Chapter One: Build Our Machine
Dear Ink Blot,
It seems like ages since we’ve last seen or worked with each other.
20 years tend to fly by quickly, huh?
I heard from a friend that you’re back in town and I was wondering if you could stop by the old studio?
That is, if you aren’t still upset with me… I would really love to make things up after what happened between us…
Not only that, but I have something I REALLY want to show you…
Your (Once) Good Friend and Ex-Coartist,
Scribble Page
Ink Blot looked over the letter a second time, just to make sure she was reading it right. ‘My old friend wants to see me again? And he still has the old studio? I thought that old thing was torn down after I left…’ She thought to herself, grabbing her cup of coffee of the counter and moving into her living space. She sat down on the couch, still reading over the letter. ‘I guess a visit might be worthwhile… It would be nice to see the place… And I’m very curious of what he has to show me…’ She sipped from her mug, then immediately spat it out from the heat. “Gosh, that’s hot!” She cried, fanning her mouth with her hoof. She got up and went to get a towel to clean up the coffee, missing the demented smile that formed on the letter from the stain.
“Well… This is the place..”
Ink was walking down a wood corridor inside the studio. Posters of the old black and white cartoons that she and Scribble had made all those years ago were hung up on the walls
“Smiling Devil Darlin’, The Prancing Demon, FillySong with Dinky.” She read, chuckling at the memories they brought to her. “Who would have known these silly little things would become so loved... “ She continued past the posters and entered a large room that had various items scattered about, including the old projector they used to preview the different cartoons, which was currently on and running. ‘Scribble must be here somewhere..’ She thought, taking into account that the machines were currently running. ‘He would have left this equipment on… At least, I think he wouldn’t.’
Ink moved closer to the wiring projector and noticed something standing in the corner of the room. It was a cut out of Inkie, their cartoon mascot. She was a light gray pony with a puffy mane that was a few shades darker. She wore two white gloves on her forelegs and a little white bowtie under her chin. She constantly wore a huge smile on her face, but what was probably most noticeable was the light blue eyes she had. Ink smiled at it, bringing back how she and Scribble had first made Inkie.
It was well before Ink had left the animation studio and her work behind. She and Scribble were sitting together in a room, trying to come up with new ideas for their project. Their goal was to bring their drawings, their cartoons, to life through animation. Something that was completely new to the Equestrian Kingdom. They, the best artists of Canterlot, were asked by Princess Celestia to come up with an idea for an animation that would appeal to ponies everywhere without frightening them too greatly. However, the two were experiencing their worst Artist Block ever. Neither one could come up with a very solid idea. That was until Ink brought something up.
“What better way to appeal to the population than through a smile?” She asked, grabbing the attention of her partner, who was busy hanging his head over a blank sheet of paper. He turned his head towards her, a small smile on his face.
“That’s a good start… But who would be smiling?”
“Why not a pony? It would be familiar to everypony and wouldn’t cause much of a scare.” She replied, smiling at her idea.
Scribble nodded. “That’s…. A really good idea… Why didn’t we think of that earlier?”
“Maybe because we’ve been doing too much fan art to remember reality?”
Scribble looked at her confused. “What you just said made no sense…”
Ink just shrugged and took her place at her desk and started working out a design.
“What would we name it?” Scribble asked after a while. Ink stopped, tapping the tip of her pencil against her mouth.
“Hmmm…. What should we name it…” She looked down at the drawing that she had been working on. It was a rough sketch of a pony and parts of it had been filled in with ink, giving it a slightly creepy look. But that gave Ink and idea. “We’ll call her Inkie!” She said, beaming a smile at her friend.
Scribble only gave her a confused look, but didn’t say anything against the idea.
“Inkie it is then!” Ink said with a smile. “Now for the show-”
Ink was brought out her memory by a loud crash that ran through the building. She turned around quickly, startled by the noise. “What was that?” She questioned, looking at the other end of the room. There was another hallway that led further into the building, the way the sound came from. Ink wasted no time, rushing down the hall, heading deeper into the building.
The short hallway that Ink rushed through led to yet another hall, though this was slightly larger than the last. But Ink didn’t care about the sizes of the halls. She was wanting to find what made that loud sound. “Please let it be Scribble. I really need to talk with him…” She said before slowing down to a trot. She entered the hall and written on one of the walls was “Dreams Come True.” This made Ink a bit unsettled. Not the phrase, but the fact the words were written in ink, which dripped down the wall, making running lines under the words. Ink didn’t like it. So she quickly turned and hurried down the room, putting distance between her and the words.
She found herself traversing down a hall with doors on both sides. There was one on her left that had light shining under it, but when she tried to open the door, she found it to be locked. She banged on the door shouting, “Hey! Open up!” But the door didn’t budge. She groaned. “Why would you leave a light on in a locked room?” She asked out loud, turning to continue down the hall. There she saw the entranceway to another large room with big bold letters above the doorway that said, “The Ink Machine”.
‘Huh… I wonder if this is what Scribble wanted to show me…’ she thought, trotting through the doorway. Beyond was the most bizarre contraption she had ever seen in her life. It was some sort of complex machinery made of a bunch of gears, electric parts and at the back end of it. The biggest jar of black ink Ink had ever seen in her life. “Wow, that’s… quite a thing you’ve built yourself, Scribble.” She said inspecting the machine, looking to see if there was maybe a way to turn it on. She didn’t see any, but there was a thick cord that ran from the machine into the deeper part of the studio. “I’ll bet anything that would lead me to the power source.” She said with a smug grin, trotting out of the room to follow the cord.
Ink had followed the cord further into the studio, passing by another drawing desk, along with a cutout of Inkie. She was traveling down a short hallway that led to an intersection when a plank of wood fell from the ceiling directly into her path. She jumped back, startled by the sudden falling object, then chuckled at her own nervousness. “Oh... There’s nothing to really be scared of, the old place’s just falling to pieces. I guess Scribble didn’t really take all that too good of care with the place.” She told herself as she chuckled at the thought of her old partner working his flank off trying to repair the building, when in reality, he would have hired somepony else to do the physical work for him. “Always so lazy, he was.” Ink smiled at the thought of her friend, then a thought came to her mind about the fallout they had…
‘We were such good friends… Why did we let something so stupid get in between us?’ She thought, looking at the floor sadly. She quickly shook her head and returned to the task at hoof. ‘I’ll be able to see him soon… Then I’ll forgive him..’ She thought to herself, following the cord once again.
It didn’t take her long before the cord led her to the lever that activated the Ink Machine. Ink looked around the room as she approached the lever, taking notice of the pedestals and the picture of objects she’ve seen scattered throughout the building. ‘I wonder what those are for…’ When she reached the lever, she immediately pulled down on it. However, it didn’t budge. “What?” Then she notice the panel next to the lever. “Low Pressure” it wrote glowing. “The heck does that mean?” Ink asked confused. Then she took another look at the pedestals and realized that she might have to collect these certain objects… For whatever reason…
She let out a groan and headed out of the room with her task, but before she got started, she ran into another cut-out of Inkie, which was standing in the hall… Where it wasn’t before. Ink jumped slightly at the sight of the sudden pony. “What the… How did you get here?” She asked confused. She thought that maybe somepony was playing around with her or something, so she decided to ignore it, walking past the cut-out. But the thing made her feel uneasy even after the moment of surprise had pass. She didn’t remember hearing any hoofsteps, and there wasn’t anypony around, so how didn’t that thing get there?
She wanted to answer that question, but something else got her attention. At the end of the hall was another big room, though this room housed something that terrified Ink. The walls were covered in ink, there was pages all over the place, a chair that sat next to what could only be described as a dissection table, and on that table. The full body form of Dinky, Inkie’s musical pegasus friend, with her chest torn open. To Ink, it was something out of a horror movie that ponies made nowadays, but involved one of her favorite characters. “Oh, sweet Celestia… Scribble, what have you done?!” She said in horror, looking over the abomination that laid on the table. It was just too much for Ink. She just didn’t want to look at it anymore. She turned, facing the doorway that she had came through and was about to quickly leave the room, when out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the six items she needed. A book with a black cover, laying against the wall. Without hesitation, Ink grabbed it and raced back down the hall, not looking back at the dismayed pony behind her.
After the terrifying situation, Ink had calmed herself down, putting the horrible image of Dinky in the back of her mind. She currently had four of the objects she thought she needed, though she still doesn’t understand why she needs them in the first place. But right now, she needed something to distract her. She was in a short corridor than led to the animation viewing room, or at least, that’s what it was when she had last visited the old place, when she found a tape recorder sitting on a shelf. It had a message already loaded in and Ink thought that maybe Scribble had left it for her. So she put all of her items down and picked up the recorder.
She fumbled around with it, trying to remember how to play the tape, when she hit the ‘Play’ button. A whir sound came from the recorder as it began to play the tape within:
“At this point in time, I no longer can see what plans Scribble has for this company anymore. I mean, the animations aren’t even being done on time and I don’t understand the deal with this… machine. It’s noisy, it’s messy and who needs that much ink anyway?
Also, get this: Scribble has us donate something from our workstations and put it on those pedestals in the break room. ‘To help appease the gods,’ Scribble says. I tried to ask why he needs these to appease the Princesses, but he told me that those aren’t the gods he’s talking about, whatever that means. Personally, I think he’s lost his mind, but hey, he writes the checks. But I tell you what, if one more of these pipes burst, I’m outta here!”
The recorder clicked, signaling that the message had ended, leaving Ink along with her thoughts. ‘Oh Scribble, what are you doing?’ She thought, worried about her friend's mental state. She placed the recorder back where she grabbed it from and continued down the hall to the projection room.
After having collected all six required objects and restoring the flow to the ink machine, Ink had found herself in front of the main power switch again with the sign next to it flashing “Ready”. She looked around the room one more time, noticing each item she had collected, then pulled down on the switch. There was a loud ‘clunk’ and the lights in the room shut off as ink was plunged into almost darkness with only the whirring sound of the ink machine running through the building. “Dear Luna, this is creepy…” She said to herself, walking through the darkened room. She made it to the doorway that led into the hall and began to retrace her steps, following the cord back to the ink machine. It was a bit more terrifying since most of the lights in the building were turned off, plunging most of the building into black. Ink shook out the nasty, creepy thoughts that roamed in her head. “There’s nothing here to be afraid of.” she said to herself. “Right?”
She rounded the last corner into the hall that led to the ink machine. However, something was majorly different. The room was blocked off by wood boards that weren’t there before. “Huh? Why is this? That’s new…” Ink said to herself confused. She approached the doorway and stood on her haunches to look over the boards into the room. She saw the machine running, its gears turning and black ink coming out of its nozzle, spilling onto the floor.
Then something jumped her, knocking her backwards onto the floor. She screamed as her body struck the floor, causing her slight pain. She looked up at the figure that scared her…
And her mouth hung open. Behind the wood planks was a creature of unknown sorts. It was covered in black ink and wore a devilish grin. Ink would have screamed again if she didn’t get distracted by the wet feeling around her hooves. She looked down and saw that the ground was becoming covered in black ink that poured down from the walls. She was scared beyond belief, her mind racing with many thoughts. But one stood out from the rest:
Run.
She lifted herself off the floor and began to run down the hallway, away from the ink creature and towards the way she came in. Her hooves slipped under her from the ink, but she didn’t stop running. She turned the last corner huffing and found the corridor that lead to the exit. She quickly ran towards it, but the floor gave out under her and her entire body fell down.
Ink Blot let out a groan as she lifted herself from the wooden floor. Her entire body ached from the fall she had just taken, but luckily for her, there were no broken bones or any bleeding. Just a few bruises here and there. She rubbed the back of her head, attempting to get the cramp out of her neck, then she looked up at the direction she had just came from. There in the ceiling of the wood-base room was a hole large enough for her entire body to fall through.
“Who the buck would put something like that there?” She growled, remembering how the floor had collapsed under her while she was fleeing from… That thing. “Speaking of which, I should probably find a way out of here before it finds me.”
Looking around the small room she was in, she found a doorway that had been boarded up by planks of wood. “What is with all the damn wood?” She questioned, shaking her head in despair. She continued to look around the room and finds something written on one of the walls in what she could only believe to be ink, “Our Creator Lied To Us.”
The fur on Ink’s body stood on end and a shiver traveled down her neck when she reads the words. “Lied about what?” She asked aloud, taking a couple steps back. She bumped into the wall behind her and something fell, striking the ground with a loud thud that made Ink jump. “OH SWEET CE- Wait, what?” She had quickly turned around, thinking that the thing had found her, but when there was no black ink creature behind her, she calmed down. Letting out a huge sigh of relief. “Oh thank you, Celestia.” She said quietly. Then she looked down at the floor and saw what had made the thud.
It was an axe. When she bumped into the wall, it had fallen from the stand on the wall and wedged itself into the floor near her hooves. “Well, that could have gone worse if I had been standing two steps to the left.” Ink chuckled nervously to herself. She grabbed the tool with a forehoof and pulled it from the wooden floor. “This should work nicely.” She said, inspecting the axe. Turning towards the blocked doorway, Ink raised the axe above her head and brought it down with force onto one of the planks. The axe did it’s job very well, splitting the wooden plank into two, but it only broke one and there were still a few more blocking her path. “Well, all that swinging practice is finally going to be of use.” She said to herself, while she swings at the planks again.
Ink had finally cleared away the wood that had been blocking the path and was quite pleased with herself. “That wasn’t so bad now was it?” She asked herself, walking down the short corridor. She came to a bend that turned to the left and followed it, then she stopped in her tracks. At the end of the hall was another room, but the room wasn’t as well lit as the last. In fact, the only thing that was lighting up the room were the candles that sat around a circle that contained a star in it. Ink knew what the shape on the ground was and that it wasn’t anything good in a case like this, but it wasn’t this fact that scared her.
What scared her was what sat behind each candle. Lit up by the flames were four black figures that look like other ponies. This probably would lead to questions of why ponies were doing a ritual under her old animation studio, but the questions were dropped when she realised that the ponies weren’t exactly ponies. Not unless there were ponies who are made of ink that she never knew about, and based on what she had just been through, Ink is uncertain of what she knows.
Taking in a deep breath, Ink slowly approached the pentagram, taking each step as slowly as possible as not to disturb the ink ponies. She had managed to make it around a couple of the ponies to the left side of the room, where there was a door that led to her escape. When she heard deep breathing. Her entire body stood on end as she slowly turned around towards the pentagram, expecting one of the ink ponies to be rising from its seat. But none of them had move even an inch. They just sat there, motionless. Then Ink heard a scratch on the wood floor and her eyes moved up from the ink ponies to the blackness behind them where the sounds came from.
And from the darkness approached a figure. This one was larger than any average pony, almost challenging Celestia’s size. It had a light gray body with a darker, flat mane and it wore two gloves on its forehooves along with a white bowtie. Splotches of black ink covered parts of its body and half of its face was buried under ink. However, the most noticeable features the creature had was its deceiving larger-than-life smile and one blue eye.
Ink’s body shook in fear upon the sight of the creature, afraid of what it could do. What it WILL do. But the creature just stood there, staring at her with its smile. Ink finally broke free of her fear and turned tail, running through the door behind her, leaving the creature behind. The creature did nothing. Nothing but speak one phrase… Three words that would bring fear to its creator… Three words that it had said to its other creator… Three… little... words…
“Who’s Laughing Now?”
Author's Note
Sorry it took so long for this story to come out, but I had a lot of distractions that prevented me from this. But truthfully, I think it was worth the wait!
I like to shout out to Tynal who helped edit this story! Thanks again, man!
And with Chapter Two of Bendy out, I will start work on the next chapter!
Inkie Will Be Back.
