This cartoon opens deep within the peaceful countryside. It is an ordinary full moon night—until the earthquake strikes. Sheep huddled together for warmth stir at the sudden commotion from where they rest beside a wooden shack, the door of which opens to reveal a wolf dressed in overalls carrying a lit candle in one gloved hand. Boris the Wolf—as the rusted mailbox along his front walkway indicates—wobbles into his front yard, and scans the fields surrounding his home in bewilderment while everything continues to jiggle.
Finally, the tremor stops. Boris heaves a sigh of relief, strokes the heads of several sheep who have gathered around him for reassurance, and turns to go back inside. Then a loud noise snaps his attention to the foothills some distance away, where a crack rips open the ground. Fire spurts upwards.
The sheep bleat and hide behind Boris. But sheep and wolf alike tremble as a dark, horned figure raises from the crevice, casting an enormous shadow across the terrain in an inky stain that falls over Boris and his flock.
Boris gulps. His knees are knocking together and sweat is trickling down his brow.
The candlelight flickers out.
Days later . . .
High above the countryside stretches another world altogether, a cartoon version of heaven represented here by an extensive cloud landscape. Soft choir music plays in the background. Meanwhile winged angels adorned in white robes and halos glide around, their fingers steepled together and expressions solemn; a few of them pluck at small harps.
Alice Angel appears from among these celestial bodies, striding over the clouds in her high-heeled shoes and black dress, distinguished further by a white bowtie attached to the front. While she does have a halo, the toon is otherwise wingless and has yet to achieve the traditional attire worn by her fellow angels—to whom she curtsies in reverences, smiles, and on various occasions opens her mouth as if to exchange a friendly greeting.
Unfortunately, each angel sweeps past Alice with little more than a polite bob of the head. They are all too busy to stop. Out of sheer desperation, she even tries to sing a short tune that begins:
"In the lovely springtime, I want to see
The flowers bloom and the birds sing—"
An angry burbled admonishment halts the rest of Alice's words in her throat, and her head bows in shame before a particularly stern angel who waggles his finger at her like a teacher might waggle a ruler at a rowdy schoolchild. The divine chorus fills the air again once the angel has glided away, and Alice walks with far less enthusiasm to the arched golden gate serving as both the entrance and exit of their heaven.
The portly, bearded angel who awaits Alice on the threshold appears to have witnessed the whole event, and the sympathy is clear on his wrinkled face. He gives her a small smile as Alice pulls out a scroll from the hammerspace behind her back to show him, which bears a title that reads in bold letters: Report for Urgent Rescue Mission.
Nodding at the scroll, the portly angel adjusts the tiny spectacles perched upon his ponderous nose, opens a ledger midway, finds an entry, and begins to speak in a stream of incoherent mumblings. The meanings behind these mumbles take shape as images in a dialogue bubble above his halo, where Alice watches them play out much like an old reel of film. They depict reports of a huge, shadowy, and fanged demon on the loose in the world below. Alice gasps during the related scenes of innocent people screaming and fleeing cities that have burst into flames, and of the demon scooping up victims to shove into its gaping mouth.
The portly angel shudders and his bubbles pops. Explaining the situation has frightened him.
Although Angel looks daunted at first, confusion slips into her expression. She unrolls the scroll further, finding the text details that while there are reports of a demon, her specific mission is to save a soul in trouble somewhere in the countryside.
One soul. Not whole cities of souls.
When she points out the discrepancy to the portly angel, he blushes in obvious embarrassment as if to suggest his imagination might have taken over for a moment. Still, Alice conjures a dialogue bubble with its own sequence of images, illustrating her plan to swoop on a cloud above this purported demon, and then sing so divinely as to drive the terrible creature screeching into some crack in the earth. Back to the deepest pits of the netherworld.
Before Alice's dialogue bubble dissolves, a picture shows up of the title on her scroll changing to read: Mission Accomplished. After all, chasing off the demon with her voice might be exactly what would allow her to save the soul in need of help.
The portly angel dabs at his brow with a handkerchief and produces a final bubble affirming when Alice returns successful from her mission, beautiful wings will blossom from her back, her dress with transform into a white robe, and she will receive full acceptance within their community. He finishes by saluting her, then floats aside to let Alice pass through the gate.
A short distance away from the gate, the cloud terrain abruptly gives way to the broad skies. Alice rips out a section of the cloud layer, hops aboard it, and makes her descent.
While Alice is traveling down to earth, Boris is in the middle of a very torturous experience. He stands in his humble shack, his eyes pouring tears of agony, his lower lip quivering, and his nose twisting this way and that as if it wants to escape his snout (even with the clothespin stuck on it). The poor wolf makes low, mournful sounds . . . at least until he finishes chopping up the onions and slides them into a pot brewing on his stove. He takes the clothespin off his nose and sniffs the overall savory aroma of his bacon soup. Boris has not turned on the stove yet to heat it up, but putting in all the ingredients now will make it easier for him to enjoy later in the day.
Taking a step back from his modest kitchen area—really nothing more than a countertop, a gas stove, an old refrigerator, and a cupboard crammed into one corner of rather bare home—Boris wipes at his eyes with a handkerchief from the top chest pocket of his overalls. A card slips out of his pocket in the process. A simple business card made of flimsy paper, all crinkled up. He picks up the card and tries to smooth it out, tapping the side of his head with one finger as if trying to remember he came across the thing in the first place.
A bubble materializes above the wolf, showing his memories from several days ago:
The bubble shows the full moon night when Boris and sheep first saw the earth crack open and the figure emerge. However, moments later, the same figure had shot upwards in an arch that had caused him to crash land, face first, into the dirt road winding past Boris' house toward the distant town. Boris had seen the lifted underside of a big boot disappear back into the opening in the earth, which had zipped up and disappeared.
A little toon—nothing like his shadow at all.
With Boris and the sheep staring on, this odd, lightly steaming visitor had yanked his face up from the ground. His oval-shaped head hung an inch or two over the rest of his plain dark body, and a ring of stars twirled about his small horns. The toon had looked so small and helpless. Boris had crept closer and gently poked him, finding him soft and warm to the touch. But as the toon had lifted his gaze, something in the sight of Boris reaching out in the darkness, his long thin candle upraised, had startled him. Pie-cut eyes shrinking, the toon had thrown gloved hands over his head as if expecting a blow, sprung up with a scared yelp, and run off, leaving behind a crumpled business card in the dust that read on one side: Bendy, Trainee Demon.
Back in the present, Boris finishes smoothing out the card and slips it back into the pocket of his overalls. He walks over the window, hopeful, and brightens in happiness. Creeping with great care along the walkway, glancing left and right as if to make sure no one would see him, is the little demon himself. A question mark forms over Boris's head, wondering what he was up to this time. Images dance in bubbles above him of odd pranks pulled over the past couple of days—of finding his mailbox moved to his backyard, or buzzers attached to his doorknob, or empty buckets over his door that never hit him but sometimes gave him a start, among similar antics. All harmless tricks that Boris has weathered without getting offended, and soon without any surprise whatsoever. For him it is only a sign, like the bleats of his sheep outside in the field or the very rare tinkling of a passing mail truck, that Boris has company.
And it is good to have a regular visitor, someone who wants to see him.
On occasion, Boris will spot Bendy watching him after a pulled prank, as Boris picks up the buckets to take inside (he has a fair collection now) or calmly sticks the mailbox back in its spot. The wolf will wave friendly-like at him, but the demon always gets flustered and flees.
In fact, it seems that the less Boris reacts to the pranks, the more flustered Bendy seems to get.
One noteworthy event that comes to mind is when Bendy had begun to stomp around on Boris's roof. Even though the stomps were clearly meant as a disturbance, they drummed out such a natural beat that Boris began to play his clarinet, nice and loud. After a while, the stomping had surprisingly transitioned to what sounded like enthusiastic tapdancing, with lighthearted whistling that followed along with his melody, which had both then, for some reason, stopped abruptly as if in shame. Right afterwards Boris had heard the slide-whistle noise of Bendy slipping off the roof, crashing to earth, and steaming in frustration as he strode away.
After that event, Bendy had stayed away for a little while—
—until now.
On this occasion, Boris watches Bendy pull out a banana peel from hammerspace and set it down on the ground in front of his front door. The little demon steps back as if to consider his work, wringing his hands nervously. He looks as hopeless and lost as a lamb separated from his flock.
What concerns Boris even more, however, is that Bendy has gotten much thinner over the past couple of days. The wolf knows enough about food to recognize hunger when he sees it; the little guy's stomach even growls, although Bendy covers it with his hands as if begging it to stop.
Well, now that Bendy is on his front doorstep and clearly starving, perhaps Boris can tempt him to stick around with the right motivation. Pulling a sandwich from his cupboard, Boris comes to the door and throws it open.
A lot happens in the next few seconds.
The first thing Boris sees is Bendy standing with a lifted fist like he is just about to start knocking. The demon jerks when he sees his intended target open the door unexpectedly. He jumps. A bucket falls from the top of the door to cover Bendy's head, and he steps on the banana peel. Then he goes careening down his front porch steps and the walkway, riding the banana peel, arms flailing wildly in the air, where he smacks into the mailbox, which at least knocks off the bucket. He has escaped again before Boris can so much as call after him.
Boris watches Bendy disappear over the foothills. The wolf scratches his head, munching on the sandwich.
Meanwhile, Alice Angel is soaring above the countryside perched atop her cloud. The land is verdant and full of life. She gazes in awe, hands clasped together closer to her chest, at the sight of tall trees whose leaves rustle in the breeze, and meadows with grasses that sway in great waves. Alice stops among a whole field of wildflowers, each one more richly colored—from her perspective—than the last. Plucking one of the blooms, she sniffs it and sighs in contentment.
For a moment she looks skywards toward the distant clouds, noting that this place is much different than those sacred and solemn stretches. It is full of rich sounds and intoxicating fragrances. Birds tweet as they go past overhead. One of them pauses when Alice hums aloud, coming to land on her outstretched finger. A little robin.
Unbidden, a song swells up from within. And Alice sings it for the bird:
"In the lovely springtime, I want to see
The flowers bloom and the birds sing
But what is the most important to me
Is seeing that huge smile on your face
Better than the sun on the darkest night."
Alice pauses at this point, having never gotten so far in her song without an admonishment or some other reprimand for disturbing the solemnness. The approving happy tweeting robin is satisfying before he takes off again, waving the tip of one wing at her.
She flops onto her cloud. She almost drifts off to sleep, surrounded by bliss, until the crinkle of paper shatters her thoughts.
Oh dear, the mission! Alice grabs the scroll out of hammerspace and unrolls it. Somewhere out here in the countryside is a poor soul in need of salvation, possibly from a demon, while Alice is having fun. Without further hesitation, she has zipped off into the air again, coming the countryside for signs of any trouble. But all she can see is the beautiful countryside, with its wide variety of plants and creatures.
When Alice comes to a small town—which the slanted sign designates as Briar Ville—she flies around the streets hopefully. However, the residents seem to go about their daily lives without much difficulty, working at the businesses arranged along the main road, or chatting to each other on the street corners. It is quiet and sleepy, a little like heaven in the sense that almost everyone moves about with some destination in mind. Alice even passes by the window of a red schoolhouse where the children sit in a classroom, looking thoroughly bored but at least in good health. She presses on, frowning.
Where is that one lost soul? The scroll given to her could not be wrong, could it?
Eventually Alice comes across a dusty road leading away from Briar Ville, winding through the fields, towards a ramshackle wooden house fronted by bits of a picket fence. A wolf dressed in overalls stands in the front yard, eating a sandwich with one hand and righting his mailbox with the other—Boris the Wolf. As Alice slows down on her cloud nearby to greet him, he waves his sandwich at her. He appears calm and unperturbed at the sudden arrival of an angel, even a bit grateful.
Alice pulls out the scroll, taps the text on the page—as Boris reads it and continues to eat his sandwich without any apparent concern—and points at him. A question marks appears above her head, as if to ask whether Boris knows anything about a soul in trouble, the presence of a huge intimidating demon, or maybe is in a terrible predicament of his own. Yet Boris stands there for such a long time that Alice draws back. Perhaps the scroll has only confused this poor wolf, and she should search on elsewhere.
Once again disappointed, Alice gives Boris a polite bob of the head, and starts to fly off on her cloud. It is almost as if she is just like the solemn angels who have passed her by so often.
Shuddering at that thought, Alice happens to glance over her shoulder after having gone only a few feet, and then gets rewarded when she sees Boris holding a hand up as if to detain her, a lit bulb flickering in a bubble over his head. Alice zips back right away, holding up the scroll. She bounces on her cloud in glee as Boris nods, and then gestures for her to follow him.
At long last Alice will carry out her rescue mission!
One scene later, Boris has taken Alice atop a knoll that overlooks a flock of grazing sheep, in the shade of a tree. The wolf flops down on the ground and offers her a sandwich from hammerspace, which Alice politely turns down. She looks around, doing her best to be patient and figure out exactly what Boris wants to show her.
The sheep are fluffy and healthy.
Boris gazes over the fields, while Alice sits tapping one finger against her cloud.
All is quiet, and then Boris pulls out a clarinet and starts to play. It is a sweet and winsome melody beautiful as, Alice cannot help but think, choir music. Instantly the sheep perk up their ears, and their heads turn toward their caretaker. The song itself bears similarities to the tune "Teddy Bear's Picnic," yet with longer pauses and more drawn-out notes. Alice listens in amazement, and watches in even greater amazement while the sheep start to frolic in the field. They bleat to the music, prance about, leap over each other, and roll in the grass with careless glee. Several of them have bells on collars around their necks, and they jingle merrily as they dance.
Boris seems able to control the movement of the sheep based on the notes he plays, and the way in which he plays them. He is a master at his craft. Alice even finds herself humming, at least until she hears a raspy whistle join in as well.
At once Alice freezes and looks around in surprise. Boris taps her on the shoulder. Smiling in triumph, he points one finger across the field, where Alice spots a rustling bush. To her astonishment, it suddenly sprouts horns and lifts off the ground to expose a pair of black shoes. The bush tiptoes, with exaggerated sneakiness, closer and closer to the flock, and a head emerges from the top of it—oval shaped, with pie-cut eyes and a sly smirk.
A demon!
Alice prepares to rush forward, because who knows what a demon could do to defenseless sheep, but Boris reaches out and tugs on her cloud. He shakes his head. For some reason he wants her to wait, and Alice decides to trust him, even though she looks on with concern as the demon in the bush approaches a puffy sheep.
It is a very small bush, Alice notices. The demon must have the ability to stretch into a much larger form.
At last the bush comes within a few feet of the sheep, before settling back down on the ground. Everything falls silent for a moment. The sheep continues to munch away at the grass.
When the bush rustles noisily, the sheep lifts her head with a cheek full of grass. Bendy leaps out, arms upheld as if in an intimidating gesture. He scowls and waves his hands; however, the sheep simply continues to stare at him.
Alice is staring too. Her mouth hangs open.
That is the demon?
He is much smaller than Alice would have thought . . . he is certainly nothing like the enormous monster the portly angel fears might be on the rampage. She studies this small demon, more of an imp, really, who continues to wave his hands with growing desperation. Steam puffs out of his little horns, nothing more.
When Alice turns to Boris, he pulls a card from his overalls pocket for her to see. She considers the name and description.
Bendy, a trainee demon. He must be very low in the ranks among other demons, just like Alice is among other angels, and she can see he is having a difficult time of carrying out whatever he wants to do.
Alice pales, and pulls out the scroll. Could it be that Bendy is both the demon and the soul in trouble here in the countryside?
And why would Alice get sent to save a demon, even one at the trainee level?
She does not have much time to ponder such questions, because in the interim Bendy has inched much closer to the sheep, with more steam raising from the horns on his head. His expression mingles desperation with agitation. He is quite thin, resembling a scarecrow in some ways. Alice catches a glimpse of his ribcage as the demon takes deep breaths, the length of a finger away from the sheep, glaring straight into her indifferent gaze.
The sheep swallows the grass in her mouth, and the pair become still as statutes. Everything falls into absolute stillness. All the other sounds in the field, and beyond it, seem muted by comparison.
Suddenly a long tongue shoots out of the sheep's mouth and slurps Bendy from his stomach upwards, with such force that for a second the little demon lifts off the ground. It is a decisive move on the sheep's part, Alice can tell. Bendy backs away a few steps, dripping and trying to wipe off the salvia. Other sheep wander over, with similar intentions. They swarm around Bendy, and he flails in clear panic as they slurp and bleat at him from all sides. For a moment the demon disappears amid all the wool, until he pops from amid them and comes crashing down on the grass a short distance away. He has one of their bells clasped in one hand.
Bendy sits up, looks at the bell and his dripping body. Next his eyes lift to the sheep as they bleat in his direction. It is almost like they are mocking him. His horns droop in dismay, and he blinks tears out of his eyes.
Alice watches the scene sympathetically, certain now that he is indeed the soul referred to in the scroll, the one that she needs to help.
Then Bendy springs up, whirls back his arm, and throws the bell quite hard toward the sheep in retaliation, who part to one side or the other in a single fluid movement. The bells zips through the air, hitting something solid with a loud clang. An infuriated cry that shakes the entire setting for a moment soon follows.
Bendy freezes, as does Alice and Boris, as a form stirs from further back in the field. All of them see the head raise, with overlarge curled horns, from a member of the flock who had apparently not joined in on the frolicking during Boris's performance—a large, and now grumpy-looking ram. The bell has gotten stuck in his eye, and he shakes his head viciously from side to side, unable to dislodge it. Grunting, the ram whirls on Bendy, his one good eye puffed out, red, and narrowed. The other sheep flee.
Sweat pours down the little demon, who goes white as a sheet. Extreme terror keeps him rooted to the spot.
Alice turns to Boris, pointing frantically at his clarinet and begging for him to play something to placate the ram, which Boris—now growing quite frantic himself—proceeds to do. He blows out the beginnings of a calm melody, until the ram drowns it out with another stricken bleat. Really, it is more of a roar now than a bleat any normal sheep or ram could make. And the speed with which the ram charges with his head down and horns in full ramming mode is akin to a train racing down a railway; the movements of his legs over the terrain are like pistons working overtime, and the snorts coming out of the ram's nose sound just like the chugs a train engine might let off.
The ram is just about to reach Bendy when Alice gets there. She sweeps past on her cloud and grabs him as the ram tears past. Alice hugs Bendy—still shivering badly—and slows down, stroking him on the head between the horns. Bendy calms just enough to look up at her, then his pie-cut eyes widen in surprise. A blush raises to his cheeks, and he tries to pull away from her, until another cry of rage redirects their attention back to the ram and, in shared alarm, to Boris, who stands before the ram with his clarinet, playing a call to arms on his clarinet.
Other sheep from the flock gather in front of Boris as the ram comes, this time not so much in a charge as a pouncing dive. However, the force of the impact is still so powerful they go flying everywhere like soft bowling pins.
Boris lands hard on the ground near the cloud, and Alice helps to pull him up onto it beside them. He sways a bit where he sits, turns to look at Bendy, brightens, and offers him a sandwich pulled from his hammerspace.
Bendy takes the sandwich in quivering fingers, gazing in astonishment from Boris to Alice as if struggling to process what has just happened. They are smiling at him, and Alice gets a thrill when she watches one corner of the demon's mouth tweak upwards.
Another roar at close range cuts through this tender moment. Alice barely manages to steer the cloud out of the ram's path as he shoots by, causing all of them to go spinning off to one side like a top. But the cloud, in general, is moving much too slowly while weighed down with the three toons. Alice finds she cannot ascend very far; she can also tell that Boris and Bendy have noticed the same thing.
Boris pulls out his clarinet, perhaps to try and tranquilize the rampaging ram again, and lets off a stunned yip when the instrument falls apart in his hands. Broken from the earlier impact by the ram, all the wolf can do now is softly whimper over it. Alice lays a hand on his arm in consolation. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Bendy reach out a hand as if to do the same thing from the other side, hesitates, and drops his hand. The guilt is clear in his expression, which then hardens into sudden determination.
Bendy stuffs the sandwich into his hammerspace, springs from the cloud, and rushes toward the panicked ram—leaping about in a mad frenzy with the bell continuing to dingle wildly in his eye.
A combined dialogue bubble appears over Alice and Boris, showing an image of Bendy's head beside an exclamation mark. They are calling for him to come back. But the little demon keeps going until he stands well away from where the cloud hangs, takes a deep breath—exposing his ribcage rather sharply—and whistles so shrilly it cuts through the frantic grunts and snorts made by the ram.
With a vigorous flare of his nostrils, the ram whirls on Bendy. He lowers his head and launches forward. For a moment Bendy looks afraid again. Then he takes a deep breath, drops a banana peel onto the ground, and leaps out of the way just as the ram bears down on him. A surprise bleat erupts from the ram's throat when he steps right on the peel and goes slipping forward, right toward a particularly large rock, one of the few in the field. He crushes flat against its surface like a pancake and flops onto the ground.
Alice gasps in astonishment, while the other sheep bleat in celebration, but Boris just gives a knowing nod and chuckles. All of them applaud.
Now both sides of Bendy's mouth tweak up, as if he is on the verge of an actual smile. He even makes a pleased whistling sound through his teeth before drawing closer to the ram, clearly with the intent to pluck out the bell. Yet then everyone gets a shock when the ram pops back into his full size right in front of Bendy, so they stand face to face, and it is clear which one of the two is the more intimidating.
The pleased whistling trails off, and with the ram puffing hot air right into his face, Bendy swallows hard and slowly reaches out to grab the bell.
Alice and Boris wince at the harsh bang when the ram strikes, and for one moment both of their eyes turn up expecting to see the demon go flying past. When he fails to, however, their gazes drop and find Bendy clutching onto the ram's horns.
Now the ram has two problems to contend with, and his frenzied leaps about the field become even more erratic. Finally, he seems to reach a consensus to as to how to get rid of his newest issue—by smack his face against the ground. Alice watches the ram draw his head back, while Bendy tries frantically to scramble atop his head, and can already imagine a splatted toon against the earth. Shuddering, she looks around while trying to figure out something, anything she can possibly do to stop that from happening.
A flock of passing birds gives her an idea.
Alice places her hands together and lets out a high, operatic note—which distracts pretty much everyone. Boris gives a soft whine of contentment, Bendy gazes toward her in outright awe, the sheep baa in unison, and even the ram pauses and twists in her direction (even with a little demon clinging to his face). Amid the sudden calm, a dialogue bubble appears over Alice's head, showing an image of the bell beside an exclamation mark.
Nodding, Bendy manages to grab onto the bell and gives it a hard yank, which even with Alice continuing to vocalize in sweet, gentle tones—doing her best to imitate the tune Boris had played on his clarinet—leads to more struggling. Suddenly, there comes a satisfying popping noise that sounds exactly like a cork coming out of a bottle, and Bendy hits the ground with the bell once again clutched in his hand.
The ram cries out. He bears down on Bendy once again . . .
. . . and nuzzles him affectionately. His tiny tail jingles, and he slurps Bendy with a tongue far larger and juicier than that of the sheep he had first approached. Using the ram's horns, Bendy pulls himself up, shakes himself off, and pats the ram on the head.
Alice navigates the cloud over to Bendy, and she and Boris slip off the cloud onto the field beside him. There is a moment where the ram nuzzles Boris as well, as if to apologize for going berserk, where the wolf strokes him along the back consolingly.
Finally, the trio of toons stand facing each other.
Bendy takes a deep breath, reaches out as if to shake Alice and Boris each by the hand—and then promptly collapses.
Alice accompanies Boris when he carries the unconsciousness Bendy back to the shack. They wrap the small demon in a warm blanket and place him on a soft armchair, which apparently doubles as a bed for the wolf, and Boris recounts to Alice the events of the past several days—of how Bendy had emerged from a crack in the earth and pulled one prank after another on him. Of special interest to Alice is when Boris shares the odd incident that involved the tapdancing on the roof, since it is the first time that she has ever heard of a demon who loves to dance. It is an odd, quirky thought.
In the meantime, Boris heats up a pot of bacon soup on his stove, the smell of which brings Bendy around. He humbly accepts first one, then two, and then three bowls of the meal, eating as if he has never tasted anything near as delicious in his life (alongside the sandwich). Alice savors the dish with just as much relish. Aside from the bacon, it includes numerous vegetables and seasonings. She praises Boris, implying by dialogue bubble that she sees it as a divine creation, something that causes Bendy to flinch just a bit before continuing to gulp down the rest.
An odd sort of magic hangs in the air during the meal, shared by an angel, a wolf, and a demon. They sit with each other like old friends getting together for a visit. Alice almost forgets that this is not exactly the case, until she hears the crinkle of her scroll.
It is during a moment where Boris sits at a small table pushed into another small corner of his shack, working to stick his clarinet back together again, at least for a while, using glue. Alice notices Bendy slip out the front door, glances at her scroll, and follows him outside.
The little demon sits on the front porch steps, chin in his hands, and gazes dejectedly out at the countryside. Alice sits beside him. When his gaze slides her way, she gives him a small smile, and a dialogue bubble appears over her head with a question mark in it—as if to ask him what is wrong.
Bendy reaches into his hammerspace and pulls out a scroll, something that resembles hers, even though it does smell of brimstone. The title reads: One Final Chance, and the text details a mission to torment at least a single mortal soul into petrified submission. As she reads it, Alice can practically hear some red-robed demon somewhere warning Bendy to successfully carry out this task, or else, as the scroll itself says, he should "not bother to come back."
Images dances over Bendy's head, affirming the reports of pranks carried out on Boris. But none of his pranks has made the desired impression on the wolf, or at least the one desired by the demons deep in the earth. If anything, they have had the exact opposite effect.
Besides that . . . and now the images Bendy shows Alice shift scenes he has observed of Boris giving him a warm wave, or throwing blankets over his sheep at night, alongside similar niceties. The issue is clear, as both Bendy and Alice turn to gaze through the front window at Boris, patiently toiling away at fixing his clarinet: Boris is too nice of a soul to torment, and Bendy, it seems, is too nice to continue tormenting him—especially after the whole incident with the sheep and meal. So now he is stuck.
Bendy sighs, looking at the scroll as one might a death warrant.
Placing a hand on his shoulder, Alice turns to the countryside and all its wonders. The birds twitter through the skies, the flowers are blooming in the field, and they can see the sheep prancing about in merriment nearby.
A beautiful place to be.
They both sit there is silence for a while, as Alice turns the issue over in her mind. When she questions Bendy, through a dialogue bubble, about the tap-dancing, the demon hops up like she has pinched him. He bows his head in shame, twiddling his fingers together, and produces a bubble illustrating quite clearly the stance other demons took regarding his focus on tap-dancing as opposed to terrorizing victims—punishments and hurling flames. Bendy cringes at recollection, and for a moment he covers his head with his arms like he expects the images of the demons in his bubble to begin assaulting him.
But Alice waves away the bubble, gesturing at the setting to indicate they are far away from those risks. She clasps his hands in hers and gazes into his eyes in an appeal for a tap-dancing demonstration. The direct contact causes a blush to raise to into the little demon's cheeks, and he steps back onto the walkway in clear nervousness.
After a long, awkward pause, Bendy starts to tap his feet and twirl about in front of her. His shoes drum out a fine-tuned rhythm that brings a smile to Alice's face right away, which only gets more elaborate as he continues to dance. His eyes shut, and he starts to whistle along with some inner melody.
The front door creaks when Boris steps outside, his clarinet reconstructed, and Bendy abruptly stops his performance. Alice and Boris clap, but the little demon shrugs his shoulders and kicks at a stone. As if his dancing is nothing particularly special. It is clear he needs encouragement from more than just Alice or Boris.
Alice only needs a moment to think up a good solution to this problem.
About an hour later, the toons are in Briar Ville opposite the red schoolhouse. Boris and Alice have constructed a crude sort of stage area, placing various wooden planks together over abandoned food crates. School is close to letting out, or so the owner of the local general store lets them know, and Bendy looks hesitant as Alice considers their work on the stage. His gaze darts around at the various shop owners who are studying them in curiosity.
Alice kneels in front of him with a handkerchief, wiping at his face, and the little demon focuses his attention on her. She encourages him to take a few deep breaths and studies his plain dark body—which seems to need something more to help him pop out a bit more.
A lit bulb appears over her head, and Alice pulls out one of her extra white ribbons from hammerspace. She arranges it into a bowtie on the front of Bendy's chest.
Yes, that looks appropriate.
At this point, Boris decides to make his own contribution on the final preparations. He reaches into his overalls pocket and brings out a card. It looks just like the business card the wolf had shown Alice earlier, except that this one appears cleaner and made from sturdier material. Boris hands the card down to Bendy, and Alice reads what it says as well: Bendy, the Dancing Demon.
Bendy regards the card in awe, grateful tears swelling in his eyes. Before he has a chance to react any further, though, the schoolhouse bell rings. The front door opens, and children begin to flood out in their eagerness to get away.
Boris lifts his clarinet and plays a high solitary note.
It is the cue for Bendy to hop up onto the makeshift stage and start to tap out a melody, while Boris plays along in accompaniment. The children stop in their tracks, attracted by the signs of a show in progress. Meanwhile, Bendy gives way to his natural inclination to dance, taking bolder steps that echo over the wooden boards.
Before long there is a sizable group of them flooding the area in front of the stage, gazing on quietly as Bendy moves to more elaborate maneuvers. He jigs and twirls, hops from one side to the next, and even begins to whistle again. The tune he creates is so clear and distinct, Boris gradually eases off his own clarinet playing without taking away from the performance.
The wolf backs up off to one side, coming to stand right beside Alice, where the pair can see Bendy performing, truly light on his feet, as the children's faces widen in incredulity at the sight before them. He truly is a dancing demon, Alice considers, as he tempts the children to watch him in quiet wonder. She even notices many of the shopkeepers and other residents of Briar Ville coming over to witness the scene. Excitement starts to light their faces.
Even Alice cannot take her eyes away from the dancing. Bendy just seems to radiate a certain inner glow all his own, certainly not divine radiance or the fearsome power of flames, but some odd combination of the two. He is working his own type of enthusiastic influence on the town, merely through entertaining the people there.
It is something Alice has never seen before, and perhaps might never have seen until she came to earth. The thought shocks her in a pleasant way.
Finally, Bendy taps out his final beat and throws open his arms to the audience before him, breathing heavily. Silence reigns for a long moment. Nervous sweat starts to trickle down his brow.
Everyone erupts into applause. They whoop and holler in sheer gratitude, a fitting tribute for a dancing demon. Bendy watches reactions with growing emotion, and right there on the stage, he gives the widest, largest grin Alice had ever seen. It has a presence all its own.
Alice watches the kids flood the stage, surrounding Bendy, while adults wade in to shake his hand. The little demon looks truly at peace now. It is obvious he is no longer thinking of the mission he got sent on, or his failure at it, but instead of the warm reception in this amazing place he has somehow reached.
Bendy will stay here, in his own version of heaven—where he deserves to be.
Another type of warmth, and the crinkling of paper, draws Alice's attention to her mission scroll, which has magically come slipping out of her hammerspace and unfurls in front of her. The title has changed to say: Mission Accomplished, and the text goes on to says she should report back to claim her reward. Even though it is the result Alice has hoped to achieve since coming down to earth, seeing the message now causes an unwelcome shiver to run through her.
From the corner of her eye, Alice catches the movement of her cloud sailing through the air and down to the edge of town, in readiness.
Alice takes a deep breath and turns to Boris, who has also seen the scroll and its message. Sadness glints in his eyes, but even so, he holds out a hand and shakes hers. This patient, gentle soul. The kind able to withstand the practical jokes of a demon. She feels a pang deep inside. Alice reaches forward and brushes her fingertips along his snout, smiling calmly, and takes one final look over at Bendy amid a thick group of children before she leaves.
Well, it is time to return up to heaven from this . . .
. . . place that is just like heaven to her.
Boris watches the cloud take off in pensive silence, hands stuffed in his pockets.
At last Bendy breaks away from the crowd, and away from the children who seem to particularly like him. The little demon drinks in the affection with a huge grin. He waves to them in farewell, and then clicks his heels together before making his way over to Boris. Pausing as if he has just remembered something important, he pulls a scroll out from his hammerspace and rips it up.
Then Bendy starts whistling again. He is so happy the wolf can hardly stand it.
The grin falls a little when Bendy sees the expression on Boris's face, and grows worried. His pie-cut eyes search around for Alice, and a question mark appears over his head.
Working hard to compose himself, Boris crouches down, places a hand on the shoulder of his new little friend, and relates through dialogue bubble the scene of Alice with the scroll and leaving town. As he does, the question mark over Bendy's head straightens into an exclamation mark as he starts putting the pieces together.
Bendy breaks away and runs a short distance out of town, searching the skies until he spots the small disappearing cloud. He stands there for a long time—so long, in fact, that Boris reaches him at a snail's pace without the little demon moving a single muscle. Finally, the wolf flicks a thumb toward the winding dirt road that leads away from Briar Ville, and the friends head back to the shack and sheep of their countryside home.
Days Later . . .
Bendy is on his way out of Briar Ville, whistling as he heads toward Boris' house. He has just returned from another successful visit with the children at the schoolhouse, who have introduced him to a wide array of toys and little practical gags that he is sure would make any reasonable demon jealous. From hammerspace, he pulls out his latest treasures to present to Boris, from yo-yos, to kazoos, to plastic flowers that squirt water, to a deck of cards.
One of the kids had had a fun way of shuffling the cards, and as Bendy fingers them, his gaze travels unbidden, as it has done so often now, up toward the skies—wondering what Alice is up to about now, or what kind of reward an angel would get.
Maybe wings. Or a harp.
If only . . .
A gust of wind blows the cards out of his hands. Bendy scrambles after them through the fields, snatching at one after the other. He springs about with great agility until he reaches a stretch of wildflowers. Their blooms twirl about like dancers when pushed by each stray breeze. He reaches out and plucks one to give it a whiff, and upsets a bee, which buzzes at him in admonishment before flying off.
Bendy brushes himself off and is about to leave when he notices the shadow. It grows over the ground like a stain. He scratches his head, puzzling over this development until he hears a peculiar whooshing sound from above. Looking up, an exclamation mark of alarm pops over his head, and Bendy leaps back out of the way as an enormous cloud comes down in the field, bearing what appears to be a cottage on top of it.
The cloud disperses. Slowly, Bendy walks up the steps towards the front door, which is wooden and has an open slit toward the top with a halo-shaped mark directly beneath it. The archway over the entryway bears reads: Little Miracle Station, and a sign alongside the door itself says: "We Grant Wishes and Make Dreams Come True. Just Ring the Bell."
Well, there is one wish that Bendy would like to come true right about now, especially after seeing this cottage from the sky—so he rings the bell.
He hears the sweet sounds of someone singing the faint strains of a song, only catching the final lines of:
"But what is the most important to me
Is seeing that huge smile on your face
Better than the sun on the darkest night."
Bendy must have truly come to a miracle station, because when the door opens none other than Alice Angel herself stands on the threshold, in her dark dress and high-heeled shoes—with no wings. She seems a bit surprised to find Bendy standing there, and Bendy is a bit surprised to find she seems unchanged aside from the presence of two little horns poking up out of her dark hair.
Even so, Alice looks immensely satisfied as she takes in the scenic countryside surrounding them, like she has reached paradise at last—a feeling Bendy now understands all too well—and finally settles her gaze back on Bendy. She smiles at him.
And Bendy gives her a wide grin back.