Armando walked along the desert dunes, trying not to look up at the black not-sky. Ruslav walked beside him. The half of a Site they had come out from had long since sank into the shifting sands.
"Any idea where we are? This one of your magical alchemist locations, or something?"
Ruslav closed his eyes. "I cannot say I have been here before, but there is an eerie familiarity to it." He breathed deeply. "The Great Seal remains intact. We are on Earth, or at least an Earth."
Armando twitched. "Did you feel that?"
Ruslav turned to face him, perplexed. "Feel what?"
"Hold on, I think one of my arms is out there. In the distance, by that tiny gray thing."
Armando pointed at a speck that looked to be at least a few miles away. Without any further clues, Ruslav figured it was as good a direction to walk as any.

The potted moon cactus sat idly in the ruined containment cell, partly because it had nothing better to do, and partly because it was a cactus and couldn't leave.
Alright. It's almost time, I hear mortals outside. Are you ready?
i am poky
Well yes, you- we are, but come on! We can finally get me out, you just have to follow my perfect plan! So are you ready?!
yes but also no
Which one is it? Someone could walk by here any minute! I've had you storing up power for months now, you can't flake out on me now or I'll have you suffer the Eternal Torments of Burning Pointed Skies!
yes ready for thing
not ready for you leave
you scare me but you are friend and here is nice
Then prove it, vessel! Prove yourself worthy and capable of being subservient to the mighty Carnegias!
thank you
Someone's coming! It's now or never, little buddy!
now
Carnegias guided the moon cactus into the use of the Fires of Transferrence, and felt his awesome eldritch power flow through the little plant. The energies containing their essences burst free from the pot and swirled through the room, locking on to the first life energy it found. The life energy split at the last second, and the essence of Carnegias and the cactus were sucked into the smaller half.
The ritual was completed, and Carnegias attempted to move its new host. There was… yes, movement! FINALLY!
Meanwhile, the man who had entered the Euclid wing of what used to be Site-42 wondered why the cactus arm he'd just grown was moving all on its own.
One thousand curses!!! What did you do?
what you said
i am arm
…
Armando tried to rip off this freaky cactus arm, but it wouldn't budge. He shrugged, and continued on through the building, looking for his target. The cactus arm struggled, and extended its middle finger.
He stopped. That was just rude. "OK, what's going on here?"
The gnarled cactus arm writhed, and a horrifying, geometry-defying mouth opened up in its palm. Cactus spines formed concentric circles of analogous teeth.
FOOOOOOL! hi SILENCE, YOU! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT AND I'LL DEAL WITH YOU LATER! bye
"What the fuck?"
I am CARNEGIAS THE GREAT, Infernal Lord of uh, Spikiness. What cruel enchantment have you trapped us with?
"Hey man, I didn't do anything. You're the one that hijacked a perfectly good arm. Although, if you play nice, and help me out, I know a guy who can probably help you out."
The gall of this mortal! Thinking you have the leverage to force ME into such a deal?
Armando rolled his eyes.
To, ahem, sate my curiosity, nothing more… how far is it to your associate?
"I'll take that as 'deal', Spike. Let's go."

With the help of the Aequeous Aether, Ruslav created two small flasks of replenishing water for himself and his companion. Ruslav recognized the building now. Site-234. Or at least the bottom half of it.
"Armando. We should turn back. I know this Site; it is full of sickness, disease, and death. If it's in this state, I would not wish to go near the viruses and organisms formerly held within."
Armando drank from the flask. "Shit. Alright then, you definitely know these sites better than I do. You sure you don't have a portal spell?"
"No. The aethers in this place are in too much flux for a convergence stable enough to do it safely. Wait."
Armando felt the tug again.
"There's something angry in that building."
"Possibly, Armando, but I also think the source of the flux might be inside. There is a large pool of the Aequeous Aether in there, corrupted. If we can neutralize it, I may be able to get us home."
Armando pulled off an arm and sprouted one made of rubidium, grinning as he held the explosive element stably in place. "What're we waiting for, then?"
The floor of the building collapsed further, exposing the labyrinth of the lower level vaults. A gigantic, slimy mass of fat gurgled and pulsed in the middle of the pit.
"Holy shit that's gross."
An explosion, and a horrible crunching sound, and the mass roared and flailed its tendrils around. One tendril whiplashed and flung a person out, towards the pair. Mid-air, a cage of arms formed around the person, and the resulting ball bounced twice and opened, releasing its passenger.
Armando dropped the arm he was holding.
"You're… me."
The cactus-armed Armando laughed. "No shit. That's hardly the weirdest thing you'll find here. And this-" the twisted mass of cactus on his left arm waved- "is Carnegias. An elder god and his buddy trapped in there, supposedly."
He turned to Ruslav. "Elder Alchemist. Yes, I know you. Another you helped me before." He fiddled with a coin hanging on a string around a neck.
Ruslav narrowed his eyes. This Armando's aetheric flow was different than the one he had been walking with. More vibrant, more powerful, more intricate… and a blue-green essence flowing through him. The cactus arm was starkly different. Sharp angles and lines covered it, converging at the "mouth" on the palm.
The Lovecraftian mouth spoke.
IS THIS THE WORKER OF MAGICKS YOU SPOKE OF?
"Alchemist, not magician. Yeah, this is him, you can lose the big voice."
Very well. Alchemist, I command you to free me from this binding.
A second, tinier mouth opened next to the first.
arm is new friend
SILENCE! Do not interrupt me in front of mortals! Also, it's your fault we're stuck here, again, so you have no say.
Poky-Armando shrugged. "Ruslav, you think you could get this thing off?"
Ruslav pointed behind them. "I think we have bigger problem."
Poky-Armando turned to see the mass pulling itself out of the pit with its tendrils. "Oh yeah, that thing. It used to be a skip, I think. All I know is that it swallowed someone and I need their brain. If-"
Young Armando cut him off. "OK, me. Do you know what this place is?"
Poky-Armando unstrapped the gun from his back. "I'm still not really sure. Ol' Thorny and I landed here two weeks ago when a dimensional mortar blew up the building I was in. From what I can tell… you know how every once in a while a place just straight up gets 'vanished from reality'? This seems to be where some of them end up."
The arm coughed.
"I mean, just as a guess. Lot of ancient temples and castles, and then some Foundation sites mostly. You never know with this kind of stuff, really. Anyways. The alchemist here can probably get the four-"
FIVE
"-five of us home, with the right preparations. If you can get this cactus arm off me first, I can provide you the materials you may need."
A tendril slammed between the two odd pairs, narrowly missing the Armandos. Poky-Armando leaped back. "Younger me, take the gun."
Ruslav manipulated the Terronous Aether, burying the tendril in the ground temporarily. "What are we up against, here?"
Poky-Armando was already running towards the mass. "Spark notes version: it's a big angry mass of fat with like, a hundred brains inside it. Don't breathe the yellow cloud, and do not let the sludge it throws touch you or you're a goner. Me, stick your arm in the back end of the gun and it'll clamp to your shoulder. Then just pull the trigger. I've got a plan to beat this thing, just need time to set it up. That's where you two come in."
Ruslav nodded, while Young Armando loaded the gun.
"Where did you even get something like this?"
"Good friend of mine, she made it just for me. Just keep it occupied. Alchemist, focus Igneous or Terronous into him for the best ammo, and probably Aeronous to keep the cloud away. If it gets too close, strong acids or bases from one of you. We've got the rest."
Poky-Armando sprinted around the east side of the pit. He froze, and gathered 28 arms around him. He closed his eyes, and his hands all moved in synchronized rhythm. A complex kinetoglyph developed by the 28-handed Myaccumans of some planet 119 light years away, the so-called "Unbroken River of Nulltaria" had been found in a dusty, forgotten Serpent's Hand manuscript. With the movement complete, the arms used all disintegrated into blue smoke, which coalesced around Armando and the cactus. They leaped into the air, the blue aura sending them soaring gracefully past the tendrils and toxic sprays. The older Armando generated hundred of arms, using the Unbroken River to send most of them high into the night sky. He began to command them to link together, and the cactus arm thrashed.
Young Armando cocked the gun, the barrel squeezing tightly around his right arm. Literal hot lead in the shape of a limb flew out at twice the speed of sound, and a new arm grew and loaded itself into the firing chamber. Rinse, repeat. The blob swung a pillar of fat at him, and Ruslav melted it with a burst of the Igneous Aether.
Poky-Armando was in the air, and finally had all the arms he needed. "Alright, Carnegias, listen to me. We're gonna get down there, and I need your Spikiness to kill that thing."
Commanding me again! The audacity! But… I can barely use my spikiness! This mouth is already pushing the limit!
"You'll have to figure it out. Break your limits!" The arms wrapped themselves tightly around the two of them, conjoining into a long cylinder tipped with a cone of metal arms. The cactus arm protruded from the cone tip, while arms made of acetylene, hydrazine, ammonium perchlorate, and pentaborane(9) lined the other end.
Little buddy! It's all on you now! You have to harness my power! I know you can do it!
The arm rocket's end ignited in prismatic flames, and the Unbroken River faded, letting the thrust and gravity pull the missile down towards the blob.
Ruslav concentrated the Tenebrous Aether beneath the mass to immobilize it with gravity, and further boost the rocket's impact. Young Armando fired explosive arms at the tendrils attempting to reach up.
i can't do this don't make me, i mess up
You can do it. You're a good cactus. You're the best cactus I know!
im not. i am bad cactus. i hurt owners and you and now arm friend because not good enough.
You stop that right now. You see that thing? It's fat and slimy and soft and gross. It's the exact opposite of spiky! Are you going to let it disrespect us?! And only the bravest, smartest, pokiest cactus can stop it!
no
I'm not the Infernal Lord of Spikiness. You are, now. Are you poky?
i… am poky
Louder.
i am poky!
Like you mean it!
i am poky!
MAKE HELL TREMBLE!
WwEe AaRrEe POKY!!!!
The cactus fist grew and spread and thickened, and its spines became as long and thick as I-beams. The rocket made impact, and exploded, sending the cactus spears through every crystal brain of the fat mass.
Ruslav quickly used the Aequeous Aether to shield himself and Young Armando from the wave of dead liquid fat flowing from the explosion site.
The cactus spines impaled the dying brains of the mass, and the fat softened and liquefied. One brain emitted a quiet, distorted voice. Thaaaaank yoooouuu. Freee. Armando emerged from the gore, protected by a polyhedral cage of arms. Next to him, the detached cactus, now normal sized, sat on the ground. The Armandos sighed and patted it with metal and porcelain arms. "Well done, cactus."

This is my entry for the second round of the Original Character Tournament. My opponent's entry can be found here.


The strip mall looks abandoned, but Johnson knows better. The drunk sitting against the far wall watches him with eyes a little too sharp, and the rusted-out cars have shrapnel charges buried in the trash on their seats. Johnson stands tall and walks slowly as he approaches the blank-fronted office building so the sniper across the street can get a good look at his face before he touches the door.
There's a short, hard-faced woman on duty in the office, standing at a counter behind a thick plate of glass. Johnson puts his gun and his ID in a drawer on his side of the counter. She pulls it through, then sends back a claim ticket and a laminated card covered in abstract symbols.
"Do you find any of these images disorienting or physically uncomfortable to view?"
"No."
"Touch the one on the bottom left."
He taps it with his index finger. Nothing happens.
"Now let me see your teeth."
He shows her.
"Does the black moon howl?"
"No, it strikes without warning."
"Okay," she says, pushing a button under the desk, "You're good to go." A metal door marked STAIRS buzzes from the back of the room. "Thank you for your cooperation, Agent. How are things going, by the way?"
"You know. The usual." He heads for the door, whistling.
The air in the cinderblock basement reeks of tobacco and anxiety. Gordon, his handler, is even more tense than normal. He chain smokes throughout Johnson's briefing, stopping frequently to lift his thick glasses and rub his temples. Gordon is always a well-groomed man, but it looks like he's been overdoing it lately. His face is raw from scrubbing and dotted with tiny flecks of dried blood where he's dug in with tweezers.
The search for sixth sons is ruining his nerves.
The assignment has been a code pink priority since last week. The Foundation needs sixth sons of sixth sons for D-Class because of how they interact with some kind of reality-devouring metaphysical entity that needs to be contained. Apparently the Foundation is chewing through a lot of these recruits lately, and it's not a common trait to begin with.
"The request is a little unconventional this time," Gordon says. "First, because the recruits are animals. Specific animals. Second, because these animals are already being contained by a Foundation affiliate."
"I didn't know we had affiliates," said Johnson. Countless people worked at Foundation front companies, but very few of them knew it.
"They're a small operation. This little group in the Northwest. It's a mom and pop outfit."
"A mom and pop containment facility?"
"That's right. For animals." Gordon rolls his eyes. "It's some kind of hippie thing."
"And the Foundation outsources to them?"
"They're partners, or something. Your guess is as good as mine. Look, you're assigned to special security projects, right?"
"Technically, I think I still am."
"Well, this is a special security type of situation." He passes over a folder. Johnson glances inside. Memetic kill agents watermarked on every page make him hiccup as they bounce off his subliminal inoculations. "I told you," Gordon says. "Special. Bring donuts, they love that."

It's peaceful out in the woods. Johnson drives with the windows down; there's no radio stations out here yet, but the songs of birds and crickets fill the air. A woman jogs up and stands outside his van as he parks it, practically bouncing in place.
"Hi there! Nice to meet you! I'm Erica, and it will be my pleasure to show you around our little nature preserve!" she's young, blonde, and much too excited to see him.
"Well, good morning, Erica! I'm Dan, it's nice to meet you. Here, have a donut." He offers a box of pastries and a cardboard tray packed with coffee cups.
"Well, thanks! Where have you been all my life?" she chirps, taking one and leading him into a small cabin packed with filing cabinets and animal carriers. "Usually the supervisors are so serious all the time."
He puts the food on the desk, taking a coffee for himself. "Might as well be neighborly," he yawns. "Long night. I could sure use a pick-me-up myself. Now, did they tell you which of your residents I'm here to see?"
"Wobbles, right?" She put a logbook on top of some papers and opens it. "First, I just have to ask you to sign in. Sorry. It's a new rule." He has forged L1 Transport Department credentials to go with the name he signs, but she doesn't ask to see them.
She leads him down a forest trail to a large cabin with footpaths trailing away from it in all directions. "This is the Lodge. Welcome! For now, most of our guests are living here, but eventually it's just going to be for rehabilitation. When we have more friends to take care of, we're going to move them into the cabins we're building around the preserve."
"Keeping it close to nature, huh?"
"That's how the animals like it."
The floor of the lodge has been dug out, so it's much bigger than it looks from outside. The whole place smells like a barn. A quirky assortment of staff in wilderness gear are tending to various animals; he can hear cheerful conversations overlapping with each other between all the hooting and braying. Hand-built enclosures made of lumber and chicken wire line most of the walls, but there's a large space in the back corner for the shark's giant glass tank. Crude shelves behind it hold aquariums, each with a pup swishing back and forth inside.
"This is Wobbles!" his guide says, leading him up to the tank. The shark circles lazily past, taking no notice of them. "She's a little bit shy, but don't worry. We'll bring her out of her shell."
"That's great," Johnson says, watching the animal. "Glad to hear it. We'll have her and her babies back to you just as soon as we can."
"Well, that might be a little tricky. Wobbles… let's just say she doesn't like to be touched."
"Don't worry, I came prepared." He smiles just widely enough. "I'll show you what I mean back at the truck. Would you please give me a hand with one of those aquariums? No sense wasting a trip."

Johnson brought huge plexiglass panels, so big he had to slide them diagonally into the back of the van, along with parts to assemble a four-foot transport tank. With a few polite requests, he gets the guide's help with the heavy lifting. Hauling the panels takes a good hour of sweaty work, and it's just the beginning; once they're all in place, they have to put the shark's carrier in the middle of the giant tank with ropes underneath it, then lower smaller and smaller panels into the tank until the shark is trapped above the carrier in the middle. The animal swims in faster and faster circles, as if it's getting claustrophobic.
"Aww, Wobbles is nervous. It's going to be okay, little friend," says the guide.
"Don't worry about her, she's going to be just fine." For all Johnson knows, this is true; the shark is going to be bred, in hopes that its protection will extend to its offspring and to their offspring. The sixth pup of the sixth pup will - maybe - be able to safely interact with 2747. Unfortunately, with no way to tell what order Wobbles' children were born in, all the litters of grandchildren will have to be tested against the anomaly. He pulls a gleaming silver flask from his jacket and takes a slug.
"Uh, wow. Okay. You, uh… well, it's five o' clock somewhere, right?"
"What? Oh. That. It's just medicine." He taps his watch. "Have to take it on time."
After another hour, they finally have the shark walled in above its carrier. She helps him lift it out - gently, so that it doesn't rise above the water level and flop out of the tank. If the fish falls out, they'll never get their hands on it to put it back in. They manage, slow and steady and with the help of a couple other staff, to lower it onto a flat garden cart they borrow from outside. A panel with holes drilled through it goes over the top, Johnson bolts it all closed with L-brackets, and the shark is ready to go.
Wheeling it down the path takes a while, but it's a nice day out. Johnson starts humming a pop song, and by the time they get to the van they're belting Elvis hits in off-key harmony. They're just getting the tank strapped in when his nose starts pouring blood.
"Oh no! Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. That's - it's just the medicine. Working." Pain stabs his left eye and his face twitches. "Mnestics are. Hate taking them, but. Had to." He mashes his palm against his forehead, spattering blood on his sleeve, and stands like that for a moment while his head clears.
"Look," he says at last, "there's one more thing I need you to do. Please go to your little records hut over there and get me all the files you have on Wobbles. Then bring out whatever other procedures and research data you've got and load that in the van too." He wipes the blood from his face and flings it aside. "Then, you're going to take anything else that mentions Wobbles or me - calendars, memos, the works - put it all on the desk, light that kerosene lantern I saw on the wall, and smash it over the papers. With any luck, the whole hut will just burn down."
"What? N-"
The word catches in her throat and her eyes widen in horror.
"Yeah. Sorry, but I gassed you. Came by last night and put a little something down the chimney of your lodge. Set off a couple hours ago. You're what they call, uh. Compulsively suggestible. Not going to remember this, either, if that helps any." He shakes his head. Tries to focus.
"Who are you? Who sent you?"
"The supervisors sent me. A big boss wants this all cleared out. She has officers ready for a task force to take over your anomalies. Sent me to go around the formal process. Takes time they can't afford. This kind of thing happens more than you'd think." The mnestic has him punch-drunk; he's saying way too much.
"Why?" she sobs. "Why would you do this?"
"Well, I see where they're coming from. You were bound for a full-on disaster sooner or later. Low security is what you're all about. It doesn't look like you're doing much to understand these things, and you're not serious about protecting them. Lots of safety issues with this setup, not even counting the information security problems. You have to admit, none of it really makes sense." He shrugs. "For what it's worth, you seem like very nice people. Now get started. Please. I have to go talk to your coworkers."
Tears stream from her eyes, but she goes.
***
"Good man," Gordon says at their next briefing. "I don't want to know how you did it, but Nine was thrilled to have the field cleared for her new division, and the compliance inquiry just showed massive incompetence on Wilson's Wildlife's part. No mention of Wobbles, either. You got away clean. And nobody even died."
There was one mauling, and four of the staff were in critical condition after angry wasps had conceptually merged with their inner ears. Erica got a nasty second-degree burn in the process of torching the records, and an intern somehow ran over his own foot while driving their buggy into a lake. But the newly-minted MTF Omikron-91 ("Where the Wild Things Are") swooped in to re-contain the animals without a hitch. And nobody died.
Johnson shrugs. "They made it easy."
"Well. Your customers are satisfied. They're researching ways to speed up the gestation process so they can cook up the shark's grandchildren in time to start testing. We'll see if they get anywhere with it, but their Site director asked me to thank you personally. And he said Nine told him to pass along her regards."
This makes him smile. A real one. "I hope it helps."
Then Gordon pulls out a new folder, and the next assignment starts.


And so, at last, it had come to this.
He woke up to the Hotel California.
There were very few things in Junior's life which were straightforward. The Hotel California was one of them. Every now and again he'd wake up in Room 04 with no idea how he got there, no shirt, no shoes, a small ecru business card with room numbers and names, and a fucking shitton of weaponry in the bathroom.
The job was simple:
Kill every last one of the bastards.
Buck walked to the bathroom, put on a bath robe, took as much weaponry as he could handle, and left his soundproofed hotel room.
13
Thirteen was easiest. Mainly because Nathan was already dead. Buck peeked into the room, and sure enough, there was a little tombstone sitting on the bed, with the text:

RIP
Nathan [Lastname]
You did a good job on this one, Buck.

He shed a single tear. He knew.
12
11
10
God fucking dammit.
The fucking ducks got out.
Buck found rooms 12 and 11 wide open, both with bathtubs filled to the brim. He sighed and looked at his notecard. 12 was supposed to have Natasha and Tiny, and 11 was supposed to have Pinstripes and Blasty, but 12's door had oversized novelty lock-pick in its inner lock, and 11 had a sooty starburst where the handle should've been.
That meant that the whole gang had met up with The Boss to craft some sort of "whacky" plan to regroup and figure out why, exactly, they were were they were, and not in a containment chamberpot.
However, Buck had his own whacky plan. He stood back a bit from the door to room 10 and shot three times into the door, a resounding bang in pursuit. He figured there was a bomb on the door, and he knew he was right when the door flew outwards off its hinges into the parking lot.
He stepped into the open doorway and into the congregation, covered in soot, eyes white holes in the darkness. He'd hit Tiny with one of the shots through the door, a pitiful mangle of yellow plastic scraps all over the room. In the mouths of the ducks were lit cigarettes billowing smoke on top of the bomb's haze, two cigs for each.
"No smoking in the hotel rooms."
Buck fired once, twice, tearing through Blasty, ripping through Natasha with two bangs and two pops. The cigarettes flew forward from the shockwave, pelting Buck in the face, giving a brief opening for Pinstripes to come up with a plan.
Pinstripes thought. And thought. And thought. He shook the ash off from the explosion and manifested a frying pan.
Clef Jr. fired, hitting the frying pan square in the center and ricocheting off. Pinstripes charged him with the cooking utensil, swung back, and
WHAM
Pinstripes was stomped into a crude heap of yellow and orange.
The Boss spoke at last. "You 'n me, we ain't too unalike, ya know? You 'n me, we'se like two birds of a feather. You did some good fuckin' work here, betta then the buffoons you'se popped, eh? How 'bout you 'n me, we go and hit the world, do some business? How 'bout I make you an offer you can't refuse?"
Buck approached The Boss, picking him up with a wing, bringing him eye height.
"I'll make you refuse."
He took The Boss back into the bathroom, setting him on the toilet reservoir as he rummaged through his bath robes for just the right thing.
"You're makin' the worst mistake of your life, here, Mr. Fuckmeup. You 'n I, we could do big things, huge things. All you gotta do is-"
Buck drove the found stilleto through The Boss's open dress-shirt, retracting it and feeling a thin hiss slowly deflate the duck. He slid Boss further on the reservoir, letting it slip off and into the watery toilet bowl face-down, air bubbling under the surface as the water let in, the duck sinking slowly into the bowl as it drowned.
He flushed.
09
He always claimed this was the unluckiest room. Sometimes the number didn't come up for several visits, and the handle was always covered in a fair coating of dust. But, today, it was time. Buck opened the door.
The first thing that struck him was the sheer number of black tubes lying on the ground. Tubes? He didn't know. They were scattered all over the floor, bent at right angles, and-
Oh my God.
What the fuck is that.
Huddled tight into the corner was a white sideways egg thing spattered in… ink? Buck took out his pistol and stepped carefully in the room. He took aim… and fired once. A black hole started spurting out arterial ink ichor, and the egg got up and slowly turned, turned, turned…
In its hands was a half-egg with an alien skull sticking out of it, a simple eye with a wet black trail running down it. The mobile egg's mouth was river of the same pitch fluid everywhere, a third eye spurting between two dot eyes.
Buck fired.
And fired. And fired, and fired, and again. He took out a second revolver and emptied that one too, and a third, a fourth. It'd fallen by the tenth bullet but Buck wasn't taking any fucking chances. This room was fucking cursed. It was fucking cursed. The egg was fucking splattered all over the place by this point, and Buck took a deep, deep breath, turned around, and left.
Christ.
08
Finally, a fucking normal person. Travis Kazmarek. "Gamma 1 Sagittarius." Buck knocked at the door in the ·— ··· pattern to lure him out.
The door opened wide. "Thank fuck someone's finally h-"
Buck already had his revolver leveled and fired square into Travis's open mouth, slicing a channel in his tongue and just barely missing his spine. He recoiled and gagged, grasping his throat and coughing heavily to try and get the constant flow of blood to break enough for him to breathe. He dropped to his knees and Buck aimed again, this time making his mark, punching through his skull and sending him twitching down in a pool of his blood.
Finally, a fucking normal kill.
07
The first thing Buck noticed when he entered the room was that it was empty aside from a document on the door.

Item #: SCP-3361

Classy Carlos. Doodle boy. Drawing based anomaly. Eh. Sure. He had enough training. He stepped into the bathroom.
To… nothing. There wasn't really anything there. He set to work. Taking out a simple sharpie he started running along the edges of the bathroom mirror, leaving a tiny gap along one side. He drew some dicks on the mirror, put a phone number, wrote a phrase in Greek, drew some more dicks, stickmen having a rudimentary conversation… the perfect storm of graffito to summon
Ah! There he is.
As Carlos slipped into the mirror view, Buck lifted his marker and closed the box.
"Hello, my most esteemed… avian. Hm. You are a goose, correct?"
"Got it in one."
"Ah! I've never had the pleasure of meeting a goose man before. It's a pleasure. Say, what're you up to?"
"Doodling. Drawing dicks."
"Well that's not very nice. How much have you thought about other people recently? I can see it in your eyes. That childlike glee. You think this's funny, yeah?"
"I think it's absolutely fuckin' hilarious."
"Well, different strokes I suppose. Say, you look like you've killed a lot of people, huh? How's that like? How does it feel for you when you see someone die? Do you ever feel any guilt about it? Do you sleep well at night? You look tired. Have you ever thought about what could've been that now will never be?"
Buck stopped doodling.
"Struck a nerve?"
Buck capped his marker.
"Ah, sorry! I'll move on friend. You don't seem like the talking type, huh? Short, terse? You don't want to let on you've got a brain, or a heart, or a soul, you just want people to see you as a force of nature, an unstoppable killing machine, Death personified. But I know you, you know yourself, right? You cry, you cry like, a lot! Almost every day actually! You fall in love incredibly easily even though you always end up killing anyone you meet. You want people to think you're the type to go in guns blazing, or one to take a baseball bat and bum-rush someone before turning their head into an oversized sausage casing. You really don't want anyone to see you, right?"
Buck took out his revolver and spun the cylinder.
"Ah! Sorry again, my feathery friend! I'll be taking my leave soon, don't worry. I'm just a drawing on a bathroom mirror surrounded by dicks. I can't hurt you. But, before I go, I want you to take a deep long look in this mirror, see yourself for once. Take a breath. Take a minute. Take a, well, use the toilet. You confront a lot of people. Have you ever tried confronting yourself?"
Buck walked up closer to the mirror and looked himself in the eyes.
"There you go, friend. You know, don't you think you deserve a vacation? Take a break from all the killing."
"I'm not too much a fan of hotels."
"Have you heard of 'bed and breakfast's?"
"Yeah. Don't like breakfast."
"Understandable. So… Enough about you. I'm guessing you can tell me why I'm stuck in here, huh?"
"Yup."
"Are you gonna tell me? Or are you just going to let me say that it's sigil magic?"
"Worst fucking sigil magic I've ever done."
"The sigil doesn't need dicks, right? Ah, it doesn't matter. I would've stayed here anyway. I guess I'll ask you now to look inside yourself, take a deep look into your heart, and think: Does killing a doodle who wants people to become their best selves help you feel more like a person? Does killing a drawing help you escape the role placed onto you, and help you become the navigator of your own story? Does killing do anything for you?
Do you like hurting other people?"
Buck shot at the mirror. A crack ran through Classy Carlos right through his midsection before shattering off the surface.
06
The Moon Champion.
Buck sighed. He knocked on the door.
A space suit answered.
"Greetings, Uncle Samuel. I am the Moon Champion, Champion of our lady the Moon, bulwark against space crime and destroyer of the unrighteous. It appears I have found myself in a box. Do you happen to know the way out?"
"Yeah. It's inside somewhere. I'll help you try and find it, alright?"
"Thank you, Uncle Sam. You are a true ally to space justice."
Buck entered and closed the door behind him. "I know."
"Say, Uncle Sam, what brings you to this particular box, at this particular time? Do you wish to ally yourself more closely with my campaign to protect the Moon People? Do you endeavor to aid me in my quest?"
"Moon Champion, I'm going to be honest here. I'm here to kill you."
"Kill me? On what grounds, Uncle Sam?"
"There are… laws. Of the world. Of… the universe. There are times when things must come to an end. I do not make the laws. I don't think about why the laws are there. I don't think about why I'm sent. I'm just the arbiter. And to put it simply, the laws of existence are all screaming at me that your time has come."
"Justice is never done. I cannot die. My people need me."
"You are a speck. You're a cell in the organ of justice. You're insignificant. Without people like you the organ would die, but I need you to understand that cells die. Cells are replaced. You will die. And you will be replaced."
"But who will protect the Moon People if I die?"
"… I'll… I have a successor for you. I'll make sure. It might be your time. It's not theirs. I promise you this."
"…"
"Oh shit look out Moon Champion there's a fucking poison cloud in your helmet!"
The Moon Champion's hands dashed up to his helmet, grasping around desperately before getting into a crouching position, trying to force the helmet off.
"Moon Champion look out! You gotta open your visor! You have to let the poison cloud out!"
"Thank you Uncle Sam! I could've died!" The Moon Champion lowered his visor at last, turned around, and was shot square in the fucking face by Buck.
05
If Alexei were able to tell Buck his final thoughts, they would be:
I have lived long. I have seen much. I have finished the race.
But there was no radio static.
There was only a gunshot
and then silence.
03
The GOC had been preparing for this moment for a long, long time. So it's no surprise that the question of "how do you kill a god?" was answered long, long ago.
It started with the squirrels.
Twenty years worth of effort. Biologically and robotically engineered squirrels implanted within the squirrel populations to search, destroy, and replace. Plagues to turn squirrels into hive-mind simple animals. Hunting permits and bounties. Increased deforestation. Everything they could to destroy the squirrels.
Admittedly, this was primarily to prevent the war of the squirrels. But it had an important side effect.
Do you know what happens when gods lose all their worship?
They die.
Not always literally. Some gods exist outside their worship. But to lose one's godhood, to lose one's myth, is as good as to die.
But a gun works too.
A gun worked. it definitely worked.
DEATh COMeS FOr YoU SOON
God, what? This isn't a room. Whose idea was this? There was some writing here before, but it all became absolute garbage at this point. All the names were replaced by [vacant]. It addressed Jr. himself.
Clef Jr. kicked in the door to room number two and found it completely empty. Literally nothing. He didn't know what was in there and honestly? One less body.
So it goes.
PREPARE YOURSELF MR. FUCKMEUP
"You and I are going to watch the sun come up."
Alto Clef Jr. wrapped a steel noose on a pole around D-7294's neck and drug the heap over the carpet, over the steel bottomrail to the door, over the concrete landing, and into the gravel and sand, all the way trailing curdled blood and screams into the California night, detritus being dragged up into the gutshot wounds.
He pulled the noose skin-tight, slightly indenting D-7294's flesh, and let the pole attached to it drop before taking a seat in the sand.
And they stayed there, in the silence, overlooking the Pacific waves cresting and breaking under the purple sky.
"I've killed a lot of bastards, Mr. Don. Or, Zeke? Zeke. I've killed a lot of bastards. A lot of fuckers just like you. I think that's ultimately the difference between the two of us."
D-7294 was still yelling from the pain. "F-fuck y, fuck y-you, you f-fucking psychopath, God, God fucking dammit."
"Funny, coming from you."
"Fuck you."
"Y'know, I'm not so sure I'm like you, though. Sure, I enjoy killing. But I think everyone does, a little. Everyone loves blood. Everyone loves revenge. Everyone for the longest fucking time, 'cept not as much today, loved the guillotine. Folks went fucking bananas for drawing and quartering.
But, what's revenge but a flimsy justification to bash another person's brains in?
Hell, you could probably think of what I'm doing to you right now as some sickening form of revenge. But, thing is, your victims are all dead, Zeke. They're all fucking dead. There's nobody to want revenge. Nobody's left to take revenge. I can call what I'm about to do to you revenge but it doesn't change the fact that I'm getting off on this shit, that I'm doing it for my own sense of karma."
"Wha-what the fuck?"
"I'm going to bash your fucking brains in because I know what you did and it fucking sickens me. I know how you killed all those women and children, how you did so much worse to them before they died. I'm going to kill you slowly and painfully because the symmetry rhymes to me. I want you to feel something for once in your fucking life."
Buck got up, walking over to D-7294 before he brought his foot down on his left hand.
He took out his knife and crouched down. With one hand he pulled out the middle finger slightly, the joint popping as it expanded. He pressed his knife between the knuckle and finger, and pressed down sharply, breaking the flesh before starting to saw through the sinew and muscle, eggy synovial fluid and blood leaking out pathetically before the muscle and tendon finally gave a sickening snap and the finger came loose. Buck pulled it off carefully, making sure to rip off the remaining flesh, and tossed it to the seagulls, and set to work on the index as 7294 screamed harder.
"Mutilation first, right? No, no, the gunshot was first, lacerations second. Forgot that part. Well, I gutshot you, so I guess I didn't. Whatever."
All the fingers fingerfood for birds now, he started to just draw straight cuts across the forearm, up the upper arm, finally going to the back before stabbing and leaving the knife in his shoulder.
"God, I'm fucking tired of this shit. You thought this was fun? It's fucking tedious." Buck reached into his bloodsoaked bathrobe and retrieved his bat, at last, as the sky warmed upon the waves.
"Australian Buloke, white stain. Hardest fuckin' wood in the world, as far as I know. Blunt trauma's next."
Buck brought the bat above his head and brought it smashing down onto Zeke's forearm, repeating until he heard the clean break. The sun was rising already, cresting upon the water.
"Well damn. I thought I had more time. Guess you get an early break."
"G-God! God! Please!"
Buck scraped the ground in front of him, pointing his bat to the sun,
wound up,
and swung right into Zeke Don's worthless skull
once,
 twice,
the skull breaking in, head caving,
 three times,
 four,
brain and blood squishing out and backspattering from the newbroken scalp,
 five,
 six times,
splattering outwards, sticking onto the baseball bat's shaft, spilling onto the beach, like a semicongealed pudding.

And the sun shone upon the Hotel California.

This was written for the SCP Original Character Tournament. Click those links for the source SCPs and tales, as there were no entries from these folks.

The ACT
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« Agent Pocket Ukulele Through the Fire and Flames | The Hotel California Presents: Ecce Farcio | Some People Call Me the Goose Cowboy »


The faint light of the 5 candles at the center of the room cast flickering shadows against the stone walls. Two shadowed figures sat near the candles with their heads down, eyes closed, and while muttering the same three words repeatedly.
"Om, Kal, Thom."
Then, as if struck, one of the men stopped chanting.
"Alexa, turn the basement light on."
"Ok." A robotic voice from near the wall called out.
The other man looked up just in time to see the overhead light turn on and both men winced at the sudden brightness. The floor here was dirty, the walls were stone and cinder block and the metal supports that ran along the bottom of the house hung above them both.
The man who'd turned the lights on looked up at the other man. "Look maybe we should talk about it."
"How about we don't, Howard."
"Phillip, I'm just saying that maybe…"
"Fuck you Howard. I said I didn't want to talk about it."
Howard shook his head. "How about we do because I'm the head cultist here not the bitch cultist."
"There's just two of us." Phillip shot back.
"And I'm in charge." Howard paused for a moment and softened his tone. "Look, all I'm saying is maybe you're supposed to wear the robes."
As their eyes finally adjusted to the bright light, their outlines became more clear. Howard wore a set of black robes with a pointed hood and Phillip wore a pair of blue jeans with a Black Sabbath T-shirt.
Phillip shook his head. "You said I didn't have to wear robes for this if I didn't want to."
"It's been an hour and a half. We're definitely doing something wrong. Have you ever seen someone do a ritual without cult robes on before?"
"I mean no, but I've never seen a real ritual either. Look man. Does the book say I have to wear robes or not?"
Howard cocked his head to the side and lifted the book in front of him up. The front of the book depicted a pentagram, while the back cover bore the stylized initials of MC&D. "Draw a pentagram on the floor with chalk, lower the lights and place 5 candles at the points of the star. Surround the pentagram with a circle of salt. Create a spiral of gunpowder beginning from the center of the pentagram and going outward until it reaches the salt circle. Then…" Howard trailed off.
Phillip's eyes went slightly wider. "Wait there's more?"
Howard shook his head quickly. "What? No."
"Ok but you said 'then' and stopped talking."
"I was reading the wrong thing."
Phillip stepped around the circle and towards Howard. "Give me the book. I wanna see."
"No. It's mine."
"Give me the book!"
Phillip reached for the book as Howard pulled it away. Phillip slapped at Howard's arm, who tried to use his free hand to push Phillip away. The two of them remained engaged in slapping and awkward pushing until Phillip lost his balance and fell backward, dragging Howard with him. Howard dropped the book as he fell and when they landed Phillip scrambled over to grab it. He started to read as the basement door opened.
"Howard?" An older woman's voice called down.
"Yeah grandma?" Howard answered.
"I heard a commotion. Are you and your friend rough-housing?"
"No grandma."
"You sure you and your friend don't want something to eat? I could make something."
"No. Thank you grandma."
"Ok. I'll be in the den watching Wheel of Fortune if you change your mind. I got the Tivo so I can pause it if you want something."
"We're fine grandma thank you."
The door shut slowly and Howard remembered his book. He looked over at Phillip who was still looking at the pages.
"'Then apply the blood of a close friend to the center of the circle.' You son of a bitch."
"Look, I was hoping we wouldn't need to get that far. I'm not…" Phillip closed the book and slapped it across Howard's face. Howard's nose immediately began to bleed. As the blood fell on the gunpowder in the circle it ignited and began to burn along the spiral.
Howard reached up to close his nose off and stepped back. "Oh shit."
The burning gunpowder reached the center of the spiral and a small explosion of energy erupted from it. The two men's eyes went wide as the ground beneath them began to rumble slightly, then the ground beneath the circle fell away. The smell of sulfur filled their nostrils and a dark cloud of smoke with two red eyes rose up from the hole.
"I AM HR'ASM'KAL OF THE SIXTH CIRCLE OF WHY IS THAT GUY WEARING A BLACK SABBATH T-SHIRT?"
Howard used his free arm to elbow Phillip in the ribs.


« Grin and Bear It || Anomalous Teens Against Trilobite Schemes || Cafeteria Chat

“You're being a baby. Just take it on its little field trip and be done with it,” Coles coaxed. “It'll be fun. Site-201 does, like, prehistoric shit. Dinosaurs, Ben. Dinosaurs.”
"It won't be fun. It'll be terrible. You know Korchenko still makes bear jokes every time I walk into the break room?” Junior Researcher Benedict Kim shuddered at the thought of the previous month's expedition. The morose expression on his face made him look a bit like a very sad moose.
Coles rolled his eyes. “That's your own damn fault for dropping your phone in a bear enclosure because an anomalously sapient snapchat account made fun of you.”
Benedict's phone beeped. He'd forgotten to put it on silent. At Coles' meaningful look, Benedict reluctantly dug it out of his pocket and checked his messages.
3009

museum hypeeeee
do you think filters work on dinosaurs?
this is so lit 🔥🔥

“It's not even a museum,” Benedict mumbled sullenly.
“It was a compromise, okay? Come on, Ben,” Coles wheedled. "We're short-staffed. I've already told the people at Site-201 to expect you. And 3009 requested you specifically. Don't you feel bad for the little phone girl?"
"Honestly? No."
Coles stared at him for a long moment and then began to snicker. Benedict winced, and stood there dejectedly until he stopped. "Okay, seriously," Coles said finally, once he finally managed to get his giggles under control. "You'll be looking for Researcher Annabel Xiulan. Don't be late. Okay? Okay. Now get out of my office."
"I… yes, sir."
Benedict sighed and spun on his heel to leave. When he was halfway to the door, Coles cleared his throat.
“Oh, and Researcher Kim?” Coles examined his nails nonchalantly. “It'll be fine. For once in your life, stop worrying so much.”

The alarms howled shrilly to life, blaring out the unmistakable caterwauling wail for a Euclid breach. Over the siren's screams, Benedict could just barely make out the loud clanking sound of the security system automatically locking shut the doors.
"There has been a containment breach in Sector C. I repeat, there has been a containment breach in Sector C," announced a smooth female voice over the crackly intercom. "The relevant anomaly is SCP-4131. Security personnel will deal with the breach shortly. If you are not in a secured room, please remain calm and proceed in an orderly manner to a designated checkpoint."
Things are going to be fine, thought Benedict bitterly. Yeah, right.
The first two hours of their guided tour of Site-201 had been… fine. Researcher Xiulan had clearly relished the opportunity to play tour guide for the day, and she'd had 3009 practically in raptures all day with tales of her most troublesome skips. A heavily armed prehistoric creature with a trilobite obsession? Sure. Xiulan could handle it.
To be completely honest, it had been a bit of a novelty to see a Site from what was almost a civilian's point of view, even if they'd only been given clearance to see the more "child-friendly" anomalies. Benedict was even willing to admit that he'd been… starting… to have a good time. But then Xiulan had run out on them for an urgent call, and shortly after, the alarms had started blaring.
Now he was boxed in by the white walls of a Site-201 laboratory like a rat in a trap. They were locked in by the security system, and even if he left, he wouldn't know which way to run. He was in for a long wait.
His cell phone vibrated in his hand, catching his attention.
3009

benny?
jeez, are you even listening to me?
helloooo??
😭😭😭

Under his breath, Benedict cursed, but strangely the existence of a concrete problem with a clear solution was almost comforting. His veins were buzzing with undirected adrenaline. He had stopped filming when the alarms started going off, so 3009 didn't know about the containment breach. There: an obvious problem, and an obvious solution.
Me

Stay calm. There has been a containment breach for SCP-4131.

Despite the cold air-conditioning blowing through the underground facility, a bead of sweat dribbled down Benedict's face. He forced himself to stop pacing and heaved himself onto a lab counter instead. His heart was jackrabbiting in his chest like he'd just downed a gallon of Red Bull.
There was a brief pause. 3009 started typing, stopped briefly, and then started back up again.
3009

oh
so what are we meant to do? 😰

Benedict got halfway through a sentence before realizing, to his horror, that he had no idea what to say. What were they supposed to do? He was only visiting Site-201, and had no idea what the breach protocols were. He barely knew anything about 4131, other than its Euclid object class, and an object class said absolutely nothing about an anomaly's ability to kill him.
Me

Just a moment.
Let me call Xiulan to check.

Swiping out of the Snapchat app, he dialed Xiulan's number. The phone rang once, twice, and then went to voicemail.
A cold trickle of fear pooled in his stomach.
3009

what did she say?
is she coming to get us??
xiulan to the rescue!! 💪

Me

She didn't pick up.
Please endeavour to stay calm regardless.

There was a long, long pause. Benedict had only ever been in one containment breach before, and he'd known immediately that he wasn't in any real danger. That wasn't the case now. Benedict was essentially alone in a new Site, with no idea what was loose or how dangerous it was, and all he had to protect himself was an anomalously annoying social media account. Ruthlessly, he stamped down on the wave of claustrophobic panic that washed over him.
3009 started rapidly firing off texts, typing with almost inhuman speed.
3009

it's okay! 👌
don't worry so much, benny 😣😣
it's a big site
there's no way that it will come here!!! 😤

His phone started to ring. It was not Xiulan.
Benedict stared at the caller ID, astonished. He hadn't even realised that Snapchat had a video call function. Distantly, the thought occurred to him that 3009 really should have told him about this previously. The ten-second video problem had really caused Benedict no end of trouble.
Numbly, he accepted the call. Stacey Lee's face filled the screen.
"Benny," said 3009 anxiously. "Benny, are you scared? It'll be okay. I'm sure it will."
Somewhere in the building, something exploded. It sounded close.
They stared at each other, wide-eyed. The girl on the screen looked impossibly young, and Benedict was suddenly reminded of the fact that the real Stacey Lee was only fifteen. A hot wave of shame washed over him. He was supposed to the adult here, but there he was, being comforted by what was essentially a teenager.
"I'm fine, 3009," he said, feeling like the world's dirtiest liar. "Just stay calm."
3009 nodded fervently, and for a moment, Benedict thought that maybe things would be okay. The explosions sounded close, but that was probably his panicked mind playing tricks on him. In a few minutes, an MTF would handle things, and—
And then, as if in direct fulfillment of Murphy's law, the northern wall exploded. The force of the explosion knocked Benedict off his feet, and for a brief moment, he was airborne, flying over the lab counters and biohazard disposal bins like an enormous bird of prey.
Somewhere in the chaos of noise and bright lights, 3009 screamed.
Benedict hit the wall with a sickening crack, and the world went black.

He came back into the world of the waking with a jolt.
The air hung thick with plaster dust. His head ached. Benedict shifted uncomfortably and then hissed, a frisson of white-hot pain shoot up his arm. He was almost certain that his left shoulder was broken, in at least two places. Blood was dripping into his left eye.
And— where was his phone?
Exhausted, he let his head loll to the side. The floor was almost unrecognisable, matted as it was with a thick layer of dust, shrapnel, and glass. With a start, he realised that his phone was still clenched tightly in his hand. If only I'd had that kind of grip strength back at Wilson's Wildlife Center, he thought, slightly dazed.
The call hadn't ended. Stacey Lee stared up at him from the screen, both hands clamped tightly over her mouth. Catching his eye, she gingerly removed her hands and then put one finger to her lips in the universal gesture for silence.
Skrrrch.
Deep inside the dust cloud, something scuttled across the linoleum, just out of sight.
Benedict's heart skipped a beat.
The thick cylindrical tip of a missile launcher emerged out of the smoke and ashes. The burnished metal glinted menacingly in the flickering fluorescent lights overhead. For half a second, relief swelled in Benedict's chest at the prospect that this might be Site-201's security personnel, come to investigate the explosions.
Not half a second later, those hopes were dashed as the rest of the missile launcher came into view, along with the enormous plated head that it was attached to. The creature's head swiveled around languidly, giving Benedict an unobstructed view of the metal grid and strange tribal markings embedded into its carapace.
Slumped limply against the wall, Benedict stared up at it in horror. The creature towered over him, standing easily at the height of an adult human. The serrated edges of its perfectly circular mouth chattered as it dragged itself forward, propelled by the steady undulation of an intricate series of overlapping lobes.
Its beady eyes swiveled on their long stalks, and landed, finally, on Benedict's frozen form.
Benedict struggled to stand, to do something, but he couldn't get up. Even the slightest movement felt impossibly difficult. In the end, he could do nothing as the creature wriggled its way towards him. His heartbeat pounded in his ears like a drumbeat.
And then it began to speak. From beside him, 3009 let out a tiny squeak. 4131's voice sounded like it was coming from the inside of Benedict's head.
"Hello!" said 4131 politely. It was bizarrely chirpy. "Gee, it sure is nice to stretch my fins a little! Seen any trilofuckers around? They must be getting complacent without me to put them in their place!"
Benedict stared, slack-jawed. Trilofuckers…? That sounded like Xiulan's troublesome project—
"—the Anomalocaris with delusions of a trilobite conspiracy," blurted out Benedict's traitorous mouth, as things clicked into place for him. Then he immediately sucked in a sharp breath, horrified at himself.
All of a sudden, Benedict was staring straight down the sleek barrel of what was definitely closer to a bazooka than a gun. "A delusion?" said the Anomalocaris, outraged. "You're one of them, aren't you? Is this a cover-up? Pretending that the trilobite threat doesn't even exist?"
Benedict's mouth opened and closed, soundlessly, as he stared up into the pointed end of a massive torpedo. He had to say something. Maybe if they bluffed well enough and played into its delusion, it wouldn't kill them. But his mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool and his head was swimming. It occurred to him that he was probably concussed.
"Well?" demanded the Anomalocaris. It peered at him suspiciously. "Why aren't you saying anything?"
"There's— there's no trilobites here," he forced out blearily.
The Anomalocaris clacked its mandibles at him and slithered a little closer until the barrel of its torpedo launcher was so close to Benedict's face that he was nearly going cross-eyed looking at it.
"That's the most pathetic attempt at a lie that I've ever heard," it said, suspiciously. "You're… you're trilobite spies, aren't you?"
Click. The safety on the missile launcher snapped off.
Benedict swallowed dryly. The realisation of his impending death cut through the haze of his foggy mind like a beam of light. An overgrown prehistoric shrimp was going to shoot him for being a trilobite spy. He was about to die there on the cold linoleum floor of a Site-201 laboratory for absolutely no reason at all. God, he wouldn't have worked so hard if he'd known it would all be for nothing. It sucked that he'd never be a Senior Researcher.
The absurdity of the situation was just starting to set in, and a gravelly laugh bubbled out hysterically out of his aching throat.
"What are you laughing about?" the Anomalocaris said, rearing back in outrage. "Your trilobite comrades can't save you now. I'm going to send you to hell where pure evil like you belongs, triloscum."
Benedict tried fruitlessly to clamp down on his uncontrollable giggles, but it was hopeless. "I just— I just—"
"Oh, shut up, Benny!"
3009's voice rang out from his phone, loud and clear. It startled him so badly that he stopped talking immediately. On the phone screen, 3009 was vibrating with nervous energy, two bright splotches of colour rising high on its cheeks.
The Anomalocaris jerked, looking around wildly. "Who said that? A— a triloghost?"
"No, you—"
But it was too late. The Anomalocaris fired off a volley of torpedoes at the southern wall, blowing an enormous hole in the plaster with a deafeningly loud blast. The dust in the air thickened.
3009 shuddered, pupils blown wide with shock. Then it shook itself and continued on with only the slightest tremor to its voice. "No, you idiot. Down here!" It crossed its arms, raising its chin in some strange parody of haughtiness.
The anomalocaris scuttled away from Benedict to peer curiously at his phone. With the enormous gun out of his face, Benedict sucked in his first proper deep breath.
"You'll have to excuse my partner," 3009 said, its voice going high and uncertain. "He's… He's new. First day on the job, you know?"
"On the trilobite spy job?"
"N-No, for god's sake! What are they teaching you here? Can't you recognise a member of, uh…" 3009 trailed off. It blinked up at the Anomalocaris, face smoothing out into a blank mask.
After a moment, Benedict jumped in. Now that the gun was out of his face, Benedict's brain had finally rebooted. "The… Anomalous Teens Against, uh… Trilobite Schemes."
3009 gave a little jump as if startled, and then nodded vigorously. "Yeah. Anomalous Teens Against Trilobite Schemes. You are a member, aren't you?" The tremor had suddenly vanished from its voice, but Benedict didn't have the time to think too hard about it.
The Anomalocaris clicked wildly. It looked embarrassed. If it was possible for a prehistoric shrimp to look embarrassed. "Well… no. But I'm the best trilobite hunter around! You know, there was one time that a squad of trilobites had me surrounded, and I busted right out of there—"
"Yeah, whatever," said 3009. It was starting to become strangely confident. "I mean, I'm like, responsible for the extinction of trilobites in, um, the tri-state area, you know? So like… not really impressed with the macho posturing." It paused, mouth twisting, and then added, "God, you're really out of touch, aren't you, old timer? You sure you're not the trilobite spy?"
"Me?" squawked the Anomalocaris, outraged. "I'm not a trilobite spy! Trilobites have pure evil burning within them. How could you confuse me for one of them?"
"Oh yeah?" said 3009. "Prove it."
"How?"
3009 hesitated. Its mouth had run away with it: it was painfully obvious, at least to Benedict, that it had no clue how the Anomalocaris could "prove" its allegiance. The Anomalocaris cocked its massive head in anticipation.
After a long, tense moment, 3009 regrouped valiantly. "Uh… how do you think?"
"How do I think?"
"Yeah," said 3009, very seriously. It had adopted the wide-eyed, earnest look of a practiced liar. "Take some initiative, comrade! This is a test. How do you think you're going prove yourself?"
The Anomalocaris paused to consider this for a moment, and then said, very enthusiastically: "I'm gonna go kill some triloghosts!"
"Um… great," said 3009. "That's awesome. You, uh… go do that. On the other side of the room, maybe. Benny was pretty badly injured by the, um. By the triloghosts."
"Okay!" it chirped and scuttled cheerfully over to the other side of the room.
As soon as its back was turned, 3009 sagged like a deflated balloon. "Are you okay?" it said, voice going hushed. "Your head— your head is bleeding. Like… really badly."
"I'm okay," mumbled Benedict. "Just… dizzy."
Dizzy was an understatement, actually. His whole field of vision was starting to go black and spotty around the edges. It seemed increasingly likely that the events of the past fifteen minutes were just a surreal stress dream of some kind.
They were interrupted by a loud blast from the other side of the room as the Anomalocaris blasted a hole in the floor. It scuttled back over, obviously pleased with itself.
"I really got that crafty little carapaced creep good, yeah?" it said eagerly. "Did you see that? Did you see? I really showed him what's up!"
3009 beamed at it. "Yeah, you did great!"
"I'm the best at trilobite elimination," the Anomalocaris preened. "It's like poetry! But with explosions!"
"Okay," said 3009. "I guess, now that you're really with us, you can tell us some war stories…"
The world swam and then faded out for a few seconds. Benedict blinked and suddenly the Anomalocaris was telling 3009 in vivid detail about a great battle in which it and a small guerilla force had taken on an entire trilobite army and survived with minimal casualties on their side.
Then it faded to black once more and only returned when Benedict was jolted out of his daze when with the doors slammed open with an enormous bang. A veritable squadron of men in uniforms poured into the room and the Anomalocaris screeched in outrage. Someone rushed over to his side. And, somewhere in the ensuing bedlam…
Benedict lost the battle to stay conscious for the final time that day and slipped into a dreamless sleep.

"…waking up. Hey, he's waking up. Someone get the medic."
Benedict opened his eyes to the bright white walls of the Site-201 medical center. He squinted. The lined face of Researcher Annabel Xiulan came into focus. She looked sheepish, and more than a little relieved.
"How are you feeling?" she said. "I think I need to buy you a drink after all this. I heard you fended off 4131 pretty well."
Benedict shook his head. "Wasn't me," he mumbled. His tongue felt very thick and the words came out slurred. "Is it still Sunday?"
"No," said Xiulan. "It's Monday. You've been out for a while. What's your name? Who's the current president?"
Monday? Benedict gaped at her and then stammered out a response. Xiulan nodded, apparently satisfied with his answers, and bustled off to fetch a medic.
Someone had put a fruit basket on his bedside table, tied with a cheerful polka dotted ribbon. His cell phone was tucked in between the apples and an enormous pineapple. It was almost out of battery.
Strange. 3009 hadn't sent him a single message.
He reached for the phone with his good hand, wincing with the stretch, and fumbled around with the app for a moment. After a few moments of fruitlessly swiping, he discovered that the elusive call button was available from the chat screen in a very low key shade of grey.
3009 picked up on the first ring. Its mouth fell open at the sight of the bandage wrapped tightly around his forehead. "Benny, you're okay!"
"Yes," Benedict said. He tried to nod but moving his head sent a sharp pain lancing through his skull, so he gave up on that and smiled tersely instead. "3009, you… you did good."
"Ah," said 3009. It seemed caught off guard by his praise and looked away. Was it embarrassed? "Well… not really. I didn't do anything particularly brave or special."
"You saved me," Benedict said slowly, struggling to maneuver his wooden tongue. "I'd be dead if it wasn't for you. Shot in the head by a giant shrimp."
A brief, weak grin flashed across 3009's face. "Yeah, that was pretty whack, huh? I liked Maya way better."
Benedict hummed in agreement. He was feeling oddly sentimental. It was probably the concussion talking. "You… you were brave. Really."
But 3009 shook its head. An odd emotion flickered behind its eyes.
"I wasn't," it insisted. "You don't get it. I wasn't brave at all."
Benedict blinked at it and thought ruefully to himself that head injuries made it even more difficult to parse 3009's mercurial moods than usual. As usual, 3009 took his uncomprehending silence as permission to continue.
"I wasn't brave. I wasn't even scared," it pressed on, seeming to stumble over its own words. "Yesterday, I realized that I'm not— I'm not scared of giant shrimp monsters with guns for heads because they, well, they can't kill me, you know? You can't shoot an app." It hesitated. "An app isn't… human. You get it, right?"
Benedict didn't get it, actually, but 3009 didn't seem to notice. There was an almost wistful cast to its expression, and though it was looking straight at him, Benedict got the strange feeling that it wasn't him that 3009 was seeing.
"You know," 3009 said, its tone softening. "It's been months since I woke up in here. Did you notice? My hair is still exactly the same length. I haven't eaten or slept in months. Humans don't do that, right?"
"No," said Benedict. "They don't."
3009 giggled. The sound had a sharp, desperate edge to it. "I— I guess it's kind of sinking in that if I stay like this, I'm never going to be normal again. I… Benny, am I still going to be like this in ten years? Twenty? A hundred?"
"I don't know," said Benedict, a little helplessly. A tiny, selfish part of him wished despairingly that he could go back to sleep. "We still don't know if—"
"Forget about C for a little bit," 3009 cut in. Its smile blinked out like someone had flicked a switch and turned off the lights. "Forget about which one of us is real. Would you guys… really ever be able to put me back in the first place?"
Benedict Kim was tired, and concussed, and generally a terrible liar. When he opened his mouth, an unspoken and unkind truth slipped out. "I don't know," he said again. And then, inadequately: "I'm sorry, 3009."
3009 nodded and looked away.
"Okay," it said, very quietly.
Benedict hesitated. "Are you?"
"Yeah," it said, with a brittle glass smile. Its shoulders sagged, very slightly. "It's fine. I guess I kind of suspected, you know?"
"Oh," said Benedict, uncertainly.
3009 shrugged, aggressively nonchalant. "You know, I kind of get it now. The other me. 3009-C."
"Is… is that so?"
"Sure. She doesn't know who she is, right? Because I exist." Stacey Lee's face was an inscrutable mask, betrayed only by the glossy dark shine of its eyes. "I guess I get that now. I mean… it's starting to become really obvious that I'm not the same person that I used to be either, right?"
Benedict stared at it, wordless and ineffectual.
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. By the time that Xiulan came back, it was clear that the conversation was over.

This was written for the Original Character Tournament. Thank you so much to PeppersGhost for organising the contest, and to NatVoltaic for the use of SCP-4131!
Make sure to check out NatVoltaic's companion piece too!
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« Previously: The Dedekind-Infinite Demographic
Between the fursuit and the magic staff, Katherine Sinclair figured that the former was far more likely to get her stopped at customs. But when the TSA agent stopped her and cited the suitcase full of wolfsbane instead of wolf's head, Sinclair felt her stomach drop into her feet even before they said the words 'Class-A thaumic focus'.
In her experience, your average customs officer couldn't have pronounced the word 'thaumic', let alone tell an Everhart driver from a particularly sharp stick. Still, she decided to play it dumb, see if she could bluff her way out of the worst that could happen.
"This?" she asked, flicking the leather grip of the driver where it lay swaddled in anti-static fabric. "Oh, this is for my sister in Milwaukee — she's real into that New Age scene, magic crystals, healing woo-woo…"
Her fingers were stopped mid-explanatory waggle as the agent fixed her with an amused if withering look. "Skipper, I've been here for a whole four hours and even I can tell that your accent's frankly atrocious."
"I-" Sinclair immediately glanced over her shoulder at the word 'Skipper' and immediately cursed herself for it. She'd just blown any chance at another bluff out of the water. That said, though, between the TSA get-up and the bitter smirk when they'd mentioned the Foundation, she thought she had a fairly good handle on who they were fronting for. "Does the Unit usually let their operatives discuss thaumaturgy in front of civilians, Agent?" she hissed.
For a moment, the smirk almost turned into a sincere smile. "Got it right first time."
Sinclair's brow furrowed. "Pardon?"
"Never mind." They rolled their eyes and muttered a low susurrus under their breath that raised hairs on Sinclair's neck and arms. "There. Glamoured. Happy?"
"Not until you tell me why you stopped me."
The agent made a face. "You sound like the last sovcit anartist I pulled over in Portlands."
"That's not an answer."
"Fine. We needed a local touch for this case, and you were the only contact we could pull up in time."
"So you're abducting a senior Foundation thaumaturgist while she's flying back home for some case you won't tell her about." Sinclair snorted. "Glad to see the Unit's as professional as ever."
It was like they hadn't even heard the insult. They simply shrugged their shoulders and casually picked up Sinclair's staff, twirling it with all the gravitas of a drunken band major. Immediately, she had to fight the urge to snatch it out of their hands and smack them over the head with it. "Fine, it's not my problem if the Foundation just had one of its Wisconsin reliquaries ransacked by a one-man team. I'll glamour down and let you go; just say the words."
A muscle in Sinclair's temple twitched. "You could've just led with that, Agent."
"And now I know why Spencer loves doing this so much," they chuckled under their breath. "Come on, let's get you briefed."

The TSA agent-slash-Sinclair's new least favourite person introduced themselves as Robin on the walk to the makeshift briefing room. "I'll leave my last name for you to find out. I'd rather not risk you trying to hex me just yet, no offense."
Sinclair barely managed to spit out the words 'none taken' between teeth ground together hard enough to squeak. At least they'd done her the decency of ensuring her luggage would go through nothing worse than a VERITAS scan for safety; as luxurious as the Foundation's insurance was, she was pretty sure she couldn't be reimbursed for damage to a fursuit, no matter how expensive it was to commission.
After at least six right turns, none of which took them back to where they started, Robin stopped at an indistinguishable white-painted door and knocked sharply on it, shave-and-a-haircut style. "Ari! Stop playing with the napkins, our VIP's here."
A retort which sounded more like a distressed squawk sounded from inside the room, before its occupant stumbled outside, tissues stuffed into his suit vest's pocket and a guilty look on his face. Between the 'disappointed parent' expression Robin was giving him and the boyish mop of brown curls, he looked about five years too young to be an FBI agent, let alone someone posing as grizzled TSA staff.
As soon as he made eye contact with Sinclair, though, it looked like the frown had just fallen off his face and onto the floor. If it weren't for the sheer relief she felt at just feeling some kind of positivity, it would've been disconcerting. "I'm Ari. Nice to meet you. You're the Foundation's alchemist, yeah?"
He offered a hand to shake, which Sinclair reluctantly accepted. "…different department, but you're close enough."
"Ah. Yeah, see, Th- Robin over here's the wizard, I'm just some schlub the Unit picked up outta Chicago." Ari grinned and shook his head, sweeping his bangs back out of his eyes. "Shame you're gonna be stuck with me for the rest of this case; you two probably would've enjoyed each other's…"
The looks he was getting from both magicians bought his sentence to a screeching halt. "…Anyway. We should probably get onto the briefing proper, yeah?"
"Good idea," Robin said crisply. "Let's get this over with and you two out in the field, shall we?"
They ushered Sinclair into the briefing room after a couple of guarded glances to check nobody was watching. A pot of coffee bearing J. Edgar Hoover's disapproving visage and a plate of cookies which looked older than Sinclair herself sat on the gaudy mahogany table at the center of the room.
"Drinks?" Ari offered, holding up a dusty-looking paper cup he'd pulled from somewhere.
Sinclair wrinkled her nose. "I'm good, thanks."
He shrugged in a way that said 'suit yourself' and settled back into his seat. "Looks like we're skipping the pleasantries, then. Wild guess here, but I think you know less than we do about the raid that just happened here, yeah?"
Sinclair nodded in confirmation, drumming her fingers on the table. "My leave just ended today, I haven't even checked my work email."
"We know," Robin said around a mouthful of aged pecan and choc-chip. The Unit wizard was scarfing down cookies in stacks of three at a time; the sheer speed at which they were putting them away made Sinclair suspect they had a case of what Monty had affectionately nicknamed 'the magic munchies'. "Darnell sends his regards for the 'dakimakura' thing, by the way."
Ari sighed, oblivious to Sinclair looking like she'd just swallowed an anthill. "Can we stay on-topic, please?"
Robin grumbled in grudging assent, while Sinclair took a moment to recover enough of her composure to speak. "Question: how do you know more than I do about a Foundation fuck-up?"
"To put it lightly? You could literally smell the mess from a mile away, Doctor." Ari reached into one of the pockets of his vest and slid a neatly-folded photo over to Sinclair. Unfolding it revealed a lurid tableau of human insides that had become outsides, shreds of tendon dripping from the walls of what looked to be a containment wing of some kind. "If the security footage is accurate, that's the work of one man. One hundred percent casualty rate."
Sinclair felt her gorge rising and hastily tried to choke it down. "I- Fine. That's… big is an understatement, but I still don't get what the Unit's doing in Foundation business. We can take care of our own."
In response, Ari held up a hand, which Robin took as their cue to toss him an evidence bag they'd pulled from their jacket. "Funny thing, Doctor — a couple of days ago, we got called out to the Wanderer's Library because someone managed to steal an entire genre of books."
He set the bag on the table. Inside was an unassuming chess piece: a black queen by the looks of it. "And now someone else gets in and out of a Foundation site with the magic equivalent of a nuclear warhead and manages to liquefy every man on-site. You're starting to see what I'm getting at, right?"
"You're thinking they're the same guy."
"More like hoping," Robin cut in. "Full disclosure, we don't have a solid link, but coincidence seems a little unlikely. Veil-shaking lightning striking twice and all that."
Sinclair sank into her seat, brows furrowed as she mulled over what she'd just been told. "Alright. Sure, why not. You've got this hunch, but why'd you need to bring me into this?"
Robin and Ari shared a glance, before Ari spoke up again. "My partner did a little research at the Library. Turns out, the perpetrator who left this—" He tapped the chess piece through the plastic of the bag. "—this isn't their first time round the block. And if our sources are right, we've got a problem that's just perfect for the folks at the Pit."
"…Right." Sinclair nodded dubiously. "Can I ask who?"

"You've come to the right place," Tristan Bailey grinned.
This time of year was one of the few where the offices of Multi-U looked even close to presentable. The various pieces of public holiday PPE had been packed away in their lockers, not to come out for another month at the least, and for once the Bailey brothers had bothered to toss out the mounds of paper detritus that littered their desks.
Tristan was the triplet on duty when Sinclair and her FBI entourage entered the Site, and he greeted the newcomers as if they were any other Foundation agents. Technically, the passes Sinclair had scored for Robin and Ari meant they were Skippers for the sake of paperwork, but it still didn't mean she was willing to let either of them out of her sight.
"So, what brings you here?" He spun lazily in his desk chair as his workstation powered up. "Got a missing person lost in another universe, accidentally pissed off another Foundation, wanted the answer to the old 'is it sex or—'"
Sinclair coughed hard into her hand. "Tristan, our… new friends… have someone they want tracked."
"Oh? Well, we do a little bit of everything here, and that doesn't seem too tough." The Bailey brother bought the chair to a halt with his foot and flashed the group a winning smile. "Anything you've got for us to go off of?"
In answer, Ari dropped the bag onto the desk. Tristan's eyes narrowed as he examined the chess piece, before looking up to regard both agents with faint suspicion. "…I see."
"See what?" Sinclair folded her arms, clearly out of the loop and not liking it.
"The Black Queen," Tristan said. The words were pronounced in a faintly distasteful tone of voice that indicated it was a Proper Noun; Ari and Robin's expressions indicated it was not to be fucked with.
"Still not getting you."
"A bunch of someones throughout the multiverse who're the same someone." He turned to his terminal and began hammering away at it. "Turns out, finding one alternate-universe body double is weird enough, but finding one for just about every universe where the Foundation exists is just- it's really fucking weird, to put it lightly."
Robin nodded. "That was the gist I got. The Library has plenty of information on what she is, but not a word on who or where she is."
"I think we can solve that problem," Tristan said. "How about a trade? We give you what we know about any Queens round this universe, and if you can get her with it, you send her straight to us."
"Quid pro quo," Robin muttered to themselves. "It's going to take some doing to convince Cora, but I think we can get her say-so."
"Then it's a deal."

Two days and an express flight from Wisconsin to Oregon later, Ari found himself and his boyfriend in line for the monthly Derby Everywhere exhibition match. The perennially gloomy Three Portlands skies had been lit up by luminescent blue cables strung from the nearby buildings, which served as both mood lighting and a magical acre-sized umbrella for the throng of spectators gathering around the impromptu arena.
A bored-looking golem with a traffic light for a head held its hand out to Ari as they reached the front of the ticket line. "Cash, credit, or improv?"
"Can't do skits, sorry. Origami work?"
"Hm." The traffic light flashed yellow in what Ari had to assume was a guarded expression. "It better not be a crane or I'm leaving you to the bouncers."
"What do you take me for, a beginner?" Ari grinned and took a square of red paper from the inside of his suit pocket. Valley here, mountain there, pinch here and twist the corners through each other like that and just like magic, a crane took shape in the palm of his hand.
The light flashed red. "Is this a joke?"
"No, it's a swan."
Right on cue, Ari's paper sculpture suddenly twitched its wings and honked at the golem, who emitted a metallic yelp and nearly fell backwards onto one of its colleagues. Righting itself, it grudgingly handed him a pair of tickets (actually just old cinema tickets recycled to save on paper) and waved the two agents through to the arena proper.
Once they were out of earshot, Landen lightly nudged Ari with his shoulder. "Does that ever get old?"
Ari snorted, which was answer enough. "This is a business trip, Landen, stay focussed."
"Smartass."
The two headed towards the increasingly crowded stands, a set of giant steel seats donated by Deer College that were almost definitely not meant for this many people. Within a few moments, the majority of the crowd had taken their seats and the Unit agents were just two more faces in the crowd.
As the lights dimmed and music began to shake the stadium, Landen tapped a spot just below his throat. "Noemi?"
"I read you," Noemi replied. She was set up on the far side of the stadium with a heavy-duty COLLICULUS system set up to take Kirlian pictures of the participants; if the Foundation's intel was on-point, the thief would stand out like a magnesium flare in a sea of lightbulbs. "Just waiting for the cue."
The announcer's voice boomed over the intercom before Landen could respond. "Robots, meatsuits, everyone in between! Derby Everywhere's proud to bring you a very special matchup of two very special teams, exactly none of which would be legal in any other competition!"
Ari's brow furrowed as he examined the playbill. "The Cleveland Browns I get, but I thought the Erisians were street-legal?"
"Tonight, we bring you: the 1964 Cleveland Browns!" Applause shook the stands as the multiclassing football team waved and tossed antiquated merchandise to their apparent fans. "And their challengers…"
Landen's eyes widened as the second team took the stage. "You're fucking kidding me."
"…in a shock rescheduling, we have the leader of the Legion of Dynamic Derby and her… second, back-up legion of herself."
It took his brain a moment to connect the woman- women? was it plural if they were all the same person?- on the rink with the image he'd seen in the dossier.
As Alliot Chao — Black Queen and never-champion of the Portlands roller derby scene — entered the rink with four body doubles in flying V formation, the crowd around Landen seemed to die to a dull roar.
She met eyes with him just for a moment, grinned, and shot him a mock salute.
And then the arena exploded.

Next: TBA