November 26th, 2014. A plot of Federal land in the Midwestern United
States appears to be completely uninhabited, but to those in the know, this is actually
the location of Biological Research Area-12 - a large SCP Foundation Facility that houses
and experiments on live biological entities and hazardous tissue samples. Already, it was proving to be a challenging
day for the personnel stationed at Area-12: Due to what seemed like a freak technical glitch, they were dealing
with a systems failure... and a large-scale containment breach. The deadly bladed petals of SCP - 143 were
drifting through the air, the acidic SCP - 153 roundworms were breeding, SCP - 811 was running
wild, and a number of amnesia-inducing SCP - 939 creatures had escaped their pen. In short, it was a total disaster. Complete paranormal pandemonium. And things were about to get so much worse,
as the sounds of whirring helicopter blades and the rumbling engines of heavy military
vehicles approached. The embattled staff were relieved that Mobile
Task Force reinforcements were arriving so quickly - after all, Area-12 was relatively
isolated and they’d only just put in the call for help. On site security staff were being overwhelmed
in the chaos of the containment breach and they needed the big guns if they wanted to
get things under control before it was too late. What they didn’t know as the vehicles surrounded
their facilities is that it was already far too late for most of them. Soon, heavily armed troops in protective tactical
gear were storming the facility. As they entered, terrified staff members ran
towards them for protection, and then stopped in their tracks. These soldiers didn’t bear the insignia
of the SCP Foundation, or any known Mobile Task Force. Nor did they bear the symbols of the Global
Occult Coalition. This was something different altogether. Some of the Foundation personnel began to
beg for assistance anyway, seeing it as an “any port in a storm” situation. They realized too late that this group wasn’t
here to save them, and met their end in a hail of bullets from the soldiers’ assault
rifles. When the actual Mobile Task Force finally
did arrive, they witnessed a horrifying sight. Most of the on site Foundation personnel had
been shot dead, and there was no trace of the culprits. Even worse, several of the SCP - 939 creatures
were missing. These are the predatory, pack-hunting creatures
that produce amnestic chemicals to lure and disorient their prey. These anomalies are dangerous enough on their
own, but in the hands of someone who really knew how to use them, these living amnestic
factories could pose an extremely serious threat. The Mobile Task Force members knew what they
were dealing with here. Only one group would have the nerve to perform
a high-casualty heist on an SCP Foundation Facility during a containment breach: The
Chaos Insurgency. The Mobile Task Force reported the incident
back to command and already knew what their next mission would be. Track down the Insurgency splinter cell and
get the 939s back. This mission would have the absolute highest
stakes, and if they weren’t successful, there was no limit to the damage the Chaos
Insurgency could do with a creature as dangerous as SCP-939 under their control. But who exactly are The Chaos Insurgency? What do they want? And why are they stealing anomalies? The Chaos Insurgency is one of the most mysterious
and clandestine of the groups that fight against the SCP Foundation. They are different from the Global Occult
Coalition, a United Nation’s offshoot created after the Seventh Occult War whose mission is to destroy rather than
try to contain anomalies. The Serpent’s Hand is on the opposite end
of the spectrum. This group strives for the normalization of
the anomalous, and the destruction of the webs of secrecy that keep the anomalous and
consensus reality separate. Both the GOC and the Serpent’s Hand have
clear ideals and mission statements, but the Chaos Insurgency is less forthcoming about
their beliefs and convictions. Something we know for sure about the Chaos
Insurgency though, is that they view anomalies as tools to be utilized rather than unpredictable
elements to be contained, studied, or neutralized. To this end, they do whatever it takes to
obtain more anomalies of their own. Whether it’s ruthlessly seeking out anomalies
in the wild or taking them from the Foundation with coordinated strikes during moments of
weakness. Though they lack the support and resources
of organizations like the Foundation and the GOC, the Chaos Insurgency more than makes
up for it in devotion to their cause, their unpredictability, and most of all, their willingness
to use violence. It’s difficult to separate the facts from
the rumors when it comes to the Chaos Insurgency. Some believe that, to compensate for their
rejection by the United Nations as an official group dealing with anomalous incidents, they
instead receive support from certain dictatorships in the developing world. Funded by the blood money of various warlords,
they carry out their research on political prisoners and captured refugees provided by
their murderous allies. They’re also believed to illegally deal
both weapons and intelligence, helping the dictators who fund them remain in power and
subjugate their own people. The Foundation has been able to gather some
intel about the Chaos Insurgency’s organizational structure, which looks like a strange mirror
of their own. It’s led by the mysterious Delta Command,
headed by a figure known only as The Engineer. Gamma Class personnel execute the orders of
Delta Command, using the lesser Beta Class personnel as field operators, and finally
there is Alpha Class. They’re typically forced into conscription
from the states occupied by the Insurgency and serve as cannon fodder for the group as
they track down as many anomalies as they can. And the Insurgency is believed to possess
a number of powerful anomalies already. These include the Bell of Entropy - an object
that can cause a variety of destructive effects depending on where it is struck - and the
Staff of Hermes - an anomalous object capable of warping the physical and chemical properties
of any matter it touches. The Chaos Insurgency is only growing more
powerful as they continue their pursuit of money and power with a legion of militarized
anomalies. Their goal? Total world domination.Other accounts are
a little more charitable to the beliefs and causes of the Chaos Insurgency. They’ve been described as a rebellion against
the ruthless early days of the SCP Foundation, when they had a more violent, take no prisoners
attitude. This rumor has likely been disseminated by
the Chaos Insurgency themselves though, as it paints them in the most positive and righteous
light. In reality, the truth - as is often the case
- is somewhere in the middle. Danger often comes from within, and the Chaos
Insurgency is no exception. One constant in all interpretations of the
origin of the Chaos Insurgency is that its members are rogue elements of the SCP Foundation,
and it’s commonly believed that they have countless moles still deep in the organization
today. However, one well-kept secret among the upper
echelons of the Foundation is that the creation of the Chaos Insurgency is a lot less “unknown”
than they’d like you to think. Yes, danger really does often come from within. When researching the origins of the Chaos
Insurgency, you’re likely to see two dates popup again and again: 1924 and 1948. According to the official line from the SCP
Foundation, 1924 was the date of the Chaos Insurgency’s defection, and 1948 marked
the first series of violent raids that the Chaos Insurgency led against the Foundation. But these are only half truths. While both dates are indeed significant in
the story of the Chaos Insurgency, it’s for entirely different reasons. 1924 was the date when the Chaos Insurgency
- known at the time simply as “The Insurgency” - was created by the O5 Council. Why would the SCP Foundation’s commanding
authority knowingly create one of the Foundation’s enemies? Well, you have to understand that at the time,
the Insurgency served a very different purpose. They were intended to be a black ops group
for the O5 Council, capable of doing their dirty work off the books and out of sight
of the rest of the Foundation. Especially its ethics committee, which is
often in conflict with O5 Command. Their members were recruited from Mobile Task
Force Alpha-1, also known as the Red Right Hand, a highly secretive MTF in the pocket
of the O5. For twenty-four years, they did the O5’s
dirty work while shielding the Foundation’s international reputation from any potential
fallout. They were faithful soldiers, until they found
themselves a new master: The Engine, a mysterious, anomalous object that began to invade and
infect the minds of the Insurgency. The group’s human leader, the previously
mentioned Engineer, is merely a puppet of the engine - its human mouth piece. While the full extent of the Engine’s plans
remain mysterious to even members of the Chaos Insurgency, the Engine has been passing down
orders ever since. In 1948, the Insurgency fully defected, becoming
the Chaos Insurgency, and they’ve been a problem for the SCP Foundation ever since,
from raids to assassinations to threats of damaging the illusion of consensus reality
with their reckless behaviour. And now, thanks to their acquisition of SCP
- 939, they could get started on amnestics production too. Thankfully for the Foundation, they had prepared
for 939s getting out into the world, and all of the creatures housed at Area-12 had been
implanted with sub-dermal trackers. Several Mobile Task Forces were immediately
dispatched to home in on the signal, take out the Insurgents, and secure the 939s once
more. They tracked the signal to a warehouse in
the badlands of New Mexico where Task Force members stormed in and began a tense firefight
with the Chaos Insurgents - all Gamma and Beta Class, of course. The Delta Classes, just like 05s, are notoriously
slippery. They emerged like tactical ghosts from behind
boxes and exposed pipes, advancing and firing with no regard for their own lives and safety. Slaves to the Engine. It wasn’t like battling your run of the
mill cultists - these were highly organized and dangerous combatants, with training right
out of the Foundation’s Mobile Task Force playbook. Several Foundation soldiers were lost in the
crossfire, but ultimately, they won the day - subduing the Chaos Insurgency Forces and
capturing the stolen 939s once more. Several of the Insurgents that’d been fatally
wounded in the battle were found to be Area-12 personnel… double-agents for the Insurgency. Many of them died with smiles on their faces,
knowing they were defying the Foundation to their last breath. There was no way of knowing just how many of these secretive Chaos
Insurgents were undercover, deep in the fabric of the Foundation’s global
apparatus. A nearby insurgent, slowly dying from several
gunshot wounds, gave a wheezy laugh. As the Task Force operators approached, he
ranted that the Foundation’s obsession with order, lies, and secrecy is the real disease. That Chaos and entropy is the fate of all
things, and that to use the anomalies they find for their own gain is simply common sense. In the world the Chaos Insurgency would someday
create, human beings would be the true masters of the universe, not just the perpetrators
of the twisted lie we call “normality.” He succumbed to his injuries shortly after,
and the Task Forces refocused their efforts on getting the 939s safely back to Area-12. What these Chaos Insurgency troops really
believed is an open question. After all, the power that dictates them - the
anomalous Engine - is a consciousness beyond humanity. Even the Engineer doesn’t know the true
scope of their master’s grand plan. If the rest of us are lucky, and the Chaos
Insurgency never reaches their mysterious goals, then neither will we.
Able wandered through the sands, a lone warrior, dragging a long, dark sword behind
him, his black cloak flowing in the gentle breeze. The sword was thirsty. It’d been too long
since it tasted blood. What had it been? A day since he cut down ten men in
a tavern without breaking a sweat? They’d bled and screamed like pigs as
he’d diced them into bloody chunks. He couldn’t remember their faces. They hadn’t
earned that. Very few combatants had been remarkable enough to warrant committing to
memory. It was all just more dead flesh. He took a sip from his canteen and sighed. Did
this world hold no more challenges? What a boring eternity was laying out before him.
His burden as the greatest warrior of all time weighed on him heavier than the chain. It was old and rusty, levered over
his shoulder and grasped in one bloody hand. About fifteen feet behind
him, the chain was connected to a dark, stone sarcophagus that was as much a part of
him as his eyes, skin, or heart. If ever he was slain in the glorious heat of battle, he’d rise
out of it, ready to fight and kill another day. All because of the actions of his
worthless, good for nothing brother… He looked up when he heard the rush of footsteps
and the clanking of armor. Warriors - or whatever passed for them around here - about
twenty of them, circled all around him. Yes, oh yes. His grip tightened around his sword.
One of the warriors called out something about him being under arrest, by order of
the king, for murders beyond counting. Able couldn’t help but yawn. Words,
words, words. Why even bother? He dropped the chain, and in one fluid motion,
he threw his sword. In a fraction of a second, it’d pierced the armor of the chattering
man, spearing him through his formerly beating heart. The scream died in his throat,
he fell to his knees, then collapsed entirely. The other soldiers sent to kill or apprehend him
turned to their fallen leader and gasped. It was that little gasp, that moment of distraction,
that sealed their fates. Able’s face cracked into a whisper of a grin, as he drew two
long daggers from the darkness of his coat. He’d at least try to have fun with this… Before the others could even get
over their leader’s sudden death, Able had vaulted forward and begun his delicate
dance of slaughter. Every swing found its way through armor and into skin. He sliced
throats, cleaved off heads, parried blows, and pierced hearts. There was barely a single
scream. Able killed too quick for screams. In what would seem like the blink of an eye for
some, the soldiers around Able fell. Most dead, the rest dying. Some looked up to him in their
dying moments, in terrified awe at the efficacy of their killer. In their dying moments,
they knew that they never had a chance. They might as well have faced the glistening
scythe of death himself on the battlefield. Able, on the other hand, rolled his eyes and
sighed. Another pathetic waste of time. He sensed movement in the corner of his eye: One
of the wounded soldiers was limping to his feet, trying to use the sword to lever himself off
of the ground. With a flick of each wrist, Able tossed his knives into the man, killing
him instantly. It really was that easy. “Your attempt to kill me does not offend
me,” he said, to whoever was still able to hear. “What offends me is that they would
send so few, and that those few would be such pitiful excuses for soldiers. This
wasn’t a battle - It was a mercy killing.” He was ready to turn around, grab the
chain, and carry on walking, when he felt a sudden pain in his back. There was a slight
whistle, then another sharp spike of pain. There were now two arrows
sticking out of his back. Able turned, surprised, and saw a much larger
force standing behind him. Swordsmen, archers, men with clubs and axes and chains.
The ones he’d killed were little more than a distraction. This was the real
threat. This was the real army. Perhaps, these fools would give him some actual exercise. He reached into his cloak and pulled out a
mighty obsidian battle axe. At the very least, he’d try to have a little fun turning
this fighting force into cold cuts. A fog of arrows sailed through the air as he
charged forwards, perforating his body, but the injuries didn’t slow him down. He lunged, slashed,
and cleaved. Even as the weapons struck him, he carried on, killing person after person. At times,
it was almost exciting - Almost, but not quite. By the time he was done, none were left standing.
Thirty arrows were sticking out of him. He’d been cut deep by more weapons than he could count on
his fingers and toes. He was breathing deeply, scarred chest pumping up and down.
He coughed blood and cracked his neck back into place. They might’ve cut him
a little too deep this time. No matter. Able fell to his knees, feeling
the life draining from him. He wondered, when he awoke from the coffin again,
what the world would look like. Sometimes it was days, sometimes weeks, months, or even years.
As he fell forward, dying once again, he hoped that he’d wake into a world with a warrior
or beast that could actually challenge him. Maybe someday… This was one of Able’s many lives, hundreds
of years before he was contained by the SCP Foundation. He’s perhaps the greatest warrior
who ever lived, died, and lived again. He’s a man so individually deadly that not only is he
kept in a containment chamber under the sea, surrounded by highly trained and armed guards,
he has his own localized on-site nuclear weapon, ready to blow away and annihilate him and his
entire containment area if deemed necessary. He may not be a contagious anomalous pathogen or
a lethal memetic hazard or a giant beast shooting world-destroying fireballs in every direction,
but if this one-man massacre was left to his own devices, there’s no doubt that he would
methodically slaughter his way through the human race until an XK-Class End of the World
Scenario was practically inevitable. He was fueled by pure hatred and an almost bottomless
bloodlust. He simply lived to fight and kill. And not only did he have the will and the skill to
be a pure force of annihilation, but his anomalous abilities also make him perfectly tailored to the
task. He has massively enhanced physical strength, speed, and durability, taking the kind
of damage that would kill several normal humans to reliably put him down - Though
even that is only a temporary measure. Able will always resurrect back into his black sarcophagus to menace the
SCP Foundation another day. It is also effectively impossible to disarm
Able, because he has the anomalous ability to pull deadly edged weapons from localized
pocket dimensions at will, and his proficiency with these weapons is unlike any warrior
the world has ever known, before or since. During containment breaches, he’s regularly
killed scores of trained Foundation guards, with both numerical advantages and considerably
more advanced ranged weapons. Despite being a simple humanoid, he was taking up a truly
insane amount of containment resources. Despite his violent tendencies, Able
is still a recognizable sentient human, albeit an extremely deadly anomalous one. This
led some higher-ups at the Foundation to come up with an interesting idea: What if Able’s eternal
rage could be harnessed? What if they could use their resources to reshape this rampaging killer
into a devoted sword of the Foundation’s cause? After all, if he wanted worthy
opponents, what could be more worthy than the anomalous monsters that
the Foundation faced on a daily basis? And as long as they kept the sarcophagus,
even if Able was killed in the line of duty, he’d still be accounted for. In many ways, if
he could be trained and truly brought to heel, there could be no better asset to their
coming struggles. It was this logic, allowing anomalies to work for the SCP
Foundation in exchange for benefits, that led to the creation of a new, groundbreaking
Mobile Task Force: MTF Omega-7, Pandora’s Box. This group became the SCP Foundation’s hail
mary pass. For any particularly dangerous or potentially deadly mission, they could send
in Able, along with a group of highly-trained Foundation soldiers that even the ancient,
blade-wielding warrior held respect for. While, like their namesake, Pandora’s Box, it would
all wind up in terrible tragedy, to begin with, they achieved some of the highest mission
successful results of any Mobile Task Force on the Foundation’s payroll. No task was too
challenging for them to swoop in and crush it. This was far from expected: Able, one of
the most violent SCPs they’d ever contained, suddenly becoming a great asset to their
operations. A vital tool in their quest to keep the anomalous at bay. He’d cleaved
through legions of Chaos Insurgency soldiers during breaches into their secure sites.
He’d fought off the well-paid, well-trained, and well-armed body guards of Marshall, Carter,
and Dark Ltd. during Foundation raids on their clandestine operations. He’d even gone toe
to toe with some of the deadliest anomalies in containment during mass escapes. It was hard
to imagine how they’d ever lived without him. Of course, while Able was happier than
he’d been in years - in his element, in fact, as a working warrior, given varied
missions and frequent opponents - there was still something nagging at him. His
thoughts were hounded by his white whale: The endless search for a truly worthy opponent,
someone or something that could really give him a run for his money. After millennia
of leaving opponents dead in his wake, nothing would bring him more joy than meeting
something that actually knocked him on his ass. A new bar somewhere above him to work towards.
Oh, what a glorious day that would be… Eventually, the Foundation started to run into
a problem: They were running out of missions to give Able. After all, he wasn’t the kind of
operative you could just give any mission to: His potential for collateral damage was truly
staggering. He’d neutralize the anomaly, then slaughter everyone within a hundred-foot
range, just to work off some of the excess energy. Like a hand grenade, he was powerful,
but dangerously imprecise. If they ran out of high-priority missions, what were they supposed
to do? Just put Able back in his box to gather dust until something else rolled around? He was
getting antsy enough between missions already… That’s when an unexpected member of
personnel stepped forward: Dr. Jack Bright. You see, Dr. Bright and Able had a history
and not an altogether pleasant one - Not that anyone could really have a pleasant
history with Able. Jack was only a junior researcher when he had his run-in, carrying a
seemingly worthless medallion dubbed SCP-963 back to its containment locker. That
was when a wall next to him exploded, showering him with brick fragments and dust, only
to reveal Able standing behind the new aperture. Before young Dr. Bright even had a chance to
scream, Able had already cleaved through him, leaving him in two distinct parts that
were both very much dead. At least it seemed that way, until it was revealed that
Dr. Bright’s consciousness had actually been eternally bonded with SCP-963, giving him the
gift and curse of immortality. Since then, Dr. Bright had become increasingly reckless in
his conduct, perhaps hoping that the next time he fades to black, the movie that is his sad,
strange life won’t just start to roll again. Of course, he hasn’t been
lucky in that regard yet. Naturally, this has given Dr. Bright complex
feelings about his fellow anomalous Foundation employee. So when the call came around all the
senior researchers and site directors, asking if there were any tasks that Able seemed fit for,
he had one very pressing suggestion. After all, it wasn’t that long after Dr. Bright had been
forced into a cross test with the intention of terminating SCP-682 - Which had not only
been a failure, but a generally painful and exhausting experience. Now, perhaps it
would be Able’s turn to take his lumps. He happily put forth the suggestion, claiming
that surely the Foundation’s new sword-wielding golden boy could give killing the Hard to
Destroy Reptile the old college try. After all, even if Able was killed in the process, he’d
just come right back. It was a situation where they really could not lose, so why not take
a chance? What’s the worse that could happen? The O5 Council found Dr. Bright’s pitch
extremely compelling. He’d succeeded in every mission they’d given him so far, so
perhaps he could carry that success into the herculean task of actually terminating
SCP-682. One boundlessly bloodthirsty killer might be the only thing truly capable of
taking out another of equal magnitude. When Able was informed of this latest mission,
he got a scary glint in his eye. They gave him warning after warning: The beast is said
to be unkillable, it can adapt to anything, it’s killed scores of people and survived the
attacks of anomalies thought to be flawless killers. The more it was explained to him, the
more Able felt the tingling sensation deep within: Was this it? Had he now discovered the
perfect opponent? Something that would actually challenge him, would actually
put him through his paces? Yes, yes, yes! He accepted the mission without question. Able would fight SCP-682 until
his breath was no longer. In order to prepare for the match, SCP-682
was released into a secure area: Rocky, desert-like terrain, bordered on all sides by
a Foundation perimeter, hundreds of meters away on all sides. They thought it best for
the showdown to happen here. After all, with combatants like Able and SCP-682, it
was bound to make a mess, one way or another. Able strode with pronounced swagger onto
the battleground shortly afterwards, carrying perhaps the most powerful sword he’d
ever summoned. It was somewhere between a claymore and a chainsaw, an unholy union that
gave the resulting weapon a degree of deranged badassery not ever seen on the battlefields
of planet earth before. Carrying this thing, Able felt like a King, and he was about to
slay the most ancient and bestial of monsters. As he approached 682 and took in the whole
of it, he could feel his heart pounding with excitement in his chest. It was a huge, reptilian
nightmare. He could see its scales hardening into a mighty carapace as he approached.
Its huge, serrated fangs. Its bulging, sinewy muscles and insane, dagger-like
claws. Oh yes, this would be the one. The beast snarled at him as he approached. He
just smiled, puffed out his chest, and said… “I have heard tales of creatures like
you. Glorious beasts of scale and flesh, talon and fang, a prowess in battle even greater
than the immense intellect hiding behind those bestial eyes. They said your kind once ruled
the Earth from enormous stockpiles of treasure, killing and eating all who displeased you. But
you were knocked from your throne, one by one, by the great warriors who walk this world
no longer, until there were no more, and you became but mere myth. Even I had
thought you to be nothing but fairy tales, but yet, here you stand
before me, a living dragon…” In response to Able’s lofty speech, the
monster merely grumbled and chided him, claiming he was little more than a pathetic SCP
Foundation lapdog, following orders and being manipulated. It showed no respect for Able
as a valued enemy combatant - Merely another nuisance thrown at it in a futile attempt to
finish its wretched and seemingly eternal life. Able couldn’t take such insolence. He leaped
forwards, bringing down his mighty chainsaw claymore, ready to cleave the beast in
two. However, what he didn’t expect was the move SCP-682 pulled next: Throwing its
head up against the blade of Able’s sword, shredding away huge chunks of flesh and bone,
and utterly confusing Able in the process. For the first time in a
lifetime of intense battles, Able found himself thinking, “What
the hell am I up against here?” The force of 682’s headbutt threw Able
off balance, leaving his stomach briefly exposed. But “briefly” was all SCP-682
needed. It thundered its massive, stony fist into Able’s gut, throwing him like
a ragdoll into a nearby rock with such a force that it nearly shattered the rock behind him.
It was a force like he hadn’t felt in years. He spat some bloody teeth and grinned. This
was just what the doctor ordered. He issued a challenge to the beast in a long-dead language,
as it seized violently, regenerating, growing, taking on the stony qualities of the ground
around it. It looked like a vengeful living mountain. A true behemoth of a beast.
In other words, challenge accepted. Able pulled an obscenely giant mace from the
shadows of his cloak - The handle six feet long, with a chaos of swirling blades
and spikes. A perfect weapon for slaying a dragon like this, he thought to himself. The two charged at each other, full of
power and fury. Able swung the mace, once again shattering the creature’s head and
flinging it back across the battlefield with the sheer force of its strike. The decimated
lizard clawed its way into the ground, devouring the rocks and the earth, integrating
more matter to fuel its regeneration. But it wasn’t long before Able was upon it
again, striking mercilessly, giving blows as the monster gave brutal claw strikes in return.
They were ripping each other’s bodies apart, piece by piece, but Able felt so exhilarated
he could barely even notice. It was the fight of his life - A battle against a
truly worthy opponent. This was heaven. Able leaped into the air and unleashed a
volley of deadly chakram down onto the beast, shredding into its reinforced flesh. As
the force of gravity brought him down, he pulled a mighty axe from his cloak, and
bellowed a warrior’s roar as he brought it down, splattering into the nightmarish body of SCP-682. However, this did nothing to even
slow the beast down. It flipped over, slashing Able with its claws. When Able stumbled,
it leaped on top of him, unleashing devastating slashes and punches onto the fallen warrior
with the speed of a machine gun firing. When it raised its claw to deal the killing blow,
though, Able once again turned the tables. He produced a giant pair of
mechanical scissors from thin air, and sliced off both of SCP-682’s forelegs. The beast descended with its mighty jaws to
devour Able, but he kicked up, with freakish strength behind his bladed boot. The sheer force
of the kick flipped SCP-682 onto its back. Now, it was Able’s turn to execute his opponent,
though on some level he thought it would be an awful shame to lose such a terrific
beast from this world of cardboard. Still, a battle is a battle,
and this is how they go. He jumped onto 682 and went berserk, slashing
into it relentlessly with blade after blade, pulling out a new one every time
the old one broke from his sheer ferocity. He screamed in incoherent battle
fury, tearing, slicing, ripping, rending. Yes, yes, yes, yes! As Able stepped away to breathe, the beast
began to regenerate, releasing a shockwave that started to warp reality around
it. But Able wouldn’t have this. No, he would give this beast no quarter. It was time
to present the true pain he was notorious for.. He pulled a long sword from his cloak and
charged, taking air and bringing it down towards SCP-682’s head. The beast, sensing
the warrior’s presence, opened its mouth, unleashing a chasm of horrifying teeth within.
The two were on a fierce collision course. As the jaws closed, Able descended. Both
roared in infinite rage and bloodlust. As the sword came down, it cut SCP-682
clean in half. As the beast’s jaws clamped, Able’s head and arm were severed from his
body. Both combatants fell to the ground, just twitching. Oh, what a glorious, terrible
day it had been. Neither had died for good, but both would remember this
incredible battle forever. When Able awoke once more in his
dark stone coffin, he did so with a smile. What a battle! What a fight! What
a truly honorable pursuit! After so long, being bored and unfulfilled, he’d found an
opponent that got his blood pumping once more. His stomach grumbled. A post-battle feast was in order. Now, where did they
put that magic pizza box… Does the Black Moon Howl? No. Not yet. See the boy. He was born in a time before names;
there weren’t enough humans around to need them back then. He was one of a handful occupying
a coastal village, using a tongue long since dead. They eked out a simple life - hunting,
gathering, fishing. The only thing on most of their minds was surviving to see the next sunrise.
Yes, a simple life, free of complications. Until The Hermit appeared. The Boy would remember this man
for an eternity. Haggard and thin; skin weathered by time and pain. A man that,
emaciated, walking with a long, gnarled cane that honestly looked healthier than he did, shouldn’t
be alive. Even the Boy, who had scarcely seen beyond the bounds of his village, knew that the
Hermit was unnatural. An aberration. An anomaly. He walked into the center of the
village, sat down on a large stone, and waited. Nobody dared ask his
business, nor what the Hermit waited for. Then, a few days later, the Black Moon howled. The Boy saw the village’s youngest hunter
freeze one evening while out on a walk. Not simply stand still, but freeze. Then, for an
instant, he became solid black. A coal statue. And as soon as he’d changed, he was gone.
Obliterated. Not a trace of him remained. Such is the power of the Black Moon. It
can make any conscious being disappear in an instant. Turned black, then wiped
from our plane of existence, never to be seen again. Its choice of victim seemed, at
each instance, to be utterly random, but it would come for all who lived eventually. This is
known to some as the howling of the Black Moon. Later that same night, the Boy found himself
talking to the Hermit, who asked with small, frantic eyes what he had seen. When the Boy
told him, he let out a deep, rattling sigh. The Boy, curious, asked him if he knew about
the nightmare he’d just witnessed. The Hermit looked up. He’d been the first one, in the
Hermit’s millennia of pursuit, that had ever asked. In that moment, he knew he had found his
successor in the hunt for the Death of Ages. The Hermit told the Boy it went by many
names. The Great Finale, the Pale King, but most common of all was the Black Moon. The
entity existed beyond the veil of our reality, a creature of pure energy, though nobody could
really be sure of its true nature. The Hermit had been tracking it, learning about it, and
trying to destroy it for thousands of years. And yet, it only took him four pathetic
minutes to tell the Boy everything he knew. The Boy, knowing still that something about
the Hermit was unnatural, asked how he came to be in this position. The Hermit told the boy
he was the Counterbalance, a kind of chosen one, destined to face and perhaps even defeat
the Black Moon someday. The Counterbalance receives a number of truly extraordinary
gifts for inheriting the responsibility: Eternal life, eternal youth,
near physical immortality. But they will be haunted by their purpose, doomed
to watch everyone they love die around them, as they continue to hunt their only true
equal and opposite, the Black Moon itself. The Hermit, in his own eyes, had failed
at his duty. He had grown weary, and now, he needed to pass the duty of Counterbalance
onto another. That other would be the Boy. He felt a sudden and profound change, along
with the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same again. He was no longer just
the Boy. Now, he was the Counterbalance. He watched the Hermit give him a slight nod out
of respect, and then crumble into dust before his eyes. The Boy, the Counterbalance, looked up at
the sky and saw the stars twinkling. So bright, so beautiful. Little did he know, his battle with the
Black Moon would outlast every single one of them. Does the Black Moon howl? Not without blood. The Boy grew into a man, as his village aged
and then died around him. Decades passed, then centuries, then millennia.
Tens of thousands of years, watching humanity develop and grow around him as
he continued his pursuit of that one elusive foe. As science and diagnostic technology gained
ground, absorbing and then evolving beyond all the old superstitions, the Counterbalance
gained a better understanding of the Black Moon - though even then, it still remained
essentially a stranger. The entity was entropic, a being of pure randomness and chaos without
consistent form. It didn’t exist in our universe, but it could exercise its influence
here with so-called “Obliteration Events” - much like the horrible fate that
befell the young hunter from the village. But that was only the
proverbial tip of the iceberg. The Counterbalance tracked and noted obliteration
events. They were exceedingly rare, at first. Something that occurred once every thousand years
or so, like a terrible curse. But he couldn’t help but notice a concerning trend emerging.
It started happening once a century...then once a decade. He could feel the terrible
future stretching out in front of him. How, over their shared eternity, the Black
Moon would gain more and more ground. Would there come a day where it took someone
once a year? One a month? A week, a day, an hour, a minute, a second? It’d spell the end
of all conscious life. A total victory for the Black Moon, the End of the Universe, the Death
of Ages. A complete existential obliteration. He was swept up in a sobering realization:
He couldn’t win this fight alone. However, while his hunt for the Black Moon had
been largely fruitless, the Counterbalance had discovered many other things along the way,
Strange creatures, objects with extraordinary powers, and events that couldn’t be explained
with rational science. Perhaps something among these oddities, these anomalies, would
hold the key to defeating his timeless enemy. And it hadn’t just been these objects,
entities, and events, he’d also discovered some truly exceptional people on his travels. Minds and
skills that rivaled even his own, despite his age. Perhaps they would be the ones to help him win. With the thirteen most brilliant and trusted
people the Counterbalance ever met, he decided to form a Council. And from this Council, they
forged and directed an organization dedicated to understanding and counteracting the strange
in all its forms, with the secret hope that their search into darkness would yield
the answer to the Black Moon’s downfall. He called it the SCP Foundation. They
would Secure the anomalous, Contain it, and Protect all of humanity from its influence.
The Counterbalance also took on a new title, befitting of his new role: The Administrator. And
even the Black Moon itself was given a moniker, in hopes of robbing it of
some of its frightening power. SCP-001. Does the Black Moon howl? Only at the blind. The year was now 1987. The SCP Foundation
had been operating for over a century, and thanks to their secret possession
of anomalous wisdom and technology, their own advancement was thousands of years ahead
of the rest of humanity. While there still wasn’t a silver bullet solution to the Black Moon,
and its deadly howls were becoming all the more frequent as the decades went on, the Foundation
did have some irons in the fire to combat it. Their ability to gather intel on both the
entity itself and its obliteration events had improved considerably, thanks to their
new global information network. Their top minds were also working on a highly classified
device known as the Singular Conceptual Bunker, which may one day come in handy for combating
the extra-dimensional entity directly. But the most valuable piece of information they
ever gathered about the Black Moon was this: It couldn’t howl when it was being watched. The
very act of engaged observation defanged it. The problem is, how can you observe something
that doesn’t technically exist inside your own reality? In order to pull this off, the Foundation
would need to get extremely creative. Thankfully, creative solutions to strange problems
are the Foundation’s specialty. Flash forward to 1993. Enter Dr. Moto, a
brilliant young scientist and conceptual engineer working for the SCP Foundation.
With The Administrator’s consultation, he started the KEY Project, an arm
of the wider Project Oromasdes - the umbrella initiative for using modified anomalous
objects in the battle against the Black Moon. The goal of the KEY Project was relatively
simple: If people couldn’t observe the Black Moon directly, then the Foundation could make
proxies of the Black Moon that could be observed, almost like a kind of voodoo doll. These
new anomalies would only need to satisfy three criteria: The inability to operate when
being observed, a hostility to conscious life, and the ability to end conscious life of their
own volition when not being observed. Through conceptual engineering, a link theoretically
could be forged between these objects and the Black Moon, allowing observation of
them to stop the obliteration events. However, despite being a good idea in theory,
Dr. Moto’s efforts were marred with errors and tragedies. One object wasn’t deadly enough, simply
appearing behind people in a threatening pose when they weren’t looking. Another one killed purely
through collateral damage - a giant sculpture of a human head that immediately attempted
escape by barging through Site-01 - the center for Anti-Black Moon operations - and killing
nineteen people in the process. Another one of Moto’s objects, a huge black sphere, simply
immediately exploded, killing twelve people. And in the most horrific misstep of all,
one of Moto’s objects caused a mass death event in a nearby hotel, where 142 people
were spontaneously incinerated when the object - a series of interlocking stalactites
and stalagmites - was left unobserved for 0.2 seconds. Almost all of Moto’s objects were
terminated in the aftermath, either being too useless or too dangerous to keep around. The
young scientist felt a deep shame, but forged on. He made one truly brilliant creation that
satisfied all the criteria: A sculpture, incapable of moving while being watched, but
would snap the neck of the nearest conscious entity if left unobserved for even a
fraction of a second. Its relatively minimal killing left it easy to contain
without causing mass deaths, and despite all the other deaths that had sadly occurred
during the KEY Project, Dr. Moto believed that the lives saved in the long run by stopping the
Black Moon’s howls would justify the sacrifice. The problem is...the KEY
Project didn’t stop anything. Not long after this, there was the first
recorded double obliteration event in Rome, where a young tourist couple had both been
obliterated simultaneously. All the deaths in the KEY Project had been for nothing. The
Black Moon was only getting more powerful. The shame and the guilt was too much for
Dr. Moto. He left a note in his office, reading, “We've been looking at nothing. I'm
sorry, Administrator. I've failed you, sir.” Moto’s corpse was later found in the
sculpture’s temporary containment chamber, his neck snapped. The KEY Project was, in
summary, shut down and its one surviving creation transported to Site-19 in late 1993,
where it was designated as SCP-173. Another painful failure for the Administrator.
Back to the drawing board once more. Does the Black Moon howl? Not while stars shine. millennia stretched on. Almost everyone died,
except The Administrator, thanks to his gift - or perhaps curse - as the Counterbalance to the
Black Moon. Science marched on, the SCP Foundation marched on, but all this progress, all this power,
was nothing against the incomprehensible influence of SCP-001. The Black Moon was howling more
frequently than ever, all the way up to the year 3156, when the Foundation launched the SEEK
Project under the support of Project Oromasdes. As more and more people were wiped
out in frequent obliteration events, the Administrator became painfully aware that
perhaps the answers to the Black Moon problem wouldn’t be found on earth. Using state of the art
technology, with a little help from the anomalous, the SCP Foundation began work on an
autonomous space-faring vessel that could search the stars for the key to the Black Moon’s
destruction. It was an awe-inspiring creation, a huge craft powered by artificial intelligence,
with a universal translator, cryogenic units, and hundreds of autonomous drones
to perform more targeted searches. SEEK was waved off into the unforgiving
depths of space. The Administrator could only hope that it would come
back with worthwhile answers. The first of the three notable planets SEEK
arrived on was one theoretically capable of supporting human life, except for its brutal
and constant blizzards and snowstorms. When SEEK’s drones were deployed, they
did discover signs of civilization, based around sentient spherical creatures, but no
signs of actual life remained. Records and statues found across the planet seemed to indicate
that the Black Moon was responsible for the destruction of the planet’s civilization, causing
so many obliteration events that the remaining survivors went mad from the fear and stress,
leading to mass death in the ensuing chaos. The next planet was discovered centuries
later, in the year 3499. While this planet could also theoretically support human life,
it suffered from frequent volcanic eruptions that rendered much of its surface a flaming
mess. However, there were still the dormant ruins of a once advanced civilization of
conscious beings. Much like the prior planet, they’d been driven extinct by Black Moon
obliteration events a century before the SEEK even arrived. Unlike the last planet,
however, it seems that they accepted their fate, and went gently into the night. The planet was now
overrun by billions of armored, bat-like creatures that operated on pure instinct, and thus, were
not considered conscious enough to be obliterated. The final planet was reached in 3764,
and was the most fruitful of the three discoveries. This planet was hyper-advanced, fully
urbanized and covered in sprawling megacities, with records and technology over a thousand
years ahead of Earth. Before the Black Moon killed almost all of them, they were a
species of humanoid telepathic fungi, and had developed an awareness of the Black Moon’s
existence that was on par with that of humanity’s. They even had their own equivalent of the SCP
Foundation actively working on countermeasures. And most amazingly of all, SEEK found one
surviving member of the species on the planet, cryogenically frozen. The craft was immediately
instructed to collect the survivor and return home for interrogation. The Administrator
was preparing for what could have been the most important conversation since he met the
Hermit, all those thousands of years ago. Does the Black Moon howl? Only when waning. When the surviving creature, codenamed SAGE,
was returned to Earth, The Administrator was eager to finally speak with it. Like
the rest of its now-extinct species, SAGE spoke through powerful telepathic mindwaves,
which only The Administrator - thanks to his Counterbalance abilities - was able to
receive at close range without being harmed. Incidentally, it wasn’t long until the very fact
of the Administrator’s nature as a Counterbalance came up in the mental conversation.
SAGE could tell, just by being in his presence. They discovered a number of vital
truths over their brief time communicating: That SAGE’s survival had been pure luck, for
starters. The Black Moon is still very much capable of obliterating conscious beings in an
unconscious state. The Administrator also learned that he was merely the latest in an extremely
long line of Counterbalances across time, space, and species, though everyone but
him had waived the duty, passed it on. SAGE had one question to ask
the Administrator in turn, “What is SCB?” The Singular Conceptual Bunker,
being worked on and perfected for thousands of years by now, by the Foundation’s top
scientists and conceptual engineers. The Administrator replied, “Victory. But it
will take a very, very long time.” Specifically, so long that he would see the stars go out
around him, one by one. Shocked, SAGE asked him what good victory would do him then. Rather
than say it aloud, he replied with a thought. SAGE paused, and said, “I see. How
blasphemous of you. Hopefully it works.” After this, the Administrator proceeded to
the Singular Conceptual Bunker and entered it, leaving instructions for the Foundation to
be run by a newly formed O5 Council in his indefinite absence. Thousands of years later,
in the year 5011, SAGE spoke one more time, repeating the words, “Hopefully, hopefully”
before turning solid black, and disappearing. The Black Moon had claimed one more victim,
but billions more had gone in the interim. The Administrator had no more answers
to give. At least, no more answers that anyone but him would understand. He was
inside the Singular Conceptual Bunker now, loaded into a device known as TOME
- an experimental memorial module, meant to pick up and record all the last messages
of every dying civilization across the universe, when the time finally came. All he could do
was wait. And wait was exactly what we did. Does the Black Moon howl? Yes. Yes it does. Years pass. Too many to count. It’s a time after
names now, and TOME sits in the very center, drinking in the end of the universe. The last
of all the human colonies across the universe were obliterated by the Black Moon back in the
year 7329, so, so, so long ago, but some of the final messages of fear, panic, and distress
still echoed around the Administrator’s mind. "Hello, is there anyone here? We — we require
assistance! There's … it's … it's taking people every day! We need help! There's barely
anyone left! We need help! Hello? Hello?!" "Cabal 09:43! We have abandoned the false
flesh! We have abandoned the false flesh! The shepherds crook broken 'neath my knee! Cabal
09:43! Cabal 09:43! Forgive us! Forgive us!" "We're going to leave this on.
It's so dark outside now. It's blotting out the sun. It's … I have to go now." "RESPOND•FIRST•CONVENIENCE EMERGENCY•SITUATION•DEVELOPING
REQUIRE•ADDITIONAL•RESOURCES." "My fault. Your fault. Our fault.
My fault. Your fault. Our fault. My fault. Your fault. Our fault. Rip out
my brain now. Rip out my brain now!" And a small child, the last on Earth, simply
asking, “Hello?” into an indifferent microphone. But the Administrator had to wait, as
the Singular Conceptual Bunker became the Solitary Conceptual Bunker. He was the last
conscious being in the universe, and still, he needed to wait, as the stars went dark
outside. Only when there was nothing outside but black was it finally time for the
Counterbalance’s long game to pay off. There was nothing left of our universe.
The only thing here was the SCB, and the Black Moon itself. With everything else
gone, the Black Moon only had one conscious being left to obliterate. It opened the door to the
Solitary Conceptual Bunker, and stepped inside. This...this doesn’t make sense. How can the
Black Moon, an entity beyond our dimension, beyond physical form, take a step?
Good question. The same question, incidentally, that was going through
the Black Moon’s mind as it entered the bunker. It didn’t look at all how
the entity expected: It was like a bar, a counter with rows of bottles behind it,
a jukebox playing in the corner. A man stood behind the bar, cleaning glasses.
The Counterbalance. The Administrator. He said, "Well, there you are! Certainly took
your time. Can I pour you a little something?" This only served to increase the Black
Moon’s confusion. It had form here, dark smoke compressed into a vaguely
humanoid shape. It could speak? It could think? None of this made any
sense. The being that’d just wiped out all conscious life and seen the very death
of the universe was truly and utterly confused. The Administrator just seemed to be enjoying
himself, preparing for a confrontation hundreds of billions of years in the making. The
Singular Conceptual Bunker - or perhaps, the Singular Containment Bunker - was a truly
ingenious creation. A place of pure ideas, where everything inside was on the same level. Here,
there were no immortals. No Gods. Just ideas, on the same level playing field. And it was time
for the Black Moon’s idea to come to an end. It was a trap, and the
entire universe was the bait. Without warning, the Administrator pulled
up a shotgun from underneath the table, and unleashed both barrels
into the Black Moon’s chest. The creature took the hit and fought back,
dragging the Administrator to the ground, beating him, strangling him. He could feel the
light fading under the monster’s relentless assault, until he managed to get his desperate
hands on a glass ashtray. He beat the monster over the head with it until its grip
loosened, and he was able to slide out. There, the killer of the universe was on the
ground before him. He grabbed the monster, held it in place, and beat it to death.
He was gravely injured by the battle, but The Black Moon was no more. Here, in
the Singular Conceptual Bunker, he had won. The Administrator, no longer the
counterbalance in the absence of the Black Moon, hobbled over to
the jukebox, producing a single, beautiful coin from his pocket. He pushed the coin
into the slot, wheezed a pained breath, and said: “The thing is … this place is only information.
T-There's nothing else out there. Not even matter. The universe closed its doors a long time ago. But
this place can go from information back to matter with just the press of a button. L-Let's see what
happens when we introduce something to nothing…” For a second, it looks as though he
might fall, but he doesn’t. Instead, he slams the button on the jukebox and, with
a relieved laugh, says, “Let there be light.” And there was light. From gigantic, indestructible,
self-regenerating reptiles, to enormous, tentacled, telepathic organisms,
it should come as no surprise that the SCP Foundation has gone head to head against a lot of
large-scale aggressors - or LSAs - in its time. Naturally, a creature of heightened size and
aggression can often prove challenging to contain, and the threat these LSAs pose is often far
too big to ignore. But anyone familiar with the Foundation will tell you, they’re not
above using any methods necessary to keep these creatures contained: huge vats
of molecular acid, impenetrable cells, disposable, D-Class personnel, even other SCPs.
But what other SCPs could possibly be big enough, and tough enough, to handle some of
the Foundation’s biggest and baddest? Meet SCP-5514, otherwise
known as “The Dragon Slayer.” While it might sound like something out of
an anime, SCP-5514 is a massive robotic mech designed to take on the worst other SCPs can throw
at it. For any who are unfamiliar with the term, a mech, or mecha, usually refers to an
upright-standing machine or automaton controlled by a human pilot. What
distinguishes a mech from a vehicle, is their often-humanoid shape, standing bipedally,
and they are often hundreds of meters tall. All of this is true of SCP-5514, and in
fact, given that it requires a trained member of Foundation staff to operate it,
the mech itself requires very little in the way of containment. Only members of
Mobile Task Force Eta-5 are trained and authorized to pilot SCP-5514. This is one
of the SCP Foundation’s specialized units, specifically designed to deal with the threat of
Large-Scale Aggressors, much like SCP-5514 itself. But SCP-5514 wasn’t discovered or captured
by the Foundation to use for the containment of LSAs, nor was it stolen from a foreign
military or found buried under the ground. Then, where did it come from? And who built it? Working with the Global Occult Coalition and
the government of Hy-Brasil, an anomalous island off the west coast of Ireland, the
Foundation themselves constructed SCP-5514, using various anomalous methods and techniques.
In 1988, a Foundation site was destroyed by an unidentified LSA, highlighting the inadequacy
of the current defenses against these larger, more damage-resistant creatures.
The Foundation, the Coalition, and Hy-Brasil formed a joint operation,
The KEY Project, and examined SCP-2406, an automaton ninety-three meters tall,
thought to be created by ancient Mekhanites. Together, the KEY Project opted to
create their own, similar machine, viewing it as the best way to defend against
further incursions with Large-Scale Aggressors. The construction of SCP-5514 began in 1990. The
intention of all parties involved in the KEY Project, including the Foundation, was that
The Dragon Slayer would be deployed in the event of an attack by an LSA. It would arrive
at cities under attack and immediately engage Large-Scale Aggressors in combat. Building of
the mech continued at a consistent pace for eight years. However, it was the occurrence
of SCP-5391, and subsequent intervention by the O5 Council, that accelerated the creation
of The Dragon Slayer, by any means necessary. On June 30th 1998, a number of
seismic disturbances were detected, including tsunamis, tremors, and volcanic
activity both underwater and above-ground. What followed was the appearance
of multiple Large-Scale Aggressors, which would soon become designated as SCP-5391.
The exact kind of scenario that The Dragon Slayer was being built for had already arrived, and
the mech was still far from completion. While the Foundation and its allies deployed forces to
drive the enormous creatures back to the oceans, something needed to be done to bring
SCP-5514 into the fight, and fast. The O5 Council authorized the use of
anomalous materials in the continued construction of The Dragon Slayer, both to speed
up the process and have it ready for deployment, but also to give the mech every
advantage against the abundance of Large-Scale Aggressors from SCP-5391. As a
result, SCP-5514 was designed to incorporate features and technology far beyond that of
any conventional, military-grade weapons. The first hurdle: How do you power
a machine the size of SCP-5514? Naturally, with the most gigantic nuclear
furnace there is… the sun. More specifically, a perpetually-stable, miniaturized sun
known as SCP-037. Even though it’s only got a diameter of two inches, this little
sucker is better than premium fuel. The surface temperature of SCP-037 is around five
thousand Kelvin, generating plenty of energy to power the SCP-5514 mech. Stored in The
Dragon Slayer’s chest, this mini-sun is kept stable by sub-dimensional portals that vent
excess energy off of this plane of reality, stopping the mech, its pilot, and
anything around it from melting. In fact, SCP-037 produces so much juice that only one percent of its energy output
is enough to fully power SCP-5514. Now, that’s the power source sorted. But how do
you solve the weight problem? Given the sheer size of SCP-5514, it would be easy for it to be
cumbersome, and potentially cause catastrophic collateral damage to its surrounding area. Well,
the mech’s weight is a problem for somewhere else, a whole other dimension in fact. Much like the
excess heat from its power source, various heavy portions of the SCP-5514 mech have had their
weight shunted off to a tiny pocket dimension. It was ensured, during the creation of the mech, that this alteration was perfectly calculated so
that SCP-5514 wouldn’t lose any mass or density, so it operates as if it were only
a fraction of its actual weight. Of course, being weightless makes flight
a whole lot easier. Oh did we forget to mention that? SCP-5514 can fly as well.
This “feature” actually became a part of the mech completely by accident
during the construction of SCP-5514, when an attempt to regulate the mech’s
internal circulation of air led to it having its own gravity field. This allowed
SCP-5514 to fly, without the aid of any turbines or other means. While this was an
unintentional mistake, no attempt has ever been made to correct it, for fear that could
lead to SCP-5514 being grounded permanently. Naturally, going up against creatures
so large that they require their own sub-category means that SCP-5514 needs an
equally-formidable arsenal. So, let’s move on to talk weaponry. Mounted on the mech’s shoulder
is a Beowulf-Sigurd Railgun, an anomalous weapon that also doesn’t obey the laws of physics at
all. The Beowulf-Sigurd uses altered gravity to affect the weight of its targets, causing
projectiles to impact with higher velocity. Even the thickest-skinned LSAs wouldn’t want to
be staring down the barrel end of one of those. Big guns aside, the SCP-5514 mech also wields
a Cold Iron Sword. Over sixty-five feet long, this weapon was contributed to The Dragon
Slayer by the Hy-Brasil Royal Court, members of the collaborative KEY Project that
created the mech. Sure, a Large-Scale Aggressor with thicker hide might take a few extra swings
to draw blood, but it will feel those swings for a long time after, since any wounds inflicted
by the Cold Iron Sword will not regenerate. Serving as less of an offensive weapon, the
SCP-5514 mech also features a unique armament known as the Thousand Word Arrows.
As pretentious as it might sound, within the mech are seven poets. Their role
is to write and recite poems that detail the slaying of monsters, and these recitals
are then broadcast from The Dragon Slayer. On the surface, this seems to have no practical
applications during a fight with LSAs, however, the goal of the Thousand Word Arrows is a form
of psychological warfare. The recital of poems telling of the mech’s victory and the defeat of
Large-Scale Aggressors is intended to have the effect of demoralizing SCP-5514’s adversaries,
while encouraging the pilot during combat. Additionally, worn atop the head of
the SCP-5514 mech, almost like a hat, is a discus with plasma-coated edges. If The
Dragon Slayer needs to deal damage at range, then it can hurl this disc and recall it
immediately thanks to built-in electromagnets. In emergency scenarios, if the Cold Iron
Sword is damaged or dropped and irretrievable, SCP-5514 is also equipped with an additional
melee weapon. Stored in the right arm of the mech is a Holdout Plasma Wristblade. This
superheated blade is strong enough to cut through almost anything. However, this blade
is strictly to be used as a backup weapon. Finally, should all else fail, one of SCP-5514’s
greatest strengths can also be used as a deadly weapon. The Emergency Sun Vent allows
a fraction of the excessive power from SCP-037 to be released, at the risk of causing
massive damage, not only to LSAs, but also any civilians or structures nearby. It is because of
the destructive risk involved, that this weapon is only authorized to be used as a final resort.
And luckily, SCP-5514 is currently undefeated. Since the arrival of multiple Large-Scale
Aggressors as a result of SCP-5391, the SCP-5514 mech has managed to successfully
eliminate twelve of these LSA creatures, either by terminating or otherwise incapacitating
them. Given that its completion was fast-tracked through the use of anomalous elements,
SCP-5514’s first combat deployments also served as field tests of the mech’s operation
and its various weapons and features. Arriving in Tokyo overseen by the Foundation’s
own Captain Rosales and Dr. Kaori, SCP-5514’s first target was a creature designated
LSA-Wake-02, as well as several other unidentified large creatures. As the
LSA was about to attack Tokyo Harbor, SCP-5514 was dispatched, its arrival
heralded by the Thousand Word Arrows. “Champion! Champion! Exalt in the glory
of the Dragon Slayer!” the poets recited. Surprisingly, the poetry worked. Hearing
it had a noticeable effect on LSA-Wake-02, causing the creature to back away shrieking. With
a single throw of the Rounded Recoiling Plasma, SCP-5514 immediately beheaded Wake-02, damaging
a number of the other nearby LSAs as it retrieved the disk via its electromagnets. Once again,
the Thousand Word Arrows cheered on the mech and its pilot, reciting “The vicious beast’s
slain! Gone to those which were once bane!” After dispatching several of the minor LSAs with
its Cold Iron Sword, SCP-5514 became aware that Wake-02 was not fully down for the count. A
second head had protruded from the mouth of the creature’s first, issuing some sort of retreat
call to the remaining LSAs in Tokyo Harbor. This second head then shot towards SCP-5514, narrowly
missing its leg, but allowing another LSA to close the distance and prepare an attack. Luckily, the
SCP-5514 mech’s sword cleaved the beast in two. The mech began firing on the remains of
Wake-02 with its Beowulf-Sigurd Railgun, launching itself into the air and flying
towards the target while bringing its Cold Iron Sword down through the air.
With a single motion, SCP-5514 brought the blade all the way down the LSAs body,
from the creature’s head to its caudal fin, gutting the Large-Scale Aggressor
and splitting its entire body in two. After one final squirm, both halves were finally
still. SCP-5514 had passed its first field test. The mech functioned exactly as designed, all
its various weapons and features working in tandem to defeat a creature far too large and
powerful for any conventional force to handle. “And thus, the deed was done!
Exalt! Exalt! In the glory of the Dragon Slayer!” the Thousand Word Arrows
called out as the other LSAs retreated. One can’t help but feel cautiously optimistic
about our chances of survival knowing that the Foundation has SCP-5514 as the
first line of defence against huge, monstrous beings that threaten humanity.
As the situation with SCP-5391 continues, the SCP-5514 mech remains on the front
line, standing between innocent human beings and the looming shapes of
multiple Large-Scale Aggressors. With creatures that pose such a large-scale
threat, it certainly is lucky that disparate groups were able to put aside their differences
and work together to build a large-scale mech, and because they did, now we have
The Dragon Slayer on our side. 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 from a powerful electric shock. 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,
and the search for Smoke is ongoing. 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. I used to complain about work all the time.
The long hours, the disrespect from my boss, getting home exhausted, aching, and sunburned. I
worked in construction a lifetime ago. I’d give anything to go back to that now. What’s that they
always say? You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone? Maybe I deserve the hand I’ve been
dealt. I haven’t been a good person. I don’t play well with others. There was an argument with my
foreman, one that got a little too heated, and I just couldn’t reign in my temper.
The hammer I’d been using all day was still in my hand…but I digress.
I used to build things with my hands, but I’m in a different line of work now. If you
can call it work. That would imply I get paid, I clock in every morning, and I get to go
home afterward. I don’t. I’m a prisoner, really. A glorified lab rat, and property of
the all-powerful SCP Foundation. I’ve been here about three weeks, and everyone always says
D-Classes like us last about a month here. So, the clock is ticking down to zero for me. I
haven’t had to do anything too dangerous yet, but like I said. It’s just a matter of time.
I’m sitting in my cell, the same windowless box I’ve spent every day for the past three weeks,
when a guard bursts in and grabs me by the arm. “What’s going on?” I ask, but he ignores me.
Of course, why make conversation with a lab rat? Better not to think of us as human at all.
He yanks me down the hall, opens a door, and shoves me inside. There are several other
D-Class in there already, and they’re staring at something in the corner that I can’t
quite make out. I start to turn around, to take in the rest of the room, but a voice
comes over the loudspeaker, cold and clinical. “Look at the statue in the corner.
Do not take your eyes off it.” Well, when a disembodied voice at the SCP
Foundation tells you to look at something, you’d better do it. So, I look.
It's a sculpture, made from concrete and rebar. It looks pretty harmless, but I’ve heard
enough screams through the walls to know that they don’t keep too many harmless things caged
up here. Whatever this thing really is, I don’t want to know what it’ll do to me when
my back is turned. I stare at it, unblinking, feeling my eyes burn and tear up from the
dry air and concentration. I’m scared to close my eyes for even a second, determined
not to be the first one in here to break. But something out there has other plans for
me, for us. I hear a warbling sound like a motor struggling to start, the sudden crash of
thunder outside, and then…the room goes black. For a second I think I’ve gone blind, but
then I hear the other guys screaming, the yelling of scientists behind the wall. Somehow,
the power’s gone out. I can’t see anything, but I can hear the sound of stone scraping
against itself, the snap of breaking bones, the thud of a limp body slumping to the floor.
The room comes into focus again, as a backup generator kicks in and fills the space with weak
fluorescent light. But something’s different, something’s wrong. The statue in the corner
is gone. The other two men are on the floor, heads twisted around backwards.
And the door is standing wide open. Is this a trap? A trick of some kind? If I
run out that door, will a guard be waiting there for me? I don’t know, but whatever might
happen to me if I try can’t be any worse than what will happen if I stay right here.
Through the wall, I hear that sickening snapping sound again, a corpse thudding to the
ground. They didn’t plan this. Something in their experiment went horribly wrong, for them.
And maybe, just maybe, it went right for me. I don’t give it a second thought, I’m out the
door, running through the dimly lit halls, through the maze of identical corridors
in search of some kind of exit. All around me, there’s chaos. Guards firing
their weapons at inhuman shapes that I catch a brief glimpse of as I run past, scientists
yelling for help, people going as fast as they can toward the danger and away from it.
I’m so caught up in it all, I don’t even notice when I run right into a woman in
a white lab coat, knocking us both to the ground. I scramble to my feet, and look at her
with wide eyes, waiting for her to turn me in, to call the guards. But she doesn’t.
“I’m so sorry,” I stammer. She holds out a hand, gesturing for me to help
her to her feet. So, I do. “Watch your step, there,” she says, with a knowing smile. I
can’t help but notice how beautiful she is, twinkling brown eyes and thick black hair.
Then, I spot them, tucked under her hair but unmistakable. She has a pair of fox ears on top
of her head. It hits me in rapid succession then, all the things about this woman that don’t look
quite right. Her unusually long nails, too sharp and pointed for lab work. The feral glint in
her eyes. The halting cadence of her voice. This woman is not an employee of the
SCP Foundation. She’s doing the same thing I am: taking advantage of
the situation to try and escape. "I'll be more careful from now on,
ma’am,” I say. She winks and turns down the hall. I can see a tail poking
out beneath the bottom of her lab coat. “Safe travels!” I call after her. She laughs, a
dangerous sound, like she’s not the one who needs to worry about staying safe, and I wonder what
might have happened if I had caught her in a worse mood. Good thing my mom taught me my manners.
Now, which way should I go from here? Should I follow the woman? I get the
feeling she doesn’t want any company, and I’d prefer to stay on her good side.
As I’m thinking it through, I hear a small popping sound behind me, like a vacuum
in the air being filled all of a sudden. I spin around, and there’s a guy standing there,
ordinary as you please. Blonde hair, green eyes, wearing jeans, and a t-shirt that says “Mothman
Fan Club” in red letters. This guy looks pretty out of place, more the type that you’d see
browsing a comic book store, but after my prior strange encounter I know not to assume anything.
“Hey man, what’s going on?” He asks me. I stare back, not sure what to say. “What did I miss?”
He continues. “I feel like I was gone for ages.” “Um,” I gesture to our collective
surroundings, the sound of alarms blaring and voices crying out for backup, the
inhuman shrieks of creatures being forced back into their cells. “There’s a lot going on.”
“Huh, yeah. Seems like it,” the guy sighs. “You wouldn’t happen to know how to get
out of here, would you?” I ask, hopefully. He shakes his head.
“Sorry, I don’t really come and go through the door here. Guess I’ll
just go back to my room until things calm down a bit. Do you want anything? I’ve
got a mini-fridge in there,” he offers. “…No thanks.”
“Suit yourself, man!” He shoves his hands in his pockets, and walks
away, whistling a tune to himself. If he’s this unphased by teleporting into the middle
of a complete madhouse, I don’t even want to know what kind of stuff he’s seen. Nice
enough kid, though. Probably better company than anyone, or anything, else in this place.
If I’m not going to take him up on his offer, though, I should keep moving before someone
notices I’m not where I’m supposed to be. I round a corner just in time to see
another body drop. I whirl around, looking for that horrible statue, but I don’t
see it. Instead, I see what looks like a man, dressed in all black, wearing a mask in the shape
of a bird’s face with a long, pointed beak. He’s carrying an old-school doctor’s bag, and he’s
bending down to inspect the body of the guard that just keeled over. I should keep running,
I should do something, but I can’t look away. The man in black pulls a syringe full of thick
green liquid from his bag and injects it into the corpse. To my horror, the body begins to move,
thrashing around, hands opening and closing, grasping for something. It sits up, reanimated,
but…wrong. Its eyes are bulging and vacant like a goldfish, its mouth hangs slack. As the zombie
climbs to its feet, the figure in all-black turns to look at me, eyes shining from beneath his mask.
“Hello, my good fellow! How are you feeling today?” He calls to me, his
voice polished and polite. “I’m fine!” I shout, my hands
shaking, my chest tight. The doctor tilts his head
to the side thoughtfully. “You don’t look well, my friend. Perhaps you could
allow me to examine you?” The zombie shuffles toward me, and the doctor opens his bag. “There’s
a pestilence raging through this land, you see.” I’m not going to stick around to find
out what that exam might look like, or what he might do in the service of curing me.
“No thanks, I don’t have health insurance!” That is all I can think to say as I turn and run
back the way I came. I still have no idea where an exit might be, how I might get out of here. It
all looks the same, one long stretch of tile and white. I guess a place like the Foundation
isn’t going to have red neon signs telling you how to escape. But this place can’t go on
forever…can it? I’m starting to have my doubts. Before I can get too lost in my own hopelessness,
the biggest man I’ve ever seen comes lumbering down the hall toward me. I worked with
some pretty big guys in construction, massive behemoths who would carry steel beams like
they were pool noodles, but this man is something else entirely. He’s gotta be…eight feet tall?
With fists that look like they could crush my skull in one hit. I’d better get out of this
monster’s way if I know what’s good for me. But as he passes me, he waves and gives me a
great big friendly - if unnaturally wide - smile. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” he bellows in
a booming, French-accented voice. With his other hand, he picks at his teeth with something
white. A closer look reveals it to be a shard of bone. I have to imagine it’s human.
His lips are stained dark with blood. “You look lost, can I help you with something?”
A helpful people-eater. What a guy. I keep my distance but decide to try my luck.
“You wouldn’t happen to know where the exit is?” I say.
He beams at me, thrilled by my question. “I’m so glad you asked! It’s that way!” He
points down a hall to the left. “Just follow that hall all the way down, and take the only
right! That should get you where you’re going!” “Thanks!”
I give him a wave back as I head that way. As I go, I can hear the giant singing
opera to himself, something Italian. It reminds me of a record my grandma used to play, a
long time ago. Maybe this will get me free, maybe it won’t, but it’s more information than I
had a second ago. Might as well give it a shot. If I make it through this, I’m going to be in the
best shape of my life from all the running I’ve done today. Maybe I’ll try to do a marathon.
Or maybe I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. There’s no one else down this particular hall,
at least no one that I can see. I slow my pace to a steady walk, keeping my eyes and ears
alert for any potential threats. So far, so good. I reach the other side of the hall, and
take a right turn…and nothing. Just a wall. That giant son of a gun lied to me! I guess that’s
what I get for asking a cannibal for directions. I guess I’m lucky he just misled me instead of
having me for dessert. I’m about to plan my next move, when I feel something nudge against the
back of my leg. I turn, and there’s what I can only describe as a blob. Just a large mass
of orange slime, wrapping around my legs, making a friendly high-pitched gurgle. I should
be suspicious of it, after everything I’ve seen, but I’m not. I just get the feeling this
thing has my best interests at heart. “Hey, buddy…” I pat its slimy surface,
and it ripples delightedly, making another gurgling sound. It’s kind of cute, honestly.
I smell the scent of freshly brewed coffee, one of my favorite smells in the world.
I haven’t had a decent cup in years. All of a sudden, I feel this overwhelming sense
of happiness, of hope. Even if it’s foolish to think so, I honestly believe that everything
is going to be alright. This strange little friendly slime has given me the strength to carry
on. I wish I had a plushie version of this thing. There’s a sudden tickling sensation along my
legs, and I laugh, pushing the slime away gently. “Hey, stop that!”
It coos apologetically and bumps itself against me again like a stray dog
asking for scratches behind the ears. I wonder for a second if I could take this thing with me, but
what would I even feed it? What kind of life could I give a domesticated slime creature? Better
to leave it with people who know how to care for it, even if they’re mad scientists.
I give it another pat, then head on my way. The slime oozes off in the opposite
direction, off to find more new friends, I imagine. I had no idea there was anything nice
here, with everything horrible that I’ve seen today. Warms my cold heart, just a little bit.
It's strange, I’ve been walking for a while, and I haven’t seen anyone else. It’s eerily
quiet over here, I can’t hear a thing except for that alarm in the distance. Not sure when all
the screaming went quiet, or where all the guards went. It’s peaceful, but I have to admit it’s
eerie. There’s no way it’s this easy. There’s no way I’ll be able to just walk out of here.
Life doesn’t work like that, especially not here. My eyes dart around, watching for any potential
danger as I go. Maybe all the action is on the other side of the facility, maybe something broke
out of containment that’s so big, so dangerous, that all hands are on deck to contain it.
Or maybe they’re all dead, and I’m next. I shouldn’t think like that. I feel the
hairs on the back of my neck prickle, and I have that paranoid feeling of being watched.
Like eyes, burning into me. I glance behind me, but there’s no one there. I stop walking, but
I don’t hear any other footsteps. Calm down, there’s no one here with you, I
tell myself. Just keep moving. I turn my eyes back to the path ahead of me,
and I freeze. What was that? I saw something, just for a second. Something long, thin, spindly,
like a stick bug but much, much bigger. When I look for it, it’s gone. But I know that I saw it.
Or this place has now driven me insane. I glance to the side, and there it is again! For a split
second, so fast I could almost convince myself I imagined it. If I were at home, or walking
down an ordinary street, I might think I had. But I’m not anywhere ordinary. And a slender
monster that can hide in my peripheral vision, only be spotted for a millisecond at a time?
That seems par for the course in a place like this.
There! I just saw it again! It’s like it wants me to know it’s here, but that I’ll
never be able to pin it down. I’m not playing mind games with a monster, forget it. I’ll keep moving.
Another flash of the creature, closer than it was before. “Whatever, you don’t
scare me.” I say out loud. I’m lying, but I hope it can’t tell. If I just play it cool,
maybe this thing will get bored and find someone else to menace. I haven’t been running for a
long time now, but my heart is still pounding. I can taste metal in the back of my throat.
Suddenly, all the sounds from before are back. The gunfire, the screaming, the shriek of
alarms. I’ve made my way back to the action. One sound drowns out all the rest: a deafening
roar, animalistic and powerful and…hateful. It reminds me of a dinosaur in a movie, but with
a power that makes my bones rattle and my teeth chatter. The roar is followed by more screaming,
and a massive crash, the crunch of wood and stone. There’s another roar, more distant than before.
Wait…whatever made that sound, it just broke out. And I bet it left a pretty big hole in its wake.
I follow the sound and find exactly what I hoped I would: A massive opening in the wall, and
the sweet feeling of a breeze coming through. I couldn’t find an exit, but this thing just
made one for me. I don’t waste any more time, I make a break for it, dancing around rubble and
pools of corrosive acid, and sprinting into the nearby forest. I’m ducking under branches,
darting around trees, and I run until I’m seeing spots and my lungs are gasping for air.
I don’t know how far I’ll make it, if there’s a town nearby or any kind of shelter.
But I promise one thing, if I survive, I’m going to be a better person. I’ll get it right
this time. I’ll earn my second chance at life. SCP-682 had escaped containment, and
it was all hands on deck at the SCP Foundation to try and stop the creature's rampage. All unarmed personnel were running to escape
before 682 had a chance to rip them apart, as the security team bravely fought to
incapacitate the hard-to-destroy reptile long enough to return him to his acid
tank. 682 was on an all-out offensive, stomping through the SCP's item gallery and
spewing acid at anyone who came within range. People, items, and parts of the room alike were
melting and sizzling as 682 attacked. It was an absolute bloodbath, and you'd have to have been
insane to try and fight back against it. However, one being remained unfazed by the chaos, and stood
proud in the face of the omnicidal monster. It was another SCP, one who had been broken free
from its glass display case in the commotion. “Who dares to disturb the Prime
Minister Sinister?” It said, in a high tinny voice. “I shall rip your eyes
from their sockets and force you to eat them!” SCP 682 stopped to see who had threatened him. It
was almost laughable that this thing had dared to make such a violent threat, because there was no
way that this little thing would be able to stand up to the unkillable 682. But its size didn't
stop it from trying to pick a fight all the same. The SCP was a tiny robot made from junk,
which looked more like a sculpture made from scrap that was found on the side of
the road than a functional automaton. Its head was made of an upside down voltmeter,
giving it the appearance of a smiling face, and its arms were made of wrenches.
It was capable of walking around, though it seemed to have difficulty
moving, as it was very top heavy. It shook its rusty fist at SCP
682 and continued to threaten him, shouting - "You do not know the fury you have
unleashed! RoboLord the Destructor will end you!" SCP 682 swiped at the robot, annoyed by its
continued attempts to antagonize him. The robot toppled over and struggled
to stand again, but when it did, it ran for 682's feet. It started to grab at 682's
toes, hitting them with its wrench hands. As you might expect, this had almost no effect on 682.
"You do realize…you are…weak…pathetic" said 682, raising his claw to get a better
look at the annoying little robot. It responded- "Lies and slander! The
Mayor of Mayhem is the most powerful being in existence!" before promptly losing its
grip on 682's claw and falling to the floor. Now 682 was really getting tired of this thing.
He prepared to swipe at it again, this time using his full strength, which would certainly smash
the robot to pieces. But, luckily for the robot, its pestering had distracted 682 just long enough
for Foundation security to sneak up on him. Before 682 had a chance to smash the robot, the
Foundation fired on him with a volley of rockets, reducing him to a misshapen lump. The
security team collected up 682's remains, ready to put them into a backup acid tank, but the
task was made slightly more difficult by the fact that the robot was running around underfoot,
trying in vain to now attack them instead. What was this strange little robot that thought
it could attack the unkillable lizard, 682? Meet SCP-1370, appropriately nicknamed “The Pesterbot”
by Foundation personnel. Pesterbot is a small robot made of junk that displays sentience and the
ability to move despite having no power source. Everything about SCP-1370 defies
common sense. The voltmeter that serves as its head contains no sensors, but
it seems unable to see if the voltmeter is covered. Its arms and legs are made of
wrenches and its wooden torso contains a speaker which it communicates
through in a tinny, monotone voice. Pesterbot lives in SCP Gallery 27, in a glass
display case which is 125 cm tall, 50 cm wide, and 75 cm long. Level 2 personnel and higher are
allowed to remove the robot from containment at their discretion, but penalties will be incurred
for anyone who doesn't return to its case. Due to its impractical, top-heavy design,
Pesterbot falls over frequently when it walks around. This led the foundation to believe that
he was created as an art project and was later somehow imbued with anomalous properties, rather
than being made with the intent of being sentient. Pesterbot has demonstrated a high capacity
for learning, having been taught how to speak in English, French, and Latin. However,
the major factor hampering attempts to further test its intelligence has nothing
to do with its robotic processing power. No, it’s because of its poor attitude. Pesterbot's encounter with SCP-682 and the
cockiness it expressed in the moment wasn’t an aberration, this SCP really believes
it's a killing machine, and as a result, it will pick a fight with anyone and anything that
moves. This even includes its own reflection - and as a result the glass of its container must
be made as non-reflective as possible to prevent the robot from damaging the case or
itself in attempts to fight its mirror self. Though its most commonly used nickname in the
Foundation is Pesterbot, SCP-1370 also goes by a variety of self-given epithets, including
Doom Bot 2000, Robolord the Destructor, and Darth Claw Killflex. It can be
made to add new names to this list through encouragement by staff, and over time
they have managed to add the name Pesterbot, as well as the even more ridiculous “Patheticon
the Garglemost”, to its lexicon of names. As you may have surmised, Pesterbot
is classified as Safe and is treated by most SCP foundation employees
as a humorous oddity rather than a legitimate threat. Many tests have been done
on Pesterbot, and they've all conclusively determined that the robot is incapable of
inflicting any damage to its opponents. In fact, Pesterbot is more
of a danger to itself than to anything around it. Both because
it's incredibly clumsy and awkward, and because it frequently picks fights with
other SCPs who are far more powerful than it. One such scenario that could've gone far worse
for Pesterbot than it did was its encounter with SCP-846, also known as Robo-Dude, one of
the many Dr. Wondertainment products currently kept in Foundation containment. Robo-Dude is an
ordinary-looking toy robot that, upon request, can produce up to 350 “robo-accessories”
that function as real weapons. Robo-Dude can deploy everything from a
rocket launcher to a flamethrower to a gun that shoots out an unknown species of
insect that can chew through wood. However, Robo-Dude seems to not be sentient, and
is unable to use these weapons unless asked to. That ultimately worked
out in the favor of Pesterbot. During another SCP-682 escape, the two robots were
brought into contact as they both had been broken out of their respective containment spaces during
the brouhaha. Robo-Dude, searching for a Robo-Pal to play with, came upon Pesterbot, who immediately
started spouting its usual overdramatic threats. “I am the Crushmaster, doom to all I
survey.” Pesterbot said. “Gaze upon my might and weep. Identify yourself, that I
might know whose destruction I shall sow.” Robo-Dude, not programmed to know
how to respond to such a statement, simply responded by asking
Pesterbot if it wanted to play. Pesterbot continued to trash-talk
Robo-Dude, until Robo-Dude decided the best way to play with its new pal
was to engage in its Robo-Dance mode. Pesterbot accepted the challenge, saying “Activate
all that you wish, but your fate is sealed. The Kill-o-tron can not be defeated. I shall render
you unto dust with my mad dancing skills." The two robots proceeded to engage in
a dance battle, which the awkwardly shaped Pesterbot failed miserably at.
While Robo-Dude was a competent dancer, Pesterbot could only gyrate pathetically, before
it fell over and rolled around on the ground, hopelessly out of time to the music
coming from Robo-Dude's speakers. The song ended, and Robo-Dude declared
- “Robo-dance is complete, Robo-pal.” Pesterbot was unable to accept its
failure, and replied- "Ha. Pathetic one, you have been schooled in the art of the
dance by none other than Mechanobasher, Scourge of a Thousand Worlds. Kneel before
me before I end your worthless existence." Robo-Dude, unimpressed with Pesterbot's poor
sportsmanship, deployed its hydrogen cannon, which it was programmed to do whenever
it detected a sore loser. Fortunately for Pesterbot, ”hydrogen cannon” was just
the name for Robo-Dude's water pistol. While Pesterbot will attempt to fight
anything that moves, the truth is, this robot will attack virtually anything it
perceives as being even slightly alive. This is perhaps best illustrated by one of the tests
of Pesterbot's abilities that involved putting a small speaker at the base of a potted houseplant
and speaking through it from another room. The plant was placed across from
Pesterbot in the testing chamber and the interaction was monitored by
researchers from outside. Researcher Davies spoke through the speaker in the plant
pot. He asked Pesterbot if it could hear him, and it answered - “Who dares. All souls
will burn. You will feel the sharp sting of my wrath. Identify yourself so that I
may sing damnation upon you as you die.” The robot began approaching the plant.
Davies, speaking as the plant, identified himself, “I am a split-leaf philodendron, a
semi-woody shrub with large glossy leaves.” At this point, he had to try
very hard not to laugh at the absurdity of this test, and the robot's reaction. He continued “These leaves can
grow up to three feet long.” Pesterbot used its wrench arms to
try and wrestle with the leaves, but was bested by the mighty plant and unable
to cause any damage. Enraged by its failure, it said “Your mockery spells your doom. I have
arrived. You will be crushed betwixt my digits.” Pesterbot then fell over and was unable
to right itself. It struggled and spent 6 minutes trying to stand before its
flailing knocked over the plant, which did nothing to help and in fact pinned
the robot to the ground. It was at this point that the researchers, who had taken time to
compose themselves after several laughing fits, entered the chamber and removed Pesterbot in
order to place it back in its display case. Despite how non-threatening Pesterbot
is, there is actually one situation in the Foundation's history where it has
actually posed a somewhat serious threat. When Mobile Task Forces were sent in to
rescue survivors of the events at Site-13, also known as SCP-1730, they were
attacked by alternate universe versions of a variety of creatures
kept in Foundation containment. One of these creatures was Pesterbot, who
had in that universe somehow gained control of a larger mechanical body constructed of
discarded pieces of machinery. It threw other pieces of metal scrap at the task force
members as they tried to leave the site, shouting in a much deeper and more intimidating
voice - “I am reborn to breathe devastation upon this fetid Earth. Pitiful humans. You will
feel the dark sting of my neverending torment.” Members of the task force could see
the original Pesterbot body on top of the larger metal construct, waving its arms madly. The task force opened fire, to little effect.
Pesterbot tossed another piece of scrap at them, just narrowly missing. One task force
member threw a frag grenade at the robot, which it caught, blowing up its hand. Another one was able to jump into the air and
reach the tiny robot atop the larger body, knocking it against the wall and shattering it. Even in the reality where Pesterbot
was able to build itself a larger body, it still ultimately wasn't able
to put up that much of a fight. Poor Pesterbot. Doomed to be a failure in
this, and apparently, every other reality. That's the story of SCP 1370, also known as the
Pesterbot, one of the most hilariously harmless anomalous entities that the foundation currently
has in containment. Perhaps one day he’ll achieve his goal of conquering the universe, he just has
to figure out how to conquer his toy box first. Hello again, dear viewers. You’ve caught me
during my break. What? Even researchers at the SCP Foundation need a little downtime
now and then. And considering they revoked my playtime privileges with The Living Lego and
the Nerfing Gun after the unfortunate incident in the Site-19 Break Room, I’ve been downgraded to
keeping myself occupied with this little rubber ball. “I have a ball. Perhaps you'd like to bounce
it,” they said. Seems innocent enough, doesn’t it? Oh, have you learned nothing? Almost any
object, even something as innocuous as a Teddy Bear or a plastic paddling pool, can
hide secrets. Sure, any avid basketball fan will happily tell you that ball is life. But
sometimes, when you’re dealing with anomalies, a ball can also… be death. Such is the case of
SCP-018, also known as The Super Ball. An anomaly so powerful that the Foundation has even used
it to help recontain SCP-682 during a breach. To the untrained observer, it really isn’t much
to look at. A small, red rubber ball, about six centimeters in diameter, produced by the Wham-O
company in 1969. Yeah, we were as surprised as you to find out that good ol’ Dr. Wondertainment
had nothing to do with this little number. You might also be surprised by just how extensive the
containment procedures are for SCP-018 - After all, it’s rare that a competently non-sentient
anomaly makes its way into the Euclid class. This little rubber ball is kept in a
specially-made titanium-alloy metal restraint, submerged in a dense polyethylene holding tank,
filled with a special endothermic compound that draws the kinetic energy out of its surroundings.
Anyone entering the chamber needs to wear a unique kind of reinforced plate armor, and if SCP-018
ever manages to escape its containment tank, nearby personnel are advised to treat it
as they would an active shooter situation. Lock yourself in a nearby room, duck
down below any cover you can find, and wait for armed containment units to
show up and take control of the situation. At this point, you probably have a lot
of questions, chief among them being: Why is this children’s toy being given more
security precautions than most serial killers? The ball was first discovered when
a cleaning and disposal company was hired to empty out an old Wham-O warehouse of
some defunct merchandise. One of the movers, Roy Fischler, embraced his inner child when he
saw a red, rubber ball sitting among all the dusty boxes of expired silly putty and broken
remote control robots. He thought to himself, “what’s the harm in having a little fun
here? It’s all going into the trash anyway.” This would prove to be a terrible
mistake for all involved. The anomalous property of SCP-018 is the fact that
it’s able to bounce at 200% efficiency every time it’s bounced, increasing at an exponential
rate with each bounce unless it’s stopped by some equivalent force. So when Roy decided
to toss that little red ball onto the ground, he’d unleashed a destructive force into that
warehouse that was more powerful than he ever could have imagined. With every bounce, the
ball increased its height and speed, ricocheting across the floor, walls, and ceiling like a bullet
run amok. And it was only just getting started. The workers hit the deck as the item that
would later be dubbed SCP-018 decided to put the “ball” in “ballistic.” It smashed
light fixtures. Knocked over piles of boxes. Smashed through forklifts. When one
worker tried to catch it, it left a red-hot, ball-shaped hole in the middle of his palm.
It wasn’t long before the ball had built up such speed that the warehouse could no
longer contain it. It blasted out of the wall and rocketed into the nearby city, ready
to cause more abject chaos wherever it went. Windows were shattered. Street lights were
annihilated. Cars crashed. Thankfully, no humans were killed by the rampaging
rubber menace, but in total five people were injured - And one unfortunate pigeon was
utterly obliterated on impact. It went on for several days, with the ball reaching over 100
kilometers per hour at several points, before finally coming to rest at a nearby lake. At which
point, it was retrieved by Foundation personnel. There were two silver linings to this
incredibly strange anomalous incident: The first was, as previously alluded to,
nobody actually died. The second was that, due to the incredible speeds at which SCP-018
moved, none of the civilian witnesses had any idea what they’d just encountered.
As far as anomalous discoveries go, this was pretty much as close
to a win as you can get. But for one ambitious researcher, it was
far more than just a pleasingly non-violent initial containment story - It was a doorway to
improving the Foundation’s technology as a whole. Meet Dr. Brian Karella. He’s what you
might call a maverick, a blue sky thinker, always on his grind. The cornerstone of Dr.
Karella’s philosophy was that the Foundation should be making more active use of its benign
anomalies to help track down and contain their more ornery foes. While everyone else
around him seemed to only see a little rubber nuisance that was better locked away, Dr.
Karella saw the immense potential in SCP-018. Namely, in providing a vital
enhancement to another piece of Foundation technology: The SCP-A5 Armor. It goes without saying that working for the
SCP Foundation is an incredibly dangerous job, especially if you’re part of one of the
Foundation’s myriad mobile task forces. The hunt for anomalies can lead to all kinds of
strange and inhospitable terrains. Before it was contained, SCP-096 was famously captured on an
icy, frozen tundra on top of a bleak mountain. Because of incidents like this, the
Foundation had first invested money in the SCP-A5 Tactical Armor Suit. Think
of them like the Foundation’s answer to the Iron Man suit. However, when dressed in
several hundred pounds of reinforced metal, something important suffers
along the way: Mobility. It isn’t exactly easy to lug all that
equipment around. And when an anomaly is heading for the hills at high speeds, being
well-defended doesn’t count for much if you’re already ten miles behind the target in
pursuit. This, in Dr. Karella’s mind, was exactly where SCP-018 came into play.
If that little red ball was built into the foot of an SCP-A5 Armor suit, it could be
used to bounce the operative wearing it to tremendous heights. This would allow them
to not only give chance against fast-moving anomalies but also cover difficult terrain and
even scale great heights in a mere instant. But it wasn’t just an increase to mobility that
SCP-018 integration offered to the SCP-A5 suit. Picture this: With SCP-108 fused to the
sole of the suit’s reinforced metal foot, lending it 200% bouncing efficiency, it
could unleash a deadly, concrete-shattering kick. The kind of thing that would leave
you singing in falsetto for the rest of your life if you were lucky enough to
survive it, if you know what I mean. To Dr. Karella, it was a match made in heaven.
It could increase both the mobility and combat effectiveness of the suits by a considerable
margin. And seeing as SCP-018 literally didn’t have a mind of its own, there’s no way it
could suddenly go rogue during a mission and compromise everything - just as Able
had during his stint as a Mobile Task Force operator before they ran out of targets for him
and he started slaughtering his own comrades. Dr. Karella was so confident in the efficacy
of this idea, he contacted the O5 Council personally to request approval for this
little pet project. This approval was granted, on a purely experimental basis. The technology
would have to prove itself before being put into common use. It wasn’t exactly what
Karella wanted to hear, but it was a step in the right direction. He just needed the
perfect opportunity to put them to the test. And then it came: SCP-682, the
Infamous Hard to Destroy Reptile, breached containment. It’d somehow adapted
a cloaking ability and escaped further from the site it was being held at than ever before. The next time it was spotted was over two
weeks later, causing pandemonium in the Amazon Rainforest, devouring tribesmen and wreaking
havoc on the local ecosystem. They needed to get on the scene fast and put that monster down
before the damage it caused was irreparable, and news of the Beast in the Amazon leaked
out into the local area. And thankfully, Dr. Karella had just the tool for the job. Field Agent Hammersmith was
fitted with an SCP-A5 suit, complete with the SCP-018 enhancement in
his dominant right leg. He was dispatched, and immediately, the augmented
suit began to show its efficacy. Agent Hammersmith bounded above the treeline
at incredible speeds, using the HUD in the suit’s mask to track the heat signature of
SCP-682 moving among the trees below him. He’d been able to bind a tracking collar to
the beast’s neck during an earlier engagement, but now the true battle was on. His heart was
pounding, adrenaline coursing through his veins, but he’d been ensured that even 682 would have
a hard time tearing through his suit’s armor. A commander directing him through an earpiece
told him now was the time to engage, before 682 detected his presence and began developing
countermeasures. Dr. Karella was watching a live feed from the control room, confident
that his 018-augmented suit would do the job. Following his orders to the letter, Hammersmith
descended down onto 682 from above. However, before he could make contact, the reptile
swiped him with its tail, sending his body sailing into a nearby tree. However, the suit
stood firm. He felt the impact, but the actual damage was minimal. Now, it was time for him
to face off against the beast, one on one. He didn’t have time to be afraid. As the
beast descended upon him, fangs bared, he gave it a swift kick to the bottom
jaw, tearing off half of its face. But anyone who knows SCP-682 would tell you that
simply removing its bottom jaw wouldn’t even slow 682 down. It was relentless, attacking
Hammersmith with its fangs and jaws. It tore deep ruts into the suit’s metal, but the suit
was still managing to keep its occupant safe. Then Hammersmith struck back. Kick after kick, augmented by the 200% power
of the Super Ball, sliced huge chunks from the reptile’s body. He kicked in its chest,
kicked off limbs, and with a final mighty kick, even managed to bisect the beast in the
middle. Of course, even that wouldn’t keep it down for long, but with the hum of evacuation
and containment helicopters rapidly approaching, Hammersmith breathed a sigh of relief. Back
in the control room, everyone celebrated - Dr. Karella most of all, vindicated in his
belief that SCP-018 could save the day. And then Agent Hammersmith, without even thinking, rested his right foot on the floor
just that little bit too firmly. The sudden bounce sent Hammersmith a mile into the
air. His Foundation-trained composure evaporated; all he could do was scream as he blasted
up into the clouds, then began to plummet. Back in the control room, everyone could see
a live feed of Agent Hammersmith hurtling into a nearby lake and landing with an epic
splash. While the regenerating remains of SCP-682 were contained and brought
back to the nearest containment site, another team was sent in to retrieve
the heavily injured Agent Hammersmith. His medical examination afterward revealed he’d
suffered two broken legs, seven broken ribs, a missing arm, and a skull fracture.
If he hadn’t been wearing the suit, his mangled remains probably would have
been devoured by the local piranhas by now. But despite that minor hiccup in the plan, Dr.
Karella was still delighted with the results, and immensely proud of the little red ball that
could. In his closing remarks on the incident, he appended a final note to
the SCP-018 file, reading: “Don't worry, it's fixed. But, I
have some more ideas. If I can be granted the use of some water from
SCP-006, as well as some other SCPs, I can deliver you a set of SCP-A5 armor
and an agent that can capture any, if not all, rogue or unattained SCPs.
All I'm waiting on is your approval.” Welcome to Planet Earth. She’s got the toughest
streets around, and if you’re not careful, that mean old missy won’t hesitate
to wash out her gutters with your blood and decorate the sidewalks with your
teeth. It’s a tough world for the good and innocent, with the looming shadow of
crime lurking around every corner, just waiting to prey on those who are unable to
defend themselves. If you don’t have the tools to survive, it’ll chew you up and spit
you out like a wad of stale chewing gum. That’s why we need a hero. A dark
defender. A cloak in the night. We need… The Specter. New Delhi, India.A woman walks home from
her late-night job. She’s exhausted, she can feel the bone-deep ache of fourteen
hours on a factory line, running herself ragged to support her three kids back home. She
can barely stand; can you really blame her for wanting to take the shortcut down that dark alley,
knowing it’ll shave fifteen minutes off her trip? She ducks in, clutching her purse tight and
keeping her head down, but it won’t do any good. A predator has been laying in wait. He emerges
from the darkness, wielding a huge knife, and grabs her by the shoulder. He’s a few heads
taller than her, with arms thicker than her neck. He tells her to hand over the money she’d
spent all month working for, or he’d turn her kids into orphans. His knife had tasted blood
before and he’d have no problem killing again. With tears streaking down her face,
knowing it’s futile to resist, she reaches out and passes him the money. The bandit snatches it from her trembling hand
and snickers. Candy from a baby. He’s ready to turn around and make a run with tonight’s
takings when he feels an odd chill drift into the alley. A soft whoosh. He turns and sees
a figure standing and watching him. He’s tall and well-built, with a long, black coat and a black
wide-brimmed hat. He was darker than the dark: Light seemed to disappear into him,
a black shape against the background. It’s him. The man that all criminals know
and fear, all over the world, even if they’ve never met him. The intrusive thought, the
moment of creeping doubt that slithers into their minds the second they even contemplate
breaking the law. The bad guys’ boogeyman. The Specter. “Halt, evildoer!” the Specter commands.
“You’ll return this fine lady’s money, or you’ll suffer the consequences.” The bandit feels a tremor
of fear quiver through him, but he won’t back down. Not yet. He charges The
Specter with his blade, slashing like a madman, but not a single hit lands. The Specter weaves
perfectly away from every strike and effortlessly disarms the bandit with a perfectly-placed whack
to the wrist. The knife clatters to the ground. He discombobulates the bandit with an
open-palmed strike to either side of his head, then knocks him out with a laser-focused
headbutt. He crumples to the ground, unconscious, and The Specter
breathes a sigh. Another battle won. This whole time, the woman has
been watching, frozen in awe. The Specter picks up her stolen money and
hands it back to her with a gentlemanly doff of his wide-brimmed hat. He really
is just darkness underneath. Unseeable, unknowable, a living shadow. She thanks
him, and he assures her that it’s all in a day’s work for a crimefighter like
him. After all, somebody needs to do it. And in a flash of smoke, he’s gone. The
woman makes it home safely that night. London, England. A man lays beaten and bloody
on the ground. Three assailants surround him, circling like hungry wolves. One wields
a long lead pipe, still slick with the man’s blood. Another, a switchblade, that
he keeps clicking in and out of the handle. And the third carries a handgun. The same
handgun he’s used to take two lives before. The wounded man on the ground - with bruises,
cuts, a broken ankle, a broken wrist, four broken ribs, and three missing teeth -
is desperate and afraid. He’s here because he was forced into a corner. He needed to
borrow money from a dangerous man tucked away in a dingy building in London’s East
End, the city’s organized crime epicenter. The money he’d borrowed came with predatory
interest that he couldn’t pay back. Now, he’s paying the difference in blood to
that same loan shark’s violent goons. The man with the gun, in a thick cockney
accent, tells him that this is why he shouldn’t have messed around with Mr. Ford.
Now he’s going to be an example for anyone else stupid enough to think they can stiff the
big man on a payment and live to tell the tale. He nods to the man with the pipe
to finish the job. The beaten and bloodied man on the ground closes
his eyes as the goon steps closer, lifting up the red-stained pipe and preparing
to finally cave his pitiful head in with it. In the dark, he hears the whoosh of the pipe’s
downswing, and the breeze hits his bruised cheek, but the pipe never connects. Instead,
there’s a chorus of gasps. The man on the ground opens his eyes to get a better
look at what on earth has happened. A tall, dark man in a long, black coat and
a wide-brimmed hat is standing over him, holding the lead pipe that he just easily
snatched from the hands of its previous user. The goons are all stepping back. The gunman raises
his pistol. The other, his knife. All of them look afraid. The man on the ground doesn’t
know the stranger who just saved his life, but in his presence, he feels something wash over
him that he hasn’t felt in a long while: Safety. It’s him. It’s The Specter. “You wretched villains. Don’t you
know better than to pick on the weak, a bunch of ‘tough guys’ like you? How
about fighting someone your own size?” In a blind panic, the gunman raises his pistol
and fires. The Specter moves like smoke in the wind. He dodges the bullet and tosses the
lead pipe. It sails through the air and hits the gunman’s skull with an almighty
crack. He collapses, dropping his weapon. The other two goons bum rush him,
but it doesn’t serve them any better. One slashes, the other punches. With
a few skillful, fluid movements, he guides one goon’s knife-wielding hand into
the other’s shoulder, then disables both with a pair of simultaneous chops to the throat
that Jackie Chan himself would be proud of. All three goons are laid out on the ground,
either writhing and gasping or knocked out cold. The Specter straightens his coat and hat
with practiced finesse and returns to the man laying on the ground. After checking that
he was still alive and conscious, he passed the man a wad of cash and a phone, telling him to
call an ambulance and get his wounds treated. None of those men would ever bother him again,
and if they or any others dared to, then they could expect to see the dark figure of The Specter
appearing behind them in their bathroom mirror. After all, someone needs to be there to
fight crime, even when nobody else will. New York City, USA. Things are going sideways
at a major bank downtown. A group of well-armed, highly organized robbers has broken in. They’ve
taken at least fifty hostages throughout the building, and have informed the police blockade
outside that unless their demands are met and they’re given free passage out of the building,
they’ll start executing people left and right. And given the ruthless organization
of this particular criminal crew, it seems more than likely that they’ll put
their blood money where their mouth is. Police squad cars form a horseshoe
blockade around the building outside, armed with handguns, shotguns, and assault rifles.
Police snipers are finding their ideal perches in the surrounding skyscrapers. SWAT is on its way
and a police helicopter circles above. However, even if everything goes right, the
higher-ups know that some fatalities are basically inevitable. Crews of
hardcore career criminals like this wouldn’t go down without a fight. One way
or another, some lives would be taken today. Another transmission is delivered from the
inside after that: The robbers know that time isn’t on their side, so they’re flipping the
script. Five minutes, exactly. If their demands aren’t met by then, blood would be staining
the bank’s immaculate marble floor. Tick tock. The negotiators on the front line are
in a cold sweat. Five minutes!? No, that isn’t enough time. We can’t mobilize,
it’ll be a massacre in there! How could ten greedy maniacs with assault rifles pull
the rug out from under them all like this? Panicked thoughts swim through the head of a
sergeant heading the blockade. He can’t concede, his superiors would never allow it. Does
he wait five minutes and see what happens, or authorize his officers to breach the
front doors, try to reclaim the bank, and potentially create one of the worst bank
robbery bloodbaths in New York City history? Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. And
every second, the time to decide runs out… That’s when he hears a soft whoosh behind
him. Paranoid enough to jump at shadows, the sergeant turns, reaching for his gun, and
sees what seems to be a dapper shadow standing right behind him. A tall man, with a long,
black coat and a wide-brimmed hat. No face, just darkness itself under the shade of the brim.
The stranger places a calm hand on his shoulder, and suddenly, a sense of trust like
he hasn’t felt in years just sets in. Somehow, deep in his marrow, he
knows this man is here to help. “Rest assured, sergeant, everything is
under control now. For I, The Specter, have arrived to save the day.
How many criminals are inside?” The sergeant murmurs ten, in awe. The Specter nods. “Worry not,
sergeant. Nobody will die today.” And with that, like the ghost that is
his very namesake, The Specter is gone. Inside the bank, the leader of the
robbers checks his watch. Two minutes, and still no word from the cops outside.
He’s starting to lose his patience. A few unfortunate bank tellers and customers crouch
around him, their hands behind their heads. Five of his men are out here with him,
armed and keeping the situation under control. The other four have cracked
the security on the vault and they’re hauling out money by the bagful.
And still, silence from the cops. He sneers, and the thought crosses his mind that
perhaps if he takes out a hostage or two now, the mooks out there might actually take his
threats seriously. That thought amuses him. Yeah, that’ll show ‘em. They’ll finally
know who they’re dealing with here. The leader shoulders his assault rifle
and draws a bead on the hostage sitting closest to him. Even his men are shocked by the
suddenness of it all, but they know better than to second guess their boss at a time like
this. He always was a little trigger happy… The hostage - an older gentleman who’d only
come into the bank to check his balance, cause he hadn’t figured out how to do
it online just yet - sees the gun and winces. He survived ‘Nam, and this
was how he was going to go. Gunned down on a Wednesday afternoon by some
creep for chump change. What a world. The leader’s finger curls around the trigger,
but before he can complete a squeeze, an expertly-aimed fist collides with the
back of his head, knocking him unconscious in a single strike. The leader collapses,
his rifle sliding across the ground. The Specter stands where he stood, straightening his
coat and blowing dandruff off of his knuckles. “Are you fellas ready to dance?” he growls. He glides through them, moving with the grace
of a prima ballerina and hitting with the force of a freight train. The goons are down before
any of them can fire a single shot. With the help of some quick-thinking bank tellers, The
Specter closes the vault door from the outside, trapping the remaining four robbers
inside. Textbook crimefighting once more. The bank customers and employees, weeping with
joy and relief, thank the Specter for saving their lives. He shakes his head and assures them
it was nothing. Just doing what he could, as any concerned citizen should. He would have left
after that, were it not for one little problem. The NYPD has a number of employees at
different levels of their sprawling structure that are actually deeply
embedded undercover agents of the SCP Foundation. And this isn’t a comic book.
There’s a word for when a mysterious man made from darkness appears from nowhere, and
effortlessly takes down ten heavily-armed, highly-trained combatants by himself,
and that word was “Anomalous.” Knowing what this mysterious combatant was capable
of, the Foundation sends some of their best Mobile Task Force Operatives to apprehend him, under
the guise of just being standard SWAT Team members sent in to get the situation back under
control in the aftermath of the robbery. However, much to their extreme surprise, The
Specter puts up absolutely no resistance to them. He understands that the men here to
apprehend him are servants of law and order, and would not defy their will, but
he pleads with them to reconsider. “You don’t understand, sirs, you’re
making a huge mistake,” he says, distraught. “I’m here to help. I’m
The Specter, defender of the innocent, scourge of the evildoer. You can’t lock
me away! You can’t! The people need me!” As tragic as it is to see a genuinely
benevolent anomaly beg for his freedom, the Mobile Task Force’s hearts have long since
hardened to this kind of thing. He wouldn’t be the first sapient humanoid anomaly to speedrun
all seven stages of grief on their knees in front of them, and he probably wouldn’t be the last.
Foundation protocol is to tag and bag either way, even if they’d just used their anomalous
abilities to thwart a bank robbery. The Specter is hauled back to the nearest
Foundation Containment Site and held in a holding cell while researchers prepare to conduct
initial tests and questioning. Everything seems so run of the mill - Little do they notice,
something extremely strange is starting to happen to New York City beyond the containment
chamber’s walls. They’re about to learn the true, devastating consequences of keeping a pure
force of good like The Specter locked up. Like a switch has been flipped, nearby
police suddenly become oddly listless. Instead of working, they just chat with each
other and random citizens about the weather. Some watch SCP Explained on their phone while
active robberies are happening. A man is mugged right in front of a squad car and the cop inside
just listens to his Van Halen CDs at max volume. In actual precincts, the on-duty cops start to
wonder why on earth they’re actually here. In this building, all together, listening to
phone calls from weirdly panicked people and typing up reports on… Stuff? It all
just seems oddly confusing. They decide to go outside and watch clouds, or go home
and play video games. It doesn’t make any sense that they’re just standing around
in here doing nothing, for no reason. Across the city, strange incidents start to
occur. People who so much as knock into each other while walking on the crowded New York streets
begin to brawl with one another on the ground, while nobody around them even really
acknowledges that they’re doing it, let alone tries to break them up.
Nearby, cars crash at the intersection, and rather than getting out to exchange insurance
information, the irate drivers draw guns and start to duel like bit-characters in an old
cowboy movie. Nobody really seems to mind. As if noticing a change in the wind, organized
crime rackets decide that secrecy isn’t the way to go anymore. Mob enforcers rob stores
and shake down random people in the streets, taking wallets, watches, phones, and jewelry.
Criminals break into people’s homes and start ransacking the place, stealing everything from
flat-screen TVs to priceless family heirlooms, while their owners sit on the couch, seemingly
unable to even comprehend that something is going wrong here. But everything is
still about to get a whole lot worse. The city breaks into riots and looting. People
battling in the streets. News helicopters circle above, reporting the chaos unfolding below them,
but they do so with an odd kind of detached calm, not really comprehending the full
scope of what’s happening or why. Just that a whole lot more is on fire
now than it was before. How strange. This is the moment when the SCP Foundation
realizes the meaning of The Specter’s pleading. He really was being entirely unselfish,
because you see, The Specter isn’t just an extremely devoted crime fighter, he’s the very
personification of the concept of fighting crime. He can’t ever be locked up or contained, because
if you do so, then the very concept of resisting crime fades from the human consciousness.
Order ceases to be and chaos reigns. That’s why The Specter, also known as SCP-4494,
is classified as Archon - Meaning that he can’t be contained, because the danger of
containing him would be far greater than the danger of letting him roam
around and do his thing unhindered. He maintains an amicable relationship with the
SCP Foundation after everything that happened, willing to swoop in and help their agents when
they’re in a bind, and need a little hand from a true hero. And when he’s not fighting crime, he
relaxes in The Specter Cave by watching TV and playing video games. No, we’re not making that up.
Unsurprisingly, his favorite video games are ones where you get to play as superheroes, though he
will occasionally indulge in some Grand Theft Auto V - Just don’t expect him to break any traffic
laws while he’s playing, thank you very much. So if ever you feel afraid, or that the dark
forces that are all too human in this world are marshaling against you, know this: You don’t
fight alone. There’s a man in the shadows, ready to come to your aid. He’s a warrior
for justice. He’s a defender of the innocent. But most of all, he is… The Specter. Oh god, oh god, oh god. I’m trapped
in the Infinite Ikea! How long have I been here? How can I get out? How can I
survive the vicious Staff of the Infinite Ikea and work with the other survivors
in this terrifying, endless building? Okay. Let’s start from the beginning. Day 1. I’d come to this flat-pack
nightmare with my lovely wife, Brenda, to pick up some stupid sofa she
saw online. We could have ordered it in, but me, being a cheapskate and a fool,
instead decided it’d be a dandy idea to head in and pick it up ourselves - even though
I can’t stand shopping in these giant stores. Of course, it didn’t take long for us to
get separated. I was wandering around, just pretending I knew what I was doing.
Surrounded by unfamiliar people. Then… Not surrounded by any people at all. Like the
complete doofus I was, I’d somehow gotten lost. Just needed to find my bearings again
and then I could call Brenda to come save me. But I never did find my bearings. The
hours went on, and I was still lost… Day 2. My dominant emotion on this day
was nothing more than sheer humiliation, knowing I’d been bested by a damn Swedish
furniture store. I spent the night before sleeping on a futon, wondering how I’d
gotten myself into this flat-pack calamity. I spent the day searching for food, my
confusion and exhaustion increasing by the moment. For a while, I even
entertained the idea I might have died and gone to some Nordic hell.
That night, I went to bed hungry, knowing that if I didn’t eat soon, I might
be found as a skeleton on a dusty old futon. It can’t end like this. I can’t die on day 2… Day 3. I continued my journey through
the labyrinthine bowels of the Ikea, disoriented by the endlessly iterating
collections of cheap furniture. There was something terrifying about the emptiness
of it all, this affordable but impossible to assemble void. Starvation has always been
one of the most horrific deaths, hasn’t it? You could only imagine my relief when I saw
the figure standing a few feet in front of me, dressed like a member of Ikea staff.
I’d found salvation! I’d found someone who could help me out of here! But when
I approached, I realized something was horribly wrong: This wasn’t a human being
standing before me, it was a monster. A being I’d later come to know is called The
Staff by the many people who fear them. It chased me, repeating, “The store is
closed. You need to vacate the premises”, flailing for me with its long, frightening
limbs. I only survived Day 3 because I locked myself in a closet and just
waited while it hammered against the wood with its fists. Once the “night” was
over, it left, and I was able to escape. Day 4. I was feeling some intense hunger
pangs on this day, not to mention the fact that I now knew there were monsters out there,
just waiting to beat me to death if they caught me when the lights turned down. Needless
to say, I wasn’t in the best headspace, and I didn’t have enough charge on my phone
to justify opening up my meditation app. Then… I found Nirvana. I found the
cafeteria, stocked full of delicious, warm Swedish meatballs. No food had
ever tasted so sweet to me. And this delicious meal also gave way to one of the
most exciting new developments: Gloria. Gloria was a veteran. She taught me
everything I needed to know at this place. Even on the first day I met her, she felt like
someone I’d known for years. It was her that took me back to her home in this place: A little
fortress made of Ikea furniture, filled with a whole community of other people trapped in there.
It was like being allowed into the Garden of Eden. Day 5, and it feels good to be alive.
I met up with all the different people around the camp. They tell the most bizarre
and fascinating stories. This sounds crazy, I know, but I get the sense not all of them
came from the same place as me. Different Ikeas in different countries, or maybe even -
as nutty as it sounds - from different worlds. One guy, Tony, who’s been trapped in here for
a year and change, and we got talking about different vacations we’d taken on the outside.
He told me he was from New York, and I told him I visited there once, and I loved going to see
the Statue of Liberty up close. That’s when he told me that he’d never heard of the Statue of
Liberty. I didn’t know what to make of that. Strange little details aside, I couldn’t be
happier to be there with other people. The next step would be finding a way
out of here, and back to Brenda. Day 6. Gloria and several others led me out on
our first excursion - Missions where the goal was to collect more food and supplies,
and map the surrounding area. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw a Staff
member standing in our path at one point, and the others all just laughed at me. The
Staff member just stood there, placid and still. Gloria told me that it’s okay, the Staff are
harmless during the day. It’s only nighttime when they enter their pattern of aggression. So
as long as you don’t get lost during the daytime, you’re generally fine. The team
often used string, like Theseus, to trail behind them and ensure they don’t get
lost. It was clear they’d been here long enough to work out systems for every possibility.
Felt like I was in good hands with them. We collected meatballs and some rugs
to fortify the walls and headed back. Day 7. This was the first night that we had
to fend off a full-on attack. Those monsters, the Staff, came at us in huge groups, pounding
at the outside of our perimeter with their balled fists. It was terrifying. As a way
of fighting them off, we tied Ikea kitchen knives to the end of curtain rails and speared
them, one by one, until all of them were dead. But they just kept coming. More and
more and more of them. When it looked like one of the walls to the north
of the community was going to fall, everyone around me started to panic. That’s
when Barry, one of the biggest men in the camp, grabbed a hammer in each hand and
when outside. He fought like a beast, taking on Staff member after Staff member,
tanking hit after hit. It was something to see. That’s when he took off into
the depths of the store, drawing the Staff away behind him and saving
us all. We never saw Barry again after that, but he’s the reason all of us made it past
day 7. Thank you, Barry, wherever you are. Day 8. Gloria took me out alone today, on another
search for the escape. That’s when she told me about her sister: She’d gone shopping in
Ikea with her well over a year ago now, when she was separated and got lost in here,
just like me. I had a lot in common with her, including my feelings of guilt for abandoning
my loved ones and my drive to escape and be united with them. While we were out that day,
we didn’t find anything useful. Gloria seemed sad but unsurprised. The Infinite Ikea
had its way of slowly grinding you down. Days 9 to 17. Despite a rocky start, I was finding
my legs in the Infinite Ikea. I started to get to know my fellow Ikea prisoners, I started to
understand and truly befriend them. We went on expeditions pretty much daily, either
to collect new food, more supplies to help build up our community, or to keep searching
for an exit. To me, it started to feel like we were making progress, and that helped a
great deal to keep my emotions semi-stable. But it wasn’t the same for Gloria. After all,
she’d been here for so much longer than me, and she had her sister to consider on the outside.
To her, these routines I was becoming part of now felt like a prison within the prison. She
was trapped. Had her sister forgotten her out there? Had she been declared dead?
Were people even still looking for her? And it was on Day 18 that it all got
a little too much for poor Gloria. She’d snuck out of the camp at night, when the
staff were most active, trying to find the exit. Sadly, that’d cost Gloria her life. There’s no
way of knowing what happened to her exactly, but considering how bruised up
her body was when we found her, it was easy to make an educated guess: She’d
gotten bum-rushed by the Staff and beaten to death before she could even muster up a defense.
It was a horrible day to go. We tried to give her as dignified a funeral as we could, given the
circumstances: Closing her up in a body-sized box. That was the day I decided to stop just
trying to survive, and start trying to escape. I owed that to Brenda, if she really
had gotten out. I couldn’t keep her waiting. But I wouldn’t be alone. As it
turns out, another two members of the little Ikea community I’d come to
know were willing to risk it all with me: A man named Kelvin and a young woman named
Vicky. They were sick of just waiting around and fending off attacks from the Staff,
night after night. They both told me they’d rather die during an escape attempt than
while cowering under a pile of cheap rugs. And so, each armed with claw hammers
from the Six-Piece Ikea Fixa tool kit and as many Pruta Tupperware containers
full of meatballs as we could carry, we set off into the great unknown… of Ikea. We traveled for weeks, marking out tracks on
the ground with the MÅLA mixed-colors chalk selection so we never got caught going
in circles. One day bled into the next: Nights were spent trying to hide
in closets and bathtub while the Staff hunted relentlessly for people just
like us. Every single time, we got lucky. Until day 41. Here’s something you need to know about the
Infinite Ikea: You’re probably already aware, if you’re watching this, that the 24-hour
cycle of night and day is dictated by the store lights up above. But the space between
day and night isn’t a gradient here, it’s a cliff. You can be minding your
own business, when suddenly, pitch darkness, and now the staff are on your
ass. That’s exactly what happened on Day 41. We were in the middle of a kitchenware section,
surrounded by a few docile members of staff, when suddenly, the lights switched off and they
went hostile on us. They look pretty goofy after the initial shock has worn off, but believe me
when I say that these monsters can really pack a mean wallop when they want to, and we received
a reminder of this unfortunate fact that night. The staff swarmed us, repeating that awful
phrase, “The store is closed. You need to vacate the premises”, while they struck and flailed at
us. If it wasn’t for our trusty claw hammers, we would have been dead that night.
Thankfully, we were able to give better than we were getting. We managed to kill a
decent number of staff members and then make a run for a section with better hiding places.
Myself, Vicky, and Kelvin all stowed away in a large wardrobe until we saw light filtering
through the crack in the door, like we were rejected extras for some painful community
theatre take on The Chronicles of Narnia. But while we survived that night, we didn’t
survive unscathed. My face was swollen from a nasty punch one of the staff members
dealt me, and from the pain in my chest, I might’ve been dealing with a few broken ribs.
Kelvin sprained his ankle during the escape, and Vicky had a cut on her forehead from when
one of the staff members kneed her in the face during the fray. You never win
these fights, you just survive them. We made a temporary camp in the area
where we could rest and recover, as well as shaking off the justifiable
fear of death or grievous harm that dampened our resolve to get out of
this place. That took us to day 53. Of course, food was always a concern. I don’t
want to romanticize what happened in there, as much as I’m sure someone on the outside
might want to imagine this whole experience as some kind of exciting, survival horror game.
But I assure you, it was less “survival horror” and more survival and horror. Meaning not only
are we suffering from constant fear, stress, and paranoia for our safety in here, but we
also need to keep ourselves fed and watered. You’re just as likely to die from starvation
in here as you are to be beaten to death. We went in search of another Ikea Kitchen, where we could fill up on more water and
meatballs - your lifeblood in a place like this. It took us several more days of
searching and hiding, searching and hiding before we hit paydirt. By the time we actually got
our hands on the food and water, we were starving and practically coughing up dust. Those meatballs
were the most delicious food I’ve ever tasted, and I could tell from their faces that
Kelvin and Vicky felt exactly the same way. Though at that moment, I told myself,
if - no, when - I get out of here, I’d never eat another meatball. It’d probably give
me war flashbacks - or, I guess, store flashbacks. We filled up our Tupperware and shoved them
back into our Ikea Pivring backpacks. Then, we needed to keep moving, keep searching,
and keep marking the ground behind us as we fanned out into the great flat-pack yonder,
avoiding confrontations whenever we could. The three of us still had no idea what insanity was
waiting for us out there. We had no idea that there were even more dangerous things
than the Staff lurking in the shadows. Day 68. Of course, I kept count, writing
it down in my on the back of a JÄTTELIK coloring book. Trust me, when every
night could mean a horrible death, you keep track of the nights. Not a single
one of them escapes you. At a certain point, I think we all adapted, in our own way. It
was back to caveman times again, learning to be like our primal ancestors, hiding away
from the dark and the monsters that hid there. So it was extremely surprising for us to
get the most brutal attack during the day. At first, I thought we were being attacked by
the staff during daylight hours, like a bolt from the blue. That’s when we noticed they weren’t
attacking with their hands: They were all holding kitchen knives, holding us up like bandits. That’s
when we realized what had actually happened here: We weren’t being attacked by the staff, we
were being attacked by other humans dressed like the staff, wearing their hollowed-out
heads like grisly masks. They told us that we were coming with them, and if we resisted,
they’d cut us to ribbons. And seeing as none of us were movie action heroes, we thought
it’d be best to do exactly what they said. This was how we fell into the
clutches of Generalissimo Vardagen. Day 69, but things were not nice. I
don’t know if I mentioned this before, but the community I became a part of in the
Infinite Ikea after meeting Gloria was just one of many. Nobody knows exactly how many
people are trapped in here. I’m hardly a martyr for spending 68 days in there, I know
people who’ve been trapped in there for years, who’ve given up all hope of escape
and accepted their lot in life. They became the elders of a lot of these
communities, helping others adjust. Though of course, Generalissimo
Vardagen was not one of these people. Myself, Vicky, and Kelvin were dragged by the
strangers dressed as staff members into a fort made of smashed-up wood, nailed together into
a huge, ominous structure. It was a far more extensive structure than any of the communities
I’d visited or even heard about before in the Infinite Ikea. It was a true fortress, guarded
by many more of those knife-wielding people, dressed in the clothes and the flesh
of the staff. They looked like some evil cult straight out of a damn horror
movie; I’d never seen anything like it. We were dragged into a kind of
tent in the middle of the camp, made out of stitched-together rugs.
That’s where we met Generlissimo Vardagen, surrounded by his guards. I’d later learn
his namesake was a set of steak knives stocked in the Ikea kitchenware sections -
similar to the knives being wielded by his gallery of goons. The Generalissimo himself
was dressed like some absurd tinpot dictator, wearing a silly hat and a jacket covered in fake
medals. His whole presence felt like a cosmic punishment for daring to believe things couldn’t
get any more absurd than they already were. His men forced us down onto our knees,
and Vardagen cleared his throat to speak. “Quake in fear at the sight of this Ikea’s ruler,
the great and powerful Generalissimo Vardagen. I have united kingdoms from the gardening and
bathroom supplies departments, and crushed dissenting tribes in the office furniture section
to the West. If you wish to live, you will swear fealty to me and join my legion of servants.
If you do as I say, you will be given safety and security from the staff come nightfall. If you
do not bend the knee, I will have you destroyed!” By the time his little spiel was done, the man
was red in the face and sweating profusely. It was clear that, much like your average Ikea
shelving unit after a couple weeks of use, the great Generalissimo Vardagen had a few
screws loose. None of us liked the idea of becoming slaves to some flat-pack ghenghis khan,
so we tried to persuade him to just let us go, telling him that we hoped to escape the store,
and with our help, he could escape, too. That’s when we learned a sobering lesson:
For some people, life inside the Infinite Ikea was better than life outside. In the
real world, the Generalissimo had been a twice-divorced ex-salaryman with nothing to
his name but debts and regrets. But here, he was a demi-god. A leader among the
rest of us mere mortals. Why would he ever want to go back to the world that had
given him nothing and taken everything? Day 70 to Day 84. We were forced into weeks
of hard labor after that, toiling under the Generalissimo and his gang of brigands. The
soldiers worked us like dogs, making us carry food and furniture back to the Generalissimo’s
Scandanavian furniture fortress. One day bled into the next. The best I could say about any of this
was that at least we were safe behind the walls of the fortress at night, so we didn’t need to worry
about getting murdered by the staff in our sleep. However, tragedy struck again on day 85. Kelvin couldn’t take the work anymore. One day, I
think his mind just snapped. He refused to follow orders from the Generalissimo and his lieutenants,
even when they threatened him with death. Sadly, that night they would prove that this wasn’t just
some empty threat. When night fell, they tied up Kelvin’s arms and legs and left him outside
the fortress. We were just forced to watch as the staff assembled and beat our friend to death
while he lay there, unable to defend himself. Even in all the time I’d spent in the Infinite Ikea,
that was the most harrowing thing I’d ever seen. But in one of the few acts of
righteous cosmic justice that we’d seen since being trapped
in here, all those months ago, just a few days after Kelvin’s brutal
execution. Day 90. The day of the revolution. While I’d love to tell you I started
this, there are no heroes in this story, I just happen to be the one telling you
about it. Some internal conflict between the Generalissimo and his men boiled over into
a kind of civil war that tore the fortress apart from within. Vicky and I escaped, but
in different directions. I like to imagine she got out in the end, it helps me sleep
at night. But one thing I will tell you: Generalissimo Vardagen found out what happened
to tyrants, big and small, when his closest confidantes gave him the Julias Caesar treatment
with the knives from which he took his name. I don’t think there’s anything wrong
in taking a little joy in that. For days afterwards, I just walked. I
felt so empty, but I refused to just lay down and let myself die. Even though so
much of the hope had been beaten out of me, I couldn’t betray Brenda by just giving up in
here. It wouldn’t be right. It just wouldn’t be right. The days ticked on, and nothing changed. I
had no food, no weapons. I was getting so tired. Then… night fell, and the Staff
started chasing me. They seemed even more aggressive than before. I
couldn’t fight; all I could do was run. I ran and I ran and I ran, not even looking
where I was going, as the crowd of staff started catching up with me. Getting closer and
closer. I ran until there was a doorway before me. I didn’t even think, I was just trying to get
away. That’s when I noticed that the store’s roof was no longer above me. For the first time in one
hundred days, I was once again tasting fresh air. That’s right, folks. On day one hundred,
I was out. I’d truly made it out. This victory, however, was short-lived: A
group of about six staff members burst out of the front door behind me, charging towards
me with ferocious speed. I couldn’t move, all I could do was grit my teeth and wince,
ready to accept my death at what had otherwise been the high point of my recent life.
What a depressing irony that would be. But instead, gunshots rang out through the air. A
hail of bullets cleaved through the staff members, dropping them to the ground mere feet away from
me, stone dead. That’s when I turned to see a group of men with assault rifles and tactical
gear walking towards me. In any other situation, this might have been terrifying, but right
then, it was the happiest moment of my life. These men took me away from the
parking lot of what was now an abandoned Ikea. They told me they were
from a group called the SCP Foundation, and that I’d been declared missing for some
time now. I didn’t care about any of that: I just asked them if Brenda had gotten out. If she
hadn’t escaped too, then this was all for nothing. You can’t even imagine my relief when
they told me that Brenda was never even trapped. She was the one who reported my
disappearance after I’d dropped off the face of the earth in what she thought was
a perfectly normal Ikea shopping session, before that building was shut down and
cordoned off under some less-insane pretense. But Brenda was alive and safe, and I’d get to
be with her again. I have no shame in telling you I cried, but I’d like to specify
that they were absolutely tears of joy. The men from the SCP Foundation told me
that they’d give me medicine that’d help me forget all this after I told them
my story, and there’s no part of me that has a problem with that. Some things
are better left forgotten. But before the SCP Foundation wipes it all from my mind
and I get to go and live with my beloved wife once more, this was how I survived
100 dreadful days in the Infinite Ikea. Agent Kister was running for his life. Every
breath had burned in his throat, like inhaling chlorine gas. He sped through the dark, surrounded
by deafening metallic screams that bounced off the eternity of pipes scaling and strangling the
walls around him. As far as he was concerned, this was what Hell looked like. A nightmare
boiler room that would somehow be less scary if Freddy Kreuger was there, because at
least there’d be some kind of recognizably human intelligence to reason with. The
Pipes - SCP-015 - are truly unknowable. As an SCP Foundation Mobile Task Force
member, Agent Kister had seen some truly horrific things in the line of duty. He’d been
there during SCP-682 containment breaches, firing an assault rifle at the beast as its
scales hardened into a bulletproof carapace. He’d seen the femur breaker used on some poor,
godforsaken D-Class to lure Uncle Larry back into the containment chamber for some midnight fun.
In the most anxiety-inducing mission of his life, he’d once even bagged 096’s weeping face
after it slaughtered a whole mountain village. And these damn pipes were going
to be the thing that killed him. He turned a sharp corner, trying to block out
the screams of his teammates. Four of them had been sent in - The rest were already
dead, or worse. Stupid, stupid, stupid. They’d made a classic military mistake:
Underestimating the capabilities of their enemy. And in Agent Kister’s experience,
this had always been a capital offense. All to install that machine. That stupid
little remote control reconnaissance vehicle. That’s what they’d given their lives for… Agent Kister tried to blink away the
memory of Agent Montgomery’s face. Monty was the youngest member of the team -
28 years old, his first major mission into the heart of a skip. Kister wanted to
remember him how he’d first seen him: A bright-eyed greenhorn, ready to protect
the human race from the horrors that lay in the dark. But he’d been the first
to go when everything got F.U.B.A.R. It was the smaller pipes that got Monty. Four
of them shot out, spearing his lungs and heart, pinning him in place. Even if they tried to cut
him out, he would have been a goner. He coughed up blood and went ghost-white faster than you’d
ever imagine. Kister would never forget, for what little time he had left to live, the horrible
sight of the light leaving that kid’s eyes. And all this because one of them had
tripped on one of the pipes on the way out and busted it. The mission was already
done. What an awful, pointless way to die. Kister was yanked from his aching thoughts
by a sudden obstacle in the way. A huge, towering pipe that looked like a
pillar of flesh, covered in bulbous, staring eyes. The thought crossed his mind, Jesus,
these pipes really can be made out of anything… He looked down and saw a series of rubber
pipes slithering towards his feet along the ground like snakes. It was time to run
again, but how long could you even run for when the very location around you wants
you dead? They should’ve sent the Mole Rats for a job like this. The infinitely
reconfiguring pipes changed the layout of the warehouse around him, making escape
seem all the more unfeasible. That’s when he started thinking about the terrible
thing that’d happened to Agent Greene… When 015 turned hostile, they
needed to make a run for it, fast. It wasn’t unlike being a pathogen inside
a living body - You start to make trouble, and the body’s immune system is going to come
for you. And one of the most common mechanisms for a body fighting a virus is a fever - A sudden
increase in temperature that burns out the threat. The group turned and ran as the pipes started
twisting towards them. Agent Greene panicked and began striking at the pipes around
him with his hands. The first instinct would have been to shoot, but no guns were
permitted inside the SCP-015 warehouse. It reacted severely to any kind of tool being
brought into its proximity. Several dead agents and researchers could tell you
all about this if they hadn’t made that same mistake. But when things were already
going sideways, it left them defenseless. Agent Greene was soon boxed in, caged by a
latticework of pipes in varying sizes. He tried desperately to push them out of the way and
make an escape route, but the hissing noise was getting louder and louder as the pipes started
to turn a glowing red around him. After all, when a body needs to deal with a hostile
foreign object, it burns out the threat. Kister wished he could shake the awful,
high-pitched wail that Agent Greene made when the heat inside his pipe cage became unbearable.
It was like seeing a human get caught inside a giant bug zapper. His skin went black and charred,
and soon after, the heat had risen to such an insane degree that Agent Greene was reduced
to little more than ash in his pipe furnace. But Kister couldn’t afford to dwell.
He kept running, vaulting over a long, ragged pipe made from stinking human hair.
This terrible place stank of motor oil, mold, and death, But maybe those perceptions had been
colored by the terrible things he’d seen here. There it was again. That awful choked
screaming coming from inside the pipes. Agent Boggs. It was a nightmare to hear him shriek
like that. Boggs had been one of the toughest men that Kister had ever met - He mentored him, back
when he first became an MTF Member. Having Boggs on the team meant experience. It meant safety.
It meant that things would go okay. Kister had seen Boggs stare down some of the most horrifying
skips imaginable and not even flinch. And yet, here he was, screaming and bawling
like a hurt child in the pipes. Boggs was the next one to get taken.
As he and Kister ran through the dark, trying to find a way out, they’d passed a huge
pipe made of a soft, foam-like substance. A seam in the side of the pipe had yawned
open, and a tangle of writhing tentacles, each one barbed with thorns like the stem of a
rosebush. They enveloped Agent Boggs, cutting into his weathered skin. He gasped in pain, unable
to scream. It happened so fast. Before Kister even had a chance to grab him, he was pulled into
the pipe and the crevice sealed behind him. And that was when the screaming
really started for poor Agent Boggs. Kister hoped, for his sake,
that he would die sometime soon. Shrouded in the fog of his dark thoughts,
Agent Kister turned a corner and felt cold, hard metal suddenly collide with his face,
breaking his nose with an unpleasant crunch. He’d been clotheslined by a low pipe
that hadn’t been there before, and now, he was laid out on his back, face humming with
pain. Thoughts and feelings swam. He looked up into the seemingly infinite web of pipes weaving
through the air above him. He was right earlier, he just knew it. The place was Hell.
It’d be his eternal resting place. Suddenly, a new, huge shape moved into
the space above him. A pipe of ancient, rusty iron that looked older than even the
warehouse holding this whole mess. Right above him, there was a huge valve fixed into
the pipe’s belly. He watched, helpless, as the valve opened itself with a squeal, and a huge,
dark mass came pouring out of it onto his body. A sudden weight. A sudden warmth. Sound and
movement and tiny scratching claws. Rats. Thousands of big, hungry, black rats with
gnarled yellow teeth, clumps of fur purged from their skin by mange. Big, ropey, worm-like
tails swaying and whipping at the air. Who knows how long they’d been in that pipe? Who knows
when these rats had eaten anything that wasn’t their brothers and sisters? And here was Agent
Kister, given unto them by the glorious pipes. The last thing he ever saw were those nasty
yellow teeth, because they ate his eyes first. Word of the four disappeared - and
presumed dead - operatives soon reached Dr. Charles Ogden Gears,
the legendarily taciturn senior researcher that managed the SCP-015
project, among a myriad of others. His face didn’t betray a flicker of emotion
when he was informed about the men lost to SCP-015. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel
for them, more that he deemed it both unproductive and unprofessional to dwell
on the deaths of personnel when carrying out their duties. After all, being killed by
an anomaly was simply an occupational hazard, and a generous stipend would be sent to their
families to compensate for their tragic loss. Dr. Gears simply asked, “Was the
mission successful, in spite of the casualties? Did the team manage to install
the Modular Robotic Vehicle at the epicenter?” He was told that the MRV had
been successfully installed, at least. Dr. Gears nodded and began
scheduling a second exploratory mission for a few months in the future to
check the status of the machine. Still, in the meantime, the MRV would chug
along, doing what humans couldn’t - or perhaps, shouldn’t - do within the nightmarish mess
of ever-growing pipes. It would roll through, collecting information on everything around it,
hopefully giving the SCP Foundation an inroad to mapping the whole thing without needing to
send a cavalcade of staff into the danger zone just to discover more about these peculiar pipes.
Sure, some lives were lost getting it in there, but this measure would likely save
even more lives in the long run. That was… Until something went wrong.
The exact nature of what had happened to the MRV inside the domain of the pipes was a
mystery, but it wasn’t doing its intended job, and the SCP Foundation needed to find out why.
The second exploratory mission was required much sooner than they’d initially anticipated,
with a dual purpose: Collecting the readings, and finding out what exactly had
happened to the MRV in the first place. He included a more specific set of instructions
for the next mission: Only three members of personnel to enter SCP-015 this time, to minimize
potential loss. One trained technician to collect and read the diagnostics, and two guards to
maintain discipline and safety under pressure. With a setup like that, what
could possibly go wrong? Dr. Gears’ various assistants began headhunting
the perfect team for the job. Junior Researcher Lon, wanting to prove herself and climb up the
ranks, put her name forward. She was young, intelligent, and had the initiative to
get the job done. Though there was one thing that she hadn’t disclosed when she was
applying for this important new position: Junior Researcher Lon suffered from
claustrophobia, the fear of enclosed spaces. Then the hunt was on for the two members of
Foundation military personnel who’d escort Lon to the MRV to take the readings.
Like the two priests in The Exorcist, they decided to recruit one grizzled,
experienced operative and one extremely cautious young buck straight out of
the Foundation MTF Training Academy. The younger of the two operatives, codenamed
Agent Two, was careful and conscientious to a fault. He did things by the book or not at
all. The older operative, codenamed Agent Six, was quite the opposite. He’d done this job
long enough to operate solely on instinct, and resented his employers for expecting
him to approach his missions any other way. Lon, Agent Two, and Agent Six. The team
was assembled, and when the time came, they were taken to SCP-015 to execute their
mission. It should have been simple enough: Get in, collect the readings, and get back out.
Though a few weeks earlier, the same thing would have been said for the mission to install
the MRV which left for Mobile Task Force operatives dead or worse. Nothing was ever as
simple as it seemed when it came to SCP-015. They were only allowed flashlights inside.
Anything else carried a substantial risk of activating SCP-015’s defensive state,
putting all of their lives in jeopardy. Lon had tried to keep things light, masking
her own terrible fear at this strange new situation. She’d joked that perhaps the
three of them should get Mario hats, seeing as they were plumbers now.
Agent Two had happily laughed along, suggesting that perhaps he should be
Luigi. Agent Six was utterly unamused by this whole situation and wanted no part of
it, which is honestly just so Wario of him. They followed along a carefully-mapped route
through the pipes, being careful not to touch any of them. After all, you never know what could
set SCP-015 off. Agent Six didn’t share in their merriment or their concern. In fact, he had
contempt for them and this whole situation. He thought Lon and Agent Two were a pair of
frightened, skittish children willing to buy whatever Foundation-assigned bullhonkey they
were given. He didn’t believe that SCP-015 was anywhere near as dangerous as they’d been told.
In all likelihood, knowing the eggheads up top, they just didn’t want men of action like him
breaking any of their precious little toys while conducting missions on their behalf.
This whole thing was a big, stupid joke. As they ducked and weaved through the
confines of SCP-015, the tension between them all just silently grew. Their
flashlights played along the pipes, revealing the insane variety of shapes, sizes,
compositions, and materials in here. Wood, steel, flesh, bone, glass, pressed ash, granite,
and so much more. And yet, there were no pipes comprised of any standard pipe-making
material, like lead, PVC plastic, or copper. It was undeniably freaky, but when
you work with SCPs for long enough, you learn to stop asking questions about the more
minor forms of strangeness inherent to anomalies. The composition only got narrower as
they delved deeper into the warehouse. Lon felt the anxiety like a hand
gripping her throat and squeezing, but tried still to keep it hidden. Agent Six, the
largest among them, almost got stuck a few times, trying to crawl into spaces too tight for
him to fit. He felt like murdering Lon when she threw out a casual comparison to Winnie the
Pooh in the process. When they reached the MRV, it gave them an ounce of momentary
relief. The journey was halfway done. But that comfort was quickly squashed by
seeing what had actually happened to the MRV: It had been speared by a pipe, and new
pipes had grown through and out of it, effectively rooting it in place. This caused
immediate debate among the group around one key issue: Did this mean that the MRV was
now technically part of the pipes? And, by extension, would the pipes feel the need
to defend themselves if the databanks were removed from the MRV in order to deliver the
readings back to the researchers at Site-17? While Lon and Agent Two carefully discussed
the issue, Agent Six lost his temper, and decided to show these two foolish kids
how it was done. He claimed that the two of them were worrying about a bunch
of Foundation hooey that they were inexperienced and gullible enough to
believe: As if this bunch of weird pipes was actually dangerous! It was like
how every six anomalies there’s apparently one capable of ending the world. It’s all a
bunch of overblown fearmongering nonsense! And to prove that he wasn’t just all talk
on this front, Agent Six pried open the top of the MRV and slid out the data cards - which
seemed to be covered in some kind of viscous, unpleasant liquid from the pipes that’d
penetrated the device. Still, he’d gotten what they came for. He could have done this whole
thing alone, without this pair of bedwetters. He scoffed and said, “Kids. I
don’t know how you two survive.” But he shouldn’t have spoken so soon. The
large pipe that he didn’t even realize he was standing on opened up beneath his feet,
and seconds later, he was immersed up to his shoulders in it. Six began to let out the
most horrifying shrieks you’ve ever heard, and when Agent Two and Lon ran over to
try to help him out, they realized why. The pipe below Agent Six was
filled with flowing molten iron. By the time they pulled Agent Six out -
Well, Agent Six from the shoulders up, considering that was all that was left
- he was already dead. And despite the actual aggressor being destroyed, SCP-015
wasn’t done. It was ready to clean house. As Agent Two and Lon attempted to flee,
some eye-level pipes around them burst, firing crystalized glass into their faces,
cutting into their skin and eyes. But they needed to push on despite the pain if
they wanted to survive and get out. The two of them ran, horrifying noises of twisting
and bursting pipes roaring behind them. Pipes made of thorns and bones started to grow, blocking
off their exits until they were trapped. Lon, utilizing her small frame, was able to
crawl through a gap in the pipes into an adjoining chamber. Two was given a horrifying
surprise when a pipe burst near his hand, showering his flesh in thick, corrosive
gunk. His hand melted away at the wrist. As Lon called for help in the tiny, cramped
chamber she was locked in, Two ran off to try and find an exit, where he could bring more
people in to help them. But it would already be too late for poor Lon. A thick, honey-like
substance began bleeding into the chamber, disgusting in its overpowering saccharine
flavor and gloopy, viscous thickness. The chamber seemed to get smaller and smaller as Lon
screamed and the honey level rose. Eventually, it got higher than her mouth and nose could
reach. She gave a horrifying final gurgle, and then she was gone, entombed
forever between the pipes. Agent Two kept running. His flashlight was
beginning to die, but he didn’t care. As his eyes bled from the splinters of glass and
what was left of his hand dripped from the jagged nub of his wrist, all he could do was
keep moving forwards. He panted and screamed and stumbled in the dark until he tripped on
something he didn’t notice and pitched forwards. He tumbled into the gaping maw of a nearby
pipe, surrounded by unseeable, unknowable ooze, as he tumbled further down into the seemingly
infinite darkness. It was too dark to see and too cramped to move anywhere but straight
down. All he could do was scream and scream and scream until his voice was hoarse and
his throat bled, though nobody was there to even hear his cries. Days later, when his skin
started to shred off, it was almost welcome. Dr. Gears would later receive the
news of this tragically failed mission and the three operatives now
declared MIA because of it. He sighed, and wrote up his report on the
matter, closing with the sentence: “Data deemed non-vital in light of lost staff.
SCP-015 classification level review suggested.” The Foundation was in chaos. One minute, Dr.
Bright was looking into some harmless products on Amazon to help the Foundation's anomalies
have a nicer experience in their cells. The next, he was physically fighting for his life
against the company's CEO. Of course, Dr. Bright’s wacky antics had revealed
the location of the SCP Foundation’s most valuable containment site to Jeff
Bezos and his legions of minions. Does Dr. Jack Bright have it in him to fix
his mistake, defeat the mighty Jeff Bezos, and save the SCP Foundation from
corporate servitude? Are the forces of the SCP Foundation equal in strength to the
Amazon horde? And how, at the eleventh hour, will anomalies like SCP-096, SCP-682,
SCP-173, and SCP-049 help save the day? Buckle up. The only way to
find out is to keep watching. The two titans, Dr. Bright and
the freakishly buff Jeff Bezos, were locked into an intense struggle.
The hapless immortal tried his best to punch and kick the augmented CEO,
but all it did was make Bezos laugh. “Pathetic, Jack,” Bezos roared. “Let
me show you how a real man does it.” With one punch, Bezos sent Dr.
Bright skidding across the dirt, seeing stars. Bezos punched him so hard, Dr.
Bright felt like he’d been hit by a runaway truck. Where had he even gotten all this anomalous
technology? Something more was going on here... But before Dr. Bright could collect his thoughts,
Bezos was already upon him. The ruthless business mogul clasped his hands together and brought
them down onto the back of Jack’s head in a brutal pile drive, burying his head in the dirt.
The guards of Site-19 looked on in terror at the thousands of Amazon troops surrounding
them - And they were betting all this on a fist fight? And what’s more, it didn’t look
like Dr. Bright was winning that fist fight. Unless the good doctor used his special move. Bezos, still cackling like a Saturday
morning cartoon villain, grabbed Dr. Bright by his hair and dragged him out of the
dirt. He lifted the Doctor, bloody and bashed, with one hand. At that moment, Dr. Bright
knew that he had to go with the nuclear option here - he needed to use SCP-963 to take over the
body of Jeff Bezos and end this demented war. “Had enough, Jack?” Bezos said. “Or
do you want me to humiliate you even more in front of your sad little employees?
Or, should I say, my sad little employees!” Without another word, Dr. Bright grabbed
the amulet hanging around his neck and balled it into his fist. Moving as quickly as
he could, he lunged at Bezos with the medallion, knowing that one touch should be enough
to finish this whole thing. But then, the unexpected happened: Bezos caught Dr.
Bright’s hand. The flesh of the CEO’s fist turned obsidian black. He gave a cruel
smirk. He was still himself. Impossible… All the SCP Foundation staff in
attendance were shocked and horrified, but none more than Dr. Bright himself. This was
the first time that SCP-963 simply hadn’t worked! “I don’t understand,” Jack said, voice
trembling as Bezos squeezed his hand with an iron grip. “I should have taken
you over. How is this possible?” Bezos chuckled before unleashing a brutal
headbutt on Dr. Bright, throwing him back through the air. Bright was lucky he managed to
keep a grip on the medallion - this body hadn’t worn it for thirty days; if he dropped it, he
would have just been another useless necklace. “Nanomachines, son!” Bezos barked,
cracking his neck back into place. “I had them designed with you in mind.
Any time and anywhere your necklace touches me, they reshuffle my genetics to
turn that flesh into inanimate psuedometal. Do you think I’d lead an assault on
the SCP Foundation without planning for every possible eventuality?
I’ve been playing the long game!” It was at this point that the Foundation guards
assembled outside the building opened fire on Bezos, but it was no use. The bullets just
ricocheted off of his anomalously enhanced physique. He just gave a bellowing laugh and
ordered the full strength of his forces to move in. As far as he was concerned, the fight
was already won. If their forces could plant the grinning Amazon flag in the heart of
Site-19, the SCP Foundation would be his. It was time for the true final battle to begin. Amazon’s troops loaded their weapons and
charged, firing volley after volley of bullets onto the Foundation guards entrenched
in their positions. Of course, the Foundation personnel was better trained, but the Amazon army
outnumbered them ten to one. It was only a matter of time until the barricades gave way, and the
forces spilled into the containment facility. And then they did. Inside the building, Dr. Clef was
reading his new copy of Shotguns: A Comprehensive Guide, when the army breached
the perimeter. It was at this point that he put down the book and picked up his favorite
shotgun, a Remington Model 11-87 - fun fact: Also the preferred weapon of Anton Chigurh
from No Country For Old Men - and entered the fray. They’d need every SCP Foundation
hand on deck to repel the incoming attack. The one thing that not even Dr. Clef predicted
was for the anomalies to get involved, too. You see, in ordering his troops to attack Site-19, the fleet of Amazon attack helicopters above
began launching AGM-114 Hellfire missiles at the building to knock out guard towers and
strategic communications arrays. This, however, had the unintended effect of causing power
fluctuations within the building, and with so many of the reserve generators devoted to maintaining
external security against the Amazon army, internal security failed entirely. In other words,
a whole lot of cell doors were popping open. A group of Amazon footsoldiers was making
their way down hallway 6C when they saw something strange on the ground: A tide of
green, bubbling chemicals that produced a horrific smell. Little did they know, this was
powerful hydrochloric acid, but in this instance, it wasn’t the acid that they should be worried
about. They heard a raspy voice behind them say... “Disssgussssting...” That’s when they turned to see SCP-682,
the giant, rage-fueled immortal reptile, standing right behind them. It had just finished
its exotic beef jerky collection, and now, it was eager for seconds. The Amazon soldiers
panicked and began to open fire on the beast, but all that succeeded in doing
was annoying it. SCP-682 leaped onto them and began devouring the
group of hapless mercenaries alive. Elsewhere in the facility, another group of Amazon
mercenaries was chasing some defenseless SCP Foundation researchers through the secure humanoid
containment wing. The researchers tried to run, but soon, they were backed into a corner. The
mercenaries laughed and leveled their assault rifles. This would be an easy kill. However, the
second they tried to fire, they realized something extremely strange had occurred: All of their guns
had turned into delightful bouquets. Standing between them and the researchers they intended
to kill was SCP-343, also known to some as God. “Now, now, boys,” SCP-343
said with a slight smile. “Can’t we all just get along? Make love, not war.” Frightened by the seemingly impossible act they
just witnessed, the now unarmed mercenaries ran into a nearby room with a sturdy-looking
door and locked themselves in. Hopefully, nobody would get them here. That thought
was interrupted by a grandiose voice with an archaic French accent speaking out behind them. “Why hello there, good sirs! So kind
of you to step into my practice today.” They turned and saw a strange, robed man
wearing a runner pigeon mask. The figure removed the mask, only to reveal what
seemed like another strange beaked mask underneath. It was SCP-049, his desk covered
in pleasingly-polished Amazon medical tools. “My, my, you gents seem a little
under the weather. This is a cause for concern,” the Plague Doctor said as
he began to walk toward the frightened mercenaries. “The Pestilence runs
rife these days. Not to worry, though. I’m an expert. And I’ve been
itching to try out my lovely new tools...” Horrified screaming was heard from
the room shortly after, then silence. But Amazon troops kept pouring in. It was
an all-out assault beyond any that Site-19 had ever experienced. Some Amazon strike teams
were making their way through the break rooms, hunting for more Foundation employees to
capture or execute. One of them remarked that these SCP Foundation employees must
be real headcases - Why else would they keep such a hideous concrete sculpture
in their break room? Utterly bizarre. The second they found there was no one
inside and turned to leave the room, they all lay dead on the ground with
snapped necks. That would make it seventeen Amazon mercenaries they’d killed today - The
Sculpture was having a truly wonderful time. Meanwhile, over in his office, Dr. Clef was
fighting for his life. A group of junior researchers were taking refuge in there with him
and handing him shotgun shells from his many, many boxes of them when he needed to reload.
Soldier after soldier was running into the room, and Clef was using his trusty
Remington pump-action to blow them away with incredible precision
every time one of them ran in. An awestruck researcher asked,
“How good are you with that thing?” Clef laughed and said, “Kid, I could
unbutton your lab coat with it.” But then tragedy struck: Dr. Clef ran
out of shells. He sighed and told the assembled researchers to run out of the back exit and save themselves. He’d hold back
the tide of Amazon mercenaries alone. He kissed his shotgun and said, “Forgive me for
this, Remy,” then grabbed it by the barrel. If he couldn’t shoot with it, he’d at least use it
as a club. He ran out into the fray, bashing down mercenaries left and right with his shotgun
club until he was finally outnumbered. A group of heavily-armed soldiers surrounded him, holding him
at gunpoint. One of them gave the order to fire. “Wait!” Dr. Clef said. “I can be
valuable to you. You don’t know who I am, do you? Give me a second; let me show you my ID.” Dr. Clef pulled an ID wallet from his lab coat and showed it to the soldiers. They looked
at it, confused and a little disturbed. The leader of the group
said. “That’s not an ID card, you schmuck. What the hell
is that ugly thing anyway?” By this point, Dr. Clef had already closed his
eyes. A distant screaming got closer and closer, until the wall of his office exploded.
SCP-096 entered the room, shrieking with rage, and began tearing the hapless soldiers to shreds.
Clef rolled away, keeping his eyes closed and waiting for the carnage to be over. But in a
grander sense, the carnage had only just begun. Oh, and for those who were curious, yes, SCP-811
did get her blobfish plushy. She loved it. Outside the facility, Jeff Bezos looked upon
the destruction he wrought and laughed. It was just as wonderful as he’d imagined it in
all his years of intense planning for this very moment. It’d all unfolded exactly to
his design. The SCP Foundation would fall, and his master plan would finally be complete. Dr. Jack Bright, demoralized but not defeated,
rose shakily to his feet. This whole disaster had been his fault. Had had to redeem this. He
had to defeat Jeff Bezos, or the Foundation would fall into his iron clutches. Even if it finally,
truly, killed him, Dr. Bright would not give up. “Impressive tech,” Dr. Bright said,
cracking his knuckles and getting Jeff’s attention again. “Which
sweat shop built it for you?” Jeff just laughed and turned to Bright
again, more than ready for round two. “A little place called Prometheus Labs,
Jack,” Jeff said. “Remember them? I was on the board of directors before the incident.
Just like you and your Foundation dogs, they left behind plenty of goodies for me.” Dr. Bright charged at Bezos, screaming in animal
fury. He punched the smug anomalous businessman square in the jaw. Bezos barely even flinched.
He gave Jack an utterly brutal open-handed slap, knocking him towards the entrance to Site-19,
where more Amazon soldiers were still pouring in. Still, Jack began to stand again. “What the hell does a corporate
stiff like you want with the SCP Foundation?” he said. “We want
to help the world, not rule it.” Bezos sneered and began stomping
toward the immortal doctor. “I don’t just want to rule the world,
Jack. I want to hold it in my hand like an apple and take a big, juicy bite. All
that exists will belong to me,” he said, throwing a punch that Dr. Bright was thankfully
able to dodge. “That’s always been the plan, and the SCP Foundation is the final piece I need.” Dr. Bright, summoning all the adrenaline
in his body, unleashed a flurry of sharp punches to Jeff’s abdomen. He simply
tanked every strike and laughed. “I’ve been funding the Chaos Insurgency for
years, Jack. I’m one of Marshall, Carter, and Dark’s largest shareholders. Amazon
is Dr. Wondertainment’s primary global distributor. The Sarkicists,
The Fifthists, The Mekhanites, those pretentious art snobs at Are We Cool Yet,
they’re all in my deep pockets!” Jeff roared. He wrapped one of his massive hands
around Dr. Bright’s throat and lifted him clear off the ground.
Jack struggled against his grip. “You’ve spent decades worrying about
all the wrong things, Jack,” Jeff said, slowly tightening his grip around Dr.
Bright’s throat. “The Devourer Of Worlds? The Black Moon? The Scarlet King? My new world
won’t have a king. It’ll have a CEO. And with the power within these walls, I’ll be the
Chairman of the Cosmic Board! And it all starts with me killing you and turning your
silly little necklace into a paperweight!” But Jack had an ace up his sleeve. Something
he had the good sense to pocket before facing Bezos on the battlefield. He reached
into his lab coat and pulled out SCP-662, The Butler’s Hand Bell. One little ring and
Mr. Deeds suddenly appeared right next to them. Jack barely managed to wheeze out,
“Deeds, kick Jeff in the groin!” “Of course, sir, “ Mr. Deeds
said, before doing exactly that. Jeff winced in pain and loosened his grip on Dr.
Bright’s neck. The plucky immortal took his chance to wriggle free from Jeff’s grip and run into
the facility, yelling back, “Deeds, stall him!” But before Deeds could execute this order,
Jeff Bezos fractured the anomalous butler’s skull with a single punch, and chased Dr. Bright
into the facility. He would have his revenge! As Dr. Bright fled, he grabbed his Foundation
walkie-talkie and frantically spoke into it, “Clef, I’m in big trouble! I
think I have a way to stop this, but there’s just something you
need to do for me first...” Battles were raging on throughout the site.
Some Amazon soldiers had unloaded their rifles into Cain, only to find themselves
on the floor, dying of massive blood loss. Other squadrons of mercenaries were being
tortured by the nightmarish SCP-106 in his terrifying pocket dimension. He was having a
wonderful time. SCP-999 was even tickling a gaggle of Amazon’s hired veteran war
criminals into absolute submission. Much to Jeff’s rage and horror, it looked
like, with the help of the anomalies, the Foundation might actually
be able to turn the tide. This would not do. He’d destroy Bright
and take care of the rest personally. “It has to be this way, Jack!” Bezos yelled
after the fleeing doctor. “I’m making the mother of all corporate omelets here, can’t
fret over a few ransacked containment sites!” Bezos’ self-aggrandizing rants were
interrupted by SCP-682 leaping onto him out of an adjoining hallway, giving Dr.
Bright even more time to create distance between them. 682 fought valiantly
and viciously, but Jeff’s Prometheus Labs nanomachine augmentations gave him the
edge. He was able to get 682 into a headlock, Steve Irwin style, then punch it in
the head until it was knocked out. Jeff sighed, relieved, and
continued the chase after Jack. As Jeff turned a corner to chase Dr.
Bright, he ran right into one of Jack’s traps. There was Dr. Bright, standing about
fifteen feet away from him, holding his favorite item that he normally wasn’t
allowed to use: The Chainsaw Cannon. Jack smirked and said, “Smile, you son of a—“ BOOM! A chainsaw projectile blasted
towards Jeff at incredible speeds. It was through pure luck and superhuman
reflexes that Jeff was able to catch it between his palms by the blade and
hold it in place, even as it cut into his nanite-hardened skin. With a grunt
of rage, he threw the saw to the ground. “Is that all you got, Jack?” he growled. “Not quite,” Dr. Bright replied. “I’ve
got a few friends who owe me some favors.” Suddenly, Bezos heard footsteps behind him.
He turned to see three figures standing there, primed and ready for battle: SCP-4494, The Specter, SCP-5151 The Black
Knight, and SCP-2800, Cactusman. “You fight without honor, Sir Jeffrey!” The
Black Knight proclaimed as he drew his longsword. “Aye, and I can’t stand bullies!” Said
Cactusman as his spikes began to grow. “Wage theft and tax evasion is a
crime, evildoer!” The Specter added. “Well, then,” Jeff said. “I suppose
I’ll just have to kill you all...” The fight began. Our group of four heroes
held their own impressively, to begin with. They consistently helped each other block or avoid
the deadly strikes that Bezos was unleashing and return their own. Four anomalies against one.
The Black Knight even gave Dr. Bright one of his spare swords to give him a better chance
of landing a meaningful blow against Bezos. But in the end, it was all for nothing.
Bezos powered up, his nanomachines drawing energy from the building around him, until he
was even larger and stronger. In his state, he easily beat down his four attackers,
incapacitating them and standing over Bright. “It’s useless, Jack,” he said with
another evil laugh. “You can’t beat me.” “I know,” Jack groaned in pain. “But I
did a pretty good job of stalling you.” At that moment, Clef came running down
the hall, wielding another firearm. But it wasn’t a shotgun this time. In fact, it
didn’t even look like a real gun, it looked like a spray-painted Nerf gun. That got another
laugh out of Jeff. What an utterly feeble attempt. That’s when Dr. Clef leveled the nerf gun
and fired one of its darts at Jeff’s chest, where it seemed to bounce off uselessly. “Really?” He asked, incredulous.
“Come on. This is just getting—“ His words were cut off by an uppercut
from Dr. Bright. Inexplicably, he actually felt that one. Jeff staggered back,
rubbing his jaw as Bright rose to his feet. “How the hell did you hurt me?”
Jeff muttered, genuinely shocked. Dr. Bright smirked. “That was the Nerfing Gun, chrome dome. We just made your
precious nanomachines useless.” With another incredibly well-earned punch in
the face from Dr. Bright, Jeff was down on the ground with a bleeding nose. Elsewhere
in the facility, the researchers, guards, and anomalies working together had defeated
the dark forces of Amazon. Outside, Hammer Down - The largest and most militarily powerful
Mobile Task Force - had arrived and wiped out what remained of Jeff’s invasion force outside.
It wasn’t easy, but the SCP Foundation had won. As Jeff lay on the ground, holding his broken
nose, Dr. Bright held him at sword point. “Wait, Wait!” Jeff said. “Let’s not let
hard feelings linger. We’re both adults, right? And I’m a businessman. I make deals.
Compromises. I can give you anything from the Amazon stock, free of charge! As long as we
agree that I can go and we forget all this!” Dr. Bright smiled and thought it over. “Well...” he said. “There are
a few things I think I’d like for myself. And there are still plenty
more anomalies that need enriching...” Victory secured. Want another video abo but the
deranged things Dr. Bright bought for even more anomalies and Foundation staff? Let us know
down in the comments, and we’ll continue the strangest story that the SCP Foundation’s
most eccentric researcher ever told... 2:00 AM, a few miles outside the city.
The car tore down the asphalt at sixty miles an hour. We kept the beams
low, the dark road around us only illuminated by the occasional street lamp
overhead. Things moved unseen in the trees. An old song rattled off the
radio. The connection was patchy, so it was interrupted by intermittent spikes of
static. It was the kind of night when you knew, deep down, that anything could happen. You just
hoped that “anything” would be in your favor. I’d rolled the window down a few
minutes ago, breathing in all that cold, fresh air to stave off the looming specter
of sleep. Thank god I wasn’t the one driving, or things would’ve gotten deadly way sooner. Cops
would’ve found us with our bumper wrapped around a tree, our heads one with the steering wheel
or the windshield, dead on impact or from the unforgiving cold overnight. They might’ve even
felt sorry for us, until they found the case. Perhaps it would have been better that
way. At least it would’ve been quick. A lot of bad things can happen on lonely
state highways in the dead of night, and we were about to find out that just
crashing your car was one of the more mild ones. Scott was driving. He was also the
one who brokered this whole deal, I was just coming along to provide backup.
There was a fully-loaded Saturday Night Special sitting in my inner coat pocket, hoping
that it wouldn’t see any action tonight, and a pump-action shotgun sitting in the back in
case things got really hairy. Deals like this, you either come well prepared or reckon with the
heavy chance you sure as hell won’t be leaving. I never asked Scott how he came into the
goods currently sitting in the briefcase and he never offered an explanation, either.
He only told me that he’d already secured a very interested potential buyer from a
syndicate out of town. Serious people. Dangerous people. They’d pay top dollar or
leave us tied up in trash bags in a ditch off the side of the highway. But we both
needed money, and we were willing to take that risk if it meant we could return
from this deal as a pair of rich men. The terms of the deal were simple: We’d
drive out onto a certain state highway at a little after 2:00 AM with the goods, meet
the buyers at a certain rest stop along the way, and make the exchange. We’d then all go
our separate ways, and if we were lucky, none of us would ever see each other
ever again. Seemed simple enough, sure. Scott seemed downright chipper about
the whole thing. And for a little while, I was excited too, until he told me about the
road that the buyers wanted to meet us on. We’d all heard legends about that
place. Superstitions, really. People think criminals are scary, but believe me,
we’re a surprisingly superstitious bunch. Our profession is one largely based on luck.
Being in the right place at the right time, and being lucky enough to avoid the cops along
the way. But something you need to know, whether you’re a criminal or arrow-straight, is that some
places are always going to be the wrong place. I’m not gonna tell you which road it is. I
know what you knuckleheads are like. You’re curious. You’re thrill-seekers. Hey, we were all
young once. But if I tell you what this road is, I know you’re gonna try to find it. Maybe
you’ll even decide it’s worth the trip down for a pleasant Sunday drive. Ha! After what I
went through on that road, I wouldn’t wish a trip down it on my worst enemy. There’s no other word
for what we encountered there other than evil. When we were kids, we used to call it The
Devil’s Passage. Every spooky rumor and scary story in the book circulated about that
place. Lemme see what I can remember… Well, there was the Watcher In The Woods.
People used to say that there was a long, tall figure with the biggest eyes you’d ever
seen - eyes like headlights - standing amongst the trees. If the moonlight shone in at
the right angle as you were driving past, you’d see it standing there, just staring
at you, thinking about doing who-knows-what. Then there was Old Beth, the Ghostly Hitchhiker.
People used to say they saw a strange old woman, hobbling down the side of the road in the middle
of the night. Sometimes, people said they could hear her crying, even if they were far enough
away to make such a thing seem impossible. If you took pity on her and pulled over, asking
her if she needed a ride, she’d tell you that you were a very kind person, but that she
was fine and dandy walking along by herself. But if you didn’t stop and offer her
a lift, if you just drove away… Well, local legend had it that the next time you’d
see her face would be in your rearview mirror, as she sat in your back seat, reaching
for you with her ancient, bony claws. It’d make you think twice about leaving an
old woman to walk home alone in the dark. And of course, there was the Lone Jogger.
The stories my dad told me about him always used to scare the hell out of me. He was
a pale man, dressed unnaturally light for the cold winter months, jogging along the
side of the road. If you looked at him, he’d look back. If your eyes ever met, the
stories went that he’d start running after you. It wouldn’t matter how fast you
drove, he’d somehow always catch up, and stare at you through the glass of your
car’s windows. He never hurt anyone directly, but I imagine he probably caused a heart attack
or two in his time, if he ever really existed. But all of these were nothing - I repeat,
nothing - compared to the phantom cruiser. You had to drive cautiously at night,
cause if you didn’t, you might find a ghostly 1970s police cruiser tailgating you,
and that’d be the worst thing you ever saw. There were fewer stories about
this one than all the others, because if you ever ran afoul of the
phantom cruiser, chances are that you wouldn’t survive to tell people about what
happened to you. Though people could still make an educated guess about what happened
to you based on whatever was left behind. Here’s a not-so-fun fact: The Devil’s Passage
is technically qualified for one of the most dangerous highways in the country. From crashes
to hitchhiker murders to unexplained deaths on the side of the road, since 1974, this road has
been an incredibly unpleasant place to drive. Every time I saw another horror story
about a strange death on the road, I’d think of the Phantom Cruiser. And it was
those same thoughts polluting my brain that night, as Scott drove the two of us to the rest
stop halfway down the Devil’s Passage. I only realized I’d dozed
off when he nudged me awake, and the blurry lights of distant street
lamps flashed into my field of vision. “Look alive,” he said. “We’re here.” The rest stop wasn’t much to look at. All
that was there was an abandoned gas station, really the perfect place for
this kind of illicit deal. My hand moved instinctively
to the Special in my coat and clicked back the hammer. Something
about this whole setup wasn’t right. Sting operation? Police ambush? This whole
thing reeked of a deal too good to be true. My instincts turned out to be right, in a
sense, just not in the way I was expecting. As we turned into the rest stop, Scott turned up
his beams. All we saw was carnage waiting for us: A car - presumably one that once belonged
to our prospective buyers - in a state of horrific disarray. It looked as though a
train had impacted the side of the vehicle, completely caving it in. The metal
was covered in deep scratches and ruts that looked almost like claw
marks. It had been eviscerated. Scott broke, hard, and we both got out
of the car. I drew the Special out of my jacket and he grabbed the shotgun out of
the back seat. We approached with caution, worrying this might just be another part of
the setup until we saw the thick puddle of blood congealing under the driver’s side
door. We drew closer, propelled mostly by morbid curiosity. Was it a hit from a rival gang
looking to intercept the deal? It seemed logical, but there were no bullet holes in the car. Just
ripping, tearing, and massive impact damage. Scott shined the light of his phone into
the destroyed car, and I vomited when I saw what was inside. The buyers looked less like
people and more like two stacks of pulled pork in tattered clothes. If I hadn’t seen them
inside the car, I wouldn’t have even guessed they were human. And the damage wasn’t just to
them: The upholstery was torn up and burned, with violent symbols carved into the walls
and scrawled on the cracked windows in blood. When I turned to Scott, he was ghost-white,
clutching his phone and the shotgun with trembling hands. We didn’t exchange a word, but we both
knew it was time to leave. We could find another buyer. There would be other opportunities, other
deals. But lives? You only get one, and we both silently acknowledged that if we stuck around
here much longer, we wouldn’t even have that. We sped back into the car and locked the doors
behind us - for whatever good that would do, considering the damage that’d been
done to the buyers and their car. Perhaps we just needed that illusion of
security to get us the hell out of here. The car pulled out of the rest stop
at break-neck speed. Scott floored it, trying to put some good distance between
us and the horror at the rest stop. Whatever had happened to the Buyers, we
didn’t fancy sharing that same awful fate. My heart dropped down into my guts when I heard
the sirens and the flashing lights behind us. After all this, we’d been busted for speeding.
They’d pull us over and find the guns and the briefcase in the car, and they’d have a lot of
questions that neither of us would have good answers to. We didn’t know whether to slow
down and hope for the best or speed up and take this boy in blue on a genuine car chase.
This whole thing couldn’t have gone more wrong. But my thoughts soon drifted from getting
used to the taste of prison food to something altogether more sinister: When I saw the
car getting closer in the rearview mirror, I realized that this wasn’t a modern cop car
tailing us. It was a beat-up old 70s cruiser, traveling at insane speeds, gaining on us. The
high beams cut through me like razor blades. I heard the radio crackle into life, even though
neither I nor Scott touched it. It wasn’t music, just a hoarse, scratchy voice repeating the word
“Run” again and again. And seeing as whatever was behind us clearly wasn’t a real cop, we
were more than happy to oblige that request. Scott hit the gas like our lives
depended on it - Which, to be fair, they did. But no matter how fast we sped
up, the cruiser kept getting closer, like a demon on our tail. I screamed at Scott to
go faster, but we were going as fast as we could. Next thing I knew, the phantom cruiser
collided with the back side of our car and sent us into a spin, showering the
two of us with broken glass crystals as the tires screeched across
the asphalt. It felt like an eternity before the car came to rest, and at
that moment, the phantom cruiser stopped too. Someone got out. He was dressed like a cop, he
even looked like a cop - a dude in his forties, balding, overweight, with a handlebar
mustache - but something was wrong about him. He didn’t say a word
as he approached the car, and he didn’t seem to register me sliding
the Special out of my jacket, either. He was inches away from Scott’s window
when I panicked and opened fire, sending a hail of small-caliber rounds
into his gut. He stumbled back slightly, as though shocked, and then
everything got a whole lot worse. The cop let out the most awful bellow. Not of
pain, but of pure rage. Something happened to his face: His eyes started to glow a bright,
hellish red, and his jaw began to extend until he looked like a Munch painting. There were no
teeth in there, just an infinite, black void. He grabbed a dazed Scott through the window,
pulling him into a brutal headlock and dragging him out of the car, releasing those deranged
bellows the entire time. Scott screamed and pleaded for help; I grabbed his body and tried
to pull him back in, but the cop was inhumanly strong. He just kept pulling until he was
all the way out, thrashing on the asphalt. I… I don’t want to tell you what he did
next. Wouldn’t be right. But suffice to say, I couldn’t save Scott, and I definitely
didn’t want it happening to me. While he was working on Scott, I scrambled
into the driver’s seat and floored it, hoping that Scott would at least buy me some
time. I was weeping in terror as I drove away into the dark, leaving my friend to a horrible
fate with the driver of the phantom cruiser. So you can only imagine how I
felt when, a few minutes later, I heard the sirens again, and saw the
bright lights getting closer behind me. “Run…Run…Run…” The year was 1991. It was a quiet
night in Lethargy Valley, Arizona, the quietest town in all of Maricopa County.
Seriously, despite the hardcore Arizona dry heat, this is one of the most idyllic little towns
you could imagine. Everyone who lived there knew each other by name and regularly invited their
neighbors to wholesome neighborhood cookouts. The town’s historic main street had an old-fashioned
ice cream parlor, a knitting supplies store, and even a Build-A-Bear workshop. And of course,
a few local car dealerships and auto body shops. Lethargy Valley really is just the sweetest, calmest place you can possibly imagine, and
tonight, my friends, it’s going to rock. While the citizens of Lethargy Valley
went about their evening duties, something hardcore was heading their way,
rumbling across the scorching Arizona deserts, burning fuel and belching smog. The hottest hot
rods this side of the sun. Wheels so fly they’re ready to take off, with riders so badass their
own reflections are scared of them. That’s right: These are the High-Octane Full-Throttle
Adventures of the Exploding Zombie Gearheads, and they’re about to give this sleepy
Arizona town a Four-Loko enema. The sun was setting on Lethargy Valley when
the lights of distant fire cut through the night. Citizens and shopkeepers,
enjoying an evening summer breeze, halted in town as the redness in the East
got closer and brighter. They could feel the rumble of torqued-up subwoofers rattling
the ground. The roar of the engines felt more fitting on 747s than road-legal cars. And when
the distance was close enough that they could taste the vapors of burning gasoline in the
air, they could finally hear the laughter, too. Meet SCP-3885-01, also known as
the Exploding Zombie Gearheads, probably the most metal of all anomalies on
the SCP Foundation catalog. But let’s talk about the time before these gas-chugging dust
devils were just another number in The Man’s filing cabinet. Cause these bad boys don’t care
about filing - They only care about defiling. They rolled into Lethargy Valley like a
pack of easy-riding coyotes on gearhead steroids. Their skin is green from
rot, and covered in cuts, lesions, and gnarly burn scars. Some have their heads
completely cracked open, exposing what little brains they have underneath. Others have fully
opened rib cages and disemboweled bellies. But they don’t care. These ain’t your grandpa’s
zombies. Forget the Walking Dead, these dudes are the Riding Dead. Romero meets Ratfink after
ten lines of Columbian Bam-Bam and a gallon of Monster Energy drink, decked out in a patchwork
of Motorhead-style leather and stolen clothes. And you better believe these fun-dead
freakazoids are here to party hardy. Paulie Poundtown rounded the corner of Main street
first on his ride, The Murderlizer. In a past life, it’d been a coffin, but now, with the aid of
two monster truck wheels on the back and a pair of circular saw blades on the front, it was a vehicle
ready to tear up the streets. Literally. Paulie drove down the road at a break-neck pace, leaving
a trail of sparks and black smog behind him. He was screaming something about being king of the
world when the vehicle exploded underneath him. The force of the boom flung Paulie down the
length of the street. He hit the window of a local barbershop and shattered through
it like a fleshy missile. For a moment, he lay on the tiles, a leather pincushion
of broken glass and wooden shrapnel from the recently-detonated Murderlizer. But at no
moment in this whole insane ordeal did Paulie stop laughing. He got up, noticing his neck
was twisted backward at an odd angle - we told you it was a break-neck pace - but Paulie
just grabbed that sucker and crunched it back into place. It’d take a little more than
a totaled spine to stop Paulie Poundtown. After all, the night’s fun was only just starting. More tricked-out zombie roadsters were
pouring into the town from every angle, hopped up on a combination of tequila, lighter
fluid, and some stuff we can’t even mention if we want to keep monetization on this video. Steely
Dan was roaring into the Build-A-Bear workshop on a modified toilet with all-crushing caterpillar
tracks. Once he’d busted in through the facade, he dismounted his porcelain throne and
began incinerating walls of teddy bears with a custom flamethrower powered by
a tube going into his stomach cavity. Once he was done burning 90% of the bears in
the store, he used the remaining unsullied parts to make a grungy-looking bear in his
own likeness. He strapped it to the front of his terrifying mobile toilet, and then
burnt that, too, just for the fun of it. Bareback Boris was making a beeline
for the ice cream parlor, riding what would look like a bull to the untrained
eye. It was actually a taxidermied bull, gutted and filled with a nightmarish configuration
of motorcycle parts that would function better together as a method of execution than a
workable vehicle, but that’s just how the Exploding Zombie Gearheads like it. Boris pulled
the handbrake, which was made out of some old bones he dug up once, and ground the Bullcycle
to a screeching halt in front of the parlor. He climbed off and kicked in the door,
before running in to cause some chaos. Boris, the animal that he was, grabbed handfuls
of gelato and shoved them into his mouth, before turning and spitting them at the wall. He pulled
out a bottle of 90% vodka and took a long swig, before taking a court summons out of his
jacket and shoving it into the bottle. He lit the top of the litigious fuse with
his lighter, which was shaped like a knife, and made a molotov cocktail. Moments
later, the whole store was in flames. Boris stepped out of the burning ice cream
parlor, on fire but utterly unphased. He pulled out no less than four cigars
and lit them on his own burning skin, before smoking each one in a single
pull. If his lungs didn’t already look like blackened lumps of decaying coal,
they would have been screaming at him. But right now, the only person screaming
was Gene Simmons of the band KISS, as some of Boris’ fellow riders rampaged through
the streets past him, “UNHOLY” blaring from their radios at ear-exploding volumes. The Exploding
Zombie Gearheads didn’t throw out-of-town ragers like this often, but when they did, they always
tried to make it one for the history books. And before you start worrying about the safety of the
citizens of Lethargy Valley, Arizona, you should know that the Zombie Gearheads never hurt anybody.
Well, never hurt anybody on purpose, that is. If a piece of stray shrapnel from an exploding
Camaro, reshaped with scrap metal to look like a giant fist spraying fire from its knuckles,
happens to take out somebody’s eye, well...That can’t really be seen as anybody’s fault, can
it? Especially when you don’t have eyes anymore. The closest thing to the brains of this operation
- which, for these guys, really isn’t saying much - was a free-thinking, free-spirited,
free-liquored individual known as Joey ]nuts. The whole gang had probably
about 40 brain cells between them, but at least five of those cells belonged to
Joey. While many of his rotting buddies were goofing off and causing mayhem across town,
Joey was already acting on the real reason everybody was here: Getting new parts
for their sick-as-all-hell car mods. Sure, as mechanics, they couldn’t produce
actually workable vehicles worth a damn. But at the end of the day, isn’t a vehicle
looking awesome much more important than boring old functionality? If you think
otherwise, you’re probably just a square. But we digress, back to Joey
nuts. Joey and a crew of his boys - including Dirty Mike, Scuzzy Steve, and
Generally Unclean Gary - rolled up on one of the local auto body shops and bashed the door
down with their vehicle. Which, by the way, was a modified SUV modded with bulldozer parts
and a makeshift cannon. It was a powerful, if structurally unsound, motorized siege weapon.
Joey and the boys jumped off the vehicle and stormed into the building, wielding pipe wrenches
with nails and fishing hooks welded onto them. A confused mechanic was quaking in
his boots as the gaggle of zombie gearheads approached him. Joey stood at the
front, swinging his pipe wrench around with menacing randomness. He was chewing twelve
toothpicks, making him look extra tough. The mechanic, with a quiet, trembling
voice, told Joey and the boys that they needed to leave. They weren’t supposed to
be back here. They’d need to leave and come back during opening hours. It was the most
polite telling-off he could possibly muster. The exploding zombie gearheads just
laughed. Once they were done cackling, Joey lifted up his pipe wrench and pointed it
at the terrified mechanic’s face. Joey cleared his tobacco-and-gasoline-burned throat and said: “Listen, ya stupid grease monkey, I’m only gonna
say this once so open your earholes real wide and listen up, ‘kay? You’re gonna pack up your
crap and leave, so me and my boys can loot this place to our heart’s content, and beef
up our sick-ass rides. And if you don’t leave? You’re gonna be holding this here pipe wrench
for me in your prison pocket. You get me?” The mechanic definitely got him. He didn’t
waste a moment in high-tailing it out of the store while Joey and the boys pulled
a classic “smash and grab” on his wares. They stole everything from whole cars
to wrenches and lug nuts. Across town, the Exploding Zombie Gearheads were doing the
exact same thing: Stealing or stripping every vehicle in sight and cannibalizing the parts
for their own righteous whips. Town by town, vehicle by vehicle, explosion by explosion, they’d
one day figure this whole “mechanic” deal out. With the night’s revelry finally concluded, it was
time to return home and get to work on the next set of rides. This legion of awesome, unkillable
morons piled back into their stylish death traps, and rode off into the misty dawn, leaving
hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage behind them - But not a single
death. As hyper-destructive anomalies go, they’re honestly pretty benevolent. Or at
least, too self-centered to be truly malevolent. They tore up the desert on the way back
to the real SCP-3885: Vulture Gulch, the home of the Exploding Zombie Gearheads.
It’s a desert shantytown that’s “officially” been abandoned since July 9th, 1973, due to high
volumes of dangerous radon gas being emitted from the uranium deposits in a nearby mine. But these
intense, joy-riding mutants hardly mind a little bit of radiation in their sweet pad. Be it ever
so radioactive, there’s no place like home, right? Some of the vehicles even exploded on the
way back to the place, but the boys didn’t mind. The flaming explosion survivors just
crawled out of the fire and hopped onto the rides of their closest buddies. All in all,
everyone in attendance had a damn good time that night. They’d spend the rest of the
early morning setting rocks on fire for fun and chewing on ignited fireworks. That’s the
kind of brain trust we’re dealing with here. When the Foundation eventually
contained them in Vulture Gulch, the gearheads didn’t even put up a fuss,
as long the Foundation kept supplying them with three decommissioned vehicles
every month. It’s a pretty sweet deal: A crazed car-lover’s paradise, where as long as
you keep it within the walls, anything goes, baby. But there is one strange little detail. A
question that remains unanswered. Drones sent in by the Foundation to spy on the residents
of Vulture Gulch have picked up one strange recurring theme in their chatter: Mentions of
an individual known only as “The Boss” paying them a visit. And we can only assume they don’t
mean Bruce Springsteen. The only clues we have are that the Gearheads believe this Boss created
them and put them here on this earth to be totally rad. The other clue is a seemingly pervasive
belief that, someday soon, the Boss will return. Who do you think the boss of the Exploding Zombie Gearheads truly is? Let us
know down in the comments. Man, it’s even better on the fifteenth read... Oh, hello! I didn’t see you there, dear viewers
of SCP Explained. I’m on break between supervising SCP-682 termination attempts and inspecting
the mops we use on SCP-173’s leavings, so I decided to do what all the cool people
are doing in their spare time right now: Rereading Chainsaw Man, the hit manga by
Japanese author and artist Tatsuki Fujimoto. For the uninitiated, it’s the story of Denji, a
poor young man from Japan who makes his living hunting devils - dangerous creatures that
are embodiments of mankind’s greatest fears. But when that living leads to him dying at the
hands of a gang of zombie yakuza - believe me, it makes sense in context - he bonds with
the legendary Chainsaw devil and is reborn as Chainsaw Man, an unconventional superhero
who chainsaws first and asks questions later. Naturally, I was eager to see how one
of our own bloodthirsty killers would fare against Denji’s chainsaws of fury, so I
selected the most violent, battle-hardened, and carnage-hungry anomaly out there:
SCP-076-2, the immortal warrior known as Able. The two of them have a surprising amount in
common. Both are effectively immortal and can revive after sustaining massive physical
injuries. Both absolutely love to fight with their array of deadly weapons and anomalous
strength. Both have been part of experimental operations groups - with Denji being a member of
Japan’s Public Safety Devil Hunter’s Division 4, and Able being an ex-member of the SCP
Foundation’s disastrous Pandora’s Box Mobile Task Force, most of which he
later massacred out of boredom. You can probably see why these two really
did feel like the perfect match-up. So after forcing the trusty Anon-O-Tron 6000 to
read every currently available volume of Chainsaw Man, and compute years of Able’s gruesome battle
data, I’ve set up the perfect simulation for your viewing pleasure. And hey, fellow fans of the
manga, isn’t it horrifying that even we beat MAPPA to the punch of animating this thing?
God, that joke will age poorly if that anime comes out before this. Anyway, let’s crank
this machine into action and let her rip! Japan, 1997. Everything is roasting in the July
Heat. Men In Black, Harrison Ford’s Air Force One, and Air Bud are hitting theaters for the first
time. Everything is right with the world. That’s why, over in the headquarters of the Public
Safety Devil Hunting Department, Denji - our Chainsaw-loving hero - is being praised by
his kind boss and mentor figure, Makima. A lovable, supportive woman who
will never do anything wrong. She even loves dogs - how could a
person who loves dogs ever be evil? That very morning, Denji, in his Chainsaw
Man form, managed to defeat the Accidentally Making A Mistake On Your Tax Forms
And Now You’re Going To Prison Devil, who had been terrorizing downtown Tokyo. It was a
challenging battle, but in the end, he’d managed to turn the tables and defeat the creature by
setting it on fire. Needless to say, Makima was extremely pleased with Denji’s work here, but
now, she had considerable graver news to impart. She’d gotten word from an envoy of another
organization that hunts down dangerous and anomalous creatures - the SCP Foundation - that
an extremely lethal entity had breached their containment and was now somewhere in Japan.
The entity in question was not a devil, and thereby would be working on a different rule
set. Makima opened a file faxed to her by the Foundation - yes, remember, this is set in
1997 - and gave Denji the crucial lowdown. Several hours ago, the entity known as Able had
resurrected from his huge, black sarcophagus in the underwater chamber of the classified
facility, Containment Area 25b. After waking up, Able had slaughtered his way through the
entire base, killing every SCP Foundation operative in his path and then swimming out
into the Pacific Ocean. Sometime after that, he infiltrated a Japanese cargo ship and murdered
all the workers on board, before steering the ship back towards the land of the rising sun,
where he hoped to claim even more victims. Makima told Denji that it would fall to
him and his associates to stop this Able, with a little help from the SCP
Foundation’s intelligence. But be warned: Able is an incredible combatant
with extreme physical strength and durability, as well as surprising tactical
intelligence. It wouldn’t be an easy fight, but Makima promised that if Denji won, she’d
hug him and go to a nearby karaoke bar with him. Denji replied, “Consider him
dead already, Miss Makima.” Meanwhile, Able was walking through the slums
of Tokyo, marveling at the neon signs for bars and clubs. His journey to Japan hadn’t been an
accident. Able had been to Japan once before, in the year 1605. He’d faced the legendary
Japanese philosopher and Swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, considered by many to be one of the
greatest warriors in human history. Able had dueled Musashi - who famously wielded
two Katanas at once - in the hills of the Harima Province, where, after a
tense battle, Musashi cut him down. Able would not resurrect again
during Musashi’s lifetime, but the battle gave him a deep and
abiding respect for the legendary warrior. Able knew that if the opportunity
ever rose again, he would return to Japan, in hopes of experiencing such a brilliant battle
yet again. But the industrial and technological boom had changed so much. It was no longer
the quiet and pastoral Japan he’d experienced, but a booming epicenter of trade and commerce.
He found it all strange and perplexing. Suddenly, he found himself surrounded by a group
of Japanese street toughs, many of them wielding switchblades. They laughed at his strange
outfit, which to them looked like an old, worn bedsheet. One of the smarter members of
the group had already decided to go home when the others made up their mind to mug Able - the
warrior’s extensive tattoos made him look like a Middle-Eastern yakuza don. The rest, however,
were happy to take their chances with him. “Empty your pockets, if that goofy toga
even has pockets,” the leader said, holding up his switchblade.
“Unless you wanna get cut.” Able just smirked and drew a pair of long,
obsidian daggers. In the following moment, the alley was filled with screams,
then was silent yet again. Able walked on, breathing a sigh
of disappointment at how incredibly mediocre this first fight had been,
his blades dripping with fresh blood. Musashi is rolling in his
grave, Able thought to himself. Meanwhile, across town, Denji and the rest
of Division 4 were mobilizing. It was him, the serious, sword-wielding Aki, and the
adorable, pathologically-lying Blood Fiend, Power. They’d been told over the phone by
a man named Dr. Bright that Able would be relatively easy to track down - He’s not known
for his subtlety; all you need to do is follow the trail of carnage he causes wherever
he goes. From the way he talks about him, it seems almost as though Dr. Bright bears
a personal grudge against Able. How strange. Power didn’t seem intimidated. She proudly
proclaimed, “I don’t think this battle will be difficult at all. In fact, I’ve faced
this Able before and defeated him handily.” Aki sighed and asked. “When did this happen?” “Last Tuesday, of course!” she replied.
Power had only heard about Able this morning, but Denji and Aki had learned better
than to dispute her at this point. Suddenly, a large television screen that
had been previously relaying an ad for a cutting-edge stereo system cut to an emergency
news report. There’d been a horrific incident in downtown Tokyo, where a bar had been attacked
and most of its patrons murdered by a deranged, tattooed man carrying a pair of huge
swords. Aki immediately recognized the place - The bar was yakuza-owned. If this
Able was on the hunt for worthy opponents, it makes all the sense in the world that Japan’s
iconic crime syndicates would be his first target. Denji, Aki, and Power knew
exactly where they needed to go. Over at the bar, Able was having a whale
of a time. Innocent patrons were running and screaming, while the Yakuza engaged
in an all-out war with the terrifying, inhuman warrior. Several of them had already been
cut down. Two Yakuza soldiers behind the bar were reloading illegal Uzis and preparing
to return fire. Both were sweating, terrified by the sudden, random
attack. When they’d shot him before, he’d managed to dodge most of the bullets,
and expertly block the rest with his swords. Who the hell had sent this monster? Was
he with the Triads? The Russian mob? Or some devil summoned by the Japanese
government to crack down on them? Whatever the case, he seemed almost impossible
to kill. The two men stood back up and opened fire. Able held his two swords and spun them
like a propeller, blocking all the bullets almost effortlessly. He then produced
another dagger, seemingly from thin air, and threw it directly into the heart of one
of the two remaining Yakuza behind the bar. He dropped to the ground, dead instantly, leaving
only his friend alive in a bar full of corpses. That’s when Able noticed a decorative katana
behind the bar. He smiled and ordered the surviving Yakuza soldier to pick up the sword
and give him a real fight. The hapless mobster realized in that moment that this guy was truly
crazy, whoever he was. But what choice did he have now? With terror in his heart, the last surviving
Yakuza grabbed the katana and unsheathed it. “Good,” Able said, his voice deep
and menacing. “Now come fight me. Let’s see if you last a few seconds longer
than your worthless friends, shall we?” He did not. The second the Yakuza ran towards
Able, and the ancient Swordsman swiped at him with one of his blades, cutting through the
katana and then the opponent holding it. A puny gangster never stood a chance
against a deadly immortal warrior, and Able was furious. The last time he was here,
he faced a truly expert killer, who’d even managed to end Able’s life in single combat. And now he
was slaying insects in a karaoke bar. Pathetic… Suddenly, his ears pricked up. He turned to see a
red axe flying at his head at incredible speeds. With his superhuman reflexes, he managed to
dodge just in time, but the axe still cleaved off a chunk of his hair as it passed. Able
could see the one who threw it standing at the entrance to the bar: It was the Blood Fiend,
Power, who’d made the axe out of her own blood. Standing next to her were Denji and Aki, Denji
wielding an axe and Aki stoically observing. “Damn, Miss Makima promised we’d
do karaoke at this bar if I beat you,” Denji said. “You’re going down for this.” Able smiled and pulled out another pair of
blades. “Finally!” he roared. “Warriors who fight the old-fashioned way. I feared
the years had stolen you all from me.” Power stepped forward, producing another
blood axe from nowhere. She yelled, “Tremble in fear, Able. ‘Tis I,
your archnemesis, the mighty Power!” Able had literally never seen her before in his
thousands of years of life, but he appreciated that these warriors were at least able to match
his level of drama. As far as he was concerned, the fight was on. But even Able didn’t know the
level of fighting he was getting in for here. As he charged forward, the trio split,
immediately surrounding him. Good tactics, Able thought to himself.
Already, this was promising. Aki, who had remained quiet up to this point,
attacked first. He drew a tanto knife from his suit jacket and slashed at Able with impressive
speed. But unlike three of the other combatants in this situation, Aki was only human, which gave
him a serious disadvantage. Able decided it would be best to put him out of commission first.
With a quick and brutal kick to the chest, Aki was thrown against the wall with
the majority of his ribs broken. Revved up by his own bloodlust, Able
turned to Denji and Power and grinned like a maniac. This was already the
most fun he’d had in a long time. Who are these people? Doesn’t matter, he
thought. They’ll be dead soon anyway. While Able was still locked in thought, Power
pulled out a comically large hammer made out of her own blood, and brought it down towards Able.
He was surprised by the sudden attack - Did this girl have the same weapon-producing powers as
him!? This just keeps getting more interesting! “‘Tis the end, Able!” Power screamed as the hammer came down. “You have
once again been defeated by the mighty Power!” Again, just to clarify, these
two had never met each other. But it was already too late. Able punched upwards, his clenched fist colliding with the
hammer. He hit it with such terrifying force that Power’s blood hammer shattered
against his knuckles. In that same instant, Able noticed Denji running at him with an axe from
behind. Able produced another obsidian dagger and threw it into Denji’s forehead, dropping
him to the ground immediately. Pathetic. Power tried to produce another weapon, but
she’d used up too much blood already. Before she had a chance to make anything substantial,
Able sprung forwards with terrifying speed, trying to land a killing blow. But even
weakened, Power was freakishly fast. She was able to dodge his blow and kick him in
the ribs, momentarily stunning him. Of course, she took the time to gloat, putting her
hands on her hips and laughing victoriously. “Need a second to catch your breath, Able? It
is to be expected. None can keep up with me!” She grandiosely announced. “Perhaps you should
just give up and agree to become my servant. I might even teach you a
thing or two about fighting—“ Suddenly, Able was standing right in front
of her, squeezing her throat with his iron grip. He smiled, flashing teeth, and said,
“If you want to kill, kill. Don’t talk.” With a surprisingly minimal amount of strength, he squeezed and heard a crunch from Power’s
neck. He dropped her limp body to the ground. Lucky for Power, Able wasn’t aware that a
Fiend like Power can survive an injury like this as long as she’s fed some more blood.
Instead, he just sighed in disappointment. “Is that all you weaklings
have to offer?” He bellowed. Aki, barely conscious after
being kicked against the wall, remained just conscious enough to activate
his contract with a powerful beast known as the Fox Devil. He twists his hands into a
strange gesture and whispers the word, “Kon”, before falling unconscious.
But that’s still enough. Suddenly, a giant demonic fox claw burst
through the wall of the bar, spraying dust and rubble everywhere. Able was definitely
not expecting that. He dodged several times as the claw swiped for him, often barely missing
him. For its last strike, it lunged forward and raked four claw marks across his chest. Able was
shocked by the sudden pain. It felt fantastic. He pulled a long, obsidian spear out of one
of his pocket dimensions, and forced it down through the Fox Devil’s paw and into the ground,
pinning it in place. After a moment of thrashing, the claw dissipated into smoke, lending
Able another victory - though even he would admit this was a more exciting
fight than the other ones had been. Was that it? Had he gained total victory once
more, just like he so often did these days? He was about to take pity on
himself when Denji rose up behind him. The durable devil hybrid teen was pulling the
knife out of his head like nothing, and dropping it onto the ground - a display of impressive
strength that certainly caught Able’s attention. “How about a rematch?” Denji asked. Able grinned. He liked this kid. “Challenge me, child,” Able said. “Well, since you asked...” Denji smirked. Denji reached into his shirt and grabbed the
rip cord emerging from his chest. It was time to go into overdrive on this thing. He gave it
a mighty yank, and like the rev of a chainsaw, the madness began. Denji transformed
- Giant blades emerging from his arms, and his head transforming into a toothy,
saw-blade nightmare. He gave a mechanical roar that spewed smoke. This wasn’t just
Denji anymore. This was Chainsaw Man. Now this, Able thought, feeling his
adrenaline spike, is more like it! Following Denji’s lead, Able reached into one
of his pocket dimensions and pulled out one of his favorite weapons - one he’d only previously
used against the mighty Hard to Destroy Reptile, SCP-682: The Chainsaw Claymore, a huge,
two-handed sword with the eternally twisting, shredding teeth of a chainsaw ever circulating
around it. It was time for Chainsaw Vs Chainsaw. “What the hell are you waiting for?” Chainsaw Man roared. “Are we gonna stand around
all day, or are we gonna fight?” Able couldn’t have said it better himself. The two charged at one another at lightning
speeds, chainsaw clashing against chainsword. The sheer force of contact was enough to send a
shockwave blasting through the bar. It rapidly became a power struggle, each one of them
trying hard to force their chainsaws out of the stalemate. Realizing that this time
he perhaps couldn’t win with raw strength, Able backflipped away to reassess his options. But Chainsaw Man had no intention of
giving Able time to think about it. He darted towards Able with the weight and
momentum of a runaway freight train. If Able hadn’t raised his claymore to parry,
he would have been shredded to pieces by the devil’s saws in an instant. Instead,
the two of them rocketed out of the nearby wall in a cascade of debris, causing everyone
on the outside street to run for their lives. The two quickly stood from the
stumble, catching their breath. “Impressive,” Able said. “You’re
much better than the others.” Instead of replying, Denji briefly
retracted his arm chainsaws and grabbed a nearby parked car,
throwing it directly at Able. Able reacted quickly, cleaving the
car in half with his claymore and charging for Chainsaw Man again. Just
before Able could land a lethal strike, Chainsaw Man deployed his
chainsaws again, blocking the blow. Able sped around him, trying
to strike again and again, but Chainsaw Man blocked every strike with
stunning efficacy. Able was astonished - few had ever been able to go toe to toe with
him like this before. He could feel his heart pounding gloriously in his chest.
He would give Denji a warrior’s death. With a furious yell, Able brought down
the Chainsaw Claymore for a devastating vertical strike, but Chainsaw Man was ready. He
arranged his arm chainsaws in a cross formation, like a giant pair of scissors, and caught
Able’s chainsword between them. Chainsaw Man pulled his arms in opposite directions,
slicing Able’s mighty sword in half. The immortal Swordsman skidded
backwards to avoid the fallout, producing two smaller blades immediately. This
Chainsaw Man just kept exceeding expectations, didn’t he? Able would need to change
tactics if he wanted to win this one... Chainsaw Man was impressed by the speed and
tenacity of his foe. For someone who apparently wasn’t even a devil, Able sure packed a hell of a
punch. Did he ever run out of those damn weapons? As though attempting to answer
Chainsaw Man’s question for him, Able began running around his flank, rapidly
producing and throwing blades and axes in a startling volley. Chainsaw Man was able to use
his Chainsaw arms and face to block most of them, but not all of them. Several daggers and
small throwing axes splattered into the tender flesh of Chainsaw Man’s chest. Able had
successfully wounded him, and he wasn’t done. Feeling a little more confident now, Able decided
to take a different tactic: He produced a large, spiked mace from thin air, and ran at Chainsaw
Man while the devil was still recovering from his projectile attack. With one brutal
whack, he sent Denji flying down the street, carving a rut into the concrete beneath him.
But Able wasn’t done. While Chainsaw Man was still trying to recover, Able leaped onto him and
began beating him into the ground with his mace. The strikes were so brutal they shook the earth
and sent cracks across the surrounding ground. Then Able stopped. He realized, for a
moment, that he was letting his blood lust get the better of him. This was dishonorable.
Where would be the fun in beating this boy to death while he lay on the ground, and depriving
himself of one of the greatest opponents he’s had in quite some time? No, that wouldn’t
do at all. He’d give him one more chance. “On your feet, boy,” Able said. “You
fight well. Get up and carry on. I won’t let a beast as rare as you die
like a common dog. Rise and fight me!” And Chainsaw Man did as he was told. Able was
shocked to see the very ground shatter underneath him as Chainsaw Man burst up through it, all his
swords at the ready. The mace was thrown from Able’s hands as Chainsaw Man launched up towards
him, all metal teeth and fury. Luckily for Able, he pulled out a battle axe just in time to
block the flurry of brutal strikes from the patron saint of chainsaws. Now this was
a fight even Musashi would be proud of. “Yes, boy, yes!” Able yelled.
“This is true combat!” Chainsaw Man replied with the swing of his blades, which Able was narrowly able to dodge. The
two finally landed back down on the ground, and Able was fast enough to bury his battle axe
in Chainsaw Man’s shoulder. Before the devil could return a blow to Able, the anomalous
Swordsman pulled out a pair of his favorite swords and locked Chainsaw Man’s arms in place.
Chainsaw Man was undeniably incredibly powerful, but it looked like Able’s superior experience
and tactics might save him this time. “What the hell are you?” Chainsaw Man roared. “You’ve been a worthy opponent, boy, those are few and far between,” Able
said. “I’ll remember you for this...” But before Able could execute a killing blow, he felt a blood red throwing axe stick into
his back. Able winced in pain and turned to see Power and Aki about thirty feet behind him.
Power was propping Aki up - he’d donated some of his blood to bring her back to life. And
she was just as delusionally cocky as ever. “Tis I once again, my arch-nemesis!” Power yelled. “Did you really believe you
could beat me so easily?” Able was about to say something, but
he’d already made a fatal mistake: Letting his guard down. Before another
word could pass the cursed warrior’s lips, one of Chainsaw Man’s arm chainsaws
passed directly through his heart, tearing it apart within Able’s chest. It was a
sudden and decisive killing blow. Chainsaw Man pulled his saw back out of Able’s chest,
stained with the deadly anomaly’s blood. Able collapsed to the ground, wheezing and bleeding profusely from
the hole in his chest. But strangely, as Power, Aki, and Chainsaw Man converged
around him, they realized he was smiling. “Thank you...” Able said, and died yet again. With the battle won, like an extremely metal
Incredible Hulk, Chainsaw Man transformed back into Denji. The trio stood around Able’s corpse,
deeply confused as to what had just happened. If this was the kind of thing the SCP Foundation
normally dealt with, they all silently agreed that perhaps it would be better not to get involved
with them in future. Except Power, of course, who said, “You two should be thanking me for
defeating him. You both owe me drinks for this!” Hundreds of miles away, in a black sarcophagus
deep underwater, surrounded by professional SCP Foundation divers, Able’s body once again
returned. Who knows how long he’d remain sleeping in there? But what we do know is that his
deathless sleep was suffused with sweet dreams, knowing that this world still held worthy
opponents. And for Able, that was everything.
