Chapter Text
Two years passed since Michael Afton was fired from Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental. His dead sibling, who took the form, name, and identity of Lolbit, stayed with him, as did Ennard. Circus Baby was the one “piloting” Ennard and was the only voice of them that others could hear. She often said messages the other Funtime robots wanted to be heard.
Mary Schmidt was dominant in the home she shared with Candy and Cindy, the two characters from the now defunct Candy’s Burgers and Fries. The characters in promotional material were twins, so she figured that they were fraternal given their differences.
Jeremy Fitzgerald had saved Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, and Toy Foxy from being scrapped when the “new and improved” Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza had to close its doors due to a failed attempt at murder on the premises. He established that he was above the four of them, but the only one who didn’t like it was Toy Freddy. He never got around to giving Toy Chica a more modest design.
Mike Schmidt got some company in the form of Fredbear, who needed to explain his “evolution” from a little boy to what was dubbed “Yenndo” by Michael Afton. After confirming that he was the one he called “Yellow Bear,” he became a roommate for him.
One day in April 2018 that was after April 1st, they got an email from a guy named Skoot Cawthin. He said to all of them that he was an indie developer who gained an interest in making a VR video game on the PC game digital distributor that would soon lose its status as a monopoly. It would be a survival horror game using the characters that the four of them encountered. The main gimmick was the ability to have custom difficulty. He believed that the hardest difficulty in the game was impossible to complete, but he wanted to see people try anyway.
He said that, since Afton Robotics went out of business and took the parent company that bought out Fazbear Entertainment, that particular division, as well as CTC Entertainment with them, the rights for all of the characters made by them were now in the public domain, so he made the game around them after he confirmed that no one could claim to own the rights anymore. He made an offer to the four heroes; once he finished coding the full game, he would give it to all of them for free two weeks, to the day, before it was to come out for the general public to buy. He compared it to a hyped up fighting game for a hybrid system that could be both a home console and a handheld, saying that some store sold the full game two weeks before its release date, and some people managed to get, record, and even beat the game before it came out.
Saying that he wanted to prevent that, he said that, if they accepted the offer, they were forbidden to upload their first impression and/or gameplay videos until the game came out. Since it was going to be a digital only game with no physical release, preventing people from getting it early was going to be easier.
They all accepted because they saw this deal as a way to legally get a video game for free.
Throughout the second calendar quarter of 2018, he notified the four of them when he was going to their houses (only notifying the one whose house he’d go to and giving them an option to decline), entered with their permission, and took measurements of the seven surviving robots and the two ghosts. It was harder to do it with the ghosts because everything clipped through them, but he figured out a way to do it.
He gave them a link to a promotional site for the game, meant to build up hype by revealing characters. He called the game Night Shift at Freddy’s: Ultimate Custom Night. When Mike Schmidt asked him via email why he chose that name, the reply was, “It’s brilliant. Trust me. Though, it may only be that funny to me, the author, and the readers.”
He asked what readers and author he was talking about, but the reply was, “You wouldn’t understand or like it. On a different subject still related to my game, the name of the location in the game is ‘Freddy Fazbear and Candy’s Pizza, Burgers, and Fries’ because I had to combine the name of both of those kids of locations.”