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War For Fun & Profit

Being a teacher, Mike was quickly learning, was just as humbling as it was empowering. Mike couldn't deny the sense of pride and fulfillment he felt when he succeeded in helping the robots learn something they hadn't known before. It wasn't always easy – in fact sometimes it was downright aggravating – but seeing their faces light up with anticipation and excitement when it was lesson time made it all so very worth it. He really couldn't help but feel like he was making a difference in their lives.

But as Harry Callahan once said, a man's got to know his limitations. Mike wasn't exactly a hardcore Dirty Harry fan, but it was a pretty obvious lesson to keep in mind. He was human, with all of the imperfections that came with the label, and while he'd long come to accept that fact it wasn't doing any favors for his self-esteem right now.

It was his first day back on the job from the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and his feelings were honestly somewhat mixed. On one hand, he loved being able to see the animatronics again; he'd really missed them over the past several days. It just wasn't the same without them. Plus, he could finally get a reprieve from his family telling him to quit his job at Freddy's and run screaming from the establishment. Go figure.

Then again, now he was back to working sleepless weeknights for chump change, so... mixed bag.

Either way, the animatronics had been overjoyed to have him back, especially Foxy, whom Mike had been both surprised and happy to find had taken his advice and left Pirate's Cove to hang with the others more freely. From there the discussion largely shifted to Mike's holiday, and the guard had happily hopped up onstage and begun telling stories about Thanksgiving with his extended family.

It had all gone fine until Mike reached the part about everybody gathering around the TV to watch the annual NFL Thanksgiving games, and Freddy spoke up.

“Football? Tha's a sport, right?”

Mike could feel the gazes of his friends intensify. “Uh... yeah, yeah. It's a sport,” he stuttered, a bit uncomfortable.

“What are sports?” Chica asked in response. “I mean, I've heard the word before, but I've never really understood what it means.” The other three animatronics nodded in assent.

This was something of a difficult question for Mike, more so than the animatronics probably realized. See, Mike Schmidt was decidedly not a sports fan, as much as the rest of his family was. He'd never been good at sports of any kind, and as such he didn't particularly care to watch or learn too much about them either – except maybe hockey, he kinda liked that one. It would have been simple to admit that fact, that he didn't know enough about what they were asking.

But whether Mike liked it or not, he had his pride, and it was telling him quite forcefully to plead the fifth in this situation. Which left him only one choice.

Wing this bitch.

Mike cleared his throat and then began. “Sports... are the distillation of war into various forms for fun and profit. But they're much more fun than war, since the rules are a lot easier to follow and there are usually far fewer casualties.”

The ensuing silence and blank stares made Mike's stomach knot itself. What was he doing?! He wasn't supposed to do stupid stuff like this; he was their teacher. Granted, he'd had plenty of goofy teachers during his past schooling, but it just didn't feel right when he did it. He should've just been honest.

Mike opened his mouth to apologize and recant what he'd said, but the sound of laughter cut him off before he could even speak. It took him a couple of seconds to realize it, but all four of the animatronics were chuckling in amusement, just loudly enough to reach the stage. Even Freddy was laughing good-naturedly.

“Heh, that's actually not bad,” Bonnie smirked. “Got anything else?”

“Aye, what be 'basketball?'” Foxy added, to the agreement of the three other machines. They'd all heard kids talk of basketball endlessly over the years, even more so than any other sports, and they were quite eager for the chance to learn more.

Mike pondered for a minute before explaining. “Uh... two teams of freakishly tall and lanky guys running around a room trying to slam a ball against a board and into a hole.”

“Alright, what's football?” Bonnie laughed.

“Men ramming into each other and chasing after a ball. And if one of the muggers can get it into their base they get points,” Mike answered, then added as an afterthought, “Then they can kick it.”

“How 'bout skatin'?” Freddy chimed in.

This went for a while, and Mike soon found that he was quite enjoying the chance to just be goofy. After the animatronics ran out of sports to suggest, he started providing his own, like baseball (“Hit somebody's ball with your rod and run home before his goons catch you.”), racing (“Guys in cars driving around in a circle, sometimes a figure eight, for several hours.”), and boxing (“Two shirtless men hitting each other with their fists until one or both of them are near fatally injured. It's fun!”). The animatronics certainly seemed to enjoy it as well, and even if they did realize that Mike was faking it all they were polite enough to keep it to themselves.

Eventually the laughter died down, and Mike knew it was time to wrap things up. “Alright, that's about all I've got,” Mike cleared his throat, and the 'lesson' was concluded. “Something to think about during work hours, I hope.”

“Well, we certainly won't be forgetting any time soon,” Chica smirked.

“Strapping knives to your feet and beating people up, huh?” Bonnie laughed. “You'll have to tell us more sometime.”

“Uh, maybe later,” Mike replied quickly. “Let's move on.”

Mike knew that he'd have to fess up eventually. He figured he'd wait at least a day, though. No point in undermining the lesson that he'd just finished teaching – if what he'd done could even qualify as that. Still, he couldn't deny that it was a nice, fun challenge. Maybe he'd force himself to learn about sports for real, so that he really could teach the others.

It was worth considering, at least.