Choices| BATIM Crossover

2

"This place is a lot darker than I remember it to be..." Charley mumbled, waving his hand near his face to shoo the dust bunnies floating around. "And dirtier, my goodness."

"You can say that again," Barley sneered, walking past the monkey. "This place is nuthin' but bad memories, why are we here again?" He turned to give Charley a questioning look. "You remember why we left to begin with, right?"

"Of course I remember, what in the world made you think I'd forget?" Charley sounded offended, and both flinched when the door shutting reverberated through the quiet studio. It sounded comparable to a metal chest slamming shut and somehow even more dust bunnies went flying into the air, choking Charley.

"How 'bout you move away from this narrow hallway, eh?" Barley grinned, stepping aside to let Charley storm past him, who was huffing in annoyance. "But seriously, why are we back here? Bendy tried to kill us, why come back?" Charley had given the room a swift glimpse before turning to Barley.

"Apparently, there's talk of toons coming here and never coming back, and because we're reckless and used to live here, we have to figure out what's going on." He looked around once more. "Where's Edgar?"

"Probably off doing who knows what, y'know him," Barley shrugged. "Let's go find him anyway." With a nod, they veered off to the right first. Edgar was found in a room at the end of the hallway, looking out over the balcony on 4 legs with two hooked over the railing.

"What'd ya find?" Charley asked, catching the spider's attention.

"I dunno what this is, but it's here," Edgar shrugged, looking back at the hole smack middle of the room. "There're chains here," Edgar said for a matter of fact.

"Maybe this thingy here does something," Charley motioned to the stand with two power holes, half recalling their old power source. "Does anyone remember where we'd put these thingies?" He asked.

Thankfully, they did. Two obese power cores conveniently in the room had slid into the sockets finely and with a simple push of the lever, the room lit up with activity. The chains moved. The atmosphere got tense and the screams of dying mechanical parts echoed up the hole until finally, the Ink Machine itself had emerged from the darkness.

"When did we leave this place?" Edgar asked. "In the 50s at least?"

"40s, 50s, somethin' like that..." Barley nodded in agreement. "I do not recall the Ink Machine being on a chain. It used to just sit in the middle of a plain room! It's gotten bigger!" The size of the machine was enough to make Charley's arms seize up and make his heart rate increase. It was menacing, and to think that machine was what had spat them out. Was this even the same machine they had known back years ago?

"I hear something..." Edgar whispered, looking back at the entrance they came from. Charley and Barley heard it too, footsteps. Soft clicks of heels slowly making its way to the very room they were in.

Instinctively, Charley gestured for them to hide, and all at once, they ran to different parts of the room. Charley had somehow crammed himself behind the Bendy cutout in the corner and the large chest next to the shelf. Barley had dove into the barrel on the right side of the room, and Edgar had leapt over the balcony and scattered to the shifting gearbox to be out of sight.

The barrel Barley had stuffed himself into had long lines between the wooden planks, large enough cracks to let him peer out and see nearly the entirety of the room. Keeping his breathing steady, he watched a figure stroll into the room and look out over the balcony, and right off the bat, he recognized who that toon was.

Bendy. The little devil darling himself. The mere presence of the toon was enough to make Barley gnarl silently as he watched Bendy stride right up to the balcony where they all stood moments ago. There wasn't much chance for him to look at his face, but he remembered Bendy's different postures and what they meant. And from what he could recall, Bendy's stiffness meant he was agitated. Barley watched Bendy stare at the machine as if it had insulted him before snatching the lever in his grasp and yanking it down. And loudly, the machine huffed down the hole as the chains whined under the pressure.

Once the machine was back down the hole, completely swallowed up in the mysterious darkness, Bendy turned on his heels and walked off down the hall. It was Barley's only chance to get a good look at his old partner from years ago, and he was ready to complain that this Bendy was the same one that had endangered them so many years ago

His eyes were solid, no opportunity to joke about the slice of pie taken away from that gaze. Somehow, Bendy had gotten those slices back.

-_-_-

PL.
6/13/20