Lightning Scrap

"But she was primed with materials on Alpha-9," Harris said. "Doesn't this mean… you know…"

"There is a small priming failure rate," Moose said. "It's also possible that

***

CLASSIFICATION: LK-CLASS RESTRUCTURING SCENARIO.

MASSIVE-SCALE REALITY ALTERATION HAS OCCURRED.

[THIS IS AN AUTOMATIC SIGNAL SENT BY THE SCP FOUNDATION. YOU ARE AT THE EDGE OF THE SAFE ZONE OUTSIDE EARTH. PLEASE TURN BACK.]

[THIS IS AN AUTOMATIC SIGNAL SENT BY THE SCP FOUNDATION. YOU ARE AT THE EDGE OF THE CONTAINMENT ZONE OF THE PLANET EARTH. PLEASE TURN BACK.]

An LK-Class "total transformation" restructuring scenario. "Total transformation." Any rearranging of reality into something unrecognizable by a human mind.

A sudden memory, triggered, of a phrase: The darkness away from the firelight.

ZK-Class meant "reality failure". By definition, a reality failure could not be observed unless it was in-progress ("contained"). LK-Class was something she'd first heard of in relation to SCP-003 — "total transformation." A restructuring scenario, related to CK-Class reality shifts. Any rearranging of reality into something stable yet unrecognizable to a human.

Assuming this timeline used a similar classification system…

ZK-Class meant "reality failure". By definition, a reality failure could not be observed unless it was in-progress ("contained").

LK-Class was something she'd first heard of in relation to SCP-003 — "total transformation." A restructuring scenario, related to CK-Class reality shifts. Any rearranging of reality into something stable yet unrecognizable to a human.

Moose had a particular interest in that one. Her first project for the Foundation was SCP-003.

"What's happened to it?"

"Give me a moment," she said.

***

"So… like, what?" Harris asks. "Earth is transformed into puppies?"

"If by Earth, you mean the planet itself, then technically, that could qualify," Moose said dryly. "Depending on the details. If all dirt was simply transformed into juvenile canines which were otherwise non-anomalous, that would not imply a change in the nature of reality, merely a catastrophic reality shift."

"But, say, the dogscape — that would be LK-Class?"

"Dogscape?"

"It's… it's fiction. The landscape gets changed into dogs. Like… dog parts."

"Perhaps. Assuming the change was stable. In extreme versions, humans cannot perceive reality whatsoever, even if they are present in it."

But something was seriously wrong. This wasn't

But something was still wrong. She couldn't tell what they were doing. They were living humans, yes, but she couldn't 'watch' them any closer than the current distance — and the patterns were completely wrong. No cities — they were scattered across the globe in a statistically uniform way —

She started running analysis patterns. And then, abruptly —

[in progress]

Darkness.

Click.

Click. Click.

Jacqueline Johnson felt her systems come online.

Touch came before seeing. Frost, forming on metal servos. The low hum of the automatic oxygenation systems, turning on in response to detecting a vacuum. A bubble of air forming around her mouth.

She opened her eyes.

She didn't see anything.

Strange. She could feel her backup visual systems automatically coming online, but she was only getting weird static on those channels so far.

"Base, do you read me?" Jackie asked.

Nothing.

"Base, do you read me?" she repeated. The air bubble was cold around her mouth, the kind of reflected sensation she was used to from being in this transformed body. The air bubble was mostly there to let her talk verbally over the mic — in this form, she didn't need to breath.

A response came over her internal comm system. "Yes, SCP-1985. We read you." Agent Harris.

"So formal," Jackie said.

"Oh, right. Um, sincere apologies… um, Jacqueline."

"Close enough." He was new. Sent down by Overwatch to oversee her latest excursion. One of those types who wasn't used to being allowed to call an SCP anything besides "it", let alone using their names. "My sensory systems are having trouble. Are you getting any signal from me?"

Static on the line. Then: "We're receiving your signals, but only your audio is readable. Can you tell us where you are?"

"I'm in space. I think. Total vacuum, at least. I don't see Earth. I'm going to run an area scan once I'm fully booted up."

"Thank you, SCP-1985." A cough. "Sorry. Are you, uh, sure Earth is still there at all?"

"Earth is always here." That's how her trans-universal teleportation device worked. There was no way to break the tether. At least, thousands upon thousands of excursions and it had never happened yet. "Even if it's space dust, or a planet-shaped hole, it's here. In some form."

"Pardon me if this is a stupid question, but… Can't you detect space dust?"

"Depends on the space dust."

"If Earth is destroyed… Do you think this was caused, directly or indirectly, by Mobile Task Force Alpha-9?"

"She doesn't know that." The voice of the director of Site-19, Tilda Moose. "Ms. Johnson knows only as much as we do when she first arrives in another timeline."

Jackie squinted, trying to make something out in the darkness. "This is strange, actually," she said. "My perception systems don't usually take this long to come online."

"True." Moose again. "Some kind of interference?"

"I'll try shifting some modes." She closed her eyes, reached back into the mechanical version of her mind, and flipped some half-metaphorical switches.

Click.

A message, cold, transmitted in her head, with thoughts instead of words. Still startling, however familiar. [SIGNAL FOUND. DECRYPTING.]

She suddenly sensed something —

A message echoed in her head — not radio waves, not anything she recognized — a message cast on an anomalous frequency, and decrypted by the special systems in her head —

[THIS IS AN AUTOMATIC SIGNAL SENT BY THE SCP FOUNDATION. YOU ARE AT THE EDGE OF THE SAFE ZONE OUTSIDE EARTH. PLEASE TURN BACK.]

Her perceptual modes had finished shifting. Not just enough to receive the signal — enough to sense something else in the void of space.

Jackie turned in the vacuum, and saw…

Earth.

Right behind her. She could see it now. Partly. What she could comprehend was a dark shadow covering the planet's surface. And beneath…

…beneath were things that, even as she used her senses to pierce through the veil to see them, she still could not comprehend.

An LK-Class restructuring scenario. "Total transformation." Any rearranging of reality into something unrecognizable by a human mind.

A sudden memory, triggered, of a phrase: The darkness away from the firelight.

Another message pinging her brain: [DEEPWELL TRANSMISSION UNDERWAY. SCENARIO ANALYSIS: CONTAINED ZK-CLASS. PERMANENT LK-CLASS.]

A data stream accompanied the message. Jackie felt her brain's system analyzing it for anomalies, and copying it to a (gibberish) safe format to prevent her taking any anomalous information back home with her.

"Are you getting all this?" she asked aloud.

"Yes," Harris replied. "Why couldn't you see Earth before? "

"I'm not sure." She didn't fully understand how all her mechanics worked, even after all this time. Once upon a time, she hadn't had clearance. Now, her creators were all beyond reach. Erased with the rest of the original timeline.

"What does ZK-Class mean in this context? End of the world scenario, correct?"

"Yeah. Could be different in this timeline, but… a ZK-Class scenario is usually reality failure. The end of a reality. Or all reality."

"And LK-Class?"

Moose cut in. "A restructuring scenario. Related to CK-class restructuring, and sometimes the result of it. Typically refers to any rearranging of reality into a stabilized configuration that cannot be fully understood by a modern human mind."

Jackie focused on the silent planet below, flipping through more perceptual modes.

There — there! Life signs flared up across the globe. A range of life-forms. And plenty of humans. Not as many as there should be, but humans, living humans, nevertheless.

"Can you get closer?" Harris asked.

"Yes. Slowly." Jackie had micro-thrusters built into her exoskeleton for vacuum movement, but they weren't meant for long distances. "Usually I don't appear so far away from Earth's surface."

[in progress]

Okay, rethink opening.
I like click, click.
First she sees nothing. Floating in vacuum.
Positioning sytems tell her she's on Earth.
No. The planet is still here. I'm somewhere in upstate New York.
So why are you in vacuum?
I don't know.
How can a planet be there if there's only a vacuum?

(Have the Bowe character as handler?)

Iris as handler… from Jackie's POV. Along with experienced agent (observing) — Irons/Bowe. (Despite the name, he seemed fairly laid-back. Decent sense of humor.)
He only cuts in a few times.
Moose is there as well, overseeing.

Okay, currently rewriting with Irons as her handler. What about Iris?

Would Iris get access to this? No, not really, actually. But Iris will probably hang out with Jackie.
How do I end the world? (Not asking the question.) What'd you find out? I'm not allowed to tell you, unfortunately.

What's the Iris/Jackie conversation? Cool setting? Training is the obvious. Jackie a little in awe of her.

Was Jackie 'rearranged' by Incident Zero?
She's been here since at least the 90's.
(Wait, is that right?)
Does she remember Iris anyway from a different timeline?
Maybe pre-Incident Zero she was in the 90's, with Iris… Like what happened with Lament.

***

This is where I left off. Check Scrap for possible alterations above. Geopositioning system should finally anchor her and identify that she's on Earth, which still exists as a planet. (Still being detected even tho she's in space.)

The looming mind seemed to sense she was about to go, and closed in fast —

— but not fast enough.

"You cannot make contact with this entity." Moose

"If this thing traps you — we can't afford to leave you stranded in another universe. There's a major breach here at Site-19."

At Site-19, watching

Finds humans. Lots of them. Something's wrong, though. The movement patterns are throwing up flags. Can't interpret them yet.

There's… something here. I can feel it, pressing on my mind. Something sentient, maybe sentient. Something huge.

I think it sees me.

"We need to end this excursion right now."

But I don't know what's going on — Jackie said. / But I'm still getting the data stream —

"There's a containment breach here at Site-19."

If she gets the data stream — it gets cut off. Only some stuff gets retrieved, after.

Maybe then we switch to Site-19. Irons' POV.
(He must have missed the hour warning while he was stuck up here.)
The Insurgency, Moose said. They're coming for Alpha-9.

Carrying heads of GOC White Agents.
Dead silent. / The Insurgents made no sound.
Strange rifles that whisper things out of existence. (Temporarily? Permanently?)
Paralyzing?

Explosions. Walking from the flames unharmed.

Get Iris. // They're heading for Iris' housing location. We need to get over there, right now.

NEXT TALE: (After About the Foundation.)

Moose talks to Jackie. Use your second pill. Get over here as fast as you can. You've got the entry codes for Site-19's transit system. Ping me and I'll let you in with an admin fiat. / admin override.

How did they get in? Irons asked.

They have to have someone on the inside. They came through the transit system designed by Esoteric Containment Systems. (Reword?) You have to have. Whoever it is, we'll find them once we go through the system.

Irons wondered if they would find anyone, and if so, who it would be. It hadn't been one of his family. The Insurgency had their own ways of getting in.

What the hell do we do?

Simple. We fight.

Boss, how the fuck are we gonna fight shit like that? These are the biggest guns I've ever seen.

We have our own big guns.

(Sigma-3 comes in? Alpha-9's special contingents? Using weapons designed by Kain. Or not weapons, but shields and such. Look like ordinary riot shields. Helmets and such. Esoteric protections built into the logo. / Esoteric units/division.]

I apologize in advance if they mind-wipe you for this, but you've gotta know what I know. You ready to step up, Agent?

I'm ready. Irons was having trouble believing his luck.

Good. / Alpha-9 isn't just about anomalous humanoids. All anomalous assets. -> Put this on. Kain designed it to dampen psychic effects.

Wait, seriously? Is this a telekill helmet?

Not telekill. Not nearly as strong. It mutes, it doesn't block. All it gives you is a fighting chance. It also won't mind-blank you or explode, so count your blessings.

I won't bore you with the details, but these shields are supposed to be proofed against a number of anomalous effects. They're still being tested, so I can't guarantee you they'll work. If an Insurgent points one of those guns at you, dodge. If you can't dodge, hold the shield up and pray to a deity of your choice.

But — / I don't think we're really prepared for this —

[Note: Moose immediately went to the nearest security station / armory. Maybe they drive thru part of 19 towards Alpha-9 stockpile, so we can show some of the crowds of 19.]

Decide who's with them. Someone to get murderized. A woman character, to throw people off. Irons tries to save her? Sympathy points.

(Interrupted by bashing in door. Fight breaks out.)

They don't break out the angels until Jackie arrives through the transit system in full metal glory.

Right behind her. She could see it now. Partly. What she could comprehend was a dark shadow covering the planet's surface. And beneath…

…beneath were things that, even as she used her senses to pierce through the veil to see them, she still could not comprehend.

Another message pinging her brain: [DEEPWELL TRANSMISSION UNDERWAY. SCENARIO ANALYSIS: CONTAINED ZK-CLASS. PERMANENT LK-CLASS.]

An LK-Class restructuring scenario. "Total transformation." Any rearranging of reality into something unrecognizable by a human mind.

A sudden memory, triggered, of a phrase: The darkness away from the firelight.

"Are you getting all this?" she asked aloud.

"Yes," Harris replied. "Why couldn't you see Earth before? "

"What does ZK-Class mean in this context? End of the world scenario, correct?"

"Yeah. Could be different in this timeline, but… a ZK-Class scenario is usually reality failure. The end of a reality. Or all reality."

"And LK-Class?"

Jackie focused on the silent planet below, flipping through more perceptual modes.

There — there! Life signs flared up across the globe. A range of life-forms. And plenty of humans. Not as many as there should be, but humans, living humans, nevertheless.

"Can you get closer?" Harris asked.

"Yes. Slowly." Jackie had micro-thrusters built into her exoskeleton for vacuum movement, but they weren't meant for long distances. "Usually I don't appear so far away from Earth's surface."

Welcome to the Foundation

The SCP Foundation, a vast, shadowy para-governmental organization operating beyond laws and jurisdiction. Perhaps the only thing as frightening as the things they existed to control.

Over a decade ago, a young amateur photographer named Iris Thompson was arrested for the murder of her boyfriend. She had, in fact, witnessed his murder through a photograph, and tried, and failed, to stop it, using an anomalous ability to view and manipulate objects through photgoraphs.

Iris Thompson was barely a teenager — naive, and bad at keeping secrets when faced with intimidating lawyers and police officers who claimed (almost certainly falsely) that she was looking at death row if she didn't tell them everything she knew.

She told her story in court. No one believed her.

Almost no one.

Iris Thompson was taken by an organization that had no name, but was referred to by most as the SCP Foundation. A vast, shadowy para-governmental organization operating beyond laws and jurisdiction, following an imperative to contain anomalous objects, entities, and phenomena. They knew very well that young Iris Thompson had not murdered her boyfriend, and they believed her story. That was, in fact, the real problem.

She was examined, and imprisoned. Her parents were told she had died, tragically killed by another prisoner. And Iris Thompson was given a new name. An SCP designation, one of many others in the vast database. SCP-105. A number notable only for being in the first thousand or so database entries, but even that was meaningless: with few exceptions, SCP numbers were selected at random.

To the Foundation, it didn't matter that the new SCP-105 was barely a teenager. All that mattered was that she was anomalous. That she was not human, the way they defined 'human'. That she could do something other than what a human was supposed to be able to do. That she did not fit with how reality was supposed to be.

The Foundation was used to containing children, even infants, in their strange, endless prison, built for anything that violated mass conception of how reality was supposed to be. Secure, Contain, Protect. Preserve normalcy at any cost.

The cost of imprisoning one little girl was a drop in the bucket, trivial compared to what the Foundation was prepared to do, was doing, had already done. Not a single Foundation member lost sleep over carrying out the containment of SCP-105.

In time, SCP-105 (formerly Iris Thompson) would barely remember her life before the Foundation, and would lose all real all conception of what her life would have been Outside.

But before that happened, she was recruited into the soon-to-be-infamous Foundation Task Force named Omega-7, Pandora's Box.

A new, unusual species of rat.

***

Much more than a decade ago, a nameless witch defected from a loose-knit, secretive occult group called the Serpent's Hand. She induced severe brain damage in herself to remove most of her memories, rendering her unable to betray her former friends, lovers, and family.

***

"I remember everything." The witch hesitated. "I was — I saw — I had a vision. A dream. I saw that the world has ended before. I saw that it will end again. Yet this time, it will be different. It will be permanent. I do not know the details, but… I saw the Bloom." The witch paused, seeing the expression change on the visitor's face. "The Foundation must save the world. It is the only way."

The visitor stood.

"Perhaps," the visitor said, "but you will never join the SCP Foundation."

When they let her out, dubious, keeping her under close supervision, they gave her a Foundation code-name. Perhaps because they found her irritating, perhaps because they simply didn't care, they didn't bother making the name sound reasonable. After all, this was a defector from the Serpent's Hand. A literal witch. Even aside from her strange personal history, she was no one likely to be trusted, in the long term.

They named her "Tilda David Moose".

Gears and Lament knew the POI's real name, but they weren't allowed to tell her.

Gracie showed Jackie to an elevator that took her up into a spacious office. She was greeted, there, by a German Shepherd wearing glasses and a nice suit.

Both Lament and Gears had been affected more by Incident Zero than most. They both had two competing sets of memories. (At least, Lament did. For all he knew, Gears had more than two.) Officially, they'd only worked together since Iceberg's suicide in 2010 (ish — the exact timeline was classified, even though there were actual records, public ones).

Unofficially, they both remembered working together since Iceberg's suicide… in the late 1990s.

No one had ever explained why Lament was allowed to keep those memories, since Gears was the only one of the two of them officially cleared to know about the existence of Incident Zero. Gears never talked about it, and Lament never asked. He'd learned that lesson a long time ago.

Maybe it was cruel to have that reaction, but she ('they'? the file mentioned something about her hiding her gender for thaumaturgic reasons or some equally unscientific-sounding explanation that boiled down to 'paranoia and assorted mental issues')

When they finally reached the witch's cell, Lament found himself unimpressed. Maybe it was cruel to have that reaction, but after all that buildup, there was just an androgynous woman chained up in a dark cell, dirty, unwashed, pathetic. He wouldn't have reacted that way if it had been an ordinary prisoner, a regular human stuck in solitary confinement for — at best — comitting the crime of trespassing.

He'd been expecting… you know. a Witch. A Magician. A Type Blue. Someone who could speak a word and twist the world. And this person could've passed for any denizen of your average mental hospital.

Instead

Part of being a containment specialist was not feeling too strongly for your potential subjects.

He momentarily wondered if Gears would answer.

[…]

***

[Discussing with Bright, after? Kondraki had tagged along?]

[She's out of her mind as a result of magic combined with solitary confinement.]

[I promise. It doesn't have to be this way. || Rattles off K-class scenarios]

SCRAP: Officially, Incident Zero had never happened. They sure as hell weren't allowed to talk about it. Those memories would never be reconciled.

They left SCP-105 (occasionally called "Iris" by her guards in a small gesture towards maintaining her mental stability) in a containment cell for nine years.

Crow oversaw the procedures himself, sometimes carrying out some especially complex operation, dog paws astonishingly versatile in the machines Crow created to

The Foundation didn't employ people like that. They protected the world from them.

A flash of a moment went through Moose's mind — a memory of an interview that she'd seen, years ago, starring Kondraki. "Lock away the bitch and throw away the key."
Kondraki flash back: lock away the bitch throw away the key re moose

"I am home," she said to the empty room. But in her voice, there was a note of doubt.

here was nothing more than an androgynous woman (according to her file, technically "non-binary", but keeping that a secret for reasons lost on Lament — not that the secret mattered at all in this circumstance) chained up in a dark cell, dirty, unwashed, pathetic.

[Iris 3: "I can stop him! I can stop him —" Stun batons? Someone who's interviewing her is called away. ]

Welcome to the Insurgency

They're fine with letting researchers discuss

, where they treat SCPs as people — people. They won't let you experiment on them, and they won't let you

Treating SCPs as people? Really?

"The Foundation is holding you back," Wilhelm said. " We offer a path to the future. A real path."

"You've read the interview transcription your friends have been passing around in secret."

"Ya know, it's funny. Some of the high-ranking staff were saying that using SCPs was a Chaos Insurgency thing."

"I assure you, they're wrong," Wilhelm said.

Logic from illogic.

they want to control SCPs for the greater good

"Our difference is our strength. And the Foundation's weakness." (Eh…)

We're asking you to help us, not join us.

it's a legitimate part of the Foundation who were villainized due to a coup;
they want to shut down Alpha-9 permanently and demote everyone involved…

One of the directors in charge of Alpha-9.

Claim the Insurgency name is propaganda. Maybe Eight? One of his Factotum.

"And now, they're bringing back Omega-7 with a new name, and I… I don't know."

"You're saying it's ableist to call you Madmen?" The serpent-eyed woman

Back then, she'd been…

A Factotum to O5-2?
A Factotum to the old O5-10? Who had her defect intentionally to find out what was happening with the Insurgency, but she got in too deep? Ten threw her family to the wolves and the Insurgency saved them?
Related to retired O5-12? Same deal?
She meets the Trainman/Conducter, former O5-12, who winks at her? Eh… may not work with Troy's stuff.
Her family had worked at the Foundation. Her children were in a massive breach
A major Foundation figure? Bantay Masipag? Lol. An ex-Administrator? Eh…
Factotum to Ten sounds intriguing… (as Factotum to the old Archivist, she was an amazing 'get' for the Insurgency, she knew things even most Factotum didn't. The old Ten had given her just enough unique information to press her case.)

Later, Wilhelm had told her — he'd always known she was a traitor. But now he wanted her to join the Insurgency, for real.

Wilhelm was in high spirits.

NOT Summer? New major 'get' from the Foundation…

"Welcome to the Inner Circle." to the new recruit? Wilhelm keeps winking at Summer, who remembers when she heard this speech before. When her family's lives were on the line. When she would have said anything, done anything. When she did say anything, do anything.

But the Insurgency had already found her family. And, technically, saved their lives.

"What is the Insurgency?" Wilhelm asked her, rhetorically.

Summer didn't expect that an answer was required, but Wilhelm waited for her. "A group who defected from the Foundation that now works to take the organization down," she responded, mechanically.

"Yes," Wilhelm said. "And no." He paused. "What do you think of the name 'Chaos Insurgency'?"

"Why do you care what I think?"

"I care. You came from the Foundation, like me. I know how you feel about me. I want to show you that you're wrong. I want you to know the truth."

Summer shook her head. "I hate the name. It's ridiculous. Sounds like a cartoon."

“The Insurgency isn’t just about the Foundation. It never was.”

She hesitated. And knew the hesitation required a little honesty. Fortunately, that part was easy.

White handkerchief

So much of the Foundation's mission didn't make sense, had never made sense.

The truth — the Insurgency must become God to save the world, because the world desperately needs it. They must be everything to everybody because one day soon they will need to be everything to everybody
(and that's why they're going to control the world-ending reality-transforming being using a bunch of controlled anomalies)

Summer noticed Wilhelm didn't close with another variation on welcoming him to the Insurgency. Dogwood probably wouldn't have approved of that.

SCP Sandbox III

Sandbox III: Revenge of the Sandbox

Welcome to the Foundation