Months passed...

...and then there were two.

In fact, Henry was surprisingly pretty freaking glad that Joey had made another abomination out of ink to play with Bendy, because personally, he couldn't look at the little devil the same way anymore. Let alone feel safe around him when he wanted company.

There was just something so wrong about all of this that plagued his mind. Bendy was like a child, newly made and curious...but he wasn't so innocent. He had a serious mean streak along with no tolerance for any sort of lie whatsoever. It was weird, and Henry still had no idea why it struck such a negative chord with the cartoon. Actually, it was beyond weird, it could be downright scary at times.

He could only wonder what the new creation, Boris, would bring to the studio.

Boris was a wolf, which was only slightly less intimidating than a literal demon. He stood far taller than Bendy, a good foot over Henry's own height. He had a white face and overalls, with two tall black ears waving to and fro atop his head. Yet again, a perfect three dimensional version of his cartoon character duplicate moving on the screen.

Unfortunately, Henry still had to be near the two often enough. Joey was really busy with...things, and Henry was starting to get the feeling that he was being used as an unpaid babysitter for the man's creations. All he really wanted to do was sit at his desk and work, but it was hard with less and less people coming in to help these days. He wasn't even entirely sure if they were quitting or being fired. But then again, why in the world would Joey fire anyone? Let alone fire so many in under a year. This studio was his metaphorical baby. It had taken him years to get it up and walking; he wouldn't let it fall...right?

"Hey, Boris! Ol' buddy, ol' pal!" Henry heard the two characters shuffling around somewhere behind him. He kept his eyes to his work.

"Why are ya cryin'?" For his part, Bendy was doing a great job of sounding generally concerned.

"Oh, it t'ain't nothin', Bendy." Boris' voice was just slightly deeper, with a tiny bit of a whine in his tone. It was still buffered with scratches and blips like Bendy's though," It t'ain't nothin' at all."

Clearly putting on a bit of an accent, there.

"Well then, what's with all tha salt water leaking down your cheeks?"

They paused as if waiting for a laugh track.

"Those are tears...of joy." A sad, over exaggerated sniff from Boris.

"Malarky!" Exclaimed the devil,"What you need is some cheerings ups!" He cleared his throat dramatically,"OOOOHHHH~"

A slight banging noise had Henry spin around in his chair to make sure no one was hurt. Instead, he saw that Boris had playfully pounced on Bendy and was pinning him to the floor by the top of his head. They were snipping at one another, but it seemed in all good fun. Henry couldn't help the small smile that crept onto his face, but attempted to banish it a second later in favor of a more professional look.

"If you start singin', I'll make you eat your own bowtie!"

"BORIS! This isn't a part of the script!"

They broke down into a fit of unmanagable laughter, Boris sliding off of Bendy. Indeed, they had been attempting to copy the lines from the almost finished episode, 'The Wolf Who Cried'. They were also trying to imitate their own voice actors, which was admittedly pretty funny.

Bendy really did seem less fitful and angry around his new friend. Almost like a totally different person...er...devil ink thing. Friendlier, with less wise-cracking and snapping. He'd even seemed to solidify more; there were fewer drops of ink falling from him. He just seemed...happier.

The two of them swatted playfully at one another for another moment, Boris overpowering Bendy at even that. Heck, the little devil's face fit in one of Boris' hands for Pete's sake. But for his credit, the toon was very gentle with everyone he came into contact with.

Henry accidentally made eye contact with the wolf, who smiled widely, showing off his fanged maw, and wagged his bushy tail slowly.

"Sorry there, Henry; we botherin' you?" He gave an apologetic grin. He seemed to like apologizing, as Henry had heard it a lot lately for lesser matters.

"No, no," He waved a hand, shrugging his broad shoulders,"No, I'm just watching. Carry on."

"Aw, c'mon, have some fun for once!' Bendy coaxed from the floor, smile lopsided against the wood,"You should really lighten up." He really did a great job at pretending that nothing had happened.

"Yeah, well, I'm doing my job. That's what I'm here for; to work, not play." He paused at their expressions,"But you guys continue, it's nice that you're enjoying yourselves."

Bendy pushed himself up by his elbows,"You mean you're not here because you want to be?"

Henry chewed his lip, rolling his pencil in his hand absently,"Well...initially, yes. But it's just something to put food on the table now." He observed the curiosity in their black eyes and decided to elaborate,"This studio was an amazing place to work at years ago...but now it's just kinda going...downhill. It's hard for me to say this, but I'm not sure how much longer we can last. Especially with all the darn staff gradually quitting for absolutely no discernable reason. First Pete, because he couldn't 'stand the smell of the place' or some bull like that, then Agatha and Thomas just left without resigning or giving a notice, and Bill..."

He realized he was ranting a bit, pencil bending in his hand as his words became more heated. He checked himself and calmed down with a breath, eyeing up from his lap to the two cartoons across the room. Boris still held his usual lazy, kind smile. Bendy, however...he was still smiling but it looked very wrong. All playfulness was gone, he looked extremely tense even from his awkward position on the floor.

He had a feeling that he really shouldn't speak to them of these matters. But then Bendy started a rather hearty chuckle, bouncing up off the ground like a compressed spring.

"Well, whatever, Henry! Humans sure are silly, eh, Boris?"He nudged the wolf in the ribs,"What matters is that we want to be here!"

Boris nodded happily, agreeing to most everything his best friend had to say,"Yup."

"Alright, we'll leave ya be," Bendy walked closer to Henry, coughing distinctly into his hand, the other held out a bit.

Henry checked his watch. Quarter past eleven. He rolled his eyes a bit, reaching under the animation desk for his lunch box. He pulled out a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and handed them over. The devil gave him a wide grin, snatching the treats rather ungratefully before high-tailing it out of the room.

"I'm going ta eat them both!" He yelled warningly, and Boris chased him a second later; but not before giving the man a genuine thank you. Henry swore, that wolf was too nice for his own good. He was going to get himself hurt someday.

Meanwhile, the whole studio was in a frenzy of stress over some key frames that were off...curteousy of Joey Drew. He claimed they had a limited time to get the next episode out, and then proceeded to try and tell the workers how to do their jobs his way. The man was a ticking time bomb; able to work everyone up around him when he himself was upset, and then becoming angry when people snapped back at him. Henry, fortunately, was mostly unaffected. He was too passive and calm to get mad at his boss. As long as his life was not hanging in the balance, and his pay check was still coming through, he wasn't going to have an anuerism over redrawing a few scenes and working overtime.

Barry from recording seemed to have other ideas, and quit promptly. However, to Joey's reluctant delight, not before the track itself had been edited together.

Joey was also sort of leaving the more difficult scenes to animate to a certain toon. For all his flaws, Bendy was still an exemplary artist and animator. Not only could he get any scene done in record time, but they were usually flawless. In fact, Henry was pretty sure that he was secretly supervising and editing many of the pieces he and others were working on. It didn't matter too much, however, as no one could complain about something so perfect looking. The new quality would certainly fool competition into believing that SillyVision was becoming well off.

...When in fact, in Henry's humble yet correct opinion, it was heading in the opposite direction. So badly that he was looking into other animation work in case he had to jump ship. Being partially in charge of finances, he couldn't help but cringe at the ever falling numbers.

It made him wonder what exactly Joey had planned for Bendy and Boris when the studio eventually turned belly up. Boris at least seemed innocent to it all, enjoying all the time with his partner. Bendy still worried Henry though, because he always seemed to know so much more than he let on.

He'd actually caught the dancing devil crying once. Or at least his supposed equivalence.

On the first of the month, he'd made the mistake of coming in early for work. After all, he had no family to entertain, and all his friends worked at SillyVision. The studio was pretty much his life. He had figured he could get some extra done and relieve some stress from Joey's shoulders. The poor guy had more grey hairs everyday.

The studio had been really, eerily quiet and dark. Kinda creeped him out a bit honestly, but he wasn't the type to outwardly show it, so he had just tucked his bag more securely under his arm and quickened his pace to the back of the building where his desk waited for him.

Just as he had reached the corridor and was about to enter the room, a small noise caught his attention. He hadn't been sure why, but he had froze completely as soon as it started. An almost pitiful crying whine, like someone was so miserable that they couldn't have held it in if they had tried. And it had come from his office.

He had leaned foreward on the toes of his feet, peering just slightly around the frame of the door as another pathetic sound went up. Almost unsurprisingly, it was the little black devil, Bendy, himself. Who else could it have been, really?

He had been on his knees on Henry's chair, leaning on the animation table like it was the only thing keeping him upright. Ink dribbled slowly off of his slightly trembling frame, oozing off onto the floor or the table itself. His face had been turned away from Henry, so the expression on his face was not seen...but it was easy to imagine.

Henry had stayed frozen, many thoughts racing through his head. Why is he back here? Where's Boris? He's dripping a lot...what if he attacks me again?...

Most strangely had been that despite the misery enveloping the toon, he was still gripping a pencil and dragging it over some papers Henry had laid out the day before. Working, correcting the poses, perhaps just trying to keep his mind off of...things.

His body had shivered as another sob pushed its way out. It sounded like he was doing everything he could to keep it in. Honestly, as bad as Henry had felt in the moment, he had wanted no part of it. He had been afraid that something bad would happen to himself, even if he had wondered what had reduced the cheerful cartoon to this.

He had chewed his lip, slipping silently backwards out of the frame. The part of him that was an Uncle to two great neices wanted to go and comfort the little tortured creature. The part of him that was a business man wanted to keep his work and emotions seperate.

Whether it was right or wrong, Henry had backtracked out of the studio and then hung around town until the time came for him to get to work. Bendy had gone back to being his usually chipper, mischieve-making self by then.

Henry never mentioned what he'd seen, and no one ever asked.

Of course, the two toons could not remain a secret forever. They just couldn't stay in two rooms their entire lives. It was inevitable that a confrontation would take place eventually. But even as he sat in the conference room with the rest of the staff, present day, Henry could reflect on about ten better ways said secret could have gotten out.

Joey had literally, in the cheesiest fashion he could manage, pulled a curtain away from his creations in the middle of a meeting. Then he stood smiling like he thought they'd be equally pleased, or at least as accepting as his fool friend Henry.

Instead, as Henry sat riggedly in his hard wood seat, suddenly aware of every sound and motion in the vicinity, he noticed the amount of jaws dropping open. This could be considered comical if it weren't so dang weird.

A stale silence enveloped the little room; a pin could drop and no one would care. Bendy and Boris, for their part, were doing pretty well at appearing friendly. Bendy's tense, twitchy body language, however, suggested that he'd rather be anywhere else.

Then the silence was shattered. A women fainted right out of her chair with a strangled noise, a man started shouting at Joey, and the rest were at least up, knocking into one another, and as far away as they could manage from the abominations. Henry looked really out of place for a moment, sitting in the middle of chaos with his legs crossed and hands gently resting in his lap. He struggled desperately to keep his expression nuetral.

The yelling in the room slowly rose up, men panicked to know what all this was, and if they were dangerous and how the heck had this happened and-

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Whoa. People!" Out from the croud pushed a rather...slimy looking man that Henry had not officially made acquaintances with yet. He looked like a kind of humanized copperhead, eyes intent and sharp, hair silver and brushed back. Henry was pretty sure he worked in the sound department downstairs, not really a popular man, but he took his work very seriously. He also had gained a reputation for wearing a black sweatshirt no matter the weather. Kinda gross, but it was no business of his.

The man strode across the room in four steps, bent foreward and incredibly eager looking. Too eager. He walked boldly right up to the inky monsters, a grin stretching up one side of his face. In fact, the other half of his face showed no expression at all. The room became quiet, besides a few people trying to get the fainted woman back in her chair. She took another look to the front and promptly plopped to the floor again.

"Joey! You scoundrel, when did ya do this?!" The man looked over the two with rapt attention, glancing sideways at their creator.

"Ah!" Joey seemed to re-gather his energy, dropping a hand on Boris' shoulder. It was hard to miss the wince from Bendy, "A few months ago now, Sammy! They've been picking up the slack and getting the studio back on its feet."

Henry wanted to disagree, but instead continued to lightly chew the pencil he usually kept behind his ear. He shifted in his chair, frowning. It looked like this Sammy was another weirdo like himself that didnt care terribly about Joey creating life from ink. Great.

"This is just incredible, Joey." Sammy near whispered, crouching down to look Bendy in the eyes. An uncomfortable silence stretched through the room again, as if most were waiting for the little devil to attack.

"Just incredible." He breathed again, almost seeming mesmerized, and not once breaking eye contact. Bendy stared back, blank in expression, tail ridged. Something unsaid passed between the two.

Then Sammy stood to his full six foot height and spun to face his disgusted or cowering co-workers.

"Ladies! Gentlemen! This isn't dangerous, this is amazing! A real step foreward for our studio and for the progress of mankind!" His half sided smile was easy and encouraging and sleazy.

"You're nuts! Both of you!" Someone yelled from the back.

Henry had to agree inwardly. Thats why he didn't rise himself to move to the front of the room as well. He was too busy trying to appear normal.

Matters were certainly not improved when a small ink pipe suddenly burst in the back of the room, showering those who had retreated to cower. A new rush of noise rose up, as the workers now made a mad dash back to the front, perhaps believing that more inky monstrosities were raining down upon them. Most exited the room altogether, yelling at Joey as they passed like he'd done it in purpose.

Now Henry really wanted to laugh, but Sammy beat him to it with a great, hearty sound.

Maybe they were all mad.

Wowie, look! Another chapter. I honestly wasn't going to bother, but all of a sudden I got a bunch of really lovely reviews!! Thank you sincerely, guys! You really encouraged me to write this third chapter. Hopefully, I'll get the fourth flowing soon. Have a great day!