Jeremy Fitzgerald, looking at a greeting card.

10:00 AM

Unsurprisingly, Freddy Fazbears was not open the next day. A number of the Rockville PD, as well as Gibbs's entire NCIS team were present.

Sarah McGee had even been let out of work to see what they uncovered. When the get out of work note is delivered on official NCIS stationary, it takes a pretty heartless boss to say no. Sarah did not have a heartless boss.

"So what were those things they hauled out of the back rooms?" Dinozzo asked Tim.

"The white fox thing was 'The Mangle', originally the new version of Foxy. Apparently, the endoskeleton had been broken, or turned into parts, or something. The only thing we found intact was a computer chip and a cellphone jammer."

"Which is why my cellphone couldn't call out two nights ago." Sarah commented.

"Right. We're not sure where the Golden Freddy costume came from. Might have actually been designed as a costume, or it might have been an animatronic suit with all the parts carefully removed, unlike what Mike tried to do."

"How is he?" Bishop asked.

"Recovering. He's still in the hospital undergoing evaluation due to his starvation, but he's expected to make a full recovery. He'll be in a wheelchair for a while. Both his legs had clean fractures in the tibia bones, like he was thrown in there and tried to stick the landing, only with a lot more force. He also has a ton of abrasions all over his lower body – those suits were not meant to fit a human. He'd ripped out as much as he could get away with, but couldn't get to the legs."

There was a collective wince from the rest of the group.

"If he hadn't brought along the spare head, it'd have gotten really messy," Bishop said, shuddering.

"Gross," Sarah said.

"Anyway, you should have seen that thing... the Golden Freddy costume, I mean... after we doused it with Luminol. Whole thing turned green under the black light. That's still less creepy then what Vance said happened last night, but not much." Tim finished.

"And what about that last one, that Bonnie over there? It's not like the others, for one thing, it has five fingers on each hand." Dinozzo asked.

"Yeah. Don't touch that, it's a deathtrap waiting to go off. It's some sort of hybrid suit, usable either as a costume or as an animatronic body. Right now, the animatronic connectors are wound back into the suit itself - that's why the suit's thicker, to account for these things. But they're held back by flimsy spring style locks, one of those locks fails, and you'll get connection cables and such snapping right into your body."

"Who even came up with that?" Sarah asked, shuddering.

"Don't know. Can't find anything about that one, might even predate the older restaurant. Maybe it's a prototype."

A yell went up from inside the restaurant. "We've got something!" The group hurried inside, where they were armed with metal detectors and more scientific devices, axes, and shovels. Inside a shallow grave lay a mixture of tattered rotted clothing and bones. It was going to take a lot of work from both Ducky and Abby, but the group was sure: These were the four children who died at the diner 20 years ago. There was also a knife, stained with old, putrefying, dried blood.

Now they'd tie the costume to their killer, the weapon to the kills, and the bodies to the victims. It would take work, but they had their killer.

One of the detectives, shaking his head, walked over to congratulate Gibbs. Gibbs was standing back, with his arms crossed, glaring at the crime scene.

"Start with a missing son of a Navy man, end up cracking a twenty year old cold case. That's impressive," the detective said. Gibbs turned his glare on him. "What are you so upset about?"

"That this didn't happen in Virginia," Gibbs said darkly.

"What?" asked Sarah quietly.

"Maryland abolished the death penalty in 2013," her brother whispered. "Gibbs wasn't happy about that. Especially in child murderer cases."

"I still think I should dress that... thing... up in a uniform and drop it in front of Freddy, just to see what happens," Gibbs said, stalking off. As he passed the team, his glare vanished for a minute. "That was good work," he told them, then met Sarah in the eyes and gave her one of his rare full smiles. "That was good courage you showed," he said, nodding slightly. He considered them for a moment. "Take the rest of the day as a comp for last night."

Tony looked up to the sky, "Thank you," he said in a stage whisper.

One week later.

Abby, Sarah, and Tim walked in Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Abby was wearing her "Let's Eat!" bib again.

"Didn't think we'd ever get you back in this place, Sarah," Larry said as they took seats.

"I'm not that far out of college that I can't be tempted with free pizza," she admitted, laughing. Her face grew somber. "The burial was yesterday. They buried all four of them together... I'm told they were great friends in life."

"I... I read about that," Larry said, closing his eyes. A minute later, he continued, "Anyway, this was the least I could do for all you, your brother, and his teammates," Larry told them. "Don't think it's going to help save this place, though. Attendance is already down, and Denise is putting this place up for sale. Might be to pay for the lawyer, because she's facing an obstruction of justice charge herself by hiding the secure room."

Sarah looked around, there was only two families there, probably a bad sign at 1 PM on a Saturday.

"I wouldn't count on that," said another voice. Wheeling himself up the corridor was Mike Schmidt, with Phil, the daytime security guard, walking along side him. "Phil and I have set up a Kickstarter to buy this place. Kids still love Freddy Fazbear, and Freddy and his friends still love kids."

"I hope it works." Larry said, with a wry sad smile. "Mike's said I can keep my job if it does."

"You did a good job for some truly awful people," Mike told him. "That's not your fault."

Sarah blinked at Mike without comprehension. "I just don't get it. Why do you want to stay..."?

"More nights at Freddys?" Mike said. He glanced up to the curtains that were currently hiding the animatronics. "Like I said, Bonnie and the bunch still loves kids, and Kids still love them. It's not really their fault they came after us."

"Phone's ringing in my office," Larry said. "Excuse me. I just hope it's not Mrs. Richardson again."

"That's right!" Abby said. "I have an engineer friend who owed me a big favor, so he came over and looked at their code.

"What'd he find, anyway?" Phil asked.

"Some really advanced mad science that he couldn't make the slightest sense out of, "Abby admitted. "But! He also found the facial recognition software... good thing too, if it'd been hardwired, he couldn't have fixed it. Anyway, there were some hard coding in it. It was programmed to recognize uniforms, like police and staff uniforms. But the actual facial recognition had been commented out, like by a lazy first year comp sci major. He just removed the comment prefixes, and he thinks it should be working now."

"Think there's a way to find out," he said. "Mr. McGee, did your boss allow you to bring the video of the formal accusation?

"He did," Tim said, handing him a flash drive. "Why did you want it?" he asked.

"To clear the air," he replied. "Phil? Can I borrow the security tablet, and can you open the curtains for me?"

Phil presented the tablet, and went to open the curtains manually.

Mike rolled himself over to the show stage, plugging in the flash drive. He manipulated the tablet to pull up the video. Then he looked up at Chica and her crewmates. "Hey guys," Mike said. "Do you remember me. Mike Schmidt, the security guard. They got the b..." he remembered there were kids present. "They got the culprit. It's over."

"That can't be right," Tim said. "There's no way they were programmed to look down like that. I mean, right at the tablet?"

After a few minutes, Mike said, "The connections are solid. They're expecting him to plead guilty."

The eyes of all three animatronics flickered shut, then open, and one at at time, the gave Mike a bow.

"Tell Foxy for me, would you?" he asked politely. "And... Bonnie? You owe Sarah an apology." He began to back his wheel chair far enough away from the show stage to turn around. "Thanks, Phil. Put the curtains back onto automatic, would you?"

He rolled his way back to the group.

"That was kind of creepy," Tim told him. "It's not like they're sentient... are they? The programmer didn't actually create an AI, did he?"

"Maybe," said Phil as he rejointed the table, "I've not seen all the weird stuff Sarah and Mike did."

"An AI? Well, that might be one explanation," said Mike. "Say, Tim? Did you ever find the article that Sarah and I found?"

"No," admitted Tim. "But we think Kevin found it and destroyed it."

"Just curious," said Mike. His tone that told the group that he wasn't actually curious.

The pizzas arrived, and they ate in silence for a bit.

"This is actually pretty good," said Sarah. "Chicago is the one true pizza type, but for New York style, this is pretty good."

"I'm just glad you didn't ask us to try the Tabasco, pickles, and peanut butter," Abby told her.

"Hey. Free Pizza, I'm not complaining."

The curtains went up on two of three animatronics on stage.

"Hey, everyone! Welcome to Freddy Fazbear's!" Freddy announced in a surprisingly soft voice. "We'd like to..." his head made a deliberate scan of the stage. Then he looked at Bonnie. "Where's Chica?"

The sound of someone eating came from the closed curtain. "Sorry... finishing one last slice."

"Turn off your mic when you're eating, Chica," Bonnie told her.

There was laughter from the kids present. Mike and Sarah looked at each other, and each cracked up.

"What's so funny?" asked Abby.

"Tell you later," said Sarah, wiping her tearing up eyes.

"Like I was saying, we... we... we..." Freddy stuttered. Sarah took a quick sniff of the air, but could only smell the fresh pizza at the table. It smelled pretty good. "We'd like to thank NCIS for their help here at Freddy Fazbear's. And Mr. Mike? I'm sorry." He lowered his head, his animatronic eyes clicking closed for a moment. "Bonnie?"

Bonnie nodded, and looked towards Sarah, meeting her directly in the eyes. "I am sorry too, for last night."

"We're... we're good," Sarah said, confused, and slightly nervous.

Abby had stood quickly. "And NCIS is more than happy to be of service to Freddy Fazbear's," she told them, giving them a deep bow.

"Thank you for your kind words, now-now-now let's strike up the band, shall we?"

Only Abby recognized the tween pop song that they played.

"That's not possible. Someone's playing games with us," said Tim, but Sarah could hear the doubt in his voice.

"One last question, Tim. Where'd those warning phone calls came from?"

Tim stared at him.

About a week later, a nurse came to see Jeremy. "Got a letter, Mr. Fitzgerald," she told him.

Jeremy sat up in the bed. "Can you open it for me?" he asked politely.

The nurse took out a letter opener, and carefully slit it, then handed it over to her patient.

Jeremy pulled out the extra large greeting card and stared at it. It was a picture of four of the animatronics of Freddy's, the older ones, clearly repaired and recently cleaned. They were in a party room, flanking a man in a wheelchair. Each of them had their head down, Freddy even had his trademark hat in his hands.

"We're sorry. Please forgive us."

(A/N: Thank you for coming to Freddy's Fazbear's, where there's always Help Wanted... but perhaps not now HELP! Needed.

This was almost a Castle/FNAF crossover instead, with Alexa in Sarah McGee's role, but I think this worked better.

I'd like to thank everyone for both the reviews and the favorites. If there's anything you especially liked – or especially didn't, please tell me. I'm an aspiring writer, and feedback can be hard to come by.

-TZ)