#hells studio

"IT'S JUNE 15TH!" He shouted at the top of his lungs while barging into as many rooms as quickly as he could, attempting to warn as many as possible. "EVERYBODY! IT'S JUNE 15TH! RUN AND HIDE WHILE YOU STILL CAN!"

"Joey, deep breaths..." The animator put his hand on his boss's shoulder in an attempt to steady him. "What's the problem with June 15th? I thought that the Inspectors were coming over on July 15th."

"Henry! The inspectors are nothing compared to this!" Joey exclaimed. "June 15th is the first day Sammy's left for his vacation!"

"Ooookay..?" Henry looked at the worried man, blinking owlishly as he still didn't grasp the severity of this dire situation.

"So? The Banjo man's out for a few days, big whoop." Bendy shrugged nonchalantly with an eye roll as he hopped over Henry's desk. "It's not like we have any tight deadlines on songs or anything, and even if we did, Mr. Fain's not *that* bad of a songwriter in his own right, so what's all the shouting and running around for?"

"It's..." Joey looked around and gestured the two to come close, as Henry and Bendy humored him, he whispered to the both of them. "The I-N-K..."

"Oh ^$@!ing son of a @*$%# we're completely #$@&ed..." Bendy's eyes went as wide as dinner plates before shaking his head and glaring at the loony cultist. "WHY DIDNTCHA SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THIS SOONER?! WE COULD'VE SENT LETTERS WARNING PEOPLE!"

"It completely slipped my mind!"

"Oh geez... well too late now..."

Bendy rubbed his temples in an over-exaggerated fashion while Henry stayed calm on the surface.

"Guys, I think we just need to stay calm and not feed into it. It does like it when people freak out, so if everyone pretends everything is normal, it won't mess with anyone. It works just like the toon logic thing where you only fall when you look down."

"Henry, that's only how it worked before we hired Sammy." Joey started to explain "But when it messed with him, he messed back and it had fun so now it gets bored and 'lonely' when he's gone, and when it gets bored and lonely, it tries to find someone to fill the void Sammy leaves, someone who has the same 'angry-spiteful' reaction to its antics, and to do that it starts causing problems ranging from mildly annoying to-"

SPLOOSH!

"...Destructive..."

"DANG IT! I *JUST* MOPPED DAT FLOOR!"

Wally shouted from right outside Henry's office door, prompting the three of them to peek out and see him confronting Thomas.

"I THOUGHT YA SAID YOU'D FIX DIS DANG THING!" The janitor rapped the broken pipe with the handle of his ink-soaked mop. "WHAT THE HECK IS ALL OF THIS?!"

"I FIXED THAT DAMN PIPE FIVE GODFORSAKEN MINUTES AGO! IF *YOU* WEREN'T KNOCKING THINGS OVER AND HITTING ALL OF THEM WITH MOPS AND BROOMS, *I* WOULDN'T NEED TO SPEND ALL MY TIME RUNNING AROUND FIXING EVERY PIPE YOU MANAGE TO BREAK!"

"WELL MAYBE THEY WOULDN'T BREAK EVERY TEN SECONDS IF YA USED SOMETHING STRONGER THAN TINFOIL! I'VE USED STRAWS STRONGER THAN YER PIPES!"

"OH, SO YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST BLAME *ME* FOR THIS?!"

As the ink started to drip on both Wally and Thomas, Joey, Bendy, and Henry gave each other a concerned look before looking back at them.

"I think it just found *two* replacement Sammies..." Joey murmured as he adjusted his glasses.

"...Should we warn them?" Henry asked the man and the demon.

Sammy felt cold, sluggish, exhausted, and just all around awful. It wasn't helped by the awful weather, awful heating system in the music department, and the awful, AWFUL pipes. He internally cursed his own body as well as the terrible timing it had on him. If he woke up feeling like this, he would have stayed home, but nope! Instead he felt just fine when he woke up and only felt this bad when he stepped in through the door.

"I swear if I didn't know any better I'd assume I was cursed..." the grumpy musician murmured under his breath as he wrapped the makeshift blanket around his shoulders, clicking his pen while trying to figure out the right notes for the newest song. "...Or maybe I was and I just didn't realize it-"

Connecting the dots, the musician bolted into the men's restroom just to double check in the mirror that there was no signs of spreading ink or magic doing magic things. But he was still on edge, just because it wasn't visible didn't mean he was safe...

"...Uh Sam? Are ya feeling okay?" The Janitor looked up from the sink he was scrubbing. "You're lookin' a little green around the gills there..."

"No."

"Regular sickness like the flu spreadin' around or Ink stuff?"

...Honestly it was a little concerning that they had to differentiate if it was ink or not, and what was slightly more concerning was the only answer he knew so far.

"I don't know yet, it's too early to tell which."

"Okay, well I've got a spare bucket just in case." Wally handed over the empty plastic bucket. "Hollar if ya need anything else."

"Thanks, either way yell at Joey for me."

"Will do." the Janitor half-chuckled. "But uh.. if its the former, do me a favor and keep da bucket close by. It's easier ta clean vomit outta a bucket than off da floor. Thanks!"

The musician nodded before leaving the janitor to finish his own work, he didn't feel *that* sick, but he also didn't feel sick at all when he was going to his job in the first place. Plus, he'd also rather not have to redo all his hard work thanks to a worsening stomach bug.

When he re-entered his office, he sat down and resumed comparing and contrasting the notes already on his desk, only turning away from them to scratch in a rough draft of a needed new theme. Only resting his eyes for a minute...

---

...A single, almost glowing white eye cracked open as the groggy monster peeled his inky body off of the floor. He cursed under his breath when he tried to wipe the sleep out of his eyes to be greeted with the irritably familiar slush that called itself ink while feeling more like a cold mud to the musician.

"Of course." He murmured bitterly to himself as he scraped up what was supposed to be his legs and managed to get them into the bucket. "It couldn't be just a damn cold, oh nooo. It had to be ink again. It's not like I'm running out of good clothes thanks to this nonsense." He scowled while trying to pull his sunken in shirt and pants out of his body. "Aaaaaand I can't dig my own clothes out of this gunk, great, lovely, EXACTLY what I needed today."

The ink man sighed as he set the makeshift blanket on the chair and sat down on his desk to inspect the damage. As he scanned his work for ink stains, he noticed someone left a box of band aids on his desk, alongside a freshly brewed cup of green tea, slice of chocolate cake on a plate, and a 'get well soon' card. He opened the card finding no signatures on it, no familiar handwriting, not even a doodle that could've hinted at who could've left these here. Just the cheesy yet well-meaning wishes already printed onto the card when it was made.

"Okay, there, we got him the stupid card too, happy?" Sammy overheard a gruff and grumpy sounding voice outside his office. "He's been out like that for at least thirty minutes already, he'll probably just sleep it off and continue like nothing happened after he changes back."

"...D-do you think we should also get him a real blanket?" replied the nervous, stuttering demon. "And dad recently mopped that floor too... s-so what what if he gets a burn from the ink remover if we leave him like that?"

Sammy slowly cracked open his office door. He still wasn't feeling ready to deal with anyone, but he figured he might as well confirm to the mechanic and the kid that he is in fact alive and not burning on the ground.

"Snowflake, he's a grown man and he's been through this song and dance more times than anyone here can count." The GENT worker rolled his eyes. "He's not one of those little toon rats who come to you with wide sad eyes and broken tails."

"H-HE'S A MELTED INK MAN, THOMAS!" Snowflake exclaimed with an urgency even the kid wasn't used to hearing in his voice. "This this isn't- isn't normal! I-it's not its not supposed to BE normal! I still really wanna a-ask Joey what to do... I wanna help him, I want to really help him, not just... just slap a band-aid box down on his desk and call it a day!"

"For Pete's sake! Whether it's 'supposed to' or not, it IS normal to the studio!" The man exclaimed back with slightly more irritation than usual. "And especially to Lawrence. That man is like a magical lightning rod! So can you stop wasting my time with this and let me go back to my damn job?!" The speckled imp shrank back as the man caught his breath. "Some of us have more important things to do than to play nurse to the studio's biggest butt monkey!"

"I-i'm sorry..." Snowflake sniffled. "I just wanted to help.."

"Well, next time, don't drag me into it! He. Is. Just. An. Ink. Creature. Not anything that's a danger to anyone els-GAaaAAH!!"

The sudden, cold and wet weight of a sheet of thick ink slapped itself on Thomas's back like a bucket full of slightly melted snow put precariously over a cracked-open door, startling both the imp and the GENT worker while the inky musician let out a few fake coughs before pulling himself free from the mechanic.

"Sorry *cough* *cough* about that I just have *cough* the worst luck today, having a TERRIBLE, *cough* POSSIBLY *cough* *cough* CONTAGAGIOUS cold *cough* on top of being turned into a toon... *cough*"

"W-wait, Mr. Lawrence, you're... you're a toon..?"

Snowflake blinked owlishly as he looked over the inky musician, taking note of his visible pie-cut eye, four-fingered hands, and altered, more distinctly recognizable silhouette. The prospect of a human being turned into a toon while being sick was a lot less horrifying to the kid than the notion that he was turned into a melting ink figure. But he still stepped back to give the man some space, while Snowflake experienced first-hand that toons melt when sick, Sammy must've been REALLY sick to be that melted.

"Yep, nothing *cough* too serious to worry about. It just looks worse than *cough* how it really is."

"W-well maybe I can ask Joey to let you go home and rest it off?" The timid imp offered. "We don't wan-want it to spread to everyone else..."

"Go ahead, but for *cough* now, I'll just quarantine myself in my office, okay?"

"Okay Sammy."

The ink man waved the kid off and shot the mechanic a glare once he was out of sight, which Thomas was quick to return.

"That was really goddamn low, Tom. That kid doesn't even have a single mean bone in his body. Treating him like that is like... yelling at a puppy that's afraid of everything."

"He has plenty of stupid ones in there and someone has to teach him because I know Wally wont."

"Teach him what, exactly?"

"To mind his own business and not drag other people into running all over the studio for a box of band aids and the other stuff! He wasted so much of my time with that stupid wild goose chase!"

"He didn't know what was going on and was trying to help how he could, you could have sat him down to explain what's going on to the kid for five minutes and then you'd be working on unclogging pipes that should've been unclogged months ago while Snowflake would be worrying less about the ink."

"Okay fine, in hindsight I should've knocked some sense into him, told him that the ink does that to you all the time, and to buzz off before he dragged me all over the place. Happy?! I learned my lesson."

Sammy gave him the most deadpan glare he could muster with only one eye and his other facial characteristics consumed by ink. "Hey, speaking of lessons, do you want to learn something about the Ink that we've learned through years of experience?"

"What?"

"It hates not having a spiteful asshole that it can throw magic at around. It only manages to last a full week at most before it will try to latch onto anyone who 'deserves to be the lightning rod'."

"...So?" the mechanic raised an eyebrow.

"Soooooo... *cough* *cough* With my TERRIBLE *cough* CONTAGIOUS disease, I think it's best for my health and the studio as a whole if I take two weeks of sick leave, *COUGH* maybe even three just to be safe." The ink creature gave the smuggest, most insufferable grin a somewhat humanoid glob of gunk could manage.

"You... You're making that up just to scare me, aren't you..?"

Snowflake did a double take as he saw her.

"I'm so happy to hear that everything's going great here! ..To be honest, part of me was a little worried that it was only as good as it seemed on the surface..."

"Well I can't really blame you for worrying, and sorry to hear about losing the role, your Joey sounds like... like an absolute jerk!"

"It's putting it lightly, but yes." the shorter woman nodded.

Right there, talking with his own timeline's Susie was a petite woman with fiery red hair tied in a braid resting on her shoulder, she had blue eyes but one of them was dull and lazy. She had tannish peach skin peppered with freckles. She looked so different, and yet, and most importantly, her voice matched up with HIS timeline's Susie Campbell perfectly.

He felt a large pit in his stomach as he saw her. Sure, she was as sweet and kind as the Susie he knew, she had the same slightly southern twain to her voice, but there was just something that felt deeply wrong about the timeline she came from..

Part of him felt like it was a *good* thing that magic wasn't the norm in that studio, he felt like if it was, things would go from bad to worse.

"Hi there, kiddo! Remember me?" the woman from another dimension waved him over and asked him as innocently as if they had met in a non-supernatural but still odd way.

"Y-yes, although I wasn't expecting to see you here... Did something happen in your place?!"

"No, at least nothing bad did. The boys and I were just curious."

"B-but how did you all get here?! There's no-" he put his hands over his mouth, remembering Joey's warning about the timeline butterfly effect "Er, w-we came from such a far away place! And we didn't tell you where we're from! And- and-"

"..Snowflake..?"

Were they some kind of supernatural stalkers?! Was this why he was so nervous about the people in that timeline?! Did they know he was coming in the first place?! They had either said or implied that their Joey was bad, but were the rest of them bad too...? He looked at her like a deer in the headlights, he SWORE that he never even told any of them his name!

While it was a small thing, it was what broke the camel's back and the imp zoomed off in search of his father, who he really hoped would convince him that this was just a weird dream... ------

"-So I kid ya not, da first thing dat little babyfaced new-hire me did the second I walked into that room was clear my throat, gettin' all of their attention and say 'Hey, you guys look like you've killed before and wont hesitate ta kill again! Wanna kill my parents?' I didn't get an answer, just, silence aside from Jack hitting one of the pool balls outta reflex. While I don't think anyone decided to adopt me right then an' there, I think that's the key moment where I went from 'The annoyin' janitor' to 'Da kid we need to check in on every now an' again'."

"Hold on, I'm still wrappin' my head around ya having your first kid in your teens, I'm an adult, I've only got one kid an' I need all the help I can get with Snowflake!"

"Well, I think part of it is dat Vincent is a human kid an' Snowflake's a cahtoon demon who brings in alotta strays and also has a supahnateral force of chaos and mischief actin' like a mama bear ta him. Yeah he sounds like a good kid, but he's also the type of kid who needs a lotta hands on deck to properly raise."

"Ya got me there." the other Wally adjusted his hat.

"DAAAAAAAAAAD!" The little toon zipped out of nowhere and clung to the janitor's back and neck, unintentionally tackling him in the process.

"Speak of the lil' devil..." The janitor pat his son's back. "What happened, Snowflake?"

"T-there w-w-was- there was-" the imp stuttered while he did a double take, realizing that there were two of 'his dad' even if one of them looked very different...

"Do ya think he saw Susie's eye fall out?" his other dimensional double whispered to him.

"Gosh I hope not, it would probably scar him..."

"M-ms. Susie's eye fell out?!"

"N-no! I mean, *hopefully* it didn't but sometimes glass eyes can-"

The janitor was cut off by the sound of the imp screaming bloody murder.

------

Sammy didn't like the new 'guests' that showed up in the music department. Er- rather didn't like the other Sammy as well as the fact that the four of them had spontaneously appeared in his personal break room. (the 'Sammy sanctuary' as Bendy humorously called it.)

The other Susie was friendly and chipper, the woman's 'lazy eye' was a little off putting for some, but he didn't mind. He had mixed feelings about the other Wally as he did the notion of a timeline where he and Wally were brothers. The other Norman was... tolerable. He didn't like the man's sense of humor, and his stories creeped him out, but at least he was smart enough to know when to quit.

He couldn't blame the others for leaving but he wished they didn't leave him with him.

THIS guy? He was almost convinced that if he took his eyes away from him for too long, he'd either kill someone or ...something else... And it didn't help that he showed up half naked and with a goddamned chainsaw.

Aside from the obvious signs that there was something deeply wrong about that guy, there were other things about this 'Sammy' that unnerved him; the redness in the whites of his eyes, the man's twitchy movements, an all too familiar bitter smell mixed in the man's breath that wasn't tobacco...

He shook his head, he didn't want to overthink this other Sammy and what was going on with him, he just wanted 'babysitting' to be over and done with as soon as possible. He didn't want this man chasing down the other musicians, he didn't want him causing trouble with his instruments, and the last thing he wanted was to call the cops over him-

"Hey! Don't touch that!" the Musician barked at his double as he took the notes out of his hands. "They're not finished, and I don't need you messing with them-"

"The character that theme is for is Ruby, right?"

"...Yes...?"

The other musician fished some crumpled up, half done sheets of music out of the trash. "What seems to be the issue between all of these drafts and your current one is that they're all too *orderly* there's chaos in Rube Goldberg machines. Organized chaos, yes, but it's still very chaotic. And it's noisy chaos too."

"Uh huh, and how do you suggest I add 'more chaos' into this?" he raised an eyebrow.

"Well-timed sound effects and improvised instruments over instrument instruments in some places. Sometimes, an empty can of soup and a wooden stick gives off the sound you need over a drum set." the man shrugged. "Here, let me show you an example..."

He took an empty can of bacon soup, a drumstick, the chainsaw, and a violin. With the violin, he followed the notes of his double's piece, he rev'd the chainsaw and used its low, mechanical purr as a base, and he rhythmically tapped the drumstick against the empty can.

The other Sammy used an empty tape to record the song, in spite of his feelings about his double, he couldn't deny that at least he knew what he was doing...

*Click*

"So what does he do to keep you here?"

"..Joey?"

"Yes, I might.. ...have issues, but I'm not blind or deaf. I could hear you muttering under your breath about 'crazy things happening like this every week', I saw the bucket of ink placed over your office door, and I'm very used to the phrase 'Goddamnit Joey, not again', but I wasn't expecting to hear it right after coming here."

"...Wanna talk with it over drinks in the breakroom?"

"You can drink, I'll just have coke."

As they got there, the neater and more put together Sammy poured the bottle of whiskey into a glass and handed his double a can of cola. The shirtless one added a fine, white powder to his own drink which he mixed in while his double wasn't looking.

"I work here mostly out of spite."

"...Spite? That's it?"

"Most of it." he sipped on his glass. "There's also some of the few coworkers here that I like and don't think I'll see if I don't work here and I'm partly convinced that the Ink will throw a tantrum if I leave for good."

"The ink's alive?"

"We have living toons here and the ink is magic, it wouldn't surprise me if it was alive too, especially with how it acts sometimes..." he shook his head. "So what about you? Why do you stay in your studio?"

"I have nowhere else to go."

"Nowhere?"

"At first I thought that one of the only good things about Joey was that it didn't matter who or what you were to him as long as you were talented..." The man sighed as he stared at his drink. "At first, I thought it was a good thing that he went out of his way to hire people who most found undesirable.. But as it turned out, that was his plan. Nobody cares if people like me wind up dead or missing. Police in the area can't be half assed to keep anyone but their own kind safe, they're not going to bother." he spat bitterly "I'm sure that shitheel bastard only fired me and re hired me only to show me that it doesn't matter if I run, I can never go back home, he's burned all my bridges that I didn't burn first. The studio is my home now. And I'm sure it'll be my grave too."

"You know... It doesn't have to be."

The brown haired man let out a loud, broken sounding laugh at the black haired man's suggestion.

"...'It doesn't have to be', god, you're so fucking optimistic it's hilarious!"

Sammy gave his double a questioning look..

"What? And don't suggest I live here, trust me, you really don't want me to do that.."

"But weren't you the one who got everyone here in the first place?"

"Huh..?"

"It obviously wasn't your Joey, otherwise, he would've made the toons by now and judging by what you've told me about him, he would've used it for other terrible things too. It couldn't be your Norman because according to him and this timeline's Norman 'He knows better than to mess with this damn' trash'." The neater Sammy listed off on his fingers. "If any Wally knew magic, I'm sure he'd use it whenever he could, especially in a place where everyone's used to it. That leaves you and your Susie and I could be wrong, but I think that you people wound up in my place because you were the one doing the spell. And don't take this the wrong way, but you are definitely unhinged enough to take on magic."

Sammy stayed silent and stared at his own hands. "I... I don't-"

The shirtless man was cut off by a bucket of ink landing on them both.

"Dammit Bendy!" Sammy cursed as he wiped the ink out of his eyes. "Can't you see this is *not* the time?!"

"Oops, didn't know we had a guest.." the imp nervously chuckled. "You're from the same place as other-Norman, right?"

"Ti ast fach..." The other Sammy grumbled under his breath as he got up.

"uh... gesundheit?"

"Bendy, if I were you, I would run." Sammy suggested as he watched his double reach for the now empty bucket.

"A-aren't you gonna tell him to calm down?!"

"Nope, good luck."

The music director of this timeline exited the room, leaving his double and Bendy to their own devices.

Both Normans rolled their eyes (or in his double's case, his eye) when they saw Bendy running for dear life away from the bucket-wielding Music Director who was screaming profanities.

"...So I take it there's never a dull moment in your timeline either?"