Live, Laugh, and Love Lunacy

Chapter 9.2

Brawl of the Beasts

Bedlam summoned a giant pair of black bird wings, then he took off into the air and chased after Travis and Allie, as much as he hated doing this he needed to stop Travis and get Allie out of danger.

She would get her punishment eventually, and he assumed Travis would feel bad if he killed someone. Even someone as despicable as this woman.

Bedlam managed to catch up with the hunter and his prey quickly, then before Travis could come down on Allie with his mighty claws he grabbed her up and teleported them behind a wall in an adjacent room.

Bedlam dropped Allie who was gasping from terror.

"What the hell just happened?" Allie asked herself.

Bedlam decided to answer her question by picking her up by the neck and pinning her up against the wall. "You happened you sick fuck!"

Allie grabbed her neck as she tried not to get choked. "What?"

"Since someone like you has bigger boobs than brains I'll explain it to you slowly: You made Travis stressed, anxious, angry, upset, and sad all at once. Those emotions mixed together inside him and transformed him into some kind of shadow monster."

"But… why?"

"His transformation; he transformed twice in a short period of time which seriously displaced his cells. Not to mention that he passed through a portal recently so he may have some subspace energy stuck to him."

Bedlam tightened his grip on the slut. "My point is he has magic inside him, powerful unstable magic which fed on his darker instincts and feelings after you raped him."

"But...but…" She tried to get out.

"Don't you dare try to beg to me. Right now you're going to take a nap and I'm going to solve this problem you caused."

Bedlam pulled her away from the walls and slammed her head into it, knocking her unconscious. If he wasn't careful he would've caused her some internal bleeding, and if he really wanted to he could have sent her right through that wall and killed her.

But there's a time and a place for everything, right now he needed to get Travis back. He teleported back into the room they were in before and saw his shadow beast form ripping through the soldiers who were trying to attack him like tissue paper. It was clear that he could bring down this whole building if he let him.

Bedlam didn't want to hurt him, he really didn't, he tries to only severely hurt or kill evil things and Travis was far from evil. Also, he saw a little bit of himself in him: talented, creative, and a bit of a dark soul. He had to save him from himself.

"Hey!" Bedlam shouted.

That got Travis' attention, he turned around and growled maliciously.

"Where…is…the defiler?" He said with venom in his voice.

"She's unconscious, hopefully having a horrible nightmare about you ripping her to shreds. But I'm not going to let that happen!"

Travis growled.

"I want to murder her too, believe me I do, but I will not let you do that. Once you walk the killer's path there's no coming back and it will change you… I mean, you're kinda changed already, but I'm going to fix that!"

Travis, not wanting to listen to his speech, roared and began charging at Bedlam.

Bedlam prepared for this by planting his feet on the ground, then he outstretched his hand and began charging up energy. When Travis was only a few feet away from him he side stepped, dodged the beast's massive claws, and outstretched his hand at the big fox.

"Dust Tornado!"

He shot out a tornado that slammed Travis into the wall, it definitely hurt him but in his large beast form it wouldn't be enough to do any serious harm.

Bedlam sighed. "You are so lucky..." He enlarged his fists until they were humongous. "If I had any good fox puns right now I'd be chewing your ear off."

Now the shadow beast was angry at Bedlam and charged at him with great speed. He opened his jaws to chomp Bedlam in half but he used his huge hands to clamp his jaws shut.

"Come on Travis, I don't want to hurt you but I can't keep you in this form or you'll kill everyone. Please just snap out of it."

Travis attacked Bedlam with his claws, Bedlam tried his best to counter it but Travis was fast and one of the claws scratched against his stomach and sent him flying across the room.

Bedlam got up in pain and felt the area where Travis had attacked him, his clothes were ripped and his claws had dug deep into his skin to the point where he was losing a serious amount of blood.

Bedlam felt the pain of the attack, he could feel his eyes go red and his fangs begin to come out… but he repressed his rage.

"It would be meaningless to kill him now. I need to fix him, not end his life."

His hand glowed for a moment and then he placed it over his stomach, it created a crystal abdominal guard that would stop his wound from bleeding out even more and protect it from further damage.

"I can smack him around all I want while he's in this form but it doesn't seem like it'll do any good."

Travis was growling at him again, he wanted to attack Bedlam but after the last two or so blows he had received he knew to keep his distance.

"His problems are within his mind; I need to get inside his psyche and see what I can do to get him back to normal. But how?"

As Bedlam pondered, he put his efforts toward evasion and defense, to buy him time to come up with a plan. His thoughts were cut short when he saw an explosion rip through one of the loading doors. This caught the attention of Travis as well, as he ceased his attack on Bedlam to observe what could possibly be his next opponent.

Out of the smoke from the explosion stepped two men. Oscar and Ivan. Ivan was wearing the same outfit from earlier with a weird looking belt around his waist, and Oscar looked like a knight from the future, as he was sporting armor that looked like something from TRON if it had taken a medieval spin.

"Third floor: explosions, awesome entrances, and kicked asses!" Ivan yelled, his voice carrying across the whole warehouse.

Bedlam sighed. "Great just what I need, another sarcastic warrior who's eager to fight." He cupped his hands around his mouth. "Hey buddy! If you're hoping to fight this thing you're going to have to wait in line, I called dibs."

Ivan groaned. "Curses, I'm always betrayed by dibs. First it was the teeter totter in second grade and now… wait a second, who are you to call dibs?"

"Ah, glad you asked."

Bedlam dissolved into an inky puddle and then reappeared in front of the two gentleman who walked in.

"Bedlam's my name, and to give you the short version I'm the guy with more power than literally anything you could throw at me so please… step off."

"What?" Oscar reached to his side and pulled out a giant greatsword with a glowing blue edge and handle. "Who are you to order us around?"

"Like I said pal: god like powers. Unless you want to be killed a hundred different ways from here to Sunday I suggest you back up."

"Or I can cleave you in half with one slice and that'll be the end of that."

Oscar raised his arm and tried to cut Bedlam and half but before he could connect his shadow appeared and blocked the blow with two gauntlet mounted arm blades.

"What?" Oscar was confused.

"The merest shade of me…"

Bedlam summoned his own arm blades and the shadow stepped behind Oscar. He didn't even have a chance to fight back, the two shadow warriors pounded away in a synchronized style that Oscar felt even through his armor. He was on the ground (not dead, but with a few broken ribs) within a minute.

"...is enough to defeat you."

Ivan looked on as Oscar got his butt handed to him on a silver platter. Something about this young man felt weird. Not just how powerful he was, no that was just the tip of the iceberg. He saw it in his eyes the moment he turned away from Oscar and locked him in a stare like no other.

Determination, pride, and heartache. This young man was a warrior, and must have seen some amazing things to give him the gaze of an old soul from the battlefield.

Bedlam turned from Ivan to the monster. "You're a man down now. So just stay back and watch. I'll take care of him."

In that moment, Ivan saw something else. A faint spark, a glow of some sort. He felt it for a split second coming from Bedlam. He recognized this feeling. It was compassion.

Whatever this monster was, Bedlam wanted to fight it because he felt some sort of personal connection to it, and didn't want anyone interfering with what could be personal business.

Ivan nodded and stepped back toward Oscar, kneeling to administer first aid. "All right then. But if anyone else comes in, I'm taking them down. I'll leave the big guy to you."

And just like Murphy and his damned law dictated, more soldiers came rushing in, led by the scar-faced scruffy guy from before. "Well if it isn't 'Iron Soul Ivan'? Remember me?!" The man yelled across the room. Unfortunately, Ivan had his attention on initiating the Auto-Heal protocol inside Oscar's armor.

"Ignoring me, huh? Well ignore this!"

The scruffy guy suddenly pulled out an RPG, aiming it at Ivan, his back still to him. "Special delivery, courtesy of Craig Nole!" He pulled the trigger, and the rocket went flying. It gained speed as it got closer, and Ivan couldn't care less.

Having fully activated the healing procedure for Oscar, Ivan took note of the rocket heading his way. "You want to take care of it, or should I?" Ivan muttered. No sooner did he finish that sentence, the rocket met its mark and the echo of the explosion was music to Craig's ears.

"Really? That's it? I expected more of a fight out of you, considering what you pulled last time we met. Oh well. No skin off my nose."

But just as Craig turned to deal with the other problem in the room, he heard a voice yell from within the dust cloud the rocket kicked up.

"Considering all the stuff I took off your face last time, you may want to keep what you can on that dumb face of yours." Ivan stood tall as the dust cleared, revealing a bubble shield as his protection. Theta appeared on his shoulder and gave Craig a raspberry.

"You think I'd storm your base without some backup? Please. Unlike you morons, I already devised every possible way things could turn south, and thanks to some outside help, it looks like I was on the nose about you and your habit with RPGs. Though the giant monster was kinda unexpected, I'll give you that." Ivan spoke smugly. Looking to Theta, he smiled. "I knew you'd watch my back for me. Thanks. Now are you ready to rumble?"

Theta couldn't help himself and broke out into a huge grin. "Yeah!" He shouted in excitement before disappearing once again.

Ivan spread his legs slightly into a relaxed stance. "Admittedly, it's been quite some time since I had to use this thing." He gestured to his strange belt. "But last time, this was still being beta tested. Now you're getting the real deal."

Ivan pulled what looked like a grey and silver USB drive from his upper left coat pocket and clicked a button near the bottom. A voice came out of the drive and yelled 'CHAIN!' before it was inserted into a slot on the left side of the belt.

"Henshin!" Ivan yelled before tilting the slot further left and becoming surrounded in a pale light, blinding Craig and his soldiers.

When the light faded, Craig smiled maliciously at what stood before him. Ivan was now wearing a grey suit with black and silver chain designs crossing everywhere over his body and framing his form perfectly. On his head was a helmet-like mask with large green eyes.

"Kamen Rider Chain...now show me what you've got, tiny." Ivan taunted.

Craig just kept smiling. "Things won't be the same as last time. I've gotten stronger since then. And with this strength, I'll pay you back tenfold for every scar you left on my body! Now, prepare to die you son of a…" He stopped suddenly. Why? Well, the long chain sticking into his chest and out of his back could be a good reason.

Ivan pulled back on the hilt, dragging the dying body of Craig with the chain. All of Craig's men stood in shock at their commanding officer's sudden defeat, but didn't move an inch. The fear of a chain in the chest was new to them, but kept them from acting all the same.

After pulling him close enough, Ivan kneeled next to his enemy. "Wow, this has to be...quite the drag for you."

Everyone in earshot groaned. Except Bedlam who gave a single "Ha!"

"I can imagine you were probably...the weakest link among your peers."

The amount of groans increased. Bedlam continued laughing even more.

"You know what song I've chosen for your funeral? A little song by Bon Jovi called...SHOT THROUGH THE HEART!"

That had everyone groaning with such force that it almost made everyone lose their fighting spirit, but Bedlam was now rolling around on the floor laughing.

"Stop! Stop! You're killing me! Hahahahaha!" He wiped his eyes of tears and got back up on his feet.

Oscar managed to lift his head up from his position across the room and yelled at Ivan. "Oh would you shut up and get on with it?!"

"Yeah! Get on with it!" An injured soldier concurred.

"Get on with it!" All the other soldiers in the room yelled.

Ivan sighed. "Some people just don't have a sense of humor. Fine!" He yelled before retracting the chain into the hilt, its length seemingly disappearing like magic.

Bedlam gave a round of applause. "Excellent work Ivan, a performance worthy of myself in every way shape and form. Well, I'd say that wraps this up quite nicely-"

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAWR!"

Everyone turned around and witnessed the rampaging Shadow Travis.

"Oh right… I almost forgot about you."

"How are we going to stop him?" Ivan asked. "He's ripped through tons of soldiers and even my weapons would barely scratch him."

Bedlam put a hand to his chin. "Well while you were laying the smack down on demoman over there I realized the easiest way for me to fix him is to enter his mind and eradicate whatever caused this transformation in the first place."

"You… can do that?"

Bedlam nodded. "Yeah, but it won't be easy without knocking him out first. And the easiest way to do that is with some sort of tranquilizer."

"And how much of that will you need?"

Bedlam reached into his pockets and pulled out an abacus, then he started sliding the beads around to figure out his dosage.

"Let's see, he's 50 yards tall and 30 yards long…"

Travis howled and started charging at the group of soldiers.

"The average blue whale weighs 420,000 thousand pounds and is 83 feet long…"

"Um… buddy?" Ivan tried to get his attention.

"Accounting for muscle mass weighing less than fat that means he's…"

"Look buddy, I don't mean to interrupt but…"

In frustration Bedlam threw his abacus onto the ground and smashed it into a million pieces. "Dude, fuck math!" He extended his arms and suddenly two giant multi barreled miniguns appeared out of his shoulder blades. "I'm just going to use all of it!"

He opened fire on the charging Travis and filled him with hundreds of needles laced with Lorazepam, a very powerful tranquilizer… that has been known to cause Amnesia in high doses.

At first it looked like the tranquilizers weren't working but slowly Travis started to slow down and just when it seemed like he was going to run into them he slid to the ground and his massive body stopped only inches away from all of them. His head was filled with dozens of needles.

"Wow…" Ivan said in awe. "What happens now?"

Bedlam smiled. "Now I get to go into his head and rearrange the furniture a little bit."

Bedlam snapped at the rubber gloves he (somehow) was wearing and walked forward. "Now… let's take a peek at your noodle you crazy dubkov." He said in an outrageous German accent.

He put his hand on Travis' head and established a magical link, when it was fully connected his eyes went white and he traveled inside of Travis' brain.

When Bedlam reappeared on Travis' dream plane the area surrounding him was barren and pure white.

"White… not a good color. If I remember what Luna told me correctly it means the person is facing an extremely vivid nightmare that affects both their mental state and their physical form as well."

Bedlam searched around this pure white dreamscape until he found what he was looking for.

"Do you hear me Travis?"

Yep, that was it. Bedlam air dashed towards the source of this noise as fast as he could until he came across what he was afraid of: it was Allie sitting on top of Travis and straddling his pelvis.

"You're mine you hear me?" She said in her wicked tone. "There's nothing you can do to escape me."

Bedlam walked behind her silently and prepared to do something that would hopefully help Travis… or at the very least make himself feel better.

He leaned down and whispered in Allie's ear. "It's not nice to use other people's bodies…"

That got her attention, and when Allie turned around she was immediately impaled through her chest. Bedlam impaled her with Alex Mercer's blade claws and he could see blood gushing out of her chest and covering her skin in crimson revenge.

"See what happens when I use yours?"

To add a little more punch to this victory he threw her up into the air and then he dashed up there himself and slashes her clean in half with his claws. He fell down faster than her and when he got to the ground he was bathed in a rain of her blood.

"Ha ha ha!" he screamed like a mad man. "God I love the taste of blood in the afternoon!"

He looked down at Travis and saw his face contorted in fear.

Realizing what he had done may not have been as beneficial as he had hoped, he retracted his claws and turned them back into normal people arms.

"Oh… maybe that wasn't the best idea."

Kneeling next to him and looking Travis in the eye, Bedlam put a hand on his shoulder. "So...how are you feeling?"

"I saw it."

Bedlam looked confused, until Travis clarified, his face easing from terrified to befuddled.

"I saw you. You came from another Equestria...no, another reality altogether. You took his powers, made them your own and made so many wondrous things happen. You made friends, enemies too, and then you fell into the roads of the multiverse. Luna looked so sad."

Bedlam sighed. "Yeah. Back then was my first trip, and boy was it awesome. I met the Discorded Doctor, a human given a second chance at life who fell in love with Vinyl Scratch, Adventure time characters, hell I even met the female version of myself; and just like I suspected… I had some pretty rockin tits."

The last comment made Travis snicker a little. Bedlam smiled at his first step of helping his young friend recover. "Yeah. That was one of my favorite pit stops on my trip. I couldn't help myself from making a joke after one pony yelled at me to 'go fuck myself'. I can't remember exactly if I did or not in the end, but it was quite the experience, getting to meet another version of myself. Who knows, maybe you'll get the chance to meet another you too."

Bedlam moved his hand from Travis' shoulder as he sat up to meet him eye to eye. "That does sound pretty cool. But I only have one question: Where are we?"

Looking around, Travis only saw white in every direction. It hurt his eyes a little to see such bright surroundings with no contrasting colors or elements.

Meanwhile, on the outside…

"Well sure, leave everything else to me why don't you?!" Ivan yelled sarcastically as his chain whipped five more soldiers away from the prone man and the giant unconscious monster next to him.

"One second he's putting his hand into the skull of something weird, and the next he's unconscious and leaves me to clean up the rest of these punks! Fair trade? I THINK NOT!"

Back inside the mind of Travis…

"So this is my brain?"

"Yep."

"And the lack of decor stems from my...recent trauma?"

"Indubitably."

"Wow...this is a lot to take in all at once. I thought mindscapes were just some kind of plot device thrown in by lazy fan fiction writers nowadays."

Bedlam had to stifle a laugh at that; for what reason, Travis didn't know.

"So how do we get out?" Travis inquired. Bedlam looked around for any sign of an exit. Seeing none, he knew there was only one way out, and it wasn't the most pleasant of options.

"That's the thing...we can't. At least, not until we take care of one itty, bitty, teeny, tiny detail. And by little, I mean big, and by 'we', I mean you."

Travis looked taken aback at this sudden reveal of information.

"You see I don't know whether you know this or not but you turned into a humongous fox monster and tried to tear me and… about 100 other soldiers to shreds."

"Oh… oh no."

"Hey, don't be like that, it's not your fault."

As they were talking a black shadow appeared on the ground and Allie spawned out it, only this time she was surrounded by a dark inky aura and her eyes glowed a bright gold color.

"It's hers."

Then suddenly more just like her spawned out of the ground, creating a wall of evil sadistic bitches who slowly started walking towards them. Seeing them made Travis freeze up again and Bedlam groaned, he needed to get him out of here.

He grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and started pulling him away from them in a mad dash.

'He won't be able to get out of here if he can't fight his demons, and if they take him down...NO! Not gonna happen!' Bedlam thought as he ran further into the white abyss, Travis close behind him.

Somewhere down the line, Travis got a bit of his nerves under control enough to run on his own, and boy did Bedlam have to put the pedal to the metal to keep up.

"That's more like it! So what's the plan?"

Travis looked at Bedlam in confusion. "What do you mean? Can't we just outrun them?"

*sigh* "No. You have to face your problem and get rid of it on your own. I can't hold your hand forever."

The Shadow Allie mob was starting to gain ground and was getting closer to them by the second. Bedlam knew now was the time to pull out all the stops and reignite the flame inside of Travis.

"Look, I may seem strong to you, but I had to overcome a lot of crazy shit to be where I am now. I had to endure physical and mental pain that would leave the most hardened soldier crying like a baby. And you may have to see just as much, if not more than I have in the WTF Department in the future."

The mob was literally grabbing at their heels now.

"I can't leave here until you wake up. If you don't wake up, I may never see my wife again. Only you can get us out of here. Only you can save us."

The mob leaped into the air, coming down on them both with the force of a charging rhino. Unfortunately, only Bedlam got caught and was dog piled by all of them before being punched and kicked from every direction.

Travis stopped running and looked on as Bedlam took on one hell of a beating.

This left him feeling guilty. He was so afraid that he couldn't get any closer to the mob. He had to do something, but what?

One of the Allie look-alikes noticed the frozen young man just standing there and started walking slowly toward him. Travis saw this and tensed up more than before. But before he could run, he heard Bedlam's words from before in his head.

"I can't leave here until you wake up."

He clenched his hands into fists.

"If you don't wake up, I may never see my wife again."

Hot tears rolled down his cheeks.

"Only you can get us out of here."

The abyss started to crack, and Travis glared straight into the eyes of the oncoming clone, stopping her in her tracks, her face showing genuine fear on a whole other level.

Light started gathering in his right hand like fireflies to a forest glen. The particles started to glow over his skin before forming a glove of pure photon energy.

Slowly he raised his hand and held an open palm in the direction of the clone.

"Only you can save us."

Travis grinned ferally before yelling at the top of his lungs and unleashing something so powerful, it broke the white abyss and threw the clones everywhere.

"IMMA FIRIN MAH LAZER!"

The very air around him vibrated with power as his beam decimated a good number of the clones, and the white surroundings started to break apart and change into something very familiar to him. The inside of a clock tower.

Bedlam, who was free from the mob of shadows, got up from the floor. His clothes were torn in several places, he had bruises on his body, and part of his clothes were singed due to that intense laser blast but he was mostly unharmed.

"Now that's more like it! Giant lasers! You make me so proud." Bedlam looked around and saw the clock tower they were standing in, but it didn't look familiar in the slightest. "I assume this place has some sort of emotional significance to you?"

Travis nodded. "Yeah. It's part of a recurring dream I had since I was a kid. I could hear the gears turning in a symphony of mechanical synchronicity. Whenever I had a bad day, I would always imagine this place, and everything would seem to slow down, allowing me to think more clearly and calm my nerves. But that's not all this place can do…"

The light glove around Travis' hand broke apart into little balls that flew off into nothingness.

"When the clock strikes a different hour, it changes the surroundings, teleporting me to somewhere else in my imagination. This stimulates my creativity and inspires me to create!"

The tower rang out all of a sudden, chiming three times. "And look what time it is."

Authors Note

Two down. One to go.