Bendy and Co's bios are located on my DeviantArt
Bumblebee and Knockout with Henry sitting on his shoulder ran into the main room of the studio and to their horror, the place was trashed. The beautiful Heavenly Toys ink fall was cracked and its sign broken in half. The ink stream itself came out lopsided and barely able to spew more than a couple feet of ink. Bendy's throne room door was destroyed, his head above the doorway missing entirely now nowhere in sight. Alice's head over her dorm was in a corner and practically none of it had its plastic on, only a frame shell of what used to be. Boris' was no different.
"Talk about terrible housecleaning," Knockout smirked.
Bee jumped off the small cliff off the tracks onto the wood boards below, making a rather noticeable dent in them. To his right, the entrance to the Ink Machine's labyrinth was still partially open but the pipes were quiet, no pulsing as usual. Knockout followed his direction and joined him.
"The Ink Machine may be resting or it shut itself off to prevent the Baron from using it to create more unwanted monsters. Maybe it can't turn back on without assistance?"
Henry sighed, "Waking up the Machine didn't go well the last couple times. I know. Joey and I did it. If the Machine wakes up and it panics, we could be looking at a whole new army of creatures. This feels like the first time I walked into the studio, when I first got the necessary parts for the ritual and not even knowing what I was about to unleash. Déjà vu, huh?"
The yellow mech nodded solemnly, "As much as I don't want you to go through the pain again, we need to turn it on."
As they carefully stepped into the inky passage that led to the Machine, the ink climbed to their abdomens making Bumblebee groan and Knockout about to cry. Henry merely clutched the shoulder armor so he didn't slide off into the ink and drown.
"It's a lot deeper than I remember. Henry, you said ink monsters can't touch large masses of free-flowing ink without getting stuck in it and being 'dragged back,' right?"
"Yeah," the human grimaced.
"What if it's deeper because the Ink Machine poured this much into its labyrinth so no one could disturb it?" Bee replied.
"Makes sense but ink monsters and toons can teleport between rooms through their own inky portals. Unless the Machine has some sort of magic shield in its room to prevent ink spawns, it wouldn't really matter."
The ex-Decepticon snarled, "Can we please stop talking about the ink and move faster! I can feel it seeping into my joints, not to mention my poor paint job is ruined!"
Bee did everything in his power to not laugh but he obliged the mech and continued at a reasonable pace. Then something caught his optic and he paused. A smaller room to the side of the labyrinth was open, the floor was clean and above ink level and inside, six podiums with vague images above them sat empty. He heard Henry gasp.
"The objects used in the ritual to awaken the Ink Machine, there aren't there! We-we need to get them back or the Machine won't respond!"
Knockout moaned, "I am not trudging through this ink on another scavenger hunt! First the relics of Iacon, then the Predacon bones, Tigressa's absence, the search for Megatron, the terrible artifact run we did between all our worlds to fix the Allspark, and now this! You go get them, I'm going to stay in this room and clean myself off. Take Henry and meet me back here with the objects. I'll contact you if anything goes wrong."
Henry made an expression that finally made Bee crack a huge smile as he jumped from Knockout to the other. "Touchy. Okay Bee, we can do this."
The Autobot sighed, "Yeah but we don't have a lot of time before one of the ink monsters return. Do you remember the layout of the studio to guess where each part may be?"
The human crouched beside his neck and thought hard. "I remember in the original studio, when I was stuck in the reoccurring loop too, the items were always placed near their respective elements. The ink jar was near the animator's desk beyond mine, the record was in a radio closet, the gear was near the Machine's former entrance, the Bendy toy was in the projection room with the dancing Bendy reel, the wrench was lodged into Boris' clone's ribcage, and the book was down in the recreation area. Obviously, those rooms don't exist anymore but I guarantee the items were probably brought to locations of similar reflection by the Timberwolves despite being evil so we have to find the new rooms associated with each and hopefully go from there."
"That could take hours, we don't have that time!" Bee urged as Knockout got out of the ink with a disgusted shiver behind him.
"We don't have a choice either."
Nodding in defeat, Bee opened his comm. "Blurr, we have a problem."
"Now's not the best time to say that!" The speedster said angrily on the other side.
"The items needed to operate the Machine are missing and it may be in a hibernation state until we get them. We don't know where they are but we need more time to find them in the studio. Is there any way to keep the Baron and the Timberwolves away for maybe an hour more?"
"Uuummm…well I have some good news for you. Your old friend Tigressa decided to join the party and she's kicking the Baron's ass so he's distracted. The Timberwolves are way too focused on attacking Bendy and the other toons to care. Octo-Perry keeps getting tangled, but Caesar isn't anywhere in sight. I'm pretty sure he's just waiting to get back at Tigressa for humiliating him. I think you're fine. Do what you have to do and we'll take care of the rest."
"Thanks," Bee smiled. "Well Henry, we have roughly an hour. Where should we start looking?"
"Bendy's entrance leads to Bendyland, his personal carnival, and the storage areas like the Vault and the art studio, remember? Alice's section has Sammy's music department, the infirmary, and her personal lab. Boris has his safe house, library, and Norman's train yard where Casey usually rests. I'd say go to Alice's section first. I'm pretty sure the records and one of the gears we need are in there and her room is the closest. Bendy would have dolls of course because he loves himself enough to protect his merchandise, and the inkwells from the art studio are magical so a jar of that would do. Boris has a personal wrench he uses that is one of the items and the book we need is no doubt in the library," Henry lectured.
Bumblebee nodded and walked back through the ink towards the main room again. He could here Knockout muttering to himself and it still made him smile humorously. When he was out of the ink, he ran straight towards the stairway up to the three entrances and immediately took a left into Alice's or rather Susie's domain. Upon entering, he grew uneasy and he felt Henry did as well. A large lobby of sorts decorated with Alice memorabilia and posters lined the walls. A couch pristine and untouched sat beautifully near a standing projector parallel to a moving picture he recognized as Showbiz Bendy where poor Boris was being cut in half by a sweet faced Alice.
When the Boris onscreen actually was cut, Henry whimpered and from what he had said about Susie's breakdown, Bee knew it reminded him too much of the horrors he witnessed by Susie's hand. The nearest door was Bumblebee's first destination and when he opened it, he gaped at what he saw. A corridor with wide open double doors and poorly constructed walls revealed things he certainly never saw before.
To his left, several valves sat broken with a few battery-looking objects scattered about. To the right much to both of their fears, several bodies of deformed ink monsters lied on tables, a morgue of sorts. The room looked remote as the small hall from the door to the actual room appeared to have a bridge which was missing. It was too far to jump across so Susie must have had a switch or something nearby.
"Look familiar?" Bee asked.
Henry just clutched his shoulder plates tightly to express his discomfort, "The infirmary and the lab should be up ahead."
They passed another room which had nothing but food to both their surprise and upon looking in, Henry snatched a random piece of fruit dangling from a vine from the ceiling and bit into it with a satisfied sound. Susie apparently cooked too. Given the time period she was originally from, this wasn't unusual of a hobby she picked up.
They made it to the end and the darkness that clouded the room from view way back near the entrance faded to reveal medical beds, all empty, and medicine locked away in cabinets. What got Bee the most was the poster above a desk that was a notice and the bottom read "Not Sick, Not Paid."
"Was Joey the type of person not to consider physical injuries qualifying?"
"Not entirely. He was willing to pay people, at first, for the first few days of an injury but he expected you to come back in as soon as possible because physical injuries aren't infectious. You broke your leg, get a cast and get back to work. That's the way he saw it."
Bee raised his brows dramatically, "Well then."
Moving past the beds, there was a large door with Alice's trademark halo on it. Bee noticed it was mechanical so a switch was needed. As he searched for it, he then directed a question towards Henry again, "So is Alice…Susie the medic of the team AND the cook? Seems like the boys don't want to take on the jobs as your culture seems to imply they are only supposed to be handled by women."
Henry used Bee's elongated arm to slide down and search alongside the mech for the switch. "Yes unfortunately. Back then, women were supposed to be 'housewives,' basically do whatever they can to please their husbands. Well, cooking was always a high standard. Linda, back when she was alive, used to cook and clean for me and I always felt kind of bad about it. She was taught at an early age to act that way but she did teach me somewhat how to cook before she passed. Women are also trained to care for other people, an extension of nurse status. Not many women were actual doctors at the time, only nurses."
"I never got that about Earth even though I've been here long enough to figure it out. In our culture, mechs and femmes are equal in everything. The only reason femmes are attempted to be kept out of high risk jobs is because there are so few, especially during the war. Other than that, we never thought a femme couldn't do what a mech could do. The only difference between a femme and a mech is chassis structure and a higher birthing rate. Femmes hold more sparklings than we do, that's all. Mechs commonly have one to two sparklings but rarely more, femmes can conceive two to about six if they're really lucky," Bee shrugged.
"That sounds nice, being able to reproduce with both genders instead of just one. If women ever go extinct, we're screwed. If women ever learn how to reproduce asexually then us men will go extinct and it'll be an amazon paradise. Not that I have anything against that idea. I always told Linda she deserved more, perhaps another woman who would see her for more than a common housewife. She said she already had what she wants and that was me, an understanding man in a cruel man's world."
Bumblebee nodded and felt nearby the door before running a hand over a button hidden behind stray soup cans. The door jolted slightly and opened, dust slightly falling from crevices in the wood planks above. "Got it. Let's go find that gear."
A random Alice Angel cutout stood awkwardly next to a table dripping with bubbly ink. Various misplaced tools like a pipe wrench, a plunger, and a large syringe were scattered about aimlessly. Cabinets half open and chests across the floor suspiciously lied about. Bumblebee went to the nearest one and opened it, he shot back when the body of a Boris flopped over, crosses over its eyes confirming it was dead.
"What the hell?! What was Susie doing to them?" Bee scowled in repugnance.
Henry didn't really flinch much at the Boris. "Back when she first came to be, she was driven insane how imperfect she ended up spawning as. She took other toon's body parts to fix her own. Boris was the only toon to come out perfect before the Allspark was involved. She's better now as she really does look like Alice but she experiments with the dead to know more about the ink."
The human scoured the floor, beneath work benches and between cabinets for the gear. The plant life and the moisture made it hard to check every spot but he made best with what he could. A large pit of vegetation lingered in the middle of the complex and the passage between rooms with glass were built obviously around it. A bed of water was in the middle nearly a hundred feet down. Think foliage vines from above calmly swayed.
Bee glanced frantically around the top shelves and opened the remaining chests but found nothing. "Where would she hide something this important to the Machine?"
Then he peered across the Pit and one room stood untouched. The glass and the walls surrounding it made it inaccessible any other way except by crossing said pit. Susie must have placed it there for a good reason. Walking to the edge, he resisted the urge to look down and examined the vines. They seemed sturdy enough for him. Against his better judgement, he backed up and ran forward with an astounding leap, grabbing the vine closest to him and swinging it just enough to hop off into the open room. He almost lost in balance in the rebound of his landing but quickly reestablished it.
He raised a brow when he noticed there were only a single filing cabinet, a chest, and a drawing desk. It was odd that a room like this only held the bare essentials of a workplace but then again, he had yet to open them. The cabinet he examined made him grow increasingly confused. There inside it held very important legal documents he carefully had to bring out of their folders including a deed to the studio which didn't hold Joey's name…
"Henry?"
"You found the gear?"
"No, but I found something alright. Did you know you're the legal owner of the studio and upon technicality, the characters are yours too?" Bee pressed, frowning slightly.
Henry leaned against the wall shocked. The studio was his! All the rights to the characters were his! "What? No, that's-that's impossible. Joey signed the lease for the studio back then. I didn't sign anything."
"I don't think it was signed by you, I think it was transferred into your name when Joey bankrupt the studio. Your name and signature must have been forged by Joey after you left to ensure that if anything were to have…happened…you would have…gotten the studio. He left you everything; the Machine, the studio, everything!" Bumblebee exclaimed.
The mech put the documents into his chest compartment before scouring through the other things. He moved onto the chest and opened it. A smile formed back onto his face as the gear they needed sat perfectly within the chest. Despite everything around it being moldy and rustic, the gear looked freshly polished. The items for the Machine must have been taken care of quite well over the years or at least they were replaced every now and then with identical ones. Putting it alongside the documents, he closed his chest cavity and turned towards Henry.
"Got the gear, now let's get the-!"
Something inky shot out from the floor on the other side of the wall where Bumblebee was causing a small quake in its awakening. Bee backed up only for his pede to nick the edge of the floor, small rocks falling from beneath the pressured floorboards down the pit. The ink reassembled and Bee immediately growled, "Caesar!"
Baron Bacon swiped ink dripping from his lip and gums. He roared back at Tigressa who had ink stains upon her abdomen and part of her legs from where he struck. His fists had bled on multiple impacts trying to get her weak points but she looked barely tired. As he kept trying to pursue her, she kept knocking him back into the rock wall where a perfect indent of his figure was really beginning to show.
Blurr and Optimus just stood baffled how determined the Baron was to win. Their helms darted from left quickly where he hit the wall with brutal force back towards the right casually as he ran right back into the fight only for the same thing to happen again and again.
Blurr snickered, "You'd think he would use a different strategy by the fifteenth time. This is just too funny. Now I see why humans love these cartoons. Seeing them in real life just takes the Energon cake, dude."
The Prime barely said anything except a small muttered "uh huh." He winced each time the Baron made contact with the wall.
It seemed in this rampage, Tigressa was growing bored. She barely had to move anything but an arm to punch him right back across the field. She gave Optimus a glance with a raised brow and all Optimus could do was shrug. Even the Timberwolves had stopped their attack and watched miserably.
Alice and Sammy sat on a ledge swinging their legs giddily while the latter drank a piña colada. He shared with his girlfriend and remarked, "I don't know whether to laugh or just feel sorry for the guy."
Susie huffed, "Never said the Baron had brain cells. Can't believe I was once this idiot's captive in Shakin' Bacon. Having to play the damsel in distress for Bendy with such a dumbass really hurt my reputation."
Finally, Tigressa grew fed up with the fight and on the next charge by a heavily bleeding Baron, she grasped his fist instead of aiming lower and merely whipped up her arm, taking him with it. He flew over her head into a tree, his body scrunching up like an accordion. Many toons made the sound of pain in response to it.
Arcee shook her helm, "This is one of the worst fights I've ever seen."
Joey and Norman made no comment beside her. Tigressa, on the other hand, roared and grabbed the back of his mane with her jaws after she transformed into her dragon mode. She began slamming him viciously across the ground, earning her various noises of pain from the Baron until she abruptly made one last forceful throw down which incapacitated the warthog. Snorting furiously, she proceeded to stomp on him before ending her rampage with a harsh kick in the ass. She stuck her tail up into the air along with her head and flew away, leaving the poor bastard a small puddle with his remaining ink splattered about.
Lennox stared at the puddle and then at the Timberwolf to his right, "Okay, so where were we?"
The wolf gave a whine at him before both grinned at each other. Lennox swung his gun first, knocking the wolf back and everyone began to battle again except for one.
Casey sniffed the battlefield anxiously but his target was nowhere in sight. Something was wrong. Where was his sibling? The toon grunted confused, not before lifting one wheel off the ground to kick away a wolf that lingered to close while not even batting an eye at it. Its yelp of pain made Casey somewhat smile.
The train knocked over cabinets and desks squirming in the tight room and he did a full 360 before he caught sight of Bumblebee. It was obvious he had enough of their taunting, their distraction. Unlike the Baron, Bee knew Caesar had no boundaries and his bloodlust was endless. He would pursue him until he died.
"Come on, let's dance," mocked Bee.
The white and black train hissed angrily, baring his mandibles and jaws opened wide. It took little effort to faze through the wall after Bumblebee, wasting no time in trying to kill the mech. His mandibles pushed Bee off the platform with full force much to the shock of Henry who screamed Bee's name.
Bumblebee, upon impact, felt himself lifted upward and let go right above the pit. His chest armor covering his hidden compartment briefly opened and flung the gear out. Bee managed to grab a vine in time just as Caesar jumped after him and he swung down. What happened afterwards almost seemed to be in slow motion.
On the downward swing, Caesar snapped his jaws following his path but began to sink where Bee began to rise. At the same time, Bee caught the gear mid fall barely avoiding getting his servo chopped off by persistent snapping black teeth. As Caesar continued to fall, he sent the train a crooked sneer and watched the toon's own expression go from furious to fearful. Their eyes met and Caesar was outfoxed. He hit the side of the pit which knocked the wind out of him and plummeted into water as Bee swung to safety on the other side.
He let out a roar before it was garbled by liquid. Ink and water was a terrible combination as Caesar found he couldn't teleport in it and swimming wasn't his strong suit. With a heavy splash, he struggled with grunts and snarls to try and stay afloat. He desperately kicked his wheels and profusely wiggled his body towards the nearest rock or ground but the ceiling was higher underneath the undiscovered cavern and he saw no wall in the darkness. The only light was from the tunnel above where he had fallen.
Bumblebee showed no remorse for the train and neither did Henry. "We need to keep moving."
He grabbed Henry and put the gear back into his chest compartment, walking down the hall they previously wandered. When they reached Alice's lobby, they went through the remaining entrance and above it read "Sammy Lawrence: Music Director" which made both Bee and Henry glance at one another.
"If the gear was hard to get, can't imagine what else we'll face in this studio," Bee moaned as he peered glumly down the music department's visible entrance.
Henry sighed in defeat, "Welcome to my hell. Now you will see what I've had to face all those years. Trust me, I expect nothing less."
AN: One of you is probably getting TFP flashbacks to the relic hunt of Season 2. I'm focusing more on Bumblebee and Henry as well as exploring the areas not covered in the new studio. Good news is with this hunt, you will not only get a feel for new locations but you'll meet new...or rather old characters. As you've no doubt noticed, Caesar is in pursuit similar to how Ink Bendy was in BATIM which means you'll probably be seeing him throughout this hunt. Let the games begin.