Jack poured himself a cup of coffee and sat in the empty projector's booth as opposed to his "office" today. The lyricist wanted to pretend that the 'Weretoon shenanigans' as he dubbed it was all just a weird fever dream and never even think about what had happened that night. The lyricist wanted to just chalk the nightmare's vividness up to strong fumes mixed with the stress of his job and his bottled-up negative feelings toward Joey. He just needed a nice vacation, maybe someone to complain about Joey with, and a LOT of time outside the sewer.

All of those things would help, he knew he was overworked and needed the time off, he knew one of these days he'd snap if he had to endure Joey's nonsense for too long, and he knew that as much as it was his only 'sanctuary' as of late, the sewer was bad for his overall health. But deep down, he also knew it wouldn't cure him of what happened.

It wouldn't undo the fact that the exact day after it happened, he, Johnny, and Buddy met each other outside of work to talk about what had happened in the 'dream' when normally people don't share the exact same lucid dream, it didn't change the fact that the alligator-esc claw marks were still in the sewer in spite of sewer gators being nothing more than a myth, and it didn't stop Joey and Thomas from acting strangely around the three of them.

Jack tried not to feel jealous of the other two, but in the lyricist's eyes, the organist was lucky he had his own office with a door that could be locked and an instrument that was loud enough to deafen what would be his inner turmoil, and the gofer was lucky that his job kept him going place to place in the studio and hard to reliably hunt. He on the other hand had just himself, his half-written lyrics, and Thomas following him around because there was 'always' a "Leaky pipe" around him.

"...You know, there's a lot more leaks in the sewers." Jack tried to hide the nervousness in his tone with a fake chuckle. "I'd be focused on those if I were you, the one thing worse than an ink flood is a sewer water flood."

"That's true, but you're the only one who spends time in the sewers." Thomas retorted. "If more people were down there more often, then I'd take a look at them, but as it is, leaks in here are riskier. Especially in the Projectionist booth, somebody could crack their skull open if they slip on ink on the stairs."

"I see... Can't argue with that..." Jack mused as he checked his coffee before taking a sip of it. "Say, why don't I call over Wally to help? I hear you've been trying to take him under your wing-"

"No." The man replied with a suspicious amount of force in his tone before clearing his throat and trying to brush it off. "I mean, today he's working on cleaning one of the lower floors, it would be an inconvenience to both of us to pry him away from that just to have him help me with a few simple fixes."

"Allison then? It turns out she's pretty handy with a wrench."

"Hell. No." Tom protested more intensely before adjusting his collar. "...That's not even close to her job description, I can't just drag her into this when she's already busy with her real job."

"Fair enough..."

"Look, you just bury your head in your lyrics, and I'll work on my pipes. Okay? Okay."

Jack nodded and tried to concentrate.

He tried to ignore Tom, he swore to g-d he tried really hard to be patient and let the mechanic do his thing and leave him alone. But he felt trapped, he was alone with a man who seemed to underreact to the fact that his client wanted to enslave his own employees by disfiguring them beyond human recognition. He was alone with a man who was not only going along with Joey Drew's insane ideas, but also was actively trying to figure out what restored the 'successful toons' humanity in an attempt to make sure that it stopped happening.

Every time he looked up from his work, the mechanic was staring at him, and he knew it but couldn't say anything.

_________

"Nicht diese Hündin..."

Johnny was cursing under his breath as he heard the door being unlocked from the other side. A week after THAT night, he knew all of it was real; the other subjects, the weird transformation, the true purpose of Bendyland, everything! The normally aloof mechanic wouldn't shove himself into his, Jack's, or Buddy's spaces unless something was in it for him. And that 'something' was most likely whatever caused... THAT to happen.

Sure, things were mostly back to normal as he hasn't turned into a toon version of himself since the initial night, but Thomas and Joey breathing down his and presumably the other twos' backs were becoming less and less intimidating and more and more annoying. Every single day his work or his break would be interrupted by either Joey's familiar smiling face or Thomas trying really hard to play himself cool only for it to not fool anyone.

He didn't sign up for any of this chaos, he just wanted to pine over the pretty men in his department and play the songs he was given. Nothing more (unless one of the men were interested in him), nothing less.

"Evening, Mr. Heisenberg."

" Evening Mr. Conner." He cleared his throat. "I know I've said this before, but I prefer to be called 'Johnny' at work."

The mechanic shrugged in response.

"...So why are you here? The ink pipes are fine over in this spot and I doubt you have any use checking the organ pipes."

"Just checking in on you. Now I'm not singling anyone out, but lately a lot of ink has been going missing. Over twenty wells of the stuff, you wouldn't happen to have any art projects at home or anything I should know about, do you...?"

"No." The man replied blankly. "And I doubt anyone stole anything."

"...And why is that?" The mechanic raised a suspicious eyebrow.

"Because everybody's scatterbrained during these deadlines! Maybe a gofer set a requested inkwell in the wrong spot, maybe an animator knocked one off the table by accident while trying to brush a spider off, maybe a musician grabbed one when they meant to use polish... There's lots of people here and lots of mistakes that can happen..."

Johnny shook his head in annoyance, just wanting the man to leave him alone.

"You know, you don't have to cover for anybody if you don't want to. In fact, I hear Joey's upset about the loss of ink. Maybe saying something will result in a good pay raise in the future..."

The Organist gave him a funny look.

"You know, just thinking out loud..."

"Can you think out loud somewhere else? I have SEVERAL ominous song tracks to record. The Halloween special isn't going to make its own music."

"Alright, but really think about it, okay?"

Johnny rolled his eyes as Thomas left.

"Why couldn't it have been the Projectionist?" He sighed while trying to focus on his work.

___________

"Day fifteen. Putting extra doses of the current formula into the subjects' lunches and or drinks appear to have no effect on any of them."

Thomas spoke into the tape recorder, unaware that the gofer just out of sight decided to hide and let the man speak into the recording instead of making his presence known to the GENT worker to let him know he brought his toolbox over. 

"My current partners are optimistic with Jack Fain and Johnny Heisenberg. They believe that they are showing 'cartoonish' emotions, but I disagree, their 'unusual behaviors' can be easily chalked up to situational stress and the fact of the matter is that they haven't even been showing the symptoms in non-toon subjects that had the current formulas. The worst-case scenario that I can think of is that their bodies re-metamorphosized back into humans they developed some sort of antibodies to prevent further toonifications, but Allison did make a good point in the most recent discussion: There is a shared variable between the three that triggered the toonification in the first place, if we figure out what that is, we can work on recreating it."

Buddy slowly put the toolbox down, fully intending to steal the recording and take it to Jack and Johnny after it was put away.

"The rest of that discussion boiled down to guesses on what the variable could be with myself filtering out the variables that the other subjects also had in common. We also tested the newest formula that apparently turned the three into toons in the first place on other subjects, but no changes have been made to them either. Mr. Drew pointed out that a shared variable between the semi-successful is that all three of them work at the studio while none of the failed experiments work for him. Come to think of it, their prolonged exposure to the ink fumes, the ink machine, and cartoons in general might have something to do with their success, but it doesn't explain how and why they turned back and aren't re-turning into toons. However, his following statements involving 'a ritual under the sun as opposed to the full moon' make me want to discredit him. But that being said, we're considering expanding the subject pool to include more studio workers and see if that helps."

The Gofer slowly opened the toolbox and grabbed a wrench out of it, just in case he needed a makeshift weapon...

"In the meantime, Mr. Drew also wants to go over the types of toons the three were turned into, unfortunately this is made harder due to a lack of photos taken of the subjects for reference during that night, but there were several notes taken on them. According to Joey, Buddy was the most successful as his toon form bares an almost identical resemblance to Boris the Wolf while Jack and Johnny, while their success cannot be overlooked, simply aren't characters canon to the show or any of Bendy's other media forms. Jack is slightly more successful than Johnny on the grounds that the studio is much more likely to introduce a sewer gator character than an obvious cameo of the organist. More notes will be taken once we get a better understanding of this."

He clicked off the recording and set it on the table.

"Mr. Conner, I got your toolbox." Buddy stepped into the doorframe with the closed box in hand and a wrench behind his back.

"Gah! Kid! Hasn't anyone told you not to sneak up on people like that?!"

"Sorry, Mr. Conner..."

"...Say, you wouldn't happen to have been eavesdropping, were you?"

"No Sir." The gofer handed him the toolbox. "I'm... er- just practicing quiet walking for the music department! You know how Mr. Lawrence is... ...he hates loud noises- That he can't control." He bit his tongue and smiled while trying to hide his nervousness.

The mechanic nodded in complete understanding.

"Anything else, Mr. Conner?"

"No, you're dismissed."

Buddy nodded and 'left'. Waiting just out of sight for Thomas to leave...

"For Pete's sake, even when he's not actively in my face that damned Music Director is still finding ways to screw me over..." The GENT worker grumbled as he dug through the toolbox for what he was looking for. "I swear, if he wasn't such a wreck of a person already, I'd nominate him for the next test subject..."

When digging through the toolbox resulted in no wrench, he cursed under his breath and started looking under the desk and in the drawers in case it fell into a weird spot again.

"..Are you looking for this, Mr. Conner?" Buddy held out the wrench, carefully putting himself between the Mechanic and the tape recorder.

"I told you not to sneak up on me like that!" Thomas grumbled as he took the wrench.

"Sorry, Sorry!" The gofer lightly chuckled while holding out his hands. "I found it while walking back, it must've fallen out."

Thomas's eyes narrowed at the teenager, but the rattling of the pipe by his desk reminded him that he needed that wrench for a very good reason.

Buddy took his shot while the GENT worker had his back turned to him, he took the tape, quietly snuck out of the makeshift office... And cursed under his breath when his thumb grazed across the 'play' button, making Thomas's gravelly voice emit from it thus alerting the real one.

They looked at each other in a second of stunned silence before both of them ran like the wind. Both of them knew their lives depended on it, both of them knew that they'd be as good as dead if they failed.

Thomas tackled the gofer knocking the tape recorder out of his hands and Buddy in an act of raw desperation bit the man's arm as hard as he could.

Thomas let out a pained yowl as he clutched his arm while Buddy scrambled out of his grip and toward the recorder.

Thomas followed closely behind ready to tackle him again but Buddy dove down with the recorder in hand which resulted in Thomas almost tackling the wall.

Instead, he caught himself just in time and ran for the teen who abandoned his original destination and was now booking it towards the nearest broom closet.

Buddy locked himself inside the closet seconds before Thomas caught him and the GENT worker couldn't help but laugh, the idiot locked himself inside a closest with no way out! All he has to do is wait for the little twerp to come out and he's got the tape back!

So that's exactly what Thomas did, he sat down outside the closet and waited for Buddy to come out. He could be a patient man and worst-case scenario; he could always grab the keys off of Wally.