The year is 1939. It’s the dead of night in Pingfang, a district
of the Harbin Prefecture in Japanese Imperial Occupied China. A squadron of over a hundred Chinese rebels
led by Lieutenant Wang Wei, clutching Bergmann MP 18 machine guns, hurry through the streets
towards their destination: The bioweapons lab operated by Unit 731 and monstrous, terrifying
Japanese Surgeon General Shirō Ishii. It is a mission of liberation...and revenge. If you know anything about Unit 731, just
hearing the name will send a chill down your spine, just as it did for the Chinese soldiers
hoping to perform a surprise assault on the Unit’s complex of horrors. Rumors had spread from the Chinese prisoners
of war taken there - and the knowledge of the horrible things happening to their countrymen
inside that building made their blood boil with white-hot fury. Their mission was simple: They would launch
an attack on the complex when the Unit least expected it, save as many prisoners as they
could, while also taking revenge on as many Unit Soldiers as they could get their hands
on. But what the brave soldiers didn’t know
is that they were in for a battle they couldn’t hope to win. Because what they were fighting was not, in
the traditional sense, human. They were about to go toe to toe with SCP-4007,
an elite group of anomalous Japanese super-soldiers known as the Pingfang 5. A name spoken in fear by their enemies and
victims, for what little time both remained alive. The Chinese rebels were hiding in a stand
of trees outside the fortress, waiting for the right moment to strike, when the Pingfang
5 suddenly beat them to the punch and descended upon them. The plan was thrown into chaos when the trees
burst into flames without so much as a hint of artillery being fired. The soldiers, all hardened men of war, began
to grow scared. But then they saw something even more terrifying
standing there amongst the flames: 1st Lieutenant Mitsuo Kitano, also known as Lightning Bolt,
or SCP-4007-1 to the Foundation. One of his hands was wreathed in blue sparks
of electricity, and in the other, he wielded a Type 14 Nambu pistol. Lieutenant Kitano continued his attack, using
his anomalous lightning to blow away soldier after soldier. When the shocked rebels tried to return fire,
they found that they couldn’t land a single shot. Kitano dodged every bullet. The second wave of the assault came from behind
as the rebels tried to flee Kitano’s wrath. Private Takashi Honda, also known as The Ogre,
or SCP-4007-2, charged into the frey. He effortlessly wielded a Type 11 Machine
gun, and rained bullets down upon his unsuspecting foes. They shot back at him, but the bullets seemed
to just bounce off of his skin. He wasn’t bothered by them in the slightest
- He just smiled, and continued firing. The rebels quickly realized that the whole
thing had been a trap, but what had given them away? As if on cue, one of their own soldiers turned
and began firing on his fellow soldiers with his MP 18. This man wasn’t a rebel - in fact, he wasn’t
even Chinese. It was Corporal Joichiro Ida, also known as
The Fox, or SCP-4007-3. How could he have possibly infiltrated the
squadron? The answer is simple: He’s an anomalously
brilliant liar. In fact, it’s impossible to not believe
a single thing that Corporal Ida says, making him a true expert in espionage. Not a single one of the other rebels ever
had a chance of sniffing him out before the doomed mission. If this betrayal surprised them, then what
came next must have seemed like something out of a nightmare. Lieutenant Wang Wei, the man who’d spearheaded
the entire mission, turned and began picking off his own troops with his pistol. The surviving soldiers didn’t understand
- had the Lieutenant gone mad? They tried to shoot him, but just like the
others, he dodged effortlessly and continued to murder them. That’s because he wasn’t Lieutenant Wang
Wei at all - Wei had been murdered in the forest earlier that night, and replaced by
Private Teruo Nishimura, also known as SCP-4007-5, or The Shapeshifter. The Pingfang Five had infiltrated and compromised
the mission from before it had even begun. They never even stood a chance. During the chaos of the massacre, a few of
the rebels had managed to escape, running through a nearby clearing into a thicket of
trees. If they could survive then perhaps they could
regroup and lead a second assault on another day. They had no hope of survival during a head-on
conflict with these anomalous supersoldiers, they needed to get away and form a new strategy. But gunshots started ringing out through the
forest, tearing into their bodies and dropping the men one by one. They tried to return fire, but they couldn’t
even see who was shooting them. It seemed to come from all directions; the
rebels’ dying thoughts were that the trees around them must have been crawling with Japanese
troops. The reality was even more frightening - it
was only one man. Private Shigeru Matsui, codenamed Smoke for
this ability to become invisible at will. To the Foundation, he’s known as SCP-4007-4,
the last member of the Pingfang Five - the deadliest troops in the entire Imperial Japanese
Army. But unlike many of the biological anomalies
catalogued by the SCP Foundation, the Pingfang Five were not born, they were made. In case you aren’t familiar with the infamous
Unit 731 and their horrifying complex in Pingfang, this unit was a secret department of the Japanese
army ordered into existence by Emperor Hirohito himself for one sinister purpose: Researching
chemical and biological weapons for the Japanese Imperial Army. Their leader, the Surgeon General Shirō Ishii,
was essentially given blanket permission to do whatever he deemed necessary in order to
achieve results for his Emperor and his nation. Ishii took that directive and ran with it,
unleashing pseudo-scientific evil on a level matched only by the Nazi extermination camps
in Europe. Experimental weapons and horrific diseases
were tested on captured Chinese civilians, political dissidents, and prisoners of war. Thousands of people met horrific ends through
execution, experimentation, and vivisection - which is the dissection of a subject that
is still very much alive. How does this relate to the Pingfang Five
and SCP-4007? It all comes back to a top secret project
overseen by Ishii himself: Project Shinka. While Unit 731 was established in 1935, in
1937 they began working in collaboration with the Imperial Japanese Anomalous Matters Examination
Agency - Think of it as Imperial Japan’s hypernationalist answer to the SCP Foundation. They had become aware of the existence of
anomalous individuals in Imperial Controlled territories, and General Ishii wanted to know
whether the powers manifested in these anomalous individuals could be induced in others through
forced organ removal and transplantation. To test this hypothesis, Ishii had the Japanese
Secret Police round up anomalous individuals in Imperial Territory en masse. They were subjected to mass vivisections,
with the intention of isolating and removing anomalous organs. It was an act so positively genocidal in proportion
that East-Asia has statistically fewer anomalous humans than they statistically should to this
day. Ishii’s intention was to transplant the
organs into loyal volunteers from the Japanese military in order to create an unbeatable
military force. Perfect soldiers who would win the war for
them. The vast majority of these twisted experiments
were complete failures, leading to the higher ups at Unit 731 almost writing Project Shinka
off as a waste of time and canceling the whole thing, but there were soon five notable exceptions
- the very scary individuals you’ve already met. Not only did every member of the Pingfang
Five end up with a specific anomalous “superpower” as a result of the experiments, they also
experienced incredible, anomalous prowess across the board. Members of the Five boast extended longevity,
meaning they rarely show their age. Enhanced physical abilities including faster
reflexes, incredible senses, and immense physical strength. They also appear to have advanced mental development,
displaying phenomenal tactical and strategic reasoning, as well as the ability to effortlessly
learn, read, and speak multiple languages like Japanese, English, Mandarin Chinese,
Russian, and German. Of course, Japan eventually lost the war,
but the Pingfang Five had no intentions of ending their fight. They continued their missions long after Japan
formally surrendered, causing chaos and violence across East-Asia. After several unsuccessful engagements with
isolated members of the Pingfang Five - leading to the deaths of many Foundation Agents and
civilians - The Foundation formed Mobile Task Force Phi-51, aka MacArthur’s Dogs, an elite
group of operatives trained for the specific mission of bringing down the Pingfang Five. While the hunt rages on, three of the five
are already dead. SCP-4007-1, Mitsuo Kitano - the man who can
unleash bursts of electricity - met his end in Burma in 1948. During a procedure called Operation Smokehouse,
Phi-51 engaged Kitano in combat in the jungle. As was one of his trademark techniques, he
attempted to use his electricity powers to burn down the jungle and escape during the
chaos. However, the Foundation operatives surrounded
and boxed him in. He couldn’t escape, and when the fires were
put out, he was found dead on the ground - the apparent cause of death was smoke inhalation. SCP-4007-2, Takashi Honda - the man with the
bulletproof skin - died in 1957 in the Philippines. Phi-51 engaged him in combat in a mission
dubbed Operation Homewrecker, which culminated in them calling down an airstrike on him. In the aftermath, Honda was found dead, but
his cause of death was determined as having been. And finally, SCP-4007-3, Joichiro Ida - the
man with the silver tongue - was found dead a year later in 1958. His corpse was discovered in his room in Guiyang,
Southern China. He appeared to have been strangled to death,
and interestingly, there was evidence that he’d tried to engage in a shootout with
his killer, but hadn’t succeeded in preventing his own murder. All of these circumstances were somewhat mysterious,
but the Foundation didn’t investigate them much further after the bodies were tagged
and bagged. SCP-4007-5, Teruo Nishimura - the shapeshifter
- is still on the run today, while SCP-4007-4, Shigeru Matsui - the invisible man - is doing
just the opposite. He lives in Sarawak, Malaysia, and works in
open cooperation with the SCP Foundation to help track down the fifth member of the Pingfang
Five. Not much has changed in the 64 years since
the death of Joichiro Ida. It seemed like the search for SCP-4007-4 had
gone cold, until a Foundation archival clerk found something suspicious: The original paper
copy of the SCP-4007 document, which was dated a year before the Foundation had supposedly
discovered the existence of SCP-4007. As the archival worker dug further, they found
a number of unsettling discoveries that alter the true meaning of SCP-4007. In the original paper documents, each dead
member of the Pingfang Five had organs missing. And each subsequent member’s death involved
a power possessed by a former member: -2 was electrocuted, and -3’s gun was useless,
as the killer had been wearing -2’s bulletproof skin. Who was behind this? Why? And most importantly of all: How had it all
been forgotten? Through more digging, the Foundation discovered
the truth about SCP-4007-4: His powers weren’t invisibility, they were antimemetic. He can make people forget him at will, essentially
editing their memories, so he could do whatever he wanted without detection...Like, for example,
murdering his team members and stealing their powers. They even managed to find an archived letter
from 4 to 3, begging for his help in fighting some kind of unknown monster - something that
would require their combined powers to face, whether that ended up being as five separate
men or one man with all of their powers. This whole time, SCP-4007-4 had been playing
the Foundation like a fiddle. Using their resources to help him track down
the final member of the Pingfang Five, to recruit him into one final mission, or murder
him and steal his powers. But that still leaves one question: What is
this mission? What is this monster? The Foundation managed to find out, at least
partially. They charted the death locations of each of
the three dead Pingfang members, and the living location of SCP-4007-4, and discovered something
amazing… Four of the five points on a perfect pentagon,
centering on the South China Sea. The Foundation also estimated that the pentagon
would reveal the location of SCP-4007-5 at the final point, but his location isn’t
nearly as interesting as what resides at the center of this massive geographical pentagon. Foundation divers discovered huge numbers
of sunken Japanese battleships, downed planes, and thousands of bones littering the seabed. Based on the damage to these vessels, it was
clear they hadn’t been shot or blown up. No, they had been torn apart by something
obscenely huge and powerful underneath the water. The pentagon, a significant shape in sorcery,
is likely a massive, supernatural containment ritual, keeping whatever unspeakable horror
is lurking under the ground there from escaping. A containment ritual that could only be maintained
by five special individuals in five special places… It was in this moment that the Foundation
came upon a truly horrifying revelation: They had misjudged the intentions of Project Shinka. It was never about creating assets for the
war against the Allies, it was about a war against something else entirely, something
much more dangerous than and deadly than the squabbles between men. It was about the entity that lurked below. A creature that nobody understood, and that
no conventional weapon can fight. And if the ritual is ever broken and the beast
is allowed to rise, the Pingfang Five will be the very least of our problems. Now check out “SCP-001 - The Broken God
- Ouroboros Cycle” and “SCP-5545 - Mysterious Tunnels in Antarctica - Abnormality” for
more fascinating mysteries and rabbit holes from the SCP Foundation!
