BEDLAM

by Gormless Wheaton

Chapter 9

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"Bedlam!" Jury cheered and clapped her hooves as we entered the room.

"Hello, Jury!" I replied with a wave. She beamed and started drumming her hooves on the table we'd been given to work on. I leered down at Applejack and then up at Spike and Rainbow, who were already at the table. "Did they give you my design?"

"Yep, yep, yep!" She chirped. "Ooooh! It's been ages since we worked together!"

Applejack rolled her eyes and nudged me forward. "Alright, rein it in, fangirl. Ya'll best get to work right quick." I smirked and strode to my seat across from Jury. To either end of the table sat Rainbow and Spike, while Applejack sat on the floor and relaxed against the wall.

I rubbed my hands together and looked over our supplies. "So, no Celestia or Luna?" I gently grabbed a piece of metal and studied it.

Rainbow leaned in and watched my hands with narrowed eyes. "They're helping Twilight fix the spell she was using to talk to Starswirl and Starlight and all the patrolling guards," she scowled at me. "Guess she had some real bad dreams last night and she screwed up the cast." I paused and stared ahead. Jury looked between us and tilted her head at me.

Finally, I hummed and shrugged. "Fair enough. You sure you three are up to the task of," I chortled. "Keeping my runecraft in line?"

Spike scoffed and reclined in his seat. "Please! I've helped Twilight with magic stuff for years!"

Rainbow smirked and stamped her hoof on the table. "Yeah! And I'm plenty attentive!" I raised an eyebrow and glanced at Jury, who smiled while her eyes darted between the two. She finally looked at me and her smile widened. I smiled back before turning to Applejack.

"And what about you?" She tipped her hat up to leer at me.

"I'm just here to kick yer tail if'n you get ornery."

I rolled my eyes and leaned on the table while twirling the metal piece in my fingers. "Sure, but hey, maybe you can answer me something else?" She raised an eyebrow. "Am I going to have my own weapon, or am I forbidden from building one for myself?"

Jury raised her hoof. "Me too!"

Applejack scoffed. "Heck no!"

"Yeah! You think we're stupid or something?" Rainbow added.

I shrugged. "Was just a question. I mean, if the Legion pops up and I'm defenseless, well." The three of them frowned and shared a look before Applejack rolled to her hooves.

"That's a good point, but I'm gonna ask Twi first."

"Of course," I replied with a nod as she slipped from the room. Jury and I shared a brief look as we got to work. A few minutes passed in abject silence, as Jury and I were, by this point, very in sync with each other, even after so long apart. We were cycling through preparing the casings for all the pony-guns at a wonderful rate, and the time came to prep the gems.

A miserable sigh came from Rainbow as she rested her head on the table, clearly bored out of her mind. On the other side, Spike was able to remain focused. He sat with his arms folded, scanning both of us as we worked, humming and leaning back and forth to get a closer look. At least until we began handling the gems.

His eyes widened with an eager glint and he gripped the edge of the table. I smirked and glanced at Rainbow, who idly was blowing puffs of air at her mane, then quickly flicked a gem Spike's way. He recoiled for a moment, but after a reassuring nod from me, he happily snatched it up and bit into it.

In that same instant, as she was sliding a gem over to carve with the tool in her teeth, Jury slipped an extra gem over and hastily twisted it into a thick lock of her mane. We both glanced left and right to see that neither had noticed. Then she subtly nodded her head at me.

I hesitated, and she darted her eyes at the pile of gems in the middle of the table. Still, I hesitated. She gave me a confused leer and then Spike spoke up. "What's wrong?" We both looked at him as he wiped his mouth with his claw.

Jury furrowed her brow, set her knife down, and shook her head. "Just spaced on the rune design for a minute." Spike hummed and reclined again as she glared at me before returning to work. I took a breath and stared at the pile of gems and my reflection in them, fighting off memories of the orb Luna'd shown me last night.

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"Princess Celestia!" Twilight cried as she and her friends burst through the throne room door. "We came as quickly as we-" She slid to a stop and gasped in unison with her friends.

"Hello, Twilight," Bedlam greeted, standing just before the stair to the throne with his hands folded behind his back and surrounded by guards.

"You," Twilight hissed.

"You guys caught him?!" Rainbow cheered. "Awesome!"

"Woohoo! Go, princesses!" Pinkie squealed, leaping in the air and clapping her hooves.

"Actually, he just surrendered," Luna retorted, causing the girls to pause. They shared a look, then glanced at Bedlam, who shrugged.

"It's true. In fact I don't even have any machine with me besides the Integrity, and the guards have it locked away." Their jaws dropped and they scrambled to circle him and fix him with critical and confused stares.

"No way," Rainbow muttered.

"You're joking," Rarity huffed.

"What in tarnation?" Applejack groused.

Twilight took a much more direct response, fluttering up to his face, planting her hooves on his chest, and glaring into his eyes. "What's your angle?" He smiled and leaned away from her as she pressed in.

"Something's come up I can't handle, but which likely concerns all of you."

"All of us?" Fluttershy squeaked. "Oh my."

Twilight snorted. "What, did the Hippogriffs finally break your blockade?"

"No."

"The Minotaurs destroyed that awful factory you've been assaulting them with?" Rarity offered.

"No."

"Them Abyssinians's cut off yer supply lines to wherever the heck yer holed up at?" Applejack asked.

"They tried and failed! So no."

"Oh! Oh! The yaks sent out a secret team of specialists to covertly invade the Southlands and smash as many of your controller tower thingies as possible?" Pinkie squeaked.

Bedlam recoiled and glared at her. "How do you know about that? And no, we've got that under control," he frowned, looked off to the side, and folded his arms. "Or at least we did. Probably not now."

Twilight shook her head. "Okay, so what?"

He hummed and leered at her. "You're familiar with my research into how magic responds to intent, emotion, and will, correct?"

"Yeah?"

"As well as my attempts at replicating changeling magic?"

Twilight scowled. "Of course. We helped Thorax chase you off and rescue those changelings you abducted."

"Excellent!" Bedlam clapped. "Because the problem relates to all of those things."

He cleared his throat and folded his hands in front of him. The girls sighed and sat down, by now used to his lectures on whatever horrible invention he was unleashing. "You see, I've been looking into creating a whole new breed of animunculi more advanced than the ones you've seen that just mimic the shape of a given creature. Shape is fine, but many creatures have unique abilities and magic which are tricky to replicate."

Pinkie raised her hoof. "Oh! Like cutie marks?"

Bedlam laughed and clapped. "Exactly! Very good." Pinkie beamed but wilted when she saw her friends scowling. "Now, changeling magic is unique of course, but its primary purpose is mimicry. My running theory was if I could understand it, and replicate it, I could potentially use it to give my machines the ability to mimic those special talents and abilities."

He grinned wide and giggled. "Those possibilities if it worked are quite literally endless."

The girls winced and shared a look before Twilight frowned at him. "And I'm guessing something went wrong?"

He cleared his throat again. "Yes. Cataclysmically." The girls breathed a sigh of relief. "You see, part of the scheme is that we could use magic's natural sensitivity to emotion and intent to allow my replicated changeling magic to adapt on the fly. Due to a slight error, my own emotions and intent were what was sampled by the machine we were testing." He hummed and drummed his fingers, as all the ponies shared a look.

Luna was the first to speak up. "What does that mean, Bedlam?"

He frowned and winced. "It means that there's currently an animuculi at my citadel that believes it's me, has access to the Crystal Mind, and has used it to usurp me," he coughed into his fist. "And is pursuing my plan of world peace in a-"

He inhaled sharply and rolled his hands. "Very different way than I was," he chuckled and drummed his fingers. "It seems to be under the impression it can best attain peace by killing all organic life on the planet." Every jaw in the room dropped.

"Yeah, kind of a wild jump," he chuckled and raised a finger. "The good news is that that's not the worst news though!"

Everyone recoiled as he nodded. "The worst news is he's preparing several thousand tons of balefire to launch a firebombing campaign across the entire planet."

"Bale-" Celestia gasped. "Balefire?"

Bedlam nodded. "Yeah, y'know? That scary green stuff that ignites when it's exposed to magic?"

"Several thousand tons.. That," Twilight held a hoof to her mouth and whimpered. "That could wipe out every city in Equestria a dozen times over!"

"Why in the world were you producing so much balefire?!" Luna screamed.

"I wasn't!" Bedlam roared back. "I just had the recipe for research purposes!"

The blue alicorn moaned and hissed as her head thrashed to and fro. "You psychotic, soulless, LUNATIC!"

"I have good news though!" Bedlam screamed. Everyone glared death his way. "Since I wasn't producing balefire, it'll still take the fake me time to actually, y'know, get it all ready."

He whirled around and bowed at Twilight. "Plenty of time for you six to rush in, blast the Crystal Mind with those nifty elements of yours, and purge this rogue animunculus from the planet!" He blanched and stared ahead for a moment. "Along with.. everything else I've built that's connected to it currently. But that's probably preferable to being incinerated to death." He gave a wide smile.

The ponies all shared a look before Celestia stepped forward. "Take him away while we discuss how to proceed."

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