I hovered on the night side of Earth at the height of the Karman line. Being so much above the planet, I could see many more stars than on the surface since there wasn't an atmosphere for light to filter through.
The stars call to me. The Oort cloud calls for me.
My strands of almost crystal-like hair swayed from my body's most minute movements. Though I was clothed in Kukulkan's second ascension outfit, I didn't feel any coldness at all.
I wasn't affected by coldness.
I thought about my last conversation with Zvezdnyy. She was tearful. Despite never being told, the girl somehow knew how dangerous this mission was. Zvezdnyy didn't want me to go, but she knew this was a mission only I could do.
We hugged and cuddled. Angela (SCP-191) later joined and Zvezdnyy put up some half-hearted protest before allowing her into my embrace.
All three of us stayed like that. On my bed, I held the two in my embrace until it was time for me to go.
I smiled as I finished reminiscing about that happy memory.
Placing my right hand over my heart, I closed my eyes and began to feel for the Star deep within me. I held on to the 'rope' that Star had already given me and I started tugging on it. I needed more power.
More than likely, the moment I start moving across the solar system Ion would likely know. That means I can't hide. Maybe I can hide for a bit while in the shadow of a planet but I can't really hide for long, not when Ion has the ability to break into the holy site of the Church of the Broken God.
I can only run then. So I shall run. I shall move as fast as I possibly can. I shall speed across the solar system and reach Jupiter.
To aid me in this endeavor, I shall fully embrace the Heart of ORT. I will use that Star as a power source to allow me to move as fast as possible.
I tugged on that 'rope' coming from that distant star even harder, until finally—
My eyes burst open and were filled with raw power. The floodgate was opened.
I felt the same alien energy filling every cell of my body. I felt the Heart of ORT glowing fully. Instead of a mere candlelight like it was before, now it was a forest fire burning brightly and bringing the day into the night.
A smile tugged on my lips. I felt amazing. I felt like I could take on Ion without any problem. I felt like a druggie who's just taken his first shot of heroin ever.
This rush. So much power! Unlimited power!
As I looked down on my body, only now did I realize how there was a white fluffy scarf wrapping around my shoulder, and from that scarf fell a golden metallic cloak. More than that, there was an odd weight above my head.
My hands reached up and touched it. It was smooth. As my hands explored more of it, I realized how many feathers were on the back of the helmet.
No, this was a headdress. I now wore Kukulkan's third ascension outfit.
With that recognition, I looked down and saw how my legs were clad in a pair of metallic boots with green lines cutting through that monotone gold. The boots themselves came up to my thighs.
Yes, this is my peak. This is when I fully embrace the Heart of ORT when I am shining as that Star.
Without a second thought, I began traveling.
In half a second my speed reached up to half that of light. In only 1.5 seconds, I passed by the orbit of the glowing Moon.
As I traveled into trans-lunar space, I began to notice how all the stars of the Milky Way appeared to gather in front of me. They were moving, gathering into this one bright blob directly in front of me like some kind of headlight of a car.
Spacetime was being warped by how fast I was moving. Newton's Laws of Motion is no longer accurate. You'd need Einstein's Special Relativity to describe what's happening to me.
Such as length contraction. Einstein's Theory of Relativity states that there is no absolute frame of reference, only perspectives. With this revelation in mind, length contraction becomes easy to understand as from the perspective of a stationary observer, I, who was moving at near light speed would appear shorter than I actually was since the light from my feet would arrive only a bit slower than the light reflecting off my head.
I grimaced as my green personal shield flared up.
A speck of dust smashed right into me with the force of an atomic bomb.
Something normally harmless was turned extremely deadly.
Moving at this speed, a collision with a single grain of sand imparts as much energy as Little Boy.
This was one of the hazards of moving at near-light speed: any collision with micro-meteorites or the like would be incredibly dangerous with the amount of energy involved. I mean seriously, if I smash into a U.S. quarter moving at this speed I would be hit with 50 megatons of TNT, or the same energy as the Tsar Bomba.
As I continued to speed up even more, any unintended collisions would become even deadlier.
I grimaced once again as I was hit with a cloud of dust.
That was enough energy to level Manhattan down to its bedrock.
Nonetheless, I continued to speed up even faster.
Mars came into view as this barely noticeably pinprick of green before rapidly becoming larger.
That's Mars. Moving at this speed has blueshifted Mar's color enough that it's no longer red for me.
Huh, that's strange. I thought during the debriefing that it was going to take light some 46 minutes to reach Mars, but somehow I reached here in less than five minutes—
Ah, that's right. Time dilation.
Moving at 99.49% of the speed of light, my Lorentz factor has reached 9.9—
Why do I know this stuff?
— At this level, every minute for me is going to be ten minutes for those on Earth, and since I wasn't always moving at 99.49, oh wait, now 99.6% the speed of light, my Lorentz factor was only going to increase, and the effect of relativistic time dilation was only going to become even more extreme.
As I passed by Mars, the color of the red planet shifted from its shades of bright green back to red. Weirdly enough, the planet looked like someone had stretched it, flattening its sides before bending it like someone curling their fingers inward. More than that, it was rotating.
In less than a millisecond Mars was already behind me, turning redder by the millisecond.
By now, almost all the stars in the night sky were shifting in front of me while the space behind where I was traveling was a dark abyss.
The redshifting of light has made Earth invisible to the naked eye. Oh sure, I could still see it on the Infrared spectrum, but any higher wavelengths and it's completely invisible.
All the lights from the stars in front of me got increasingly clumped together, more and more contracted.
Passing the orbit of Mars, now comes the long journey of traveling through the Asteroid belt and finally reaching Jupiter.
I reached 99.99999% of the speed of light. Length contraction has made everything around me almost completely dark save for very long wavelengths of infrared and the bright spot in front of me, a spot where all the starlights have gathered. Around that bright spot was a crown of rainbow, a corona of visible light still not yet blueshifted into X-rays and Gamma rays.
I grimaced once more as I smashed right into an asteroid, slowing me down to a mere 99.9991% of the speed of light and completely disintegrating that asteroid into a soup of fundamental particles.
I ignored it.
As I sped up to even higher regions of relativistic speeds, I found that corona of rainbow slowly retracting into that infinitely bright spot like the edge of a closing umbrella.
By now I was moving at such speed that it'll take a photon a whole month of travel to gain a single centimeter lead.
Spacetime warping has become extreme. My Lorentz factor was now in the millions. Every second for me is now many weeks for those on Earth.
It was primarily due to this time dilation that I was unable to react to the sudden appearance of Ganymede in my field of view.
OH SHI—
—I had only nanoseconds of relative time to react—
Crashing into Ganymede, I tried to slow down. I tried to floor the brakes but I just kept on going and going until I went right out the other side.
I passed right through the entirety of Jupiter's moon in a fraction of a second, but for me, that was less than a millionth of a second.
Thousands of kilometers of rock and dirt were gone in an instant as I pierced through the largest of Jupiter's moon with ease.
I slowed down to a crawl over the length of five thousand kilometers. Looking behind me at Ganymede, I found the moon to be an utter wreck.
I was showered in a cloud of moon gore as I made an utterly massive exit wound on the remnant of Ganymede. I mean close to half of the planetoid was gone with more disappearing every second as they were lifted off Ganymede, carried away by the force of my impact like wind carrying sand.
The whole moon became loose, appearing more akin to a comet. Gravity could no longer bind them together anymore.
Crap. That's probably going to give Jupiter a new ring. A small one, nothing like Saturn but a ring nonetheless.
I had no time to repair this. Ion could be here any second so I flew towards the humongous gas giant with strips of colored wind moving across its surface.
Jupiter appeared to get larger and larger, like a titanic maw that could consume whole planets.
I'll be honest, I felt a bit of fear. This extremely large Jovian planet… it's an irrational fear, so I push forward and descend into the depths of Jupiter's cloud layers.
It was loud, that was the first thing I noticed as I could hear the loud booms coming from hundreds of lightnings. The clouds weren't white like those on Earth, instead, they were mostly shades of brown with the occasional outcrop of white.
These clouds were all made of mostly helium and hydrogen. Jupiter would've been very flammable if not for the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere.
I was now veiled in true darkness as I crossed 50 kilometers of Jupiter's cloud layers.
Continuing my descent, I opted to travel even faster since I was likely not even a single percent of the way down to Jupiter's core.
Lightning became more common. It was almost deafening with the unceasing roar of thunder and flashes of light as I descended deeper into Jupiter. The pressure was increasing as well.
Then, I suddenly hit a layer of liquid hydrogen. It felt just like that time I descended down into the ocean, only this liquid was only about 33 degrees Celsius above Absolute Zero, a solid 13 Kelvin above its boiling point.
The pressure here was intense enough to force hydrogen into a supercritical fluid state.
I swam through this ocean of liquid hydrogen. It really didn't feel any different from swimming through the ocean except for this one, it's way colder and the pressure is astronomical. However, that coldness was disappearing as the pressure forces the liquid to become hotter.
I didn't want to ignite this pool of hydrogen I was in. I didn't want any potential for nuclear fusion to occur and cause a runaway reaction that would set all of Jupiter on fire.
So I didn't conjure up any plasma. Nor did I move at speeds that would cause nuclear fusion, only at the higher ends of hypersonic.
I used the gravitational pull of Jupiter as a lighthouse inside this dark abyss of liquid hydrogen.
It took about ten minutes of travel before I felt droplets hitting me.
Rain-like droplets of helium and neon precipitate down through the sea of liquid hydrogen.
By now, the temperature around me was over 5,000 kelvin, and the pressure here was two times that of the Earth's core.
This was how hydrogen was able to stay in a liquid state despite the temperature almost being able to make plasma.
It took me half an hour to cross that 21,000-kilometer-thick layer of hydrogen before I finally hit the sea of liquid metallic hydrogen.
The liquid was extremely smooth. That makes sense. Metallic hydrogen has zero viscosity as a superfluid after all.
I had no problem swimming through it surprisingly. I had an even easier time moving through this than through air.
Well, the pressure just jumped, and so was the temperature rising as well as I continued my travel down to Jupiter's core.
Thus, I increased my speed. I moved so fast that cavitation bubbles began to form behind me, trailing my cape and my feet.
A dull sense of warmth surrounded me. The liquid was over 10,000 degrees Kelvin.
I should be nearing Jupiter's core now after close to an hour of constant travel…
"—!"
I smashed into a solid surface, digging about a meter into it before stopping.
I swam through that 40,000-kilometer-thick blanket of metallic hydrogen and finally reached Jupiter's core. A ball of rock and ice with a radius one and a half times larger than Earth. The place where the heaviest element is contained inside Jupiter.
The pressure down here was unlike anything I've ever encountered. It was over 40 times more intense than those found in the depth of Earth's core, and the temperature here was hot enough to rival lightning.
Yet nonetheless, the incredible pressure forces the metallic hydrogen to stay as a liquid. A superfluid.
Time to get to work then.
I reached out with my senses. My eyes were useless as the metallic hydrogen was opaque to all forms of light. I tried to detect any disturbances in the local magnetic field that would point toward pieces of SCP-2399.
"..."
There are so many, what the actual fuck?!?
Back on Earth.
Sgt. James Goodwell checked his guns once more. He was once more assigned surface duty and so, he was clad in an opaque full-body suit underneath his usual armor that sealed him in.
Walking on top of these solid concrete walls with nothing to do was boring, so Goodwell explored the new gears that were given to him.
Glancing at the magazine underneath his assault rifle, Goodwell probed at the symbol of a cross upon his magazine.
"Uh, Lieutenant Charles?" Goodwell called out to his commanding officer, who was standing 10 meters away, "Why's our guns have crosses on them?"
His Lieutenant walked up to him. Staring at the magazine for a while, he said, "Oh you're one of the religious ones. Didn't they debrief you on how to use these 'faith bullets' I think they're called?"
"Faith bullets? No, they didn't have time. Only said if you find any instances of SCP-9401A to just pray and shoot."
Lieutenant Charles swept his gaze at the landscape outside of the walls of Site-19, before giving Goodwell what's presumably a sideways glance.
Hard to tell under all that thick layer of armor and full-body covering.
"The higher-ups finally let SCP-890 have a crack at SCP-914. Did something to it and turned that thing into a factory that's spewing out these anomalous technologies. You got God's miracle in the shape of a bullet, I got phaser bullets. Testing shows it shunts any solid matter hit into another dimension."
"Are the higher-ups really using SCPs? Did the Ethics Committee allow it?"
Charles laughed at 'The Ethics Committee' part before shrugging, "Seems like it. Not like the Ethics Committee would put up much of a protest. They're just stamping whatever paper's in front of them."
Then, Charles raised his gun and aimed it down at somewhere in the barren landscape.
He pulled the trigger.
The light around the gun warped and left a trail of distortions as the phaser bullets shot out and traveled over a kilometer away, whereupon hitting an almost hidden flesh blob created a spherical portal that shunts whatever's been hit into an alien dimension.
As the portal collapsed, it sent forth gravitational waves undetectable to human senses.
"Probing units. Foundation Type-Blue clairvoyants and diviners are foreseeing the flesh bastards launching a massive attack in the next hour or so. There have been some seismic activities as well all around Site-19. The lab coats think they're going to tunnel underground and pop up. Enjoy this quiet time of boredom and tranquility, Sgt Goodwell. It's not gonna last."
With that, Lieutenant Charles walked away, leaving a tense Goodwell.
And the Lieutenant was right. For no more than a minute after Charles had said that, the alarm blared as the announcer said how there were multiple large instances of SCP-9401A all rapidly approaching the facility from underground.
Simultaneously, the ground outside of the walls depressed before dozens of massive molten meat worms each with a mouth wide enough to eat multiple school buses came up and surrounded Site-19.
Each meat worm came up, tall, majesty almost like a whale, before falling down with the intention to crack the walls using their mass alone.
"Holy shit. Fire fire fire!" He heard Lieutenant Charles scream out.
Multiple portals opened up all over the thick, waxy, meat worm, but compared to its sheer size it only seemed to annoy the beast as if fell.
Booom*
Like a falling skyscraper, the meat worm crashed down. Surprisingly, the walls stood up against the weight of many tons of fused flesh and instead cut into the worm akin to knives.
"Do not let up! Fire fire fire!"
Goodwell found himself praying to every god of every religion he knew of as he pulled the trigger. He prayed to the Lord. He prayed to Allah. He prayed to Shiva. He prayed to the Buddha. He prayed to Odin. He prayed to Ares.
As a result of this, his bullets all had random effects. Some burned the flesh. Some transmuted it into gold. Some even exploded in showers of acid.
The meat worms didn't do anything after they'd fallen. Instead, they lay there, motionless as they took on the assault.
All kinds of bullets were used to try and shred this meat worm down to size. Beyond random effects and opening portals to alternate dimensions, some of the security guards shot out cryo bullets that flash froze a large chunk of flesh while there were others of a more transmutive property.
Amidst this barrage, hundreds of arms crawled out of the surface of the meat worm. They looked like maggots trying to crawl out of an empty carcass they finished eating.
Those hands then started making weird gestures and in turn, all kinds of glyphs started manifesting all over the worms like a suit of armor.
Goodwell realized these fleshworms were just carriers for humanoids able to perform kinetohazards.
They're trying to swarm them.
The sun is trying to bury Site-19 under an avalanche of corrupted flesh.
AN: Your comments give me motivation. I require a lot of motivation.
[spoiler=A more detailed explanation of what we would see near the speed of light[MEDIA=youtube]vFNgd3pitAI/MEDIA/spoiler/QUOTE]
[QUOTE="Unit 301, post: 7581340, member: 81898"]The SCP Foundation only has less than 3,000 SCPs. They are not numbered numerically.
"So, what's our current state of affairs?"
I asked as I sat on a chair with my legs crossed. I wasn't inside Bright's office but instead a special meeting room for the O5s. Most of the O5s were connecting via telepathic communicators since radiowaves and the internet are still choke full of those corrupted warning messages.
Apparently, I'm important enough— or more accurately, the SCP Foundation is desperate enough— to involve me in a meeting of the highest levels. And my security clearance level has also been increased to Level 4 as well.
O5-2 replied, giving me the full run down "We've lost 60% of all Sites. Two more were placed under siege in the last 12 hours. An estimated 1,400 SCPs are lost to the sun give or take 5% error. 99.99% of humanity is dead or otherwise converted by the sun. The Church of the Broken God has fully descended into a full-blown civil war. The Global Occult Coalition is in much worse shape than us since all senior leadership has been turned into instances of SCP-9401A."
Damn, that is one serious decapitation strike.
"We are trying to make contact with any remaining GOC members to try and have them join us. The Serpent's Hand has abandoned this reality and secluded themselves inside their library, refusing all outside contacts. Remnants of Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd have agreed to cooperate with us. Dr. Wondertainment did not answer her phone. The Chaos Insurgency is disbanded. Any remaining Groups of Interest have all either been entirely destroyed or are too small to make a difference. The SCP Foundation is all that's left as the bulwark for humanity."
If I remember, wasn't Unlondon a thing? There were tales under the When Day Breaks hub about Unlondon surviving in the middle of this sun apocalypse.
"What about Unlondon or Three Portlands?" I asked.
"Unlondon fell in the first 24 hours of Ion's victory," O5-13 said. "Similar to the Serpent's Hand, Three Portland has opted to abandon this reality. Their Mayor has severed all Ways connected to this universe, thinking it a lesser risk to take their chances in the infinite multiverse than to deal with the sun."
This… is really all that humanity has left.
No wonder there's a veil of despair clouding over everyone's head. These people are the same ones who know just how bad everything is.
"We are also evacuating all SCPs, assets, and personnel from smaller facilities and concentrating them into larger, more defensible ones, like SCP-2000. The kinetohazards conjured up by Ion have made them a liability."
All the 13 O5s present had grim looks on their faces. These people hold ultimate authority over the Foundation—these people who can make a person piss their pants by simply walking into a room.
I then asked, "We have fully deciphered the riddle given to us by Uriel, correct?"
This time, it was O5-11 who replied. His voice, and all the O5's voices the same as they passed through a changer. None of their faces were visible.
"Yes. We have confirmation that Uriel is referring to SCP-2399."
"But that machine is still damaged."
Though I couldn't see it, I got the sense that O5-1 was nodding, "Yes. According to the timeline of Protocol LEGIONNAIRE, there are still about two years before SCP-2399 becomes fully functional again."
"Is there any way we can speed this up?"
There was silence in the room before Bright snapped his fingers and caught everyone's attention.
"There… is a way, but it mainly depends on you, Goddess Kukulkan."
I raised an eyebrow, "What do you mean?"
"You can help SCP-2399 repair itself."
I tilted my head to signify confusion. How the hell could I help SCP-2399 repair itself? I mean granted I can have knowledge on anything thanks to Quetzalcoatl's Authority over knowledge but the moment that Authority is gone, any information, conjectures, or hypotheses I made relating to the topic using knowledge granted by the Authority is just gone.
I can't retain anything. Even if I write it down, I can't understand what's been written since I don't have the prerequisite knowledge. It'll just be like someone with a degree in graphic design browsing through a Wikipedia article on Quantum Physics.
"How would Agent Kukulkan do that?" O5-6 asked.
"By collecting the debris of SCP-2399 scattered across Jupiter and her orbit and giving it to those drones."
"And how many pieces are left?"
"We estimate based on collected data of the disturbance in Jupiter's magnetosphere, about 12,000 pieces larger than a baseball."
I'm not even going to ask how the SCP Foundation knows about that, probably through either divination or some SCP.
Still, 12,000? That's… a lot. Even if assuming I managed to collect one every second that meant it'll still require like four hours of non-stop collecting.
O5-9 turned to face me, "The material that SCP-2399 is made of has anti-magnetic properties and is dense. Denser than anything we have here on Earth. Thus, practically all of them are in the deepest part of Jupiter's atmosphere, on the surface of the gas giant's Earth-size rock and ice core."
Hold on, "Ice? At the core?"
"Yep. Despite an internal temperature of 20,000 kelvin, the pressure is extreme enough that water continues into its solid state. Ice-VII's down there."
I scratched my chin. Damn, that's way more extreme than any environment I've ever found myself in.
"So pretty much all those 12,000 pieces are scattered around the surface of Jupiter's core?
"Some may be buried inside the core," Bright admitted. "Others may also be carried by Jupiter's wind currents and are whizzing across the Jovian planet at speeds of 900 miles an hour."
"How can you guys track these things? How am I supposed to track them?"
It'll be useless if I don't know what I'm searching for.
A hologram of a blackish metallic rock that reflected no light appeared. It was like a void in existence, something even blacker than Vantablack, with only black holes being slightly darker.
"Whatever material SCP-2399 is made of, it's ridiculously anti-magnetic. We were able to determine the 12,000 pieces of SCP-2399 still scattered about in Jupiter solely by their interference with Jupiter's magnetic field, the constant fluctuations we're forced to tell the mundane world as a 'scientific mystery'." O5-6 explained.
Anti-magnetic… what the hell is that?
"What do you mean by 'anti-magnetic'?"
"It emits a passive null field around it, nullifying any magnetic fields just like how normal magnets attract things. We search for weak points in Jupiter's magnetic fields, places where these things are. Just one piece the size of a baseball creates enough of a dip inside the localized magnetic field that we using cutting-edge instruments were able to measure. Our researchers think it's some kind of Bose-Einstein Condensate."
… The Great Red Spot alone can contain three Earths across and this thing, this tiny chunk no larger than a baseball is powerful enough to reduce Jupiter's magnetic field?
Jupiter's!
Holy shit.
My eyes widened. No wonder the original article called SCP-2399 'indestructible'. Being anti-magnetic, they should be able to repel my plasma attacks with ease then. Any energy-based attack will be less effective in the face of this material.
"I…"
As the Heart of ORT, a creature of the Oort Cloud and a star, I should have no problem detecting changes in the local magnetic field. I think I can generate a personal magnetic field and manipulate ferrous materials. Going to test that in the future.
"On a side note," O5-6 continued, "It has recently come to my attention that the astronomy division of Site-69 has detected weird movements along the planets of the solar system, alongside worrying gravitic anomalies."
An animation of the solar system replaced the black material. It showed those planets on the outer solar system speeding up and those on the inner system slowing down.
"The rate of speeding up and slowing down is exponential. Our mathematicians are thinking it'll result in an alignment of the eight planets including Pluto."
Instantly, I was a bit worried. The movie 2012 has made me wary of any alignments of the planets something to fear as all kinds of natural disasters can pop up.
Although now… I don't think can get much worse.
Well, it can definitely get worse if say a supervolcano erupts but there are so few humans left that killing them wouldn't amount to much.
"So Ion's turning our solar system into an artwork now." O5-1 concluded.
"Yes, it appears so. He's focusing on turning the solar system into a work of art."
My face cringed. Ion is so assured of his victory that he's showing off. Narcissist.
"But how will you all fend off attacks from the sun-corrupted flesh blobs without me?"
None of the O5s spoke, so I continued, "I'm probably going to be inside the depth of Jupiter for a while, how are SCP Foundation going to survive without my help?"
They must've already thought of something but are just refusing to tell me. Security clearance and all.
It was O5-1 who broke the silence, "Goddess Kukulkan. As of yesterday 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, we of the O5 Council have officially enacted Procedure 220-Titanomachy. Under Procedure 220-Titanomachy, we are hereby weaponizing all SCPs, anomalous technologies, Type Green, and Blues in the defense of humanity. Everything we've ever contained is now being sent to the walls to protect our major facilities."
"…" I had to blink several times before what O5-1 said fully registered inside my mind. The SCP Foundation, the organization responsible for containing SCPs, is now using them. Turning all of them Thaumiel or something.
This, I thought as I gazed at all the O5s present, must be what desperation looks like.
"We will be fine. Ion is playing with us. He thinks he's won. So please, go repair SCP-2399 and bring us victory."
"... That's not like you guys to rely on someone with anomalous abilities." I denoted. It really isn't. They've given me a really long leash.
O5-9, Bright, then jovially remarked, "Well I'm also on the O5 Council because half of them turned into blobs of meat so there's a first time for everything."
The intercom room of Site-19 wasn't much. It mainly comprises two 'mini' rooms sectioned off from each other with a large window and a door off to one end. One mini-room was the recording studio and was padded with materials that aid in sound dampening while the other room was where the sound technician with his soundboard sat.
Bright sat inside the padded room, on a bar stool while I stood in the technician's room. I held a piece of paper containing what I should say.
The main points of this paper are to 'reassure the Foundation personnel' and 'raise morale'.
They're trying to turn me into a mascot.
Bright cleared his throat before speaking into the microphone, "Greetings all Foundation staff members. For those of you Level 2 and below, I am Doctor Jack Bright, of the O5 Council, the highest governing body of the SCP Foundation. I am here to speak with you all in regard to what the SCP Foundation intends to do to repair humanity, to set out an action plan."
Bright flipped the pages of his script, "Effectively immediately, we are to assess the viability of using any and every SCPs within Site-19 for weaponization purposes. Some of you may have heard— ah fuck it."
Bright threw the paper containing the script away.
"I'm going to be honest with you all. We are in a tough spot. Humanity is in a tough spot. We estimate that there are no more than 100,000 humans left across the globe who are unchanged by the corrupted sun. We are witnessing the final days of humanity— if not for the effort of one person, a single extremely powerful reality bender who could've easily escaped Earth and chosen another planet to settle down, but instead didn't and chose to stay here and rescue what few humans are there. Please welcome, Kukulkan."
What?
My mouth dropped at what just happened. The original plan was for Bright to introduce me, where then I would read out some encouraging lines and walk away from the microphone as O5-9 took over.
Now that's thrown right out the window. Bright is staring at me, telling me with his eyes to come.
Abruptly, I stepped into the room with a furious expression on my face. Bright just put me on the spot!
"What are you doing?!" I whispered to the man.
"Just so you know, everyone can hear every noise you're making."
I felt my cheeks heat up. Quickly, I activated We Are The Winged Serpent and picked out Quetzalcoatl's Authority over knowledge of speeches.
Let's hope this speech ends in less than three minutes.
"Ahem," Clearing my throat, I began to speak into the mic that hung off the ceiling, "Thank you O5-9 for that wonderfully abrupt introduction. For those of you who are unaware, my name is Kukulkan. I encountered the Foundation when Mobile Task Force Tau-5 passed through New York, where I kept a group of survivors whom I rescued. There, I proved to the Foundation how useful I was when I terminated a half-infected SCP-343 and melted the surface of the Moon. In case you were wondering, yes, that bright light from a few days ago that turned the night into day was because of me."
I sat down on a chair and started speaking in a tone of frankness.
Sgt. James Goodwell was indulging himself in as much food as the cafeteria machine would give him when the announcement started. Oh sure he stopped to listen, but he didn't really care.
Humanity is dead. There's no hope, especially not when James was one of those on the surface when those blob creatures breached the containment cell walls using those kinetohazards.
So James gorged himself on as much food as he could. Might as well do the thing that brings him the most amount of joy.
He continued to eat, and the speaker continued to blare out this announcement.
"But enough about me. Let's talk about you. More specifically, let's talk about human history. According to anthropologist Margaret Mead, the first evidence of human civilization came from a healed fractured femur bone from 15,000 years ago." The announcer paused for two seconds, "'Why?' One may ask. Why use that, a healed broken bone, to signify the dawn of human civilization? Why not tools? Why not the spears we use to hunt woolly mammoths? Why not cave paintings? Why not religious artifacts? Why not writings or primitive forms of governance among the tribes?"
"Yeah… who… knows…?" James said between bites of a sausage, "Don't care."
"15,000 years ago, a broken femur bone was fatal because, with an inoperable leg, you cannot hunt. You cannot forage for food or seek shelter, nor can you run away from predators. However, this bone was healed. This means that after injury, the owner of that femur bone was cared for. They were fed. They were protected from any potential predators. This kind of support, solidarity, and cooperation prolonged human civilization into what it is today."
James slowed down in eating his sausage before slowly, half-mindedly, placing the fork back onto his plate. He stared down at the amount of food in front of him, enough to make a pile.
SCP-890 waited patiently as the blast door opened. He was flanked by two security guards wielding assault rifles while the SCP himself was chained from head to toe like he was a dangerous criminal.
Eh, he's used to it. Though the voice of the announcer lady was really nice.
"Why am I telling you this story? Because for the last 75,000 years ever since the last Toba eruption that culled the human population down to a mere 10,000 individuals, humanity has never been closer to extinction than it is today. Because after 15,000 years, a new broken femur has been placed right in front of us. Because the medicine used to heal that broken femur is the SCPs that the Foundation contained. Just like the Toba eruption 75,000 years ago, look around you. Look at your fellow man and woman. We are all that's left of humanity. We are its last bulwark. We cannot do it alone. Humanity cannot stand alone, humanity needs the aid of SCPs, the anomalous, from technology to magic to reality-bending: the Foundation must empty its cell to ensure humanity survives."
Once the blast door fully opened, SCP-890 saw the most beautiful thing in his life. Right there, in the middle of this room, was a large clockwork machine with a dial of 'rough', 'coarse', '1:1', 'fine', and 'very fine', and intake and outtake on two ends.
"Oh my, oh my."
"In the face of extinction, we all, be we normal or abnormal, all must work as one, all individuals become cogs inside a machine. We must heal this broken femur. We must climb out of this abyss. The O5 Council has devised a plan to return the sun to how it once was, and all we need— all I need— is time. As much time as you all can grant. As much time as the last remnant of humanity can grant. From precious seconds to invaluable hours, any amount of time matters no matter how small, matters. We need your help. Every last one of you. If not for humanity then do it for yourself, so that you can freely walk into the sun once more without worry."
With that, I walked away from the microphone.
Let's hope that was good enough.
I can only hope now.
AN: and with that, [Act III Preparation for War] has ended. [Act IV War for a New Dawn, begins. The endgame is upon us.
The speech took a bit since my mind was blank on what to write. Then I remembered a scene from Wandering Earth 2 and chose that as the basis.
Updates may get sporadic. But the good news is that I foresee Act IV lasting no more than 7 chapters. Maybe even only 3 with an epilogue since all the stories are pretty much wrapping up and the final battle between Grand Karcist Ion and Kukulkan is happening.