Friendly Face | Sea Bonnies | Together Forever
Always double-check your outbox.
He smiled at the phone number. For the first time in weeks, it didn’t feel like a monster was trying to squeeze the heart out of Edward’s chest. He suddenly saw a sliver of hope for his future. Maybe he could have a friend after all.
Best friends Edward Colter and Jack Weston find a stray kitten hiding in a bush and immediately take it to Jack's home. Naming him Faraday, the two absolutely adore their new pet and dote on the kitten nonstop. When the kitten gets out of the yard and runs into the street, obviously they rush after it, and both Faraday and Jack are struck by an oncoming truck, instantly dead. Traumatized and grief-stricken, Edward retreats into himself until he sees a strange advertisement on the television– Fazbear Entertainment says that with just a little shed hair, they can make a functional animatronic replica of your dead pet. Overjoyed that he may have a way to still have his best friends still with him, Edward scoops up some hair from the scene of the accident... and doesn't check to make sure it's the cat's hair before sending it in.
The twenty-eighth Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights story, and the first of the tenth book.
Tropes related to “Friendly Face”:
- Adaptational Name Change: It may have been a typo, but the original listing for the book referred to Edward as "Andrew." As his story has nothing to do with Andrew from the epilogues, it's most likely that his name was changed to avoid confusion with the two characters.
- Adorably Precocious Child: Jack usually speaks in long, thought-out sentences and references his scientific studies.
- Animalistic Abomination: Friendly Faces are supposed to be animatronic recreations of deceased pets, using DNA from the pet's hair to recreate the face. Edward wants one to get over Faraday's death, but mistakenly sends one of Jack's hairs, resulting in a black cat with a grinning human face.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Edward has some kind of disorder that causes him to be inattentive and fall back into daydreams. It gets him into a ton of accidents.
- Bookworm: Both Edward and Jack are huge book-lovers, usually reading either science fiction or science non-fiction.
- A Boy and His X: Two boys and their cat. If only this wasn't a tragedy series.
- Break the Cutie: Jack's death leaves Edward a Broken Ace who can barely get out of bed and take care of himself.
- Bully Magnet: Both Jack and Edward, though the latter takes the cake as his oddities can cause classroom accidents, while Jack's just a Stereotypical Nerd.
- Buried Alive: Edward does this to the Friendly Face in a panic, thinking it's non-sentient. The thing just crawls out and tries to find him again.
- But Wait, There's More!: Edward finds out about the Friendly Face service because of an infomercial that pops up on the TV in the classic, sales-pitch style.
- Cheerful Child: Jack has noticeable smile lines on his face.
- Chekhov's Gun: The dump trucks coming around the neighborhood for construction are brought up consistently even before one hits Jack, with one even scaring Faraday closer to the boys in their first meeting.
- Childhood Friends: Edward and Jack have been best friends since they were in diapers.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Edward off-handedly states that he believes the Loch Ness Monster is real, and just occasionally travels through wormholes.
- Cope by Pretending: Edward thinks that the Friendly Face will help him do this by reminding him of his lost friends. It works a bit too well.
- Covers Always Lie: The book cover depicts the titular character with white, pupil-less eyes and a blank expression, but in-story it has regular-looking brown eyes and is constantly grinning.
- Creepy Good: The Friendly Face is completely and utterly unnerving, but actually means no harm.
- Cute Kitten: Our plot is kickstarted when Edward finds one in the bushes.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Our Good All Along Friendly Face.
- Death of a Child: Jack's death affects everyone who knew him, and poor Edward is absolutely broken over it. The sudden death of Edward hits just as hard, too. (No pun intended.)
- Disappeared Dad: Edward's dad left when he was three and remarried. Jack's father is almost constantly at work.
- Downer Ending: After being soaked in grief for so long, Edward dies in the same was Jack and Faraday, and in utter fear for his life. Meanwhile, the creation he was so scared of simply wanted to play, and sits down and waits for him to get up.
- Five Stages of Grief: Edward starts the accident by being unable to process what he'd just seen, then with bargaining as he tries to figure out where to place the blame. He sinks into a deep depression which he's unable to climb out of, interspersed with anger for everyone blaming Faraday. He falls back on "bargaining" when he thinks he's found a new coping mechanism in the Friendly Face, and never reaches Acceptance.
- Gone Horribly Right: Fazbear Entertainment was right, they were able to make that animatronic look like the DNA they got. Too bad they got human DNA and didn't care enough to call the buyer about it.
- Good All Along: It seems that the Friendly Face is now stalking Edward as vengeance for burying it alive. Turns out it didn't even notice, and just thought they were playing a game.
- Good with Numbers: Edward's stated to be a bit of a math nerd.
- Ironic Name: "Friendly Face," which has Edward's friend for a face... which doesn't make it look friendly at all.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: The second Jack lays eyes on Faraday, he's in love with the little kitten. From then on, he refuses to be parted from him.
- Look Both Ways: Jack chases Faraday into the street and gets hit by a truck. Later, the Friendly Face chases Edward into the street in a similar fashion.
- Loyal Animal Companion: Faraday was this to Jack and Edward. The Friendly Face was built to be this, too.
- Monster of the Week: Friendly Face, though it's not actively malevolent.
- Mouthful of Pi: Edward does this while in bed to distract himself from his paranoia over the Friendly Face and get to sleep.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Edward did this quite a bit even before Jack's accident. Then, he's so excited to essentially have Faraday back from the dead through Fazbear Ent.'s Friendly Face product, he just grabs a hair from the location of his and Jack's death without examining it to make sure it was Faraday's cat hair. A few weeks later, and Edward gets his Friendly Face. A human face.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: The Friendly Face that Edward gets, while creepy due to Edward sending in human hairs by mistake to make the face with, turns out to be simply playful and is not malicious at all. Unfortunately, Edward never finds this out.
- Parental Abandonment: Edward's dad left and has a new family. He only sends his son some money on birthdays. While Jack's parents are present, they are usually at work, which means Jack raised himself.
- Perpetual Smiler: Friendly Face, which is made to be played with.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Faraday.
- The Scapegoat: Jack's parents start cursing out the cat for running into the road, blaming it for their son's death. Edward is horrified by this, as he and Jack were very close with the kitten.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Mainly Jack, but bookish Edward will slip into big words as well.
- Shout-Out: The cat is named after Michael Faraday, an electrochemist and electromagnetist.
- Edward additionally references Guru Kailash Singh and Amou Haji.
- Stereotypical Nerd: Both of the boys, though Jack is more obvious about it with his direct manner of speech.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Jack and Faraday were just playing in the yard when they got hit by a dump truck, shocking the entire community. Then, right at the end, the audience is just as shocked when Edward runs out of the woods and onto a highway.
- Survivor's Guilt: Edward, as he watched Jack and Faraday die only a few feet from him.
- Unnamed Parent: All the parents in this story go without names.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Edward spends a long time wondering what could have been done differently to prevent the accident. Most of the adults blame Faraday, who chased a butterfly into the street, but Edward refuses to place the blame solely on the beloved cat.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Mr. Weston, who's a long-haul trucker and always on the road; the only time Jack is serious and quiet are when his dad is around. While his mom is more present, she's a Workaholic and isn't "all that aware of what was going on in the world beyond her work."
