Chapter 5- New strangeness and an old friend
A loud scream erupted from Bendy's lungs as he stumbled back from the large blotling, closing his eyes tight and reeling his arm back in case if he felt he had no choice but to fight. But it wasn't like he has much of a chance, those claws could rip him in two no problem.
"W-wait!" Mickeys voice cut through the air. "It's okay Bendy! She's a friend!"
Bendy opened his eyes at the mouses words. Friend? Who was he kidding?! But when he looked up he notices a soft look on the monsters face as well as a vanilla soft serve cone in one of her hands.
"Bendy..." Oswald announced. "This is Deloris, one of the slobbers in Blot Alley. She's very friendly."
Bendy stared for a second longer before letting out a large breath of relief. "Of-of course, how silly of me."
He looked up at the she-blot with a warm smile before he heard a gasp amongst his companions.
"Bendy lad, what's the matter with your arm?" Gus spoke.
Bendy tilted his head in obvious confusi

It was a Saturday afternoon when Bendy stormed into Henry’s house, not giving the old man as much as a hello before disappearing upstairs, a tirade of comical squeaks and honks covering up the toon’s foul language.
Well, he was a child friendly cartoon and people simply didn’t swear back in the 30s.
Henry remained seated in his favourite armchair as the little devil raced upstairs and then went silent. He took a moment to fold his newspaper and take a quick look out of the nearby window, only to see an empty street. Sighing quietly to himself, he got up from his chair, leaving the paper on it, and slowly made his way to follow the irate toon.
As he slowly climbed the stairs, he thought about the last five months.
Shit, it had been five months since he’d rescued himself and the toons from his old workplace, Joey Drew Studios. Not wanting to abandon them again, he’d appointed himself the custodian of the three living, breathing cartoon characters, whi

The halls of the studio were silent as Bendy walked down them. There was no dripping of ink from some unknown place, no hiss of Searchers from puddles underfoot, not even his own breathing made a sound. Everything was still and silent.
The place was clean, too; cleaner than he’d ever seen it. The wallpaper was fresh, the siding and skirting tidy, and the floorboards were evenly fixed and made no noise as he walked over them. The posters that were splayed across the walls were undamaged, looking brand new. And, there wasn’t a drop or splash of errant ink anywhere. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have sworn he’d ventured into one of Joey’s hallways.
The director always did like to keep things immaculate.
“QUIET! I won’t listen to the words of a TRAITOR!”
Bendy spun around as angry words echoed down the hall he’d just come from. It took him a moment, but he recognised the distorted voice to be from Sammy Lawrence, the s

A few minutes later, they’d set up a small summoning circle, complete with lit candles. No one seemed to believe that any of it was necessary, not even Henry who’d told them that it was ‘better safe than sorry’. And while no one said it aloud, he was probably right.
That didn’t make Bendy feel any better when he stood in the centre of the thing.
Not that he’d told anyone, but he still didn’t know what to think about the whole ‘real demon’ business. He also hadn’t told them that his fragmented memory pieces together from his… demonic episode were coming together to form a rather disturbing picture, if he was going to be honest. It made him sick to his stomach that he’d acted in such an untoony way, and he was grateful that no one had gotten hurt because of him.
Well… almost no one.
He tried not to wince as Henry approached him and the circle he was standing in. The old man was stil

Henry was relieved that the hallway was relatively linear, except for the twists and turns of corners. Soon enough, he began to recognise the layout and could make a pretty good guess as to where his destination was.
In some ways, he wondered how he could have thought Joey would have gone anywhere else. Perhaps he was thinking the old director couldn’t have been that obvious. But, as he turned the last corner and slowly approached the room at the end of the hall, he had to sigh quietly as he realised that yes, the director really could be that obvious, that predictable.
There it was.
The Ink Machine.
And there was Joey, fiddling with the controls. The man was frantically trying to activate the beast of a contraption, but, no button he pressed, lever he pulled or valve he spun, nothing seemed to work. It looked like he had tried everything twice because the man suddenly hit the panel hard with a fist and swung a foot at its base, perhaps hoping to kick

Henry stared up at the ceiling and tried to breathe. The three long gashes across his side and chest made even the shallowest of breaths painful, but he had no choice.  The fact the he was shaking wasn’t helping matters much either, every twitch sending bolts of agony through his body.
The door shuddered beside him as it was rammed into again, still whole despite the beating it was taking. However, an ominous crunch of something giving way indicated that it wouldn’t remain intact for much longer. The barricade they’d erected wouldn’t hold.
Alice flinched at the sound, pulling her hands away from Henry’s injuries, which she had been trying to heal. Her halo dimmed as fear distracted her yet again, breaking the fragile concentration she’d had.
“Hey, Alice, sweetheart… Look at me.” Henry reached out and took her trembling hands into his own. His heart ached at the sight of her almost in tears. “He

When Henry woke up the first thing he noticed was a pounding headache. It radiated from the back of his head and it left his vision skewed, everything spinning slightly and out of focus. He shook his head vigorously from side to side and blinked rapidly when he stopped. The headache cleared and his sight sharpened back into focus, making him smile ruefully.
Only in a cartoon could you shake off a concussion. His grasp of toon logic was getting better each time he used it.
Remaining motionless, he looked around to assess his surroundings, and his stomach clenched as he realised he was in Joey’s office. He’d been dumped in a corner, out of the director’s way, and was lying on the floor. To make matters worse, he didn’t need to move to realise that his hands were bound behind his back; he could feel the rope around his wrists and the strain on his shoulders from the awkward position.
Glancing at Joey’s chair, he realised that it was occupied but facing away f

Just when things had been looking up…
Henry swore as he watched Bendy fall through the trapdoor and disappear out of sight; there was nothing he, Alice or Boris could do to save him. But, a trapdoor from here could only send the little devil back down to one of the lower levels, although who knew where the chute would spit him out.
Alice seemed to have a similar idea and rushed back the way they’d come, no doubt looking for the nearest stairway down. She was off and gone before the animator had a chance to call out to her.
“Dammit,” he cursed under his breath. He looked over to Boris who was still kneeling over the hole, whining softly. He sighed before giving the wolf a gentle tap on the shoulder. “Come on, Pup, let’s catch up with Alice and find Bendy before something else happens.”
Boris nodded without a word and the pair of them jogged back down the corridor. The toon took the lead, his knowledge of the studio’s layout infinitely more