Recording Gold
"Ugh..."
Sunset tried to take evaluation of herself. She was floating face-up in some kind of liquid, staring at a hand-drawn ceiling. She tried to right herself, but her body was sluggish to respond, still probably recovering from whatever impact had knocked her out. She knew she was lucky not to have died in that fall, but the memory of that monster lurking above them was enough to dampen her enthusiasm. Their one certain way of escaping this place was now near-impossible to reach.
"Sunset? You okay?" Missy's voice spoke up from nearby.
"Yeah, just got the wind knocked out of me..." Sunset sighed. "How long was I out?"
"Heck if I know..." Missy replied. "All I know is that my dress is ruined, and I am NOT happy about it!"
Sunset chuckled to herself as she forced her body upright. "Too bad we haven't found Rarity, yet... she'd be HAPPY to make you something new." Her legs expectedly sank, but only to a depth of about knee-level. After a few seconds, she was back on her feet. She could see Missy floating nearby, arms crossed and face pouting. True to her word, her dress had been thoroughly drenched in the ink, staining it pitch-black. Sunset glanced down at herself, taking a moment to note that her own clothes had gotten a heavy dousing. A few shreds and splashes of color were still left untouched, and the ink seemed to be running off of her hair without staining it (she took a moment to remind herself to thank Isis for the hair care products she'd been using on the road). Her skin had large tinted splotches, but her natural complexion still came through. The biggest loss was the contents of her pockets, really. On examination, her phone was completely fried from being in the ink, and her wallet was full of nothing but scraps of black paper. They were cut off from Isis.
"So... what do we do now?" Missy floated into the air and began to wring the ink from the bottom of her dress.
"We could always ask Lantern, Witch, and Specter to try and give us a lift back up, right?"
"And what? Go back without Penn?" Missy placed her hands on her hips.
"Well, what's our other option?" Sunset gestured to a boarded-up hallway leading out of the room they'd fallen into. "Dig deeper into the basement?"
"Well, he wasn't upstairs! Maybe he found some other way down?"
"Missy, did you FEEL how much black magic is in this place? We need to get out of here as fast as we can!" Sunset pressed her palm against her forehead. "It's no wonder my geode tried to tell us to keep out."
"But we can't leave without Penn!"
"He's NOT PENN!"
The volume of her own outburst startled Sunset, and she instantly felt a rush of guilt when Missy flinched back from her. Still, Sunset wasn't willing to retract what she said, only forcing herself to take a deep breath and calm herself more before she continued.
"You want to know what I think? We came here looking for the person we've been traveling with, a copy of Penn. This entire place was empty. Then we started touching stuff and fiddling around, thanks for that, by the way, and we found TWO other living creatures! One was that copy of you, and the other was that monster." She glanced up into the hole they'd fallen through, a long, dark vertical corridor that looked like the early makings of an elevator. "A copy of Penn comes here, and then a copy of YOU shows up, and the monster who's clearly in charge of it tries to chase us down!"
Missy's eyes grew wider and wider by the second, and her wings began to wilt and draw closer to her body. "Sunset, you're scaring me... What are you trying to say?"
Sunset wanted to finish the thought, but the genuine fear on Missy's face was enough to make her reconsider. She reached down to her belt, shaking off as much of the liquid as she could before switching on her saber. The light cast everything into red before she began to cut through the boards on the hallway.
"We can look around down here. Have it your way. But I'm saying... what if a fake Penn wants to make fake copies of US to travel with, instead?"
"No! Penn wouldn't-"
"Then WHY was there another you up there? Why would Penn come someplace with so much evil in it?" With their path clear and lit by her saber, Sunset began to wade on ahead. "You can't tell me you don't feel it, too!"
Missy pulled further into herself, rubbing at her arm. "I... I thought it might be dark, but dark doesn't ALWAYS mean evil..."
"Yeah, well this is the real deal." Sunset gritted her teeth as they walked further and further into the dark. They found a place where the floor rose up, allowing her to step up and out of the ink. Eventually, they had sliced their way through another boarded-up doorway and entered a new room: one with a large circular rune drawn in the center of the floor, and coffins leaned against the door. The sigil was an inverted pentagram, decorated with writing and shapes along every line, most notably a large insignia in the shape of Bendy's head behind the inverted star. She stepped carefully around the inscription, gesturing down for Missy before stating the self-evident: "Evil magic."
"Then... what if Penn wasn't behind this?" Missy whispered. "If he's in here, maybe he can't just sense magic like you or me, he's a normal human! We HAVE to be sure before we leave!"
Sunset felt a tremble of fear in the pit of her stomach. She tried to take a deep breath and steady herself, but the feeling stayed.
Not again... We can't leave him alone again...
Sunset straightened and stopped as she heard Missy's voice whispering at the edge of her thoughts. She turned back to her partner. Missy's blank expression made it clear that the message hadn't been intentional.
"Are you... afraid of him being on his own again?"
Missy's lip began to tremble as tears welled up in her eyes. She kept her mouth clamped shut and hastily nodded up and down.
"Wh-What if that thing finds him, a-and he tries to fight it and-" her breath caught in her throat as tears spilled down her cheeks. She trembled as a sob interrupted her and her voice wobbled in her efforts to speak through the obvious lump in her throat. "W-What if he d-" she shook her head and took a deep breath. "What if he die-" She cut herself off again, rushing forward in burying her face in the crook of Sunset's neck. "What if he dies because we weren't there? Again? He tried to fight by himself and he died! I wasn't there when he needed me, and he DIED!" Missy pounded her fist softly against Sunset's chest. "I went and got myself into trouble and he DIED trying to protect me from the consequences while I was just ASLEEP!"
Sunset's eyes widened as her arms instinctively wrapped around the sobbing spirit. In all of the time since they'd left Mount Ebott, Missy hadn't shown even a small sign of trauma from the event. By all appearances, she had been her usual, chipper self, and Sunset had been too focused on "Penn" to think to ask. How long was she hiding this?
Sunset sighed and began to rub Missy's back as the younger girl sobbed into her shoulder.
"Missy, it wasn't your fault-" Missy's wing came up and pressed against her mouth, forcing her to stop.
"Don't lie. You said it yourself, I was the one touching stuff and messing with things I shouldn't... It was my fault before, and now it's my fault again..."
Sunset winced as her own biting words came back to haunt her. Standing there, in what felt like the belly of the beast, Sunset forced herself to think slowly and carefully.
"Well... did you fight Penn? Did you strike the killing blow?"
"N-no! But if it wasn't for me-"
"That's true. We wouldn't have chosen to go into the underground if you hadn't been there. But you didn't kill him. Frisk did that, remember?" Sunset stroked Missy's hair, running her fingers through the pink strands while occasionally catching on a gummy bit of dried-up ink. "And if Penn is here and gets into a fight, then it'll be the monster that kills him, not you. It wasn't even 'you' you who turned on the machine, it was that other... You called her a 'misprint,' right? She turned on the machine." Sunset pulled her closer. "You need to accept what IS your fault... to understand what isn't."
Sunset tried to let Missy cry her tears without pressure as she sliced her way through another doorway, and she carried the younger girl through another flooded hallway.
"I'm sorry for what I said earlier... I just..." Sunset sighed, trying to parse out her own thoughts. Now that she was feeling calm again, she could see how absurd the idea of "Penn" and that monster trying to replace them was. How could I say something like that and scare her in a situation like this?
"I just... I need him to really be Penn..." Missy whispered, clinging to her a little tighter. "If he's not Penn, then we didn't really bring him back, and if we didn't really bring him back, then not only did we break Monster Reborn for nothing, but... then him being dead is still on me... and you seem to WANT him not to really be Penn!"
Sunset stopped in place as she felt the last pieces click into place in her head.
"I'm sorry, Missy. It's not that I don't want him to really be Penn, I just..." she took a deep breath, then let it out again. "You didn't walk away from that fight, I carried you. You didn't see his body until after we already were free on the surface and knew his soul was with Undyne... You latched onto the Penn we brought back because you hadn't needed to accept that he was completely gone." She unconsciously tightened her grip on Missy as if she were clutching a teddy bear. "I did. It was the only way I could think straight enough to fight Frisk... I tipped over the edge into grief long before I was willing to forgive Asriel..." She glanced down as a tinge of shame and anger slipped into her tone. "I still haven't forgiven Frisk." She shook her head, pushing out the dark thoughts. "So when I saw his disembodied soul in Undyne's chest, I accepted that that was Penn, which meant the one we brought back couldn't be! His soul was THERE, I could look at it, talk to him, he wasn't gone! It... made me more relieved to see him saved from death than brought back from it." She shook her head, disgusted with her own admission. "If getting him back was just that easy, what did I go through all the pain for? Why did such an awful thing even have to happen? Why does the original Penn have to live the rest of his life as a passenger in another person's body? He didn't deserve that!"
"Sometimes... bad things just happen, Sunset. Even to good people. No moral to be learned, no reason for the greater good... That's how things work in Penn's world," Missy whispered.
"Well, it's WRONG!" Sunset kicked at the ink, sending a splash up and rippling the entire surface. The two of them paused for a moment, each one seeming to wait for a response from the other. When none came, Sunset started walking again. "It's wrong. I want MY Penn to get a happy ending... not be stuck like that."
"What about this Penn? He's not YOUR Penn?" Missy pulled away far enough to give Sunset a smirk. "You don't own Penn, you know, original or copy..."
"I- I don't know, okay?" Sunset grumbled. "If he's not the original, but that's who he keeps claiming to be, then I don't know who he is. I want to know THAT, first, and how it relates to this place, before I'm willing to trust him at all."
The two of them continued pressing forward until they found another place that the floor rose up and out of the ink. The two of them found themselves entering another hallway, but this one was much more similar to the upstairs rooms, indicating that they had made it back to the main structure. The first thing to greet her was a large set of shelves, all stocked high with cans labeled "Briar Label Bacon Soup!" Beside it was another piece of graffiti proudly declaring "HE WILL SET US FREE" beside an illustration of Bendy. Sunset felt shivers traveling down her spine as the cute-looking mascot stared at her with that unnerving grin. As they continued, Sunset noticed another tape recorder sitting on a shelf. Part of her was tempted to listen to it, but just as her finger hovered over the button, a new voice made her nearly jump out of her skin.
"YOU!"
Sunset whirled around, finding herself staring down the open door into the next room, where a black figure was rushing through. She barely had a second to raise her saber to counter his weapon, slicing through the wooden handle like it wasn't even there. She felt the wind brush her cheek as the axe head separated from the handle and continued moving forward past her head. A moment later, she felt a painful blow to her gut as the end of the wooden stick drove into her stomach now that it had been cut down to size. The world lurched as she was knocked back and slammed into the wall, only able to focus on hanging on to her weapon. Her mouth opened into a wordless scream as the pain in her stomach grew into a searing sensation.
"Sunset!" Missy called out as she flew across the room, instantly placing herself between them, cards at the ready.
The stranger staggered back, looking at the still-glowing embers at the end of his tool handle in shock... or so Sunset assumed. He was wearing only a pair of overalls and a mask of Bendy's face, and his skin appeared to have been so thoroughly soaked in ink that it was the same pitch-black shade and glistened with the moisture. Sunset looked down at her stomach, hissing as she saw that the smoldering end of the handle had easily scorched through her shirt and left a painful burn on her abdomen. The stranger pointed the end of the handle at them in an accusatory manner.
"Corrupters! Profaners! You enter the house of my lord and seek to warp it to your own twisted vision!"
"If somebody here is warped, I don't think it's us..." Missy muttered.
Sunset hissed as she forced herself back to her feet. The movement made her burn feel like her skin was ripping from the motion, but she forced herself to focus through it. She lowered her saber to a ready position.
"I'm good, Missy..." she whispered through gritted teeth. "Get out of the way."
"Like hell!" Missy hissed as she floated back to stand abreast with Sunset. "If somebody wants to pick a fight with us, I'm not sitting it out!"
Their assailant either didn't notice or didn't care about their whispering, beginning to advance on them while brandishing his cut-down weapon. "I will blot you all out until you are nothing more than an awful memory! You will be purified in the name of the ink demon!"
In her mind's eye, Sunset remembered the fearsome creature that had chased them down here. Yeah, that's what I'd expect an "ink demon" to look like...
"Look, we're just looking for our friend..." Sunset spoke slowly as she began to walk backwards around the edge of the room. It would be better to defuse this situation than escalate it, and for once she actually had a chance to talk to someone who was attacking them. "Once we find him, we'll be HAPPY to get on our way and out of your whole world. You'll never have to see us again if you can just help us find him..."
The stranger didn't relent, continuing to follow her. "The only escape from this place is through our lord. He will reward me for my faith!" He raised his weapon to strike, and Sunset did the same while also preparing to dodge around his lunge. She wouldn't make the same mistake twice.
"FWOOZSH!" a voice shouted. A long object sprung up from behind their assailant, slamming into the side of his head without warning. The deranged man dropped like a sack of potatoes, instantly unconscious. Despite that threat being taken care of, Sunset's grip on her weapon only tightened when she saw exactly who is was that had come to their rescue:
Herself. TWO black-and-white cartoon versions of herself.
One of them was her demonic transformation from the Fall Formal (which Rainbow had lovingly dubbed "Sunset Satan," or "Satanset" for short), albeit dialed back quite a bit, without the wings and wielding much shorter claws and fangs than she remembered having. She had foregone the tattered red-and-yellow dress in favor of her old studded leather jacket and blue jeans, and was clutching a lightsaber of her own. Unlike Sunset's red LIGHT saber, though, this one was much more solid, looking more like a sepia-colored baseball bat mounted on a lightsaber handle. A large pair of angry-looking eyebrows had been drawn onto her face, leaving her with a perpetual scowl.
"Fsssh!" Satanset hissed as the blade on the "lightsaber" retracted back into its handle. Sunset had to blink for a moment as she realized her demonic double was making her own sound effects.
The other Sunset was... well... Tiny. She was barely Missy's height, with an oversized head, huge sparkling eyes, and tiny body that just screamed "CUTE!" at maximum volume. She looked as if she ought to have toppled over a longtime ago from being so topheavy, but she seemed to somehow refuse to obey the laws of gravity.
Everyone stood in silence for several seconds, both sides examining the other carefully in search of a threat. When Satanset's eyes lingered on Sunset's weapon, she switched it off, letting the blade retract but still keeping it in her hand.
"Satanset and Chibiset... Okay... Are you seeing them, too?" Missy whispered. "Or am I just hallucinating?"
"If you are, then we're seeing the same hallucination..." Sunset muttered in return. Finally, she cleared her throat and broke the silence between the two sides.
"Um... thanks for the help?"
"Someone had to do something!" Chibiset shouted.
The other doppelganger wasn't quite so amenable, pointing her empty handle at the two of them and glaring. "You're not real."
"We're... about as real as it gets." Missy forced a smile and rubbed awkwardly at the back of her head.
The two fake Sunsets looked at one another, one clearly doubtful while the other was excited. Sunset stepped forward, drawing their attention back to her. "We're looking for our friend, Penn. Have you seen him anywhere?"
The tiny version of herself tapped at her chin thoughtfully. "Somebody has to do something..." she muttered.
Satanset huffed and folded her arms over her chest. "Penn's not real. Penn's not Penn."
Sunset wasn't quite sure what to do with those answers. "But, real or not, have you seen him? Can you help us find him?"
Chibiset looked up at Satanset, batting her huge eyelashes pleadingly. "Somebody has to do something..." Satanset stared back, clearly fighting the plea before finally groaning and turning towards the door.
"He's not REAL!"
Chibiset silently cheered and pumped her fist before motioning for them to follow and running out the far door of the room. "Somebody has to DO something!"
Sunset and Missy lingered for a moment, both still feeling pretty dumbstruck by the turn of events. It was only the fear of losing their guides that finally spurred them both to start moving, keeping a comfortable distance between them and the inky recreations.
"Is it just me... or are those two both a few cards short of a deck?" Missy whispered.
Sunset nodded. "I'm more worried about why there's copies of me running around all over this place. Is it weird that I feel strangely... violated from being copied without my permission?"
"Oh, people have been making fake cards for decades and it NEVER feels any less weird to see a knockoff..." Missy shivered. "They get the font wrong and the card stock is weird and..."
Sunset unconsciously tuned out Missy's incoming ramble as they stepped into the area that a large sign denoted as the Music Department. Splotches and puddles of ink were scattered across the floor as their guides passed through. Satanset pointed to each one as they passed.
"She wasn't real, SHE wasn't real, she wasn't real..."
Chibiset simply shook her head sadly. "Somebody has to do something..."
Sunset felt a shiver run down her spine at the implication that each puddle they pointed to was the remains of another fake Sunset. And I can hazard a guess who was responsible for them not being around, any more...
The two Sunsets led them around and through the back, into a wide open band room. It was a complete soundstage, with room for a whole band and instruments scattered everywhere. It looked as though someone or something had come through and rearranged the chairs, clearing a large open space in the center. In the back of the room was a shut-off recording booth, clearly for actors. Sunset shivered as she spotted another version of herself absently strumming on a guitar in the corner behind the sealed-off glass, oblivious to the world. There was a balcony above them populated by more of the cardboard Bendy cutouts, she counted six at a glance. The one person Sunset had been hoping to see, however, was notably absent.
Missy floated up to the balcony, searching behind the cutouts of Bendy, then shook her head.
"He's not here, Sunny!" She turned her gaze back to the false Sunsets, who both were simply watching them, as if curious to how they would react. Missy sighed with disappointment, leaning on a nearby object. She squeaked with surprise and dropped almost halfway back down when the device whirred to life, revealing itself to be an old-fashioned projector.
All eyes were on the back wall of the sound stage, where a fresh image was being projected: an office lined with shelves of books behind a heavy-looking desk. More importantly, however, was the fact that Penn was standing behind the desk, dressed in a snappy-looking suit and shaking what looked like a bell. Sunset sighed as it appeared that there wasn't any sound to the film.
"Ouch!" Missy clapped her hands over her ears. "Somebody turn the volume down!"
"Somebody has to do something!"
"It's not real."
Sunset glanced at Missy to confirm that the angel wasn't joking, then back to the screen. "I don't hear-"
"Would you cut that out? I HEARD you!" The cartoonish Missy flew into frame, snatching the bell out of Penn's hand with a scowl and clamping her hand over it. "I never should have given you this pixie bell!"
Penn simply chuckled, giving the fake angel's hair a tousle. "Sorry, Missy! I just wanted to run my most recent idea past you, see what you think! Now, imagine with me for a second, would you?"
Sunset and Missy glanced at each other for a second, neither entirely sure what to say. On the screen, Penn began to walk around the office, and the camera followed him. Soon, he'd left the tidy bookshelves behind in favor of what looked like a giant corkboard with hundreds of pictures connected by various pins, notes, and pieces of string. As he walked, Sunset noticed a pool of ink beginning to swell up at the bandstand, filling the cleared-out space. The ink churned and bubbled, looking as if it were alive.
"So imagine a ship..." Penn pressed his hands together, peaking his fingers just under his nose for a moment as he examined the board, finally settling on a picture and pointing to it. "Like this one!"
"Aye, aye, cap'n!" the cartoon Missy responded, marching across the bottom of the screen with a three-cornered hat and an eyepatch.
The ink responded to his words, reaching up and swelling into the form of a great sailing ship. Soon, the oily surface of the ink washed away, leaving behind a three-masted ship made from the same sepia material as everything else in this world.
"Now, imagine some foul privateer comes along and blows holes all through the hull and the body!" The model ship rocked and shuddered as holes splintered and cracked all through the hull until it looked more like Swiss cheese. A small cartoon pirate poked his head out of one of the holes and angrily waved a bottle of rum.
"Stop blowing holes in my ship!" he cried before disappearing inside again.
"Clearly, you've got to replace the hull, right? So you bring it into port, rip off all the old boards and panels, and have them all replaced with new stuff!"
The broken boards all dropped off of the ship, momentarily exposing the pirate stumbling through the lower decks. A second later, "new" boards rose out of the ink and affixed themselves to the side.
"Now, a few weeks later, you go to get your revenge, and that same dastardly privateer rips through all your sails and brings down your masts! You've got to bring it in and replace those, too!"
"How is this happening?" Sunset whispered to Missy.
Missy simply shrugged and shook her head as they watched the ship once again break and rebuild itself. "Magic?"
"Eventually, you've replaced every single piece of that ship, you're out of money, and you have to give up on the revenge business and go back to pirating!"
"Yo ho ho!"
"So... The question is..." At this point, Penn turned back to the camera, and Sunset could feel his gaze looking straight through her. "If you've replaced every piece, is it still the same..." he trailed off, looking away for a second before grabbing at the bridge of his nose. "No, no, no. That's not the right metaphor... Just throw it out, start over..."
The ship in the center of the room shattered to pieces, plunging the tiny pirate into the inky depths.
"The Ship of Theseus isn't going to work, she knows it's the same body, she thinks I'm a different SOUL. That's like having a problem with the CAPTAIN of a ship being replaced with an exact copy..."
"What? I thought it was pretty good!" Missy's double replied, then pointed out at the audience. "They were TOTALLY into it!"
The cheerful facade seemed to have fallen away as Penn returned to the desk, placing a book on it and beginning to hastily flip through the pages. "Unless the argument's airtight, we both know what she's going to say..."
"HE'S NOT THE REAL PENN." Penn, Missy's double, and all of the other Sunsets spoke in unison, catching Sunset off-guard enough to make her reach for her saber.
"I can see it now..." Penn muttered. Another disturbance in the ink began to rise, staggering to life. Sunset covered her mouth as another copy of herself formed out of the liquid, shaking herself slightly before walking towards the door. As she left, she spoke in unison with Penn's impression of her. "You're not the real Penn, you're not MY Penn! Why don't you just prove it to me when I've already made up my mind?" He sighed sorrowfully and shook his head. "I just... can't figure out how to get through to her, no matter how I put it together in my head..."
Sunset and Missy looked at each other, both of their jaws hanging slack as the pieces came together.
"It's him! He IS making the copies!"
"And he doesn't even know he's doing it!"
"Wait, what do you mean, 'copies?'"
Sunset and Missy both continued to stare at each other, each processing the fact that the other hadn't spoken. Slowly, they turned back toward the projected image. Penn was staring right at them, waiting for an answer.
"D-D-D-Did he hear us?" Missy stuttered.
"Um, yes?" Penn raised an eyebrow. "What are you two even DOING here? It's the middle of the night!" he blinked and turned back to the fake Missy. "It hasn't been THAT long, has it?"
She replied by reaching into her hat and retrieving an alarm clock slightly larger than her entire head. "Nope!"
"How are you- How-" Sunset looked back up at the projector, confirming that the film was indeed being projected from an ongoing reel. "This is pre-recorded!"
Penn rolled his eyes before beginning to walk towards the camera. Paradoxically, he grew SMALLER as he got closer, until a perfect match for his life-size self walked out of the image and onto the stage, followed closely by the fake Missy. Moments later, the projector seemed to run out of film, cutting to a blank white image for a few seconds before finally shutting itself off. He confidently strolled up to them before holding his arms open, inviting their comments.
"How did you DO THAT?" Missy didn't hesitate, immediately flying up to him and beginning to inspect whether or not he was real. Sunset decided to hang back as the sense of this being 'Penn' and not Penn settled back in, stronger than ever. Penn didn't have magic, especially nothing like this.
"It's just a matter of perspective, Missy! Nothing but illusions." He chuckled to himself before wrapping an arm around her shoulders and giving her a short hug. "The better question is what are YOU two doing here?" He cocked one eyebrow at Sunset. "Do you ALWAYS go running into strange portals by yourselves in the middle of the night? Have I been missing nocturnal adventures?"
Sunset folded her arms and countered with a glare. "Isis woke us up when you ran off on your own. Do YOU always go running into strange portals that reek of black magic by yourself?"
He sighed and rolled his eyes, displaying a significant lack of shame at having been caught. "I couldn't sleep, I had writer's block, and this portal seemed to be calling to me! It was one time." He shrugged nonchalantly. "Besides, this place isn't THAT dangerous if you know what you're doing! As long as you don't go any lower than the second floor and nobody turns on the ink machine, it's just a slightly-haunted animation studio!"
Sunset felt the bottom drop out of her stomach.
"Did... you say it's safe 'as long as nobody turns on the ink machine?'" she clasped her hands behind her back for a moment as she began to wring them.
He had already looked pale, but what little color remained drained out of his face as he stared at her.
"Sunset... tell me you didn't."
"Oh, we didn't, SHE DID!" Missy pointed at her double.
"HEY! I'm not the one who powered it up!" the cartoon doppelganger countered with a point of her own. "That lever's harmless unless the power's on, and I was too excited about meeting myself to notice you pressed the big glowing power button!"
"Oh don't even TRY to blame me for this!"
"WATCH ME!"
Penn sighed, holding the two angels apart by their collars at arm's length.
"Okay... As long as we haven't busted up the timeline TOO badly, we should be able to figure out a way out of here."
"Somebody's got to DO something!"
Everyone fell quiet as Penn turned to glance in the other direction. He stared at the inky doubles, then back at Sunset. He repeated the motion several times, each time looking more exasperated.
"Okay... Well, I'm sure we can still make this work. I just need some time to think-"
"FOUND YOU!" The man in the Bendy mask shouted as he stepped through the door, dragging the most recent Sunset clone by a fresh axe buried in her chest.
Penn's eye twitched. Sunset could tell just by looking at him that he was on the brink of snapping. Whether that snap would be a yelling session or a fainting spell had yet to be determined.
"Well, while we're giving me everything I DON'T say that I want..." he cleared his throat. "Gee wilickers, I sure hope that the ink demon shows up soon!"
Above them, the ceiling began to sag and groan under a heavy weight. The cracks between boards began to widen and ink rapidly began to fall down on them.
"Uhm, Missy?"
"Yeah?"
"You don't think the upstairs has kept flooding the whole time we've been down here, do you?"
"Uh-oh..."
Penn pressed his palm to his forehead. "Son of a bi-"
They only had time to all throw themselves in different directions when the floorboards of the room above them collapsed, creating a titanic waterfall of ink. The doubles all seemed to beeline for one another, Missy's duplicate lifting the two Sunsets into the air before the flood could reach them. The originals fared much worse. Before Sunset could push herself back onto her feet, the wave of ink had already crashed into her and sent her tumbling in the current. She scrambled blindly, not daring to try to open her eyes until she got her head back above the chemical-laden flood. After too long of scrambling, Sunset managed to grab onto something firm and kept a hold. Pulling herself above the current, she cracked open her eyes as far as she dared without getting ink in them.
She'd been washed back to the door they'd come in through, and was holding on to the frame for dear life. The torrent of ink was still pouring, enough to fill entire swimming pools and turn the entire studio into a waterslide powered by current alone. First and foremost, she searched for Missy, feeling relieved to see that the little duel spirit had avoided the flood by following her double's example and taking flight. Penn had gripped onto the edge of the window of the recording booth to keep his footing. Unfortunately, while he'd kept his footing, he was cornered, and the gnarled figure of the ink demon was rising out of the black sea.
"DON'T YOU KNOW SARCASM WHEN YOU HEAR IT, UNIVERSE?" Penn roared as the demon began to advance on him.
"PENN!"
"I'M ON IT!" Missy shouted, darting down out of the air. The demon took a flailing swing at her, but the little angel was too quick, darting around it and grabbing onto Penn. She reached into her pocket, holding out a card defensively in the demon's direction. "GHOSTRICK VANISH!"
Sunset felt a surge of relief as her friends both magically disappeared, leaving the demon unfulfilled. The feeling was short-lived, however, as the demon's attention turned to her. With the current on its side, its hobbling gait was faster, and she knew it wouldn't be long until it had closed the distance. She looked back down the hallway the ink was flowing into, then back at the approaching demon.
Just this once, I think 'the devil you know' is the less appealing option! she thought. She braced herself, took a deep breath, and let go.
She had no control over her speed, only able to follow the flow as she was swept away with gut-wrenching acceleration. She could only try to roll with the punches as she was slammed into the walls and collided with the floor repeatedly. At one point, she thought that she could feel the painful feeling of stairs jamming into her back. It felt like she was tumbling in the ink for ages, barely swallowing gasps of air whenever her head was above the liquid, but the wild ride reached its end when it culminated in a moment of free-fall and a rough landing on a hard surface. Sunset coughed as the vapors of the ink filled her lungs and burned at her eyes, dragging herself up and out of the pool she had landed in. Once she'd gotten her fill of fresh air, she wiped off her face as best she could and opened her eyes.
She was in another big room, the centerpiece of which was an ink waterfall pouring into a decorative pool. That was where she had landed, being too large to get through the grate on the drain. Oversized plushies of the cartoon characters were scattered about the room, and a set of railings indicated an amusement park-esque queue line. She rolled onto her back, feeling the battering her body had received beginning to treat her with a cacophony of aches and pains. She wasn't even sure whether or not all of her bones were intact. From her spot on the floor, she could see the large sign placed just in front of the waterfall finally telling her where she was: HEAVENLY TOYS.
"Yeah... right..." she wheezed. "Heavenly..."
"Well, well, well..." a soft, feminine voice crackled through unseen speakers. "What have we here? What fresh morsel has the ink washed into my web this time?"
In her groggy state, Sunset found herself pondering whether or not this disembodied electronic voice secretly observing her was more pleasant than the last one. She weighed her options, then settled on the fact that she'd still prefer this to going back to Aperture Science. At least she was armed, this time.
"My, oh my... You're not like the rest, are you? You're... an original."
Sunset coughed weakly. "Until recently, the one and only..."
"Well, in that case, perhaps we can help one another." A nearby door slid open, revealing a large service elevator. "Find me on level nine. Just follow the screams."
"Y-yeah, sure..." Sunset muttered. "Just- gimmie a minute, okay?"
"Don't stay out in the open too long, or the ink demon will find you..."
"Yeah... I've noticed."
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This is one big mess, isn’t it? I’m really enjoying this ark so far, I’m actually really glad that Sunset is having trouble with the whole copy of Pen thing, instead of just immediately being ok with it.
Aye, it be good to be seein' Cap'n Jack.
Personally, I think the "Ship of Theseus" paradox is really helpful in resolving the which is real "Penn" vs. Penndyne question. Especially when you consider the version in which the ship is duplicated by rebuilding it from the original parts. While it is a good point that it is the soul, not the body, that has been duplicated in this way, so it feels more like switching captains than changing a hull, I think it could still work. Penndyne can be seen as the new ship, maintaining continuity of experience from the original soul, while having all the pieces switched out over time, while the resurrected "Penn" is like taking the discarded soulstuff of Penn, and recreating the original. Of course, "Penn" doesn't need to find an argument that convinces me or any of the other readers, but one that will convince Sunset, and himself. I agree that this argument probably isn't sufficiently airtight by itself, but I don't know if such an argument can even exist... at least not without a deeper understanding of the metaphysics of souls in this iteration of the multiverse.
I'm definitely looking forward to see where this goes!
Well that went about as well as could be expected.
You know I've never seen someone get so hung up over a simple case of temporal cloning before.
Oh no!
It's Sammy Lawrence!
"Sunset Satan" is the fandom for Sunset's she-demon form. At least it is on Derpibooru. I love metareferences like this.
Quite an amusing moment when Penn says everything is safe unless someone turns on the ink machine, which we know happened last chapter.
Looks like next chapter, Sunset goes up against Alice Angel. Seems that each chapter in this arc parallels a chapter from Bendy and the Ink Machine. Given Bendy has five chapters, I imagine this arc will have at least five chapters as well.
Looking forward the next chapters in this inky arch. Keep up the great work.
I wonder what would Sunset perceive when using her power on any of the inked Boris or Alices.
Regarding Psycho Alice, I think despite her crimes she is more of a sort of Nightmare Moon in need of purification than an irredimable monster.
10526535
Well obviously she unconsciously attracted it to her with the Force, what with her life being in danger and all
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It's probably not going to happen, but if I had to guess, it would probably be like when she tried to read the endermen: too much/incomprehensible feedback and/or outside influence would overwhelm her.
Well this was yet another nice chapter.
Great chapter! I’m enjoying the concepts I see here and as I’ve never seen bendy and the ink machine anything before I’m totally in the dark except for knowing who Alice angel and bendy are. I’m liking this a lot so far, and I really can appreciate the way that both writers block and the “he’s not the REAL Penn” conflict are adding to this story. It adds a whole new aspect to the characters challenges because they need to escape alive and find a way to come to terms with what’s happening with themselves and each other. I look forward to the next chapter!
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I prefer Demonset Shimmer, myself
I've taken about 10 minutes to talk with my dad, because while I consciously thought of Penn, as, well, Penn, I have managed to solve it. There just both Penn. Everything up until there memories line up is what I feel is the SAME person, we can treat both of them like there Penn from that point backwards, after that, there different.
Just two people both named Penn. I knew this consciously, but it took a few minutes to let it settle, since I just read the past chapters.