t believe Lefty had convinced me to bring her along on this mission, or that Samantha had convinced her mom we were actually teachers picking her up for a field trip. I did wonder if this was not the first time she had used her powers against family to her own advantage.

Ares rushed in behind her bare handed. We had only found a few guns at the evidence locker, and Ares decided I was the only one that couldn’t kill with my bare hands. That was fair, but I was still sure I could get more kills than him if he didn’t have his horrific friends.

I remember the horror that he caused to that officer Burke at the police station. The officer was just trying to do his job, but Ares decided that Shadow Freddy should make sure he wouldn’t be able to do it for a long while. I’m 100% sure he would have killed him if we didn’t stop him. Of course, this did not endear him well to either Samantha or Lefty.

I’ve never seen such pure unadulterated malice until I watched Freddy as he slammed into the officer just because he caught us. I had completely lost any trust for Ares. He was a manipulator, had been one since he was just Subject A, and now I felt he was just manipulating us for something new.

"Listen Michael, I don't like him." Samantha said, as if responding to my thoughts. "He wasn't part of my visions, I don't know why. But he's here for the same reason as we are, so..." she trailed off.

Lefty followed behind. Surprisingly, I trusted them the most. They had originally been my enemy, but now I had been with them enough to trust them. Also they were older and stronger than Samantha, so if it came to a fight I would take them along any day.

“Find the entrance.” I said running my hands along the wall feeling for a button or lever.

“The entrance? The entrance to what?” Ares said as he joined in the search.

“I saw this house in my vision. Now this is a big manor, but I really doubt a worldwide group like Animus would be operating out of a single house. Look for passages or underground doors.” I said as I threw a candlestick onto the ground off the mantle.

“Found it!” Samantha yelled from the other room.

“How did you find it so quickly?” I asked rushing in.

“Well I mean it’s an uncovered elevator in the middle of the living room,” she said walking into it. “Going down.”

We all rushed into the elevator which was an extremely bad idea. It was a big elevator, but the group wasn’t made up of normal sized humans. I was just barely able to squeeze past Lefty to press the button marked 4 as it was the one right below us on this 3 story house.

It was a long elevator ride down for just a single floor, but when the doors opened I realized why. The entire floor was a full model town complete with a screen sky, houses and a large river that flowed around its entirety. It was extremely silent due to the utter lack of animal life, but soon that silence was broken by the muffled screams coming from a nearby house.

Lefty was first to lead the charge, and he was soon breaking through the door into the house. There tied up were two young women, one of which had Chica’s beak buried in her arm. She was the one screaming as she was being eaten alive by the robotic chicken. All the while, a faceless withered Bonnie was looming over the other.

As the first woman took her final breaths, Chica turned to other and charged only for it to be stopped by Lefty’s bulking frame. They grabbed the chicken's head and with one quick twist, they had ripped it clean off. Bonnie then tried to grab onto Lefty with its one arm, but they delivered a brutal elbow to Bonnie's midsection, before swinging it over their shoulder and onto the ground, before crushing the faceless head with a single stomp. He looked at it for a second and then turned to me holding the robot’s head which still dripped blood from its beak (that image would haunt my nightmares for at least a month).

“That’s- that’s- that’s my aunt.” Samantha said using her knife to cut down the young, blonde woman. Samantha’s face went white as a ghost as she saw the patch of blood matted hair at the back of her head. “Can you carry her?” Samantha said looking at Lefty, “We don't have time to take her back to the Jeep just yet, so I guess she can come along, but you have to promise to keep her safe.”

“ɪ ᴡɪʟʟ. ɪ ᴘʀᴏᴍɪsᴇ ᴏɴ ᴍʏ ʟɪꜰᴇ.” Lefty said, picking up the unconscious woman.

As we made our way out of the house I saw one of the people I hated the most, Father Meisberger, walking away whistling some ungodly tune. I snuck after him, P22 in hand, ready to end his evil presence on earth. As soon as I had a clear shot I hit his knee stopping him dead in his tracks. I couldn’t just kill him; he had to see his executioners.

I grabbed his shoulder and threw him down. “Forgive me Father for I have sinned.” I said raising my gun to his face, striking him again and again until blood poured out of his mouth and nose. I could see that he could recognize my purple suit and puppet mask instantly, and now he quivered with fear.

“A-a-Animus will stop you!” he stuttered as he spit blood on my foot.

“Animus is dying, and when it dies I’ll still be here.” I said as I pushed the barrel harder against his head and wiped the blood off my shoe, “I only have 5 shots left, so one of them must have your name on it.”

I can, um, tell you about your father,” he said quivering. ”You would like that wouldn’t you little Michael?” He raised my hand to his trying to get me to back down.

I...am...not...a...slave anymore!” I said knocking his hand out of my face, “You are going to die, Father, just know Michael sent you to hell.”

I pulled the trigger sending out a second bullet. The bullet thundered as it went through his gut. A quick death would be too easy. I motioned to Ares hoping to get real justice.

Ares walked over and summoned Shadow Freddy and Bonnie. They bent down onto the injured "priest" and bit into his face and chest. As the two shadow animatronics feasted on him, he let out a final scream.

As soon as Father Meisberger let out his final scream, Charisma woke up, started screaming, and banged her fists against Lefty’s back.

“Wait! Aunt Charisma, it’s me Samantha!” Samantha said running up to look her in the face.

“Your mom's gonna kill me!” She yelled back obviously stressed, “What are you doing with one of these... these evil robots!”

“I AM NOT EVIL!” Lefty shouted, offended at the very idea.

“We need them to overthrow Animus.” Samantha said defiantly.

“Ani-what-now?” She said extremely confused by the whole situation.

“Animus.” I said running up, “Now if you go up that elevator you will end up in a manor. Outside that manor is van. Wait there, or come along, either way we’re going now.”

“I can’t just leave my niece.” She answered.

“Good,” I said throwing her my gun and pulling out my stolen sword, “Welcome to the team.”

We walked down the fake town back to the elevator that stood out like a sore thumb. “Let’s split up this ti-“ I started to say before I was interrupted by Lefty picking me up and running us inside with everyone else. That trip was even tighter than the first due to the new person, but there were only three floors left so I hopefully wouldn’t have to deal with this for much longer.

As we stepped out, we came face-to-face with a guard, who was no doubt as startled by our presence as we were. Before he could even respond or raise his weapon, Ares had pulled both triggers on a duct-taped lupara from the police station and decapitated him in a shower of buckshot. Lefty bent over the corpse and rummaged through his pockets. “ʜᴇʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ɢᴏ,” they said pulling out a $5 bill and flicking it to me contemptuously. “'ʀᴀʀᴇ ꜰɪɴᴅs ᴀᴜᴄᴛɪᴏɴ' ᴍʏ ᴀss.” I didn’t have pockets in the suit so I just slipped it into my shoe.

The 5th floor was way weirder than the 4th. It was a completely black room filled with lab equipment and white boards all along the walls. On either opposing, side walls sat a door. Centered in the middle of the room sat a microphone marked "Universal Mic".

“Oh! Check it out.” Samantha said picking it up, “It says it’s ‘an experimental weapon capable of giving commands to any animatronic that they have to follow.’ Or so it says.”

“Let’s split up.” I said pointing to both doors, “Samantha and I will go right. Ares, you take Lefty and Charisma.”

“No way! I’m going with Sam!” Charisma yelled.

“I’ll be fine Charisma, and there’s no way Michael and I could protect you,” Samantha said. “Also I have the god mic now so bring it on Animus.”

“Fine I’ll go with the monsters.” Charisma conceded as they walked through the door.

I’m not sure what the other group had, but ours was by far the weirdest thing I had ever seen. Buried deep in this underground bunker was an actual Freddy’s Diner filled with animatronics and human workers, except this time it looked as if this diner had been set into a mall.

“Well good time to find out if this works.” Samantha whispered before putting the mic to her mouth. “Kill. Each other.” She said, sending the room into ultimate chaos.

Every single animatronic had instantly gone berserk, and even the humans tried their hardest to survive, but most died quickly. An animatronic lizard picked up a human to throw him out the window only for a giant duck to stab a chair leg through its face, a large man used a second man as a club to beat down an robotic bear, and a smaller man tried to tackle a wolf only to be eaten alive. As quickly as it started, it ended leaving only a single, animatronic lion to rip out its own heart.

All that was left was a giant mound of robotic parts and corpses. All the windows had been broken revealing cinder block walls painted to look like a sky all around. This place was weird. It was like my own personal hell filled with Animus agents and animatronics.

We walked along to the other end of diner where there sat a single door marked “NOWHERE.” I threw it open and held my sword at length ready to kill whoever was inside. Instead of enemies it was truly nowhere.

It was a tight tunnel only about 6’ by 6’ and only about 26’ to the exit, but all the walls were coated in distorted mirrors, creating a sense of vertigo in all of us. Every wall was only a few feet from my face, but each felt a mile away as they showed back my terrible mask. Every step I took the mirrors underneath cracked. I really hoped that there was something sturdy underneath the mirrors.

Samantha walked behind surprisingly unaffected. “Can you hurry up?” she asked getting annoyed at my caution, “They’re just mirrors.” All of a sudden she stepped on a crack, and fell through disappearing into the darkness below.

“No!” I yelled jumping in afterwards. I felt myself sliding down cold metal chute deeper underground. Finally I slid into a well-lit room filled with all the rest of my group.

“What… happened?” Samantha asked obviously just as dazed as I was as she held a broken mic up, “Ugh! I fell on the god mic! Now it’s split in half.”

“Better that then have it fall into the wrong hands.” Ares said, “I guess this is floor 6. There was a trap door on the stage and we fell through.”

“You’ll never believe what happened to us. The door lead to a stage where they were performing a human sacrifice.” Lefty said pulling out a small black sphere, “We couldn’t save the sacrifice, but we killed this priest and got this.”

“It’s the pearl!” Samantha yelled, “That’s their psychic blocker. I would say smash it, but we should use it to get through the rest undetected.”

“How much do we have left?” Charisma asked still stressed.

“Two floors at least.” I said pointing to a black door at the end of the room, “But we won’t have to split up this time.”

We walked over to the door with Ares leading the breach. Slowly he opened the door and we walked inside. Once again, the 6th floor was so much worse than the one above.

It was an animal and human harvesting center. All along the walls sat humans and animals with tubes sticking out of every inch of skin. Most were missing limbs, eyes, some were even missing their entire heads. Others had been grafted together with metal endoskeletons, as if they had been stuffed into animatronic suits like so many others. It was terrifying to me, so I'm sure Samantha was definitely having a hard time.

Slowly we made our way to the center of the room trying to move stealthily as to not reveal our position to anyone nearby. As soon as we stepped in the center, though, the worst thing happened. Every single mutilated creature turned towards us and rushed us.

I drew my sword and started fending off the oncoming undead horde. I swung my sword relieving a three legged cow of its head. A headless man riding a wolf came charging, but Lefty stepped in its way and threw both against a wall squashing both into a pile of fur and flesh. I turned around just in time to stab a man crawling along without legs.

We all fought through trying to make our escape. Suddenly, out of the roof dropped a Foxy ready to join the other minions in the fight against the intruders. Lefty started fighting Foxy using a broken shard of glass to stab her, and out of nowhere, Shadow Bonnie ran up and grabbed Foxy, ripping out the mechanical spine out of its chest. Before the Foxy could even crumple up, Shadow Freddy uppercutted it in the head knocking it clean off.

“There you go, Lefty.” Ares said, “Now you have a second head.” He continued to fight along our side, but we were surrounded by too many of them. No matter how many we killed, more monstrosities would take their place. I didn't even hear Samantha screaming until an invisible force knocked us all down, leaving the girl in the center, face contorted in rage. It was all I could do to cover my ears as each of the beasts were torn apart in a shower of gore and shrapnel, until every single enemy was killed.

We walked over to the only door and opened it up. It revealed a flight of stairs that went down for what looked like forever. We made our way down until our path was blocked by a pool of lava. At the end of the stairs was a white door marked with a golden number 7.

I led the charge this time as I slammed into the door and rushed in. It’s free from enemies, but all around us were labs filled with tubes with remnant. Surrounding these were tubes filled with cryogenically frozen people dressed in black robes.

“Smash them all.” I said slamming my sword into a tube of the evil fluid. Everyone joined in the destruction of their resources. Even Charisma put a few well aimed shots into the glass containers. Every last one was smashed.

“That’s the last of it.” I said as I brushed some remnant off of my purple suit.

“Not quite.” Ares said, and we looked behind us to see him raising a needle against his neck. “This is the instrument of my vengeance, Michael! This is Umbra's last gift to us! Animus, Freddy, they will all pay!” And with that, he plunged the needle into his throat.

Slowly, black ink started pouring out of his eyes, nose, and mouth. He started coughing up the gunk along with teeth, way too many teeth for a human mouth to hold. Both Shadow Freddy and Bonnie appeared and started merging with Ares, until he was completely covered in black tar.

Ares rose up and laughed maniacally as his limbs were torn apart by shadowy arms exploding out of their flesh. His organs liquefied and his bones snapped as he transformed into a cross between a Shadow Freddy and Shadow Bonnie, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. Suddenly he started swelling up. He looked like a bubble ready to pop.

“Run!” I yelled as we all ran into the nearby elevator. The elevator was faster this time, but not nearly fast enough. As soon as we reached the 4th floor a large explosion could be heard thundering through the lower floors, followed by a horde of squealing, screaming voices, and occasional bursts of automatic gunfire. Reaching the third floor, we all got out into the manor we started in.

We thought we were home free, but instead, a new challenger had arrived. It was Tangled Freddy, that beast who had committed so much evil throughout its eastward rampage, and it stood at the door, his mouth covered with the blood and fur of a freshly killed squirrel. Beside him, plush toys wrapped in red twine and wielding a variety of sharp objects grinned wickedly. Before any of us could even move the explosion finally caught up.

Out of thin air, hordes of shadow creatures formed and swarmed past us to attack the robotic monstrosity. Each would explode as soon as it entered the sunlight, but the ones in shadows leapt on him, holding him down. It let out a roar that shook the entire house, sending our minds reeling to the point of nausea under the crushing pressure, before Samantha joined the fight using all her psychic powers to attack Freddy and shield us as we all made it to the back door. Like the mutations before, one by one, the plush toys squealed and exploded in a shower of scraps and dry rice.

Suddenly, Tangled Freddy burst forth from the pile unharmed, shadows sizzling as they were knocked outside. Charisma tried to help by firing the gun at him, but the bullet bounced off and hit a gas line, adding highly flammable propane into the already explosive situation. We all backed up into the stolen Jeep leaving only Samantha in the doorway and Tangled Freddy still inside.

Samantha was trying her hardest with her psychic powers, but the monster was on a much higher psychic plane. Even with the shadows monsters' constant bombardment, Freddy managed to keep his pace. He was now just a few feet from the door frame, and Samantha was now backed against the car, her nose bleeding from the sheer strain.

“ᴡᴀɪᴛ!” Lefty said, opening the glove compartment and pulling out a box of Diamond kitchen matches. In a feat of heroics even I had not anticipated, they rushed past Samantha and delivered a flying kick to Freddy's midsection, causing him to stumble as Samantha pushed him back into the house with all her might. Lefty stood in the doorway as the shadows enveloped Freddy and had struck one of the matches before dropping it into the box and then throwing it into the room where it broke apart mid-air into a hundred flaming dots. Lefty fled the house as the expanding gas ignited, creating an explosion that ruptured the entire nearby land, sending them flying past the Jeep and onto the pavement. Slowly all the mansions and under-levels collapsed, sending a cloud of dust in their wake.

“Floor it!” Charisma yelled pointing at the crack upon the asphalt that had started to form out of the initial collapse. I slammed the Jeep's pedal to the floor, sending us down the driveway at top speed while Lefty ran up to us, clambering onboard. As we drove away the entire hill behind us collapsed revealing an entire labyrinth of rubble, and I could have sworn I saw a variety of black shapes fleeing the destruction into the nearby woods.

“Good job Lefty! You killed Tangled Freddy!” Samantha yelled, overwhelmed by joy as we drove away.

“No, not yet.” I said, “In my vision, I saw from the eyes of something there, and I guarantee it wasn’t Ares.”

“ᴡʜᴀᴛ’s ɪᴍᴘᴏʀᴛᴀɴᴛ ɪs ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴇ ᴅᴇꜰᴇᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴀɴɪᴍᴜs, ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ɢᴏᴛ ᴛʜɪs.” Lefty said turning to Samantha revealing the black pearl sitting in his bad eye. “Watch the road, Michael!” As Samantha said this, we turned around, narrowly missing an oncoming car.

“You’re right.” I said to Lefty, “I defeated my demons, but now you must fight yours.” Right after saying this Charisma’s phone started to ring.

“Hello?” She answered before handing it to me, “It's for you.”

“Who is this?” I asked trying to focus on the road while still talking.

“Hello? Uh, hello?" came the voice, “This is Clyde. Wow. You actually fucking did it. I might as well tell you now. I need your help and you need mine. We both know this isn’t actually the [end](reddit.com/r/26FrightsOfFreddy/).”