(Trial&Error AU)
Michael Aaron Afton is the eldest of his siblings, and very possibly the most exhausted.
He's always been a hard worker. He's very strong, both physically and mentally. When he'd end up in the hospital cause his mother would forget about his allergies, when he was forced to take care of a newborn with Elizabeth when they were only 12, and when Elizabeth would have violent outbursts and attack someone. He'd always be the mediator, he'd always be the one to keep it together.
And his hard working followed him to his career.
Robotics has been his special interest ever since he was introduced to Foxy the Pirate when he was little. So he started small, taking apart and putting clocks back together, and putting stuffed animal skins over his old robotic toys. Then his father noticed, it's probably the one thing he noticed about Mike. So William introduced him to Henry, and started training him to take up the company.
Elizabeth was also involved, but in a different way. Elizabeth was very business aware, an extrovert, and she specialized in understanding people and socialization. Just like their father. While Mike was the opposite, he took up more heavy-lifting and material knowledge, and he was very introverted. Just like Henry.
So Mike would take up robotics and learn all other helpful skills to keep himself going as long as possible (lock picking to get quicker access to materials, wound stitching in case of a workplace accident, sewing & painting for designing, etc) and would teach his siblings if they ever asked. Of course he would, he'd always help out his siblings.
Even if the late-night designing and building would shift to going days without sleep, this skill of his would keep them alive! He can make money and support them all when he's an adult. They won't have to rely on their father and they could get out of this shithole as fast as possible with this!
Elizabeth is getting tired of carrying his unconscious body to his bed repeatedly.
