Per 
SCP-4956
Item #: SCP-4956
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-4956 is to be held in a locked containment cell on Site-72. No less than three armed guards should be posted to stand at the door to SCP-4956's containment cell, at all times, using regular shift-changes.
Guards who are assigned to protect SCP-4956 are to be screened for previous violent incidents or reports of aggression, and any guard found to have such psychological tendencies (or any previous history of psychosis, psychopathy, or sociopathy) is to be barred from SCP-4956-duty, and are not permitted within fifty feet of SCP-4956's containment cell. Any unauthorized guard-personnel who violate this protocol are to be immediately detained by the posted guard-detail.
Guards who are permitted to watch the object's containment cell are to be briefed on the object's properties and the memetic hazards inherent to it.
Any personnel who approach SCP-4956's containment cell are to be questioned by the posted guard-detail, and detained should they appear to display symptoms of SCP-4956's effects. The object, itself, should be checked on, and the inside of the cell must be thoroughly examined, once every ten hours by the guard-detail as to ensure that it is still contained, has not been taken from its cell by unknown means, and that no infiltration of the cell has or could occur.
Should any personage enter the containment cell and attempt to interact with SCP-4956 without proper authorization by the resident Site Commander, they are to be terminated on the spot.
Should said personage have already become an instance of SCP-4956-1, Mobile Task Force "Onyx Watchmen" will be called on to engage and destroy SCP-4956-1 with all possible swiftness.
Any proposal for experimentation with SCP-4956 must be approved by the 05 Council, beforehand, and must be done with all necessary precautions, without exception. Research personnel who are found to have had a history of any aforementioned pathological attributes, are to be denied access to SCP-4956 for the duration of any experimentation.
If SCP-4956 is found to be missing from its cell at any interval, MTF-Onyx Watchmen must be ordered to perform a full sweep of Site-72. If the object and/or SCP-4956-1 are not found on-site, a full roll-call of the Site must be conducted in order to determine whomever is missing, and in turn, whomever the target of SCP-4956-1 is.
When the identity of SCP-4956-1 and their possible target is determined, the Onyx Watchmen will be ordered to enact the "Straight Jacket Protocol", which proceeds as follows:
— MTF-Onyx Watchmen will mobilize and begin to track down the instance of SCP-4956-1 by any means possible.
— If the probable target or targets of SCP-4956-1 are believed to be SCP-Foundation personnel: said individual(s) will be ordered to immediately report to their Site Commander. The individual in-question must be told to say to their Site Commander the exact phrase: "I regret to inform you that I have no excuse".
— The Site Commander in-question will know to act in accordance with the Straight Jacket Protocol, and the target of SCP-4956 will be promptly detained, blindfolded, and escorted to the nearest Foundation transport helicopter.
— The helicopter in-question will be ordered to navigate toward the nearest unpopulated area as soon as possible, and will remain there indefinitely, until SCP-4956-1 has been eliminated, or until SCP-4956-1 arrives at the location in-question. Should it do so, the helicopter containing the entity's target must remain airborne and avoid SCP-4956-1 for as long as possible, and contact the nearest Mobile Task Force for assistance, if none is already present.
— At no point, and under no circumstances, should the individual be told that they are SCP-4956-1's target, and until the entity in-question is confirmed to be eliminated, the individual must remain blindfolded at all times.
— If the probable target or targets of SCP-4956-1 are not Foundation personnel, any Foundation field-agent or Mobile Task Force believed to be nearest to the target or targets will be ordered to similarly find, detain, blindfold, escort, and protect the target by transporting them in any available vehicle capable of traveling more than 50 kilometers-per-hour, ideally a flying one. SCP-Foundation personnel are to do this with the cover-story that the target or targets in-question are believed to be possible terrorist or criminal accomplices by the local government.
—Only when SCP-4956-1 has been eliminated are the target or target(s) allowed to be returned to their home, place-of-residence, or Foundation Site, after the administering of any appropriate amnestic.
Once SCP-4956-1 has been eliminated, SCP-4956 is to be found and transported inside of a portable cast-iron lock-box and returned to its containment cell in Site-72.
All personnel who are stationed on Site-72 are required to report any major incidents or emotional outbursts (especially those involving anger and perceived hatred) of their colleagues to their superiors, and psychological evaluations of all personnel are to be conducted at least once every four months.
Description: SCP-4956 is a traditionally-crafted gauntlet-sword of Northern-Indian make and heritage. On both edges of the gauntlet-sword's blade are the inscribed words: "Hatred is my Sword, Hatred is my Shield, Hatred is my Purpose" in an ancient dialect of Indian Tamil, believed to date back to somewhere around 1200 A.D. No apparent historical reference to SCP-4956 or its properties has been discovered.
SCP-4956's only anomalous properties, in and of itself, are its complete and utter lack of oxidization and apparent indestructibility. No known tonnage of explosive or temperature-extreme has been shown to damage it, no attempt to disassemble the object has been effective, and it is believed to be more or less impervious to all conventional means of destruction.
SCP-4956's memetic properties will begin to manifest in any human being of sufficiently low memetic-resistance that remains in its direct presence or visual-contact for longer than twenty-minutes. The effected individual will become compelled to approach the object and wear it upon their arm. Until they do so, the effected individual will become increasingly agitated, and appear to entire a fugue-state, where they become dismissive or outright unresponsive to questioning or outside stimulus.
If the individual is unable to act upon their desire to wield SCP-4956 for longer than around half an hour, they will become violent and make every attempt to reach the object, by any means available to them. It is speculated that any individual who reaches this stage subsequently loses any of their previously-held aversion to murder and concern for human life.
Individuals that have a history of psychopathy, sociopathy, or psychotic episodes are believed to be more susceptible to SCP-4956's pull, and appear to undergo this process of mental degradation at a rate around three times faster than an otherwise typical subject.
SCP-4956's memetic properties have been shown to remain consistent only part of the time. At random intervals, and for seemingly no apparent reason, its memetic properties appear to be able to effect persons who are not in its immediate vicinity, and even persons who have never seen or known of the object, itself.
Roughly one-hundred separate instances of seemingly completely random civilians attempting to enter Site-72 have been halted by on-Site guards, since the object's initial containment, in 197█. Individuals who are effected by the object's properties, but whom have never been in its presence, can typically be detained and cured of its effects using a judicial application of amnestics.
Despite Site-72 being in █████, North America, many civilians apprehended by on-Site personnel were discovered to have come all the way from locations as far as China, and the Philippines, indicating that SCP-4956's "effective range" may well extend across the entire planet.
Whensoever any human being picks up and dons SCP-4956, regardless of whether they have succumbed to its effects, will instantaneously become an instance of SCP-4956-1. When SCP-4956 is worn by any individual, the object itself will begin to emit sound in excess of 150 decibels at a constant rate, and for as long as SCP-4956-1 remains alive.
The sounds that SCP-4956 emit while it is worn have always been without any apparent source, and have always been extant songs of popular-culture, typically of the "rock" or "metal" genres and their various sub-genres. What effect that this music has on those that hear it, or on the wearer of SCP-4956, are poorly-understood. Any analysis of the significance of the music in-question has been speculative, at most, and frustrated by the fact that the songs in-question have manifested from SCP-4956 sometimes decades before their apparent writing and performance. A list of some of the songs SCP-4956 has generated can be foundWhen a subject becomes an instance of SCP-4956-1, the only change in appearance they undergo is the complete disappearance of the sclera, irises, and pupils of their eyes, which is entirely replaced by what can only be described as a "red glow" roughly identical to the color of blood.
The instance of SCP-4956-1 will become completely unresponsive to any and all commands and questions, and appears to completely lose all memory of whom they once were, or have simply undergone a mental change so complete that communication is simply impossible. The subject, upon becoming an SCP-4956-1 instance will immediately walk in the direction of a specific individual, henceforth known as SCP-4956-2. SCP-4956-1 instances appear to possess innate knowledge of their target's whereabouts, as well as the quickest route to them.
Any attempt to impede an SCP-4956-1's progress will result in the entity killing all those that stand in its path. Instances of SCP-4956-1 have consistently displayed feats of strength, speed, and reflexes far in excess of anything in the realm of possibility for a normal human being; injuries that would have resulted in the onset of shock and instant death for a non-anomalous person have proven ineffective against SCP-4956-1 instances.
Subjects wielding SCP-4956 display apparently prodigious combat-skill in using SCP-4956, with many of the techniques it uses being ones known to have been popular during the era of human history that gauntlet-swords were in regular use.
Given the object's extreme durability, instances of SCP-4956-1 have been shown using the object to cut and puncture through materials as impermeable as high-carbon steel and kevlar; the subject will also use the weapon as a shield, and has been seen deflecting multiple rounds from high-caliber rifles while defending itself. It is estimated that the muscle-output of SCP-4956-1 instances may exceed the human norm by a multiple of at least 300.
MTF personnel who engage an instance of SCP-4956-1 should ideally do so from a range in excess of three-hundred meters, as anything less will likely be a short enough distance for the subject to close in and inflict an unacceptable number of casualties.
SCP-4956-1 instances are not indestructible, and with enough firepower, the body of the subject can be destroyed to a degree that they can no longer function.
However: it is believed that instances of SCP-4956-1 may possess mild reality-warping properties, during the course of a containment breach. Statistically improbable and often absurd turns of events have been consistently observed to occur while the subject is in the process of seeking its target, and as a result, protocols and counter-measures designed to halt the creature will often fail, outright, or function contrary to what was intended, seemingly out of sheer bad luck. It was observed, at least once, for example, that the targeting-system of a heat-seeking missile fired at an instance of SCP-4956-1 failed mid-flight for no apparent reason, and sent it far off-target.
Should SCP-4956-1 reach its target, SCP-4956-2, it will proceed to maim and mutilate the target-individual by using the object to repeatedly administer superficial wounds with the apparent goal being to inflict as much physical pain as possible. Once the target has died from blood-loss, the SCP-4956-1 instance will move on and seek the next closest instance of SCP-4956-2. Once all instances of SCP-4956-2 have been tortured and killed, SCP-4956-1 will proceed to spontaneously combust into flame and drop SCP-4956 to the floor. The SCP-4956-1 instance will expire from its burns, while SCP-4956 will cease to emit music and become inactive, once more.
SCP-4956-2 are individuals who have become targeted by an SCP-4956-1 instance. The only anomalous property that instances of SCP-4956-2 possess occurs when SCP-4956-2 makes visual contact with the SCP-4956-1 instance hunting it. SCP-4956-2 individuals will become compelled to attack SCP-4956-1, regardless of any self-preservation instinct or higher brain-function. When an instance of SCP-4956-2 is told, or indirectly finds out, that they are the target of an SCP-4956-1 instance, they will proceed to seek out the SCP-4956-1 instance, regardless of the individual's previous personality or pathologies.
After some investigation, it was determined that almost every single SCP-4956-2 individual was found to have had an antagonistic relationship with the SCP-4956-1 subject prior to the latter acquiring SCP-4956. In many cases, the two people are often found to have been career-rivals, the victim of abuse from the other, or simply life-long enemies. It is fairly uncontroversial that SCP-4956-1 instances consistently target those whom they carry disdain and outright hatred for.
Of the sixty-or-so instances of a subject becoming SCP-4956-1: in only a third of them were the SCP-Foundation's current safety protocols proven sufficient, and in all others, at least one instance of SCP-4956-2 was killed by the subject, in addition to the lives of all the bystanders and MTF-Units that attempted to intervene.
Given the unpredictable nature of the object's properties and the danger inherent to experimenting with it: not many termination-proposals have been approved, thus far, and a better solution is still being worked on.
