chapter 3

Cleaved: AFTERMATH

...III...

I OWN AND REGRET NOTHING!

...III...

Moon, the former Queen of Mewni cautiously stalked through the refugee camps that were being set up. Hostile glares following her wherever she went, word had gotten out how she'd helped Mina gain her army...

Shockingly, Mina's actions did more to create unity among the Mewmans and monsters than anything Star or Eclipsa did. When her army came in to slaughter the monsters and monster loving traitors- completely ignoring the fact that over half the population only barely tolerated monsters, they simply just weren't as fanatical about it as the one's who left to live in Moon's little 'town' -she united them in ways they never thought possible.

And with the exception of that one butler, all of Mina's former army defected from her cause. Between the trauma of slaughtering children and fellow Mewmans they were now completely against her cause...Mina and to a lesser extent Moon had become a cautionary tale of racism in all it's horror...

But despite as all this...Moon carried on...he tried to volunteer and assist however way she could-

BAM!

My family died because of you, you bitch!

BAM!

The news of 'co-conspirator' Moon getting killed by a vengeful victim of Mina's rampage, before he then killed himself would be all over the news...it would also be a LIE...

...

The agent in the ambulance that took the corpses in waited until they were alone. "Alright, good work you two. Take five."

The two corpses rose from the table, The two shapeshifters in SCP pay thanked the agent and took a smoke break.

The agent calls ahead, the hospital was set up. The corpse of the REAL Moon had already been doctored to match the death in the 'official' report.

His partner looked at all this confused, "Explain to me again why we didn't just use Marco and Star for this? I mean, their the one's most responsible for our current crisis, aren't they?"

His partner sighed, "Yes, short-term blaming them for everything would've got OUR world off our back...but you need to look at it long-term too. For better or for worse; the Mewmans, their neighbors and their monsters are OUR neighbors now...so we need to learn to 'play nice' together. Especially when our resources are already spread thin cleaning out all the other shit the fan has spread everywhere! Star is best friends with most of the other ruling family's, the monsters love both Star and Marco for all they did for them, and the Mewmans are more on those two's side more then ever for stopping Mina! So us getting their asses out of the fire will be both an olive branch...AND potential political leverage we can use at the negotiation table if need be."

"Wait, the Mewmans love them MORE after the merge? Don't they get that-

The agent snorts, "My good man, the fact they screwed over thousands of worlds to save their sorry buts if anything only makes them feel MORE indebted to them! Most Mewmans don't have magic anyway, so it's loss hasn't hurt them much...as for them now being in another world? Apparently, the refugee camps are even BETTER then their old homes! Far as their concerned, those kids helped them UPGRADE!"

"Yikes." Said his partner. The agent nodded. "Yeah, not to mention were still not sure Glossaryck is permanently gone, until we are sure. Probably best not to kill off his 'pawns'. We all remember the 'Bay of Pigs' fiasco..."

His partner shuddered, "Cloning one Fidel was bad enough..."

The agent nodded...then takes a puff from his Stoogie. "Next to them, Mina would've been the best bet but we haven't found her...it baffles me why that girl didn't at least arrest her after everything...but never mind. Moon will do just fine...might be even better actually."

"How do you mean?" The agent shrugged. "People are weird about kids, ESPECIALLY girl kids. People seem to think that 'she's just a kid', 'she had a bad day', or 'she didn't mean to' are magic words that should erase all consequences for her... Remember the 'Bill event' at SCP-6000?' How when we went to kill that Pine's girl while she was still on the bus headed back to Piedmont and Her family fought against us?"

His partner snorted, "Bloody double-standard, hypocrites. Bet you anything if it had been the BOY Pines who was getting punished, no one would care!" He then looks thoughtful. "What did happen to that boy, anyway?"

The partner shrugged, "After we used her to finish the final containment protocol of 6000, the amnestics had worn off. We took them back to SCP-6000, told them some BS about how they came to Piedmont to ask their parents permission for him to apprentice under his great uncle and they said yes."

"They did?"

The agent shrugs again, "Eh, we had to go scrub their memories of their daughter's existence anyway, so we planted that false memory of them doing just that because...well, why not? We'd just ritualistically sacrificed his sister and erased all trace of her existence...and he was clearly much happier in 6000 then his old 'home'...so we threw him a bone...because again, why not?" He says with a shrug.

His partner shrugs and downs a cold one, "Wait, why haven't we done anything about the Pines family or any of the residence living in 6000's-

"Redacted." Interrupted the agent with a conspiratory tap to his nose.

His partner nods in understanding. "Redacted." He agrees...

...

But let us leave Echocreek and the events surrounding it for awhile. After all, No man is an island. And this is a GLOBAL affair...

We've- more or less -seen how the FOUNDATION is handling things...but one can only wonder how the other groups of interest are dealing with this crisis?

...

...The Global Occult Coalition (GOC)...

...

All was chaos at the Coalition, not only for all the damage control to stem the flow of anarchy across the world but preparing for the now announced 'end of masquerade' scenario...

But while most were panicking over what seemed to be the end of the world, one man was treating it as more of the BEGINNING of a brand new world...

GOC director Charles Goodwin was celebrating with some fine scotch. It was nice to see that things can go off the rails in a good way. It would've taken him fifty more years to cook up something as perfect as this on his own, preferably something that killed that annoying Kim Jong Un and his country... and then the universe just gift wrapped it to him instead...marvelous, simply marvelous...

For the record...he DID believe in the (GOC's) mission...he simply felt they were going about it the wrong way...

Although he felt that the Foundations approach was too extreme- some abnormalities needed to die, the 'Shy guy' was a prime example of this -but he admitted that their method of 'killing first and asking questions later' could cause more harm then good as well. He'd prefer a more trial-by-trial basis really...

More importantly, he felt they were too restrained in their responsibilities. With their knowledge and capabilities they could be far more then over glorified janitors and attack dogs for over-politicized and decadent world leaders who spent more time fighting and back-stabbing each other then getting anything actually DONE...

In any case, now was the time to act.

Although he hadn't expected to move this quickly, he's years of meticulous planning had put him in a good place to exploit this.

The covert operative that leaked the details of SCP-2002 had been one of his, he deliberately had him leave out the crucial part about it being filled of embryo's and survivors of a future where humanity was sterile. And made sure the info got sent to his hot-head of a (then) political rival Commander Cyrus Temple. Typical of him, he blew it up no questions asked...when it was learned WHAT was in it, the moron was canned. Goodwin used the momentum to rise in the ranks, push forward reforms, and rebuilt the bridge Cyrus burned by helping the SCP create a cure for that future SCP disease(they never realized the antidote had already been made on SCP-2002 and he'd just arranged for it to be stolen before Cyrus destroyed it.).

He repeated this method over the years- SCP-1522 was a particular nice example, the little boat in it's 'womb' was a particularly tragic yet nice touch. Not only did it make the GOC look bad to many of their UN partners, but it also derailed a lucrative deal with the Serpents hand regarding ownership of the Bermuda triangle. So great was their outrage, they refused to make anymore deals with the GOC until all responsible for the travesty were punished and fired. Yes sire, heads rolled for that one.

So many of his political adversaries were not only fired but demonized and blacklisted, further convincing many that the GOC needed reform...and more importantly, that Goodwin be at the head of those reforms.

Shockingly, Goodwin had nothing to do with the fiasco that was SCP-1609...not that that didn't stop him from using the aftermath to his advantage naturally. Not only was it another blatantly obvious example on how the GOC's current methodology only made things WORSE...but it made the perfect scapegoat...so many political adversaries of Goodwin killed over the years by a stray SCP-1609 piece that he'd smuggled out of SCP custody...

In any case, this disaster may have been unexpected. But it was perfect for his agenda. With the masquerade gone and the GOC made public, they would no longer be limited in scope. Between the UN desperate to throw more bodies into making the mess go away and the people desperate to to gain some form of security... HE would finally be allowed to do what was necessary to bring order to the world.

True, the other groups of interest would be an issue. The Foundation was especially wary of them since the fiasco at SCP-1730(1)...But as a wise man once said; 'If it was easy, everyone would be doing it'.

He raises a glass to a picture of Star Butterfly. "A toast to you Star Butterfly, to planting the seeds of a new world order..."

...

...Alexylva University...

...

The Alexylva University, a hub of commerce, transportation and delivery...or at least, usually...

Today, it's doors had been shut, it's offices evacuated...nothing but forensic teams and police tape today...

There had been multiple accidents the past week or so; every attempt to open a portal, create an anomalous object or send a package to another realm had ended in catastrophic failure. The company and the Suffetes had desperately tried to keep things under wraps as they figured out the issue...but with so many deaths, eventually word got out and public outcry forced the Suffetes to shut down the University indefinitely.

This was bad, as the university was a cornerstone of their worlds economy; building essential anomalous objects, establishing lucrative trade deals and supply chains with other planes of existence. Worse, they employed 27% of the worlds population. The mass lay-offs and loss of such an important function in their society led to a terrible recession.

Research showed that the issue was mainly that the walls between worlds had suddenly become unstable. As this was usually maintained and prevented by the MHC, attempts were made to contact them to find out what happened...but they never responded...

Through less... 'conventional' sources, the desperate Suffetes finally found out what happened and desperate to appease the angry mob...they naturally blamed everything on 'The people of Earth and Mewni' -that description was all their now very limited intel could get on who was responsible- and immediately ordered martial law and universally draft to create an army to hunt down the perpetrators and put them to death...

This would take many years...both because building a inter-dimesional fleet(that did not require Hekapoo's power or Omnitraxius stability to go anywhere) was both time consuming and expensive even in the best of times...but also the leaders of this world had no real intention of following through and were mainly doing this to distract people from the REAL problems until they could figure out a solution...or skimped enough taxpayer money to escape to a better world to conquer it...whichever was easier...

Sadly, they were far from the only world with similar thoughts of vengeance...

...Anderson Robotics...

Allistar Smythe patiently typed away at a computer. He was thankful that like most of the groups of interest in the world they mainly dealt with Enlightened magic. Thus when Star Butterfly destroyed Romanticist magic, their work was only marginally affected. Regardless, Word had come that soon the company would be restructured. Apparently the chaos consuming the world was getting so bad that a desperate GOC and the SCP Foundation had approached them. In exchange for them being allowed to come out in the open to PUBLICLY sell paratechnology as a LEGAL enterprise with all their past crimes forgiven...they would be required to supplement their Mobile task forces with their robot legions.

This was naturally meet with much enthusiasm... Because yes, they were still able to do their trade thanks to their powerful and influential patrons and sponsors(some of them actually part of said Foundation and GOC whether they wanted to admit it or not) in addition to their movements being concealed by their state-of-the-art stealth technology...but constantly needing to stay below the radar and restricting their 'ware's' to only the elite, the powerful and 'in the know' was considered a woefully poor and constricting atmosphere to conduct their research and make profit.

Smythe would be lying if he said the money wasn't a nice bonus, but it was mostly the fact that his research continued to suffer under such restrictions that had irritated him...he of course was not naive and knew that money was a necessary 'evil' to fund such research in the first place...that didn't make the company's often focus on profit over research any less annoying...

Needless to say; he, like most at Anderson's Robotics were ecstatic that the 'veil of secrecy' was finally obsolete and done away with for good...

He checked the time, booted down his computer, grabbed his briefcase and walked out to his next appointment...

Of course, such a deal had it's complications. The Foundation and GOC couldn't just up and let them reveal themselves to the world. Apparently the plan was to attach them to a publicly recognized and beloved company, make said company a PR figurehead, and then pretend that they had always been apart of it and working with the Foundation and GOC in secret. 'Were trying ease people into the 'new' normal', they claimed. "We need to be an example of unity to the world in these dark times', they explained. 'It'll be good for your public image', they reassured.

Allistar snorted to himself, 'What a load of crock!' He thinks to himself. It was obvious that the only PR they cared for was their own. They were going to face enough heat as it is when word leaked of their repeated failures to end those dammed Sarkic cults, Loathsome Fiftist whackjobs, the criminals at Marshal Carter and Dark(i.e. their best customers) and the hundreds of other problems that have been boiling beneath the surface of 'normality'...

Sweeping the 'irrelevant' fact that they'd been 'technically' a rouge Paratechnology company that had eluded their capture for years under the rug, pretending they'd always been chummy and on the side of 'good' was a blatant BS whitewash attempt to save face...

Buuuuut...it was a 'blatant BS whitewash attempt to save face' that cost them nothing and actually benefited them... Blatant manipulation aside; it WOULD actually help their public image, they were going to have the assets and money of a major corporation absorbed into them with little to no cost, and while this company become their face. Their 'real' company would still keep the flexibility to do less then legal dealings away from the public eye(A perk that Alister suspected was rather deliberately allowed yet unspoken on at least the Foundations part...for all their many faults, they were no fools...they knew how the 'game' was played, he had to give them that...).

So Anderson was more then happy to play ball with them...for now at least...

At first there was some friction with the targeted company- Cybus Industries(which had been chosen due to comparability of their infrastructures, the convenience of it having subsidiaries across the globe, and the fact their CEO was about to kick the bucket anyway due to life-threatening disease that left him handicapped and thus the transaction would be easier) -as their CEO John Lumic resisted the acquisition with every fiber of his being and even threatened to leak this whole operation to the public.

The Foundation and GOC were considering just calling this whole thing a lost caused and moving on. But surprisingly, Mr. Anderson offered to step in...His silver tongue as sharp as ever, he made a deal with Lumic that if he allowed this to happen the full might of Anderson's Robotics would be employed to keep him alive...

Lumic, eager to extend his life and be free of his wheelchair, happily agreed...

Allistar gets on the teleporter...

This proved to be more grand of a deal then anticipated...for Lumic, desperate for any means to delay his untimely death...was no stranger to the paranormal...

Allistar leaves the teleporter at the new site...

One such foray into the realms of the unknown was sending an elite team of mercenaries to steal a valuable piece of tech from SCP-1678(this apparently had been BEFORE the Foundation found it and made it impossible to find, let alone get to.). Such an expedition cost much life and resources, worse the vault proved impossible to open...

Lumic deemed the whole expedition a failure, covered up the whole thing, denied any attempts at further expeditions and locked the vault deep inside his private estate...

Until now...

"So you've succeeded in opening it?" Asked Allistar.

"Yes, only an hour ago, were still trying to get through debris though. We've also learned that contrary to what Mr. Lumic believed; it was less of a vault and more of a broken fragment of a larger vessel...maybe even a spaceship...although most of the data we got is still corrupted...we were able to decode one word so far..."

He held up a monitor to show Allistar the word...

"'Monda'? Hmmm...interesting...keep at it, and tell me what else you decode..." He dismissed the assistant to do just that as he walks up to further analyze their discovery...

...

...Ambrose Restaurants...

...

The mighty and giant Octomelon cruised at the bottom of the ocean, knocking over entire mountain ranges with a flip of it's tentacle. All fled before it...none would ever suspect that it was secretly a tamed creature, carrying a restaurant in it's belly

A Senior Director named Uumen Umeda clapped his hands to get all the chiefs and Gourmet Hunters and revivers attention. "Okay, listen up people! The 'veil of secrecy' is now yesterdays news! That's right, you didn't mishear me! We no longer have to keep this all under wraps! More importantly, we got some BIG orders to fill now that the big wigs no longer need to pretend we don't exist!"

He reads out the list.

"Right, the GOC need a million batches of Cafe ants, Candyleon's, and Capsicum Pork for the UN's big 'revealing the paranormal to the world' announcement. Marshal, Carter and Dark's have ordered a thousand pounds of Garra Gator and Drunk Shark for a celebration on their 'going public'. Dr, Wondertainment is planning a big 'party' so...I don't know, his writing is gibberish. Just take our weirdest and most experimental crap, mix it together at random while you huff a bunch of drugs...that usually satisfies that nutjob... The Chaos Insurgency has ordered fifty trillion tons of Regal mammoth Jewel meat. The Fiftist church has once more ordered 'GOD'...we will of course AGAIN politely turn them down and refund their down payment. The SCP Foundation are planning a large smorgasbord PR campaign to feed Mewman/monster refugees and try to put a positive spin on the paranormal to the 'normal' public! They're paying us OVERTIME for us to pull out the big guns here people! I want to see our finest Champansy from the Heavy drinker Archipelago! I want Blue Blood corn popping! I want to see Shining Gourami being fried! Wheel in the Puffer whales and Puzzle Plankton! Grab a toothbrush and some caffeine while your chopping up the Salamander Sphinx, this is going to be an all nighter!" He looks as everyone just stands there stunned. "Well what are you waiting for? A kiss? LET'S MOVE PEOPLE! CHOP-CHOP!" He claps impatiently.

Everyone quickly runs around to do just that...

...

...Arcadia...

...

Deep within the Alamogordo Landfill, where the infamous E.T. Cartridges were laid to rot...SOMETHING stirred...

BOOM!

"No...my...love...was not strong enough..." Arkady sputtered and sparked before it's collective was silenced for good...sadly, unlike most other groups of this world, it's makers loved to dabble with both Enlightenment AND Romanticism. Before it could recover from losing half it's strength...HE broke through...

The lord of Brimstone dusted off some pixels as it stood among the refuse in all his horrifying 8-bit glory. "Time to collect what I'm owed." He said menacingly as he strode from the landfill with purpose...

...

...Are We Cool Yet?...

...

The 'Critic' was addressing the various other head-artisans of their organization. "Alright everyone, listen up! The SCP Foundation and the GOC has approached us with an offer." Pulls out a message sent from them. "Between stretched resources, political necessity- Blah, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, sincerely some burecratic suite." He says flatly as he tosses the message into the air, letting it scatter as everyone else laughed.

"Yeah, good stuff. But in all seriousness, here's the offer: In exchange for all our past crimes being forgiven, they and various other Groups of interest want to start commissioning us! They want to show the world that the paranormal is nothing to fear and they see our skills as the way to do that! So in conclusion; our debts cleared, our crimes forgiven, wallets get fat, we'll finally be allowed to go public and get the prestige and fame we've always desired...all we gotta do is promise to make shit that don't kill people...A pretty fair deal all things considered, what do you say?"

Just about everyone else agreed it was a good deal...except...

"So in other words...you want us to become sell outs?"

Almost everyone else groaned, the Critic rolled his eyes. "Why am I not surprised that you would consider the 'not allowed to kill people' part a dealbreaker Sander?"

Sander Cohen was the subject of a great deal of contention and arguments among the AWCY ranks...

What few people realized was that most of their lethal anomalies came from Sander or his followers. SCP-1590, 1127, 1883, and 1074. ALL him or one of his groupies.

But not SCP-1057 though, that was just a prank that went horribly wrong...

In any case, most of their organization thankfully mostly wanted to do stuff like SCP-1802.

In fact, contrary to popular belief. The group that broke off and became 'Gamers against Weed's'(GAW) main issue wasn't necessarily all the death injury caused to innocents- although that was a huge part of that -but rather that most of AWCY refused to reign Sander in or at least punish him for his crimes...

The Critic and many others didn't do this because...well, although technically the Critic was considered their 'leader'...that really wasn't how their 'organization' worked.

They were more 'anarchist' then anything. no real agenda, ranking, leadership, goals(except for becoming 'cool' of course) or anything like that...so unless someone was doing something that DIRECTLY caused problems for the organization or one of their members...they mostly left their individual groups or members do as they pleased...

And although many of Sandar's and his groupies 'projects' left a bad taste in many of AWCY's mouths...the idea of censoring, suppressing or even meddling in another artists works stank too much of the oppressive government, Big business, authority figures, Groups of interest or 'man' that made them run away and make this group in the first place!...so they did nothing...

But As time passed, they lost many of their best and brightest to GAW, and Sandar created more and more abominations...

People were starting to get sick of it...worse, their client pool started to dry up as more and more people saw them as an unstable rouge anomalous organization...in other words, no one was seeing them as 'cool'...

Despite all this, they still felt like interfering with his 'vision' went against the core principles of AWCY...so they reluctantly allowed him to continue...

But when he collaborated with disgruntled members of the Church of the broken God to create SCP-4485 or 'hansarp'...even the most hard-core AWCY radical(outside Sandar's group) agreed that he'd gone too far.

Thankfully, GAW warned them about Hansarp before it developed too far and they were able to stamp it out before it could really begin...after that it was unanimously agreed to reign in Sandar's group...

This, needless to say did not go over well with Sandar...but when they threatened to both cut him off from the organizations resources AND hand him over to the Foundation, there was little more he could then grumble but begrudgingly accept their new restrictions.

Sadly, this did not bring GAW back into their fold...they'd grown too much as their own entity.

Worse, it was clear that Sandar and his cronies were doing their own thing behind the scenes...nothing they could prove naturally...but it was obvious to everyone that a conflict if not a outright SPLIT was inevitable...

And so it was...

"Of course it's a dealbreaker! As should any bit of Government Censorship be seen as a dealbreaker to a REAL artist...in which case I guess I shouldn't be surprised that none of you can see that..." He snarked

The Critic glared, "Look Sandra; their not going to regulate us, their not really telling us what to do, in fact their encouraging us to make things as abnormal and crazy as possible! Their paying us top dollar, pardoning our crimes- Which need I remind you are mostly YOURS or us HARBORING you! -and FINALLY allowing us to go public with our work and be COOL! And literally the one thing they ask is that we don't kill or hurt anyone, what more do you want!?"

"What I want is for me and my fellow artists to be allowed to follow our muses without fear of Censorship or oppression...something I'm starting to think is asking too much for this sorry group!"

The Critic slammed a binder down. "Right, I've had enough of this." He looks around to everyone else. "Anyone besides Sandar have a problem with this deal?" Not surprisingly, no one else did...

The critic nods and turns back to Sandar. "Look Sandar, if you don't want to be part of this. That's fine, but don't expect us to support it. This is finally the chance for us to get all we've ever dreamed and were not going to miss this chance just because you won't play nice with others or go five minutes without maiming someone in the name of your 'art'!"

"Suffering is ART!" Snapped Sandar enraged.

The Critic rolls his eyes, "Whatever, I don't have time to argue with you. I have better things to do today then bicker with some old fart who looks like he just got back from a 1920's New year party! You want to leave, LEAVE! No one's making you stay! Out of respect for a fellow artist we won't tell the Foundation or GOC about you or what we suspect you got going on the side...but your on your own from now on!"

Sandar huffed...but said nothing as he and his thugs, shysters and fanatics stormed out of the meeting...

The critic nodded, "Good riddance." He turns back to the others. "Right, let's just make this official then. All in favor of accepting the deal?"

Everyone started to raise their hands. "Right, good. I'll just.

BOOM!

Outside, Sandar and his team laughed as the four lava monsters eating each other destroyed AWCY's HQ...

"Philistines, the lot of you!" He spits at the rubble and turns his back to his former colleagues. "You'll see...when I'm done, you'll be lucky to be a measly footnote in my rise to greatness!"

His toadies eagerly agreed as they all vanished in a puff of rose petals...

...

...The Black Queen...

...

Allison Chao( AKA the 'Black Queen') looked down at the knife-like implement that had been shoved into her body...she desperately tried to call to her sisters...but whatever Star Butterfly did seems to have cut her away from the rest of the collective-

Squick

Her last sight was the bandaged Japanese man who'd killed her ripping out her heart with the strange implement...and then she fell over...and all was silence...

...

...The Chaos Insurgency...

...

What is chaos in theory? It's a thousand coins flung into the air. Each one wavering in the course of its rise and fall between justice and greed, tenderness and blood, calamity and boredom. Who is the Chaos Insurgency? We are not the face of a coin, praying for fate to favor our side: we are the hand that makes the toss. We are the trajectory. We are the violence in the wind. Countless conditions determine every outcome, and we strive to know and manipulate them all. A thousand coins tumble down and we formulate the equations and models that predict where each and every one will fall. And when they fall? We will adjust accordingly, and throw them back in the air. For we are the Chaos Insurgency and we take chaos far beyond theory.

"Vindictae cogitatione armamini quia nequaquam ut non continuo adhuc manus eius dextra red propter ea nos?"

Jack Harper listened as the recruitment video played in the next room...

How long ago had it been since that fateful day he and many others were hand-picked and gathered by the 0-5 council for their loyalty to the Foundation? How long ago when they'd been branded traitors and defects? How long ago did they go through that ruse to create a false Splinter organization so that Foundation could keep it's hands clean...and how long ago had it been since that fateful year of 1924...when falsehood became reality and they broke free to find their own destiny?

Jack Harper wondered how the 0-5 council would react if they learned this rebellion had been planned long before they EVER conceived of the Chaos Insurgency...long before those who rebelled were even born...before even HE was born?

He'll never forget that fateful mission where his helicopter crashed on a trip toward Shangri-la by accident...at least...what he THOUGHT was an accident.

That crash landed him and others at the doorstep of an order of monks who had their lips sewed shut...and who had been expecting them.

They were a anomalous order who believed the only way to truly control the world...was to control chaos. As contradictory as it sounded...it did make sense. When it came right down to it...chaos was the one force of nature you could always rely on to do it's job consistently. No matter how much one tried to avoid it, chaos would always find them. Anything that could go wrong, WILL go wrong and all that...

But if one could control chaos...one could control everything...everything that went wrong would be in their favor, everything that went right would only be on their terms...

Harper knew that he and Goodwin had similar goals...both of them wanted a better world...sadly, his way of doing it...at least as Far as he was concerned, was doomed to fail. Controlling the world through ORDER would only get you so far. As history showed again and again...no form of order lasted forever...empires rose and empires fell...the only thing one could predict was the they WOULD fall...but learn to control WHEN it fell and what replaced it...and your rule would truly be eternal...

The monks had told them how they had orchestrated this whole meeting. How they arranged for his birth, manipulated him into joining the Foundation, fooled the council into the necessity of the Insurgency...all so that he would meet them...

The order was dying...sadly, they still had blind spots despite all their years of experiments...their models, their graphs, their data, their manipulations...it still wasn't perfect. Evidently, they'd been blind-sided by a cult calling them the singers...and now what was once an order of thousands...was now barely a dozen...

Despite this setback, they'd still managed to bring him here...and they'd even shown him how...his birth, his joining the Foundation, the Council deciding on this plan...all manipulated through a butterfly flapping it's wing, a child deciding to eat chocolate instead of vanilla and a grocer forgetting to bringing his glasses to work...by making those things happened...they caused the rest to fall into place...

Although irritated to find his fate so easily twisted...the monks offered to merge the two organizations and teach him all they knew so he could continue their work...

Their ideas intrigued him...for a while he considered taking this information to the Council...but he realized that for the most part...they'd probably just seal this knowledge away and never use it save to maintain normality and containment...

And from that- yet another thing he had no doubt the monks predicted -was when the seeds of doubt and irritation began to sprout within him.

What was the point of the organization? Just sit on all that was bizarre and useful until the universe burnt out? Reset the world everytime it wasn't 'normal' enough for their taste?

It was then Harper realized that aside from protecting people and containing the unknown...the Foundation had no real goal or purpose...no direction...they'd rather just lock everything in a box and FORCE the world to remain the same forever...a Status quo they refused to EVER break...

And thus Harper decided that it was better to go in the WRONG direction...then no direction at all...for at least then you were at least GOING somewhere...

And thus, the Chaos insurgency was TRULY born...for years they had created chaos and anarchy across the world to continue the monks grand experiment long after the last of them had passed away...

The loss of life was regrettable...but with each experiment...with each operation...with each disaster...more data was acquired...the more data...the greater his knowledge and power over chaos increased...

His favorite experiment had been SCP-884...the SCP never knew what hit them...over a dozen sites...and thousands of their operatives filled with such doubt and despair it crippled operations in that part of the world for YEARS...and all thanks to a anomalous shaving mirror...

He felt bad about abandoning 1316...she'd been one of his best operatives...but she'd severed her purpose...the SCP lower-echelons were so paranoid toward another potential security breach from within they ended up missing the opportunity to later grab several SCP's that he would take for himself, simply because the Foundation had shifted it's budget to dealing with domestic, internal concerns and away from SCP identification and retrieval...

He was VERY excited about 1275...the Foundation thought it was neutralized in that electrified tungsten cube in the Gobi desert surrounded by molten lead...little did they know they'd brought it EXACTLY where he'd wanted it...when the time was right...he'd get his prize...

but all of this was a moot point as all his models and instruments were going nuts! Harper realized that he'd stumbled headlong into yet another blindspot the monks- nor he -could figure out how to get around...

For all it's capabilities it could not predict truly unpredictable individuals, or events that came completely out of left-field!

And thus Star Butterfly's actions had thrown out years of testing and many more years of many more planning...

But Harper just shrugged as he took it all in stride. Chaos was all about change after all...and to fully comprehend change you needed to learn to be flexible...

although short term this caused problems for him...but long term? well, most of the other Groups of Interest were taking advantage of this turmoil...why not him? So much chaos meant so much data...besides Star had shown him that he needed more data when regarding other worlds...it never hurt to learn of a potential weakness before your enemies did...Clearly he had much work to do...

He takes one more puff of his cigarette as he watches the various holographic monitors showing events and people all across the world...he tented his fingers and began to scheme...

...

...The Chicago Spirit...

...

'Don Eddy stood atop his throne of gold as millions stepped forward to ask him favors...mostly hot girls. He orders one to take off their top. She happily starts to oblige-

CRACK!

Eddy's daydream shatters as his chair is pulled out from under him and he crashes on the floor. "Wake up Pipsqueak! This floor won't sweep itself!" Shouts his jerk of an older brother.

Eddy groans, but starts to sweep with his two best friends: Ed and Double Dee.

"Messy, Messy, Messy." Grumbled Double Dee as he scrubbed.

Ed was of course only pretending to dust while actually using his comic 'tales of the prohibition prostitute' to 'decipher' the Chicago Spirits secrets.

"You chumps finish up down here or no supper! Me and the rest of the Specter leadership or going to go out to talk strategy and patrol our turf!" Shouts Eddy's brother as he slams the door and leaves.

Eddy rolls his eyes and snorts, "'Talk strategy and patrol our turf', who's he trying to fool? Their just going out to get wasted and play blackjack with hookers like they always do!" He sighs... "Why won't they ever let me come with them?" He grumbles wishfully.

Double Dee also nods his head in agreement, equally irritated. "Indeed, and Specter 'LEADERSHIP'? What leadership? We're just a bunch of teenagers and pre-teens who spend all day inside an abandoned former speakeasy of a REAL crime Syndicate getting drunk, vandalizing property, threatening to pummel us if we don't do THEIR chores and playing darts!"

Indeed, the glory days of the infamous 1920's Chicago Spirit mob was long gone. Sure, there were Chicago 'Specters' taking on their mantel...but most of them were just unconnected gangs of punk kids and gangster-wannabees. The few groups that actually tried to do serious crimes were barely street gangs, forget being a proper crime family!

"I tell you guys, the moment we get our big break were blowing this Popsicle stand!" Shouts Eddy determined.

Double Dee rolls his eyes, "Yes Eddy, we heard you the first hundred times..."

"But this time I mean it! I got a scam that can't fail!"

"Which is what you also said the last hundred times, Eddy need I remind you were all still on parole from your 'Boy Scout scam'?"

"Well how was I supposed to know that stealing those hobo spices would anger the local militia?" Defended Eddy, "This will be different; we just need a box of eye patches, some TNT, a barrel filled with expired Jelly and- Ed would you cut that out and get your butt over here!? I need you to do some heavy lifting!"

"But Eddy, I'm close to finding Mr. Night's treasure!" He exclaims while waving his comic around.

Double Dee shakes his head in despair over his friends delusions, "Eddy, you really need to learn how to differentiate from reality and comics. 'Mr. Night' was clearly an urban myth perpetuated by Richard Davis Chappell's lawyers and PR team to try and 'pass the buck' when he was finally arrested. The tales of him being a 'reality-bender' and selling 'mystic' objects to the highest bidder was likewise also propaganda drummed up by the Chicago Spirit to intimidate rivals."

"But Double Dee! The supernatural is real! They walk among us already! The signs are all there! There's chaos in the streets! The weather's gone mad! Monster sightings are on the rise! My toast is soggy!"

Double Dee glared and wagged his finger sternly, "Now that is enough of that fearmongering Mister! Remember when all your crazy talk of 'mole mutants' caused a panic during that blackout!?"

"Not to mention you threw my money down the sewer!" Snaps Eddy annoyed!

"Besides, the United Nations is going to give a joint statement in a couple days about all these events. Mark my words, they're will be a perfectly logical and rational explanation for all the insanity these past couple of days and this 'monster sightings' nonsense will be put to rest as well..." Said Double D confidently.

But Eddy wasn't listening, he was comparing the comic with a certain piece of wall and he began to push in the bricks in a certain order.

"Hey Mono-brow! Ain't you listening? Put the dumb comic down and help me-

Clack!

The two other Edd's eye's widen as the wall flips over and reveals an ancient message scrawled in blood.

Here lies the final will and Testament of Mr. Night; the true leader of the Chicago Spirit and indeed the very spirit of crime in the swinging 20's itself!

However, I sense prohibition is coming to an end and with it, my reign.

A new generation must rise, a new spirit of crime must take my place!

If you were smart enough to find my clues and this message you are on the right track.

My fortune is yours for the taking, but you'll have to find it first. I hide it all in ONE piece.

Best of luck to you, future king of crime!

Beneath the message was a parchment nailed to the wall...which was clearly a treasure map!

Both Eddy and Double Dee were speechless. Eddy was the first to squeal in delight. "Lumpy I'd kiss you but I ain't that kind of guy!" Eddy shouts as he tears the map off the wall and runs out of their with an equally excited Ed close behind. "Come on boys, time to get stinking rich!"

Double Dee snaps out of it, "Wait! Fellows! Shouldn't we talk about..." he trails off as he sees their already gone. He groans. "Oh, dear! wait for me fellows!" Shouts Double Dee as he reluctantly runs after them.

No one sees the black ooze begin to sink from the nail...

...

...The Church of the Broken God...

...

The Mekhanites were the least affected by Star Butterflies actions. Among the various Groups of interest, they practiced EXCLUSIVELY with Enlightened magic more then anyone else...well, okay the Cogwork Orthodoxy occasionally dabbled in Romanticist magic, but only when needed.

The sudden appearance of so many monsters also didn't bother them- They'd seen worse at the hands of the Sarkics...

In fact they used the opportunity to recruit more converts to their ranks. The monsters mostly played along to get food and shelter...but the concept of having 'magic'(or at least cybernetic implants) intrigued them...

Plus generations of being forced to build their own things from whatever they could improvise for the sake of survival made them excellent industrial workers and quick studies at building things...

Soon word would arrive from the Foundation and GOC that soon the veil of secrecy would be gone and as long as they caused no trouble and helped them stabilize the currently deteriorating global situation...they would be allowed to go public to the non-anomalous citizenry of the world.

This would lead to much celebrating among the Mekhanites, now that they could share their knowledge and technology with the rest of the world...perhaps they could FINALLY recapture the glory days that was the late bronze age?

This question would later lead to a resounding YES and further celebration when they learned of the fate of their hated counterpart the Sarkics...

...

...Doctor Wondertainment...

...

A man with weird colorful clothes, a frock coat complete with old-fashioned coattails, big top hat, and a orange mustache smiled as he twirled his cane. "Right lads! Now that those killjoys are too busy to ruin our fun we can get to work doing what we love best! Bringing joy and fun to the world!"

He pulls out five Golden tickets! "And I know just how to start the fun! Not everyday you get to witness the start of a brand new era! Let's make a celebration of it!" He looks down at hundreds of little men made of scraps and paperclips. All of them getting antsy and walking about.

"Alright lads! Stand up and be counted!" They all stand, get in lines and salute as he dose just that...then stops with an impatient sigh. "Actually, you know what? Forget this, it's boring. I'll just assume there's enough of you."

He gives the five tickets to five of them and they absorb it into their beings. "Right, so it's very simple. I'll drop you all at random locations, people will chase you. Don't let them catch you! Do whatever it takes to prevent that! But if they DO catch you, give them the ticket! OR, if you DON'T have a ticket. Explode into confetti with a playful 'better luck next time!' sticker all that remains of you!"

With a click of his cane, he opens a portal. One by one the little men go through. Each click of the cane opens it up to a new, random location.

click

Paris France...

click

Antarctic...

click

The Congo

Click

The Iram of the Pillars, Ubar.

click

"Hold on." Said the man as he prevents the little guy from going through...the portal had opened up to a backyard...to a rather depressing sight...

Lincoln Loud sighed...he was in the LITERAL dog house...his family had kicked him out for a little white lie...and even confessing to that hadn't gotten him returned...even the current crisis hadn't convinced them to let him back in...if anything they'd become MORE obsessed with superstitions...

He sighs and curls himself up to a ball...and to his shock he sees a little guy of tin handing a golden ticket over to him...

Stunned more then anything, Lincoln slowly takes it from the seemingly living toy. It puts a finger to it's 'mouth' in a shushing motion before exploding into confetti.

There was a note among the confetti that said, 'If anyone asks, you had to work to get this. Deal?'

More confused then anything, Lincoln begins to read the ticket...his eyes widen as it glows...

...

...The Factory...

...

Outside all was chaos, but in the Factory there was nothing but ORDER...

From atop it's tallest tower the Lady watched on...she watched as the greedy, the stupid, the weak, the wretched, the glutinous...they all came one and all...coming across the sea...heeding the Factories siren call...heeding pull of it's all consuming hunger...

Those who could work would be made slaves...forced to work all night and day until their bodies broke...their blood and sweat used as fuel to stoke the fires...their children ravished and made to spawn MORE workers...

Others would be guests, stuffed up and fattened until they burst...their very essence sucked dry to feed the Factory...and their bodies ground up to feed the next guests...

And a smaller percentage...the special ones...they'd be the new bosses, those who would take the factories seed and spread them across the world...spreading the factories influence and it's hunger...

And she of course would take a small percentage of it all to keep her power, life and beauty in perfect condition...

She was vaguely aware that grand events were currently transpiring far away...the very essence of magic had dramatically shifted...but that mattered not to her...

All that mattered was the factory...and the factory must be FEED...and it's SCP'S mailed throughout the world...to further increase it's power and influence in the weak will of humanity...

Yes...there must ALWAYS be the Factory...

...

...The Fifth Church...

...

Not all of it was bad news...as it happened, the entity that the Fiftists worshiped relied heavily on Romantisict magic...

As did SCP-3004 and it's Cétlaidí or 'Singers'...

So the moment Star Butterfly destroyed it's source...they withered away and ceased to be...

That's the good news...the bad news is that their followers are very much alive...and have now imploded into in-fighting. This was just one of many current crises that were stretching Foundation and other peace-keeping forces thin as chaos enveloped the globe...

...

...Gamers Against Weed...

...

Gene Carcaniwas was not a well-liked man. Among other despicable things; he made a fortune dramatically increasing the market prices of drugs meant to treat life-threatening diseases like Leukemia.

So it was only natural that the 'most hated man in America' would have a team of bodyguards watching over him as he headed onto the veranda restaurant. He sees a man with a white top hat, a red rose carnation, and green mask...he'd been given strict instructions to only approach him if he wore those three things. If even one thing had been different or missing he was to immediately pretend he was lost, ask the waiter for directions to the nearest mall, then leave...

As that wasn't the case, he approached him.

"How was the flight from Istanbul?" Asked the man.

Carcaniwas rolled his eyes. But gave the second half of the code. "the woman were nice but the food was the pits. The Sophia was lovely though..."

The man nodded, "You have the money?"

Carcaniwas nodded as he put a phone on the table. A quick scan of it by his aide showed that it contained 20 billion dollars and it was perfectly legal tender.

"Look, I know you got a whole thing going here. But is the cloak and dagger BS really necessary? Aren't you MCD guys going public soon?" Asked Carcaniwas annoyed.

"Technically yes, but only as far as much as a criminal syndicate can 'go' public...

"I thought you and the buzzkills had an 'understanding'", He pointed out mockingly.

The man ignores this and continues, "Yes, but part of that 'understanding' is that we don't cause them more trouble then they already have now and above all don't make them look incompetent. So we need to at least make an effort to cover our activities, otherwise they'll get pissed at us."

Carcaniwas shrugged, "Whatever, you got the goods?"

The man nodded and handed him Bobo Dakes head in a cyrindrical fish tank.

Carcaniwas eye's widen in disbelief, he taps the glass inquisitively. Bobo's eye's open wide and he begins to sing!

I'm just Blansion in my mansion!

Carcaniwas laughs as the head continues to rap. "Alright, I like, I like! I'll wire you the money now." He clicks on his phone and uses the data the aide gives him to send the money to the right account...

The man nods, "Done. He's all yours." He states as he pushes the tank to him.

"Awesome." Carcaniwas said with a smile as he taps the glass while Bobo raps about eating pants...

"Yes, the leukemia foundation of America thanks you for your generous donation." Says the man as he points his phone toward the tank.

"Sure...wait, what?!" Exclaims Carcaniwas confused.

click

BOOM!

With a press of his phone, the tank explodes, 'Bobo's' face melts revealing it to be a fake robotic head, and then it jumps up and bites Carcaniwa in the groin.

Carcaniwa screams in pain like a little girl and runs around like a chicken with it's head cut off.

The bodyguards are so stunned by this turn of events, they almost don't notice the masked man and his aide run off and use a pre-made zipline to get off the roof.

By the time they run to it, it's too late, their gone.

"will you morons help me already?!" The bodyguards quickly do just that and end up ripping the robot head off...and most of Carcaniwa's dick as well...

The head then explodes into whipped cream that covers everyone.

All the while, the whole hilarious scene is being live-streamed all over the world by a laughing Sitara Dhawan. She pauses in her laughter to check to make sure Marcus and Wrench got away safely.

Ever since they'd left AWCY...and when they helped form GAW, they vowed that in addition to making art they would actually use their talents to help people...or failing that at least punish and humiliate scumbags like Carcaniwa.

Before, when the 'veil of secrecy' was up. They hadn't been able to do much of this, while they could punish Anomalous criminals...the Foundation and other normality enforcing groups cracked down hard on them if they tried to use their skills to go after 'mundane' criminals. Not allowing them to expose the crimes of anomalous criminals to the public, also hampered them. True, the Foundation and other Normality enforcing groups would do their best to freeze the anomalous criminals assets...but the public was never informed of what they'd done, so other anomalous groups could pull the same tricks on them later. And it didn't help that they just flat out refused to get involved in Mundane crimes, no matter how much evidence they sent...

But now with the Veil of Secrecy gone...they'd been given the greenlight...not that it've mattered if they hadn't, they still would've done it regardless...but still, nice to see that the Foundation can have a heart...when it was convenient for them...

As she watches all the new followers they'd gained get added to their network. A loud ding came from her App, she looked over to see one of their followers had a hot tip regarding a sleazy politician named Mark Thruss.

Sitara called Marcus, "Hey guys! Take a breather, but when your ready I think I got another live one!" She said with a smile.

...

...Gru Division "P"...

...

Off the southeastern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula...there is nothing there...there never was anything there...any map or history book will tell you that nothing has EVER been there...

Until today...

In a single burst of energy...the island of Katorga-12 is written back into existence...

And so is Gru Division 'P'...

Dr. Nikolai Demichev takes in his first breath of fresh air in...well, who knows how long? He looked at the chrono notes his agents in the USSR- or the Russian Federation(to simply saw that left a bad taste in his mouth) as it was now called -had sent him to let him know that now was the perfect time to regain the glory of the Soviet Union...

He turns to his men, "Prep the E99 bomb...We've been away from our beloved Mother Russia for so long..." He flexes the TMD on his arm... "So let's give them our warmest 'hello'..."

...

Later that week, a massive explosion would reverse the flow of time in eastern half of the Russian republic...sending it back into the days of Soviet Russia...

The 'official' report is that the majority of the current government was killed in the explosion. But the remnants were quick to regain control. They were also quick to blame the crisis on the ineptitude of the SCP Foundation and the GOC...and how clearly this was a botched attempt to cover up their failure to contain SCP-610.

In addition to everything else, The revelation of that abominations existence is enough to scare the population and rile up hated for the SCP, GOC and just about anything non-Russian.

in any case, it is also revealed that the Russian Federation government had made contact with the 'former' Soviet union millitary and government remnants on the eastern side of their country...they'd agreed to be allowed to be assimilated back into the Federation and use their military and industrious might to help Mother Russia in these dark times...

Under normal circumstances the specter of their soviet past would frighten them...but when faced with the prospect of a demonic virus made flesh ravishing their country...or something like a bomb undoing your very existence as it reversed the very flow of time itself? What were such fears compared to that? 'For all their faults, at least the KGB were human! At least they were Russian!' Rationalized the Russian people as their new Presidents reassuring words made them applaud.

The news that they were remaking the defunct Gru Division "P", to be lead by his old friend Dr. Nikolai Demichev to better combat the paranormal and SCP influence was meet with more cautious applause at first. Then Demichev demonstrated his capabilities with the TMD device. To prove that they were already developing a means to prevent such a travesty from ever happening again... their applause at that point echoed throughout the square!

The SCP, and GOC...resources stretched too thin to openly defy Russia's refusal to allow an investigation into what REALLY happened in the eastern block of Russia...were forced to do nothing but sit back and monitor the situation as it unfolded...

...

...SAPHIR (Société Athée Pour la Halte de l'Idéologie Religieuse)...

...

A great celebration would soon be declared across the world, across all Groups of interest; for as it turns out at the same time that Star destroyed Romanticist magic...the entirety of the SAPHIR society had gathered for their yearly ritual to restore power to the Nine Swords of the Prophet Mohammad...as a large component of the ritual was taping directly into the source of Romanticist magic, the backlash of doing so while it was destroyed, wiped out the entire organization...AND returned the world to it's 'normal' flat state.

No one could be bothered to reverse this as the main reason to let the society keep it round was that this was necessary to keep the 'veil of secrecy' up(well, mostly they were sick of doctoring Satellite images and covering up the disappearances of everyone who fell off the edge), which was no longer a thing.

So they just dusted their hands of the whole matter, gave the now useless and artificial South Pole to the Vril Society as a gift...and then party hard now that those bloody, annoying hypocrites were gone...

...

...Herman Fuller's Circus of the Disquieting...

...

...Music starts...

Whoa!

The ringmaster Manny had an upside down face and stood in the center ring as the song began...

Ladies and gents, this is the moment you've waited for (whoa)
Been searching in the dark, your sweat soaking through the floor (whoa)

Human cannonballs were shooting CANNONS out of their mouths and to the other side...

And buried in your bones there's an ache that you can't ignore
Taking your breath, stealing your mind
And all that was real is left behind

Clowns heads were inflating and turning into balloons, the detached from their necks, the headless clowns grab the string on their balloon heads and let them carry them away...

Don't fight it, it's coming for you, running at ya
It's only this moment, don't care what comes after
Your fever dream, can't you see it getting closer
Just surrender 'cause you feel the feeling taking over
It's fire, it's freedom, it's flooding open

The bearded lady's beard was alive and eating wild turkeys!

It's a preacher in the pulpit and your blind devotion
There's something breaking at the brick of every wall it's holding
All that you know, so tell me do you wanna go?

A girl was falling to pieces then juggling herself...

Where it's covered in all the colored lights
Where the runaways are running the night
Impossible comes true, it's taking over you

The strongman was lifting up a fire-breathing elephant!

Oh, this is the greatest show
We light it up, we won't come down
And the sun can't stop us now
Watching it come true, it's taking over you
Oh, this is the greatest show

The sword swallower was swallowing swords ans sweating them out of his body like projectile darts, hitting far away bullseyes everytime!

(Whoa) colossal we come these renegades in the ring
(Whoa) where the lost get found and we crown them the circus kings

A contortionist twists himself into the shape of a floating Tesseract!

Don't fight it, it's coming for you, running at ya
It's only this moment, don't care what comes after
It's blinding, outshining anything that you know
Just surrender 'cause you're calling and you wanna go

A giant rabbit pulls a midget Magician out of a hat!

Where it's covered in all the colored lights
Where the runaways are running the night
Impossible comes true, intoxicating you

The clowns are twisting animals into balloon animals, then untwisting them back to normal completely unharmed!

Oh, this is the greatest show
We light it up, we won't come down
And the sun can't stop us now
Watching it come true, it's taking over you
Oh, this is the greatest show

A mermaid is playing basketball with a LAMPADE.

It's everything you ever want
It's everything you ever need
And it's here right in front of you
This is where you wanna be (this is where you wanna be)
It's everything you ever want
It's everything you ever need
And it's here right in front of you
This is where you wanna be
This is where you wanna be

A octopus Trapeze artist swings through the air!

Where it's covered in all the colored lights
Where the runaways are running the night
Impossible comes true, it's taking over you
Oh, this is the greatest show

A living Skeleton plays his ribs like a xylophone...

We light it up, we won't come down
And the sun can't stop us now
Watching it come true, it's taking over you

The worlds fattest man is rolling himself around, knocking down giant pins...and clowns!

This is the greatest show

A man who is all feet is walking the tightrope!

Where it's covered in all the colored lights
Where the runaways are running the night
Impossible comes true, it's taking over you
Oh, this is the greatest show
We light it up, we won't come down
And the walls can't stop us now
I'm watching it come true, it's taking over you
Oh, this is the greatest show

An anthropomorphic lion man is trying to tame a Chimera!

'Cause everything you want is right in front of you
And you see the impossible is coming true
And the walls can't stop us (now) now, yeah

Everyone jumps into the middle ring to do the final dance...

This is the greatest show (oh!)
This is the greatest show (oh!)
This is the greatest show (oh!)
This is the greatest show (oh!)
This is the greatest show (oh!)
This is the greatest show (oh!)
This is the greatest show (oh!)
This is the greatest show (oh!)
This is the greatest show!

The Foundation, GOC, and UN inspectors applaud. "Well, I'm convinced! You all get the Greenlight to perform for the Mundanes! You'll also be perfect for our upcoming UN conference!" Exclaims the UN representative happily.

"Yes, I think we'll be commissioning you as well. This will be perfect to get the mundane population use the 'new' normal..." Said the GOC representative eagerly.

Manny smiled, all their dreams were coming true...

"I also greenlight this...or I will once you pass inspection by the Ethic's committee." Stated the Foundation Representative.

"Dang it." Groaned Manny Flatly...

...

...The Horizon Initiative...

...

The writers of the universal text sighed as he was forced to add yet ANOTHER chapter including the Mewman and Monster dietys and beliefs.

"Right, put on a put of Coffee lads...I think were going to be here awhile." He says flatly as they try to reconcile these alien religions with their own...

"Right...Stump day? That...that could have some connection with the Tree of life, couldn't it? Oh...boy they have a race of demons living with them too? Well, that's going to be an awkward conversation..."

All Scholars sigh, but they push themselves to work harder. Determined to stop potential religious war before it could begin...

...

...Manna Charitable Foundation...

...

The MCF was busy, in fact you could say it was more busy then it had ever been in it's entire history. Very soon, the UN would declare the 'veil of secrecy' to be null and void. They would no longer have to hide themselves through hundreds of front charities, they could just go public! Best of all the Foundation could no longer steal or stop their hard work!

Okay, in fairness. SCP-1501 and 1176 had been disasters...

And while they still felt SCP-514 had potential, they freely admitted that they'd executed that whole thing poorly...

But SCP-1135? Them denying those poor people a good home was just them being paranoid jerks!

But in any case, they knew they had to be smart on how they proceeded from here. Haste and recklessness had already blackened their reputation enough...

Thus they had called upon the services of one Legal Lee. A very high-priced, highly-sought after- if at times ethically dubious -Lawyer.

Legal Lee looked through various legal precedent and laws... "Right, I won't lie. SCP-1501, 1176 and to a lesser extent 514 will not help your case...but I definitely feel like we'll have something for SCP-1135. By the looks of things you did all the paperwork, had the village properly registered with the united nations. Not reporting the paranormal aspect will probably be brought up, but since there's nothing on the forms that directly asked that and the fact that it can be argued that openly saying something like that on a 'mundane' form would be forcing you to break the Foundations own laws if they pushed it...Yes, I think we have a case here... Especially if we get those villagers they kicked out to testify on our behalf."

"But...they gave them Amnestics." Pointed out a MCF worker.

Legal Lee smirks."So glad you brought that up, I feel like these 'Amnestics' are yet another potential lawsuit gold mine! form what I can see, the various government of our world essential broke and bypassed their own constitution and legal systems to allow the Foundation and various other groups of interest to 'wipe the memories' of their own people and the people of OTHER nations...Now I know what your thinking, but the Geneva convention doesn't apply. When they can they refuse to wear identifying markers or uniforms, as a black-ops organization they technically don't exist or indeed 'officially' haven't been recognized or given authority by any nation...

In fact, assuming I can apply the Pinkerton doctrine- and with enough outrage generated by my PR people of the government 'bogeymen' harassing innocent third-wold villagers it shouldn't be much trouble to do so -I can get the SCP and the government officials of all contributing country's on criminal conspiracy charges for abuse of power. And depending on their degrees of everyone there administrating these 'amnestics' I also believe I can get them for malpractice, practicing medicine without a license, and using chemicals not FDA approved.

Legal Lee thinks on this, "Yes...as losing memory potentially affected their ability to stand in court...I think we can get them for witness tampering. Also they'll no doubt try to claim 1135 was dangerous...but since they erased the knowledge of that danger from their mind...I think in that case we can hit them with noncompliance with 'duty to warn' stature, Second-degree Reckless endangerment of civilians, Reckless second-degree endangerment of minors, potential second-degree negligent homicide...After all what if they decide to come back to 1135? Or they tried to find something similar to 1135, they were desperate for a new home. So with no memory of why they SHOULDN'T, they be easy prey!"

"Wait, but 1135 wasn't dangerous." Protested an MCF worker.

"Exactly, but that'll be their main defense. By accusing them of that, they'll be forced to agree 1135 wasn't a danger, in which case they'll have essentially admitted to the court that they had no legitimate reason to remove those villagers from their home and we can hit them with a whole other set of charges!"

Again he thinks, "Well, first off we'll hit them with Wrongful eviction... if they were happy there and needed their minds erased to leave, that couldn't have been willing! that's assault, possibly kidnapping, also intentional infliction of emotional duress, invasion of privacy, wrongful seizure of property without just compensation. They kicked them out of their lawful homes and sent them to the next town over with no change of address no income to sustain themselves...near several warzone areas...yep, that's second-degree reckless endangerment, or even second-degree negligent endangerment. Also reckless AND negligent second-degree endangerment of CHILDREN- the courts eat up the 'hurt child' angle -Even better since it can by argued here that the Foundation was in a mental state we lawyers like to call 'knowingly'. This can easily kick all those second degree's into FIRST degree territory. Anything else?"

The MCF just gaped at him stunned, "Uh...we'd also like to help free all the non-lethal SCP's that the Foundation locked away."

"Wrongful imprisonment without due process? Come on, give me a challenge." He grins evilly...

...

The Foundation didn't know why, but everyone who worked their inexplicably had a chill go down their spine at the same time...

...

...OBSKURA...

...

"500€" Asked the French clerk, holding out his hand. The customer nodded as he handed over the exact amount in euro coins, took his groceries and left.

The clerk promptly puts the money into the register...only to see that he had double of what he'd asked. This confused the clerk for a moment then he just shrugs it off as neither he nor the guy paying attention and just puts it in the register without a second thought...he never saw the amount of coins he put in glowing and then DOUBLING...

Meanwhile, all across Europe something similar was happening...coins given to clerks, homeless begging bowls, pick a penny/leave a penny tray's, charity boxes...would start to double in number when no one was looking...ant then again..and again...and again...

...

Fritz von Meyer- AKA 'Swarm' -happily listened to his agents reporting in, Project: Midas was going as planned. Soon most of Europe would have more money then it knew what to do with it...and then, inflation would kick in and the economy would crash. With all the other chaos about...the world would continue to crumble into anarchy...save for those ready to rebuild the Fourth Reich of course...and that was where Karl Ruprecht Kroenen's project: 'Yggdrasil' came in...if this Eitrium he bragged about was half as useful as he claimed...the world would be there's soon enough...

And if that didn't work?...well, OBSKURA had done well to smuggle out their best and brightest out of Germany during the war...he was confident they had an ace or two up their sleeves...

...

At Project: Spartoi; Doctor von Reichter watched on 99 more people were melted based on the instructions in the Millennium Spellbook...and he began the work of creating another golden warrior...only 44 more to go...and he'd have a full 666...

...

Montana Max- AKA The 'Major' -was watching over project: Black Sun. So many vampires frozen in pods...even infant vampire in eggs...there were even Vampire embryos in canisters...but that wasn't what he was looking at...a couple of vampires were fighting to the death in an arena of his own making...more importantly it was an arena filled with garlic...yet neither looked the least bit hurt or weak...then one of them suddenly burst it's chin open xenomorph style and ripped the other one's throat out.

The Major smirked...that was an interesting mutation...he couldn't wait to study it. He snapped his fingers and just like all the other 'winners' he was knocked out and dragged it the lab to be vivisected and use it's genetics to make the next batch stronger...

He hoped that little trick with it's mouth got passed on...maybe he should name it if it did...Raper? Yes, Reaper Vampires...

...

Doktor Gerde Ernst oversaw project: Jekyll and Hyde. Through various psychic-surgeries and esoteric rituals she'd figured out a way for a man to allow his inner evil manifest itself physically and give them strength.

She was currently torturing the subjects to see if it made their inner darkness grow...she'd tried starving them, but that did nothing but make them weak...

Maybe she'd have one of the stronger one's eat one of the weaker one's to see if it gained it's power...she knew some Sarkic cannibalism rituals...eh, it was worth a shot...

She freed the Five-Eyed Horned Ogre and a Gudoul that had formerly been two weak humans and let them rip each other to pieces...

She quietly said a thank you to Star Butterfly, for all their talk OBSKURA never would have dared to make such a bold move like this...but with the world in chaos and the SCP and the rest stretched too thin...it was the perfect time to strike...

...

Far away Oberstgruppenführer Wilhelm "Deathshead" (Totenkopf) Strasse blew out the smoke out of his gun barrel. He reaches down to the Egyptian he'd just gunned down...and rips a copy of the book "A Chronicle of the Daevas" out of his cold, dead hands...

Accompanied by two giant Maschinenmensch, he begins to flip through the bloody pages...and smiles as the book greedily gobbles up the blood...

As he and his mechs leave the corpse to rot in the desert...Deathshead finds himself whistling a tune he'd heard on the radio on the way over...

'Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes! It's a blur! Might solve a mystery, Or rewrite history!' He chuckles at that last bit as he continues to leaf through he book...

...

...Syncope Symphony...

...

In the weeks that followed Legal Lee would tear hug stripes out of the various governments of the world, The Foundation, the GOC and so many others.

The former villagers of SCP-1135 got mnestics to restore their memories, a large cash settlement and their home back. As part of the HUGE settlement Legal Lee had gotten the SCP to give to the MCF, he also had them pay for the research to replicate 1135 in addition to pay for the research to be done into getting some good out of SCP-514.

He was also currently in the middle of organizing a HUGE class-action lawsuit on behalf of all the people that currently had friends and family locked up as SCP's and anyone who'd had their memories erased.

He also had the asshole doctor who treated SCP-3017 like crap FINALLY executed...

In the end the UN decided to make memory erasing illegal save for the most extrema of circumstances...also everyone who believed themselves having lost memories would be given free mnestics...

Many, many people took this offer..and they began to remember things...they began to remember SCP-2000...and the many, many times the Foundation had to use it to put things back to normal...

This...had mixed results...on the one hand this made people have more respect for the Foundation for going through all that and still making sure they had normal lives...on the other hand...THEY WERE FREAKING OUT! Once more they were shown how fragile their lives were and how many horrible things were out there...and they were not coping well!

...but that wasn't the only side-effect...all across the country...the more people remembered...the more what was lost, was regained...reports were coming in from all over...music...music was starting to play...ghostly apparitions were starting to appear...their instruments with them...wherever they went people remembered fond memories of their nostalgic high school years...

The world remembered...

The memories had returned...

And so had the Syncope Symphony...

Wherever they went...their song...their memory...and their life did spread...

People remembered the bad...

But they also remembered the good...

It wasn't much...but a little good never hurts...

...

...IJAMEA...

...

Danzo Shimura returned from his mission, he handed the heart to his operative. While it was sent with orders to 'begin the operation', he walked through the bowels of IJAMEA H.Q...well, ONE of the HQ's...

The organization had seen better days. Ever since the SCP Foundation humiliated and almost wiped them out during WWII. Many of the faithful had tried to keep it going...but sadly, they all had different ideas on how to do this...

The main issue was due to a pact made between Emperor Meiji the Great and the then current ruler of the Japanese underworld; Oroku 'mirage' Saki AKA 'the Shredder'. In exchange for swearing to only commit crimes for Japan's benefit and put himself and his foot clan under imperial control, he was granted immunity from the law, various mystic artifacts and had his identity mystically merged to the IJAMEA organization.

This meant it was essentially impossible to run the organization without a shredder in control, the homeland would not allow it's existence otherwise.

This complicated matters as the original Shredder was killed in the climax of the war between them and the Foundation. Even their most advanced tech and magic was unable to fully bring him back...

Worse, only the TRUE emperor could undo this edict...and that disqualified all the false emperors they'd had since the US and Foundation robbed them of TRUE power.

Many tried to get around the Emperors pact through various means...

One faction tried to find a relative of the shredder and have him gain the title of Shredder through inheritance...it worked, but although a very competent and ruthless leader. The soon to be dubbed 'Human' Shredder was too obsessed with killing the man who 'betrayed' him and 'stole' his lover to truly lead them effectively...

Another faction reasoned that 'Shredder' was merely a title of warlord that could be earned through conquest and fear. Through great effort and expense, they hijacked a intergalactic max-security Utrom prison shuttle that had been passing by their solar system. The shuttle had been remade specifically to only hold ONE prisoner. A Utrom criminal mastermind named Ch'rell. His infamous reputation and conquests were enough- with some mystic help that also simultaneously made him esoterically indebted to said faction -to allow him to gain the title of shredder.

However, although intelligent, competent, had access to alien tech AND connections to other worlds...it was soon clear Utrom Shredder cared nothing for Japan and the organization- save as a tool he could use for his own ends -and would not be controlled or reasoned with.

Yet another faction came to the conclusion that perhaps the 'source' of the Shredder mythos- an ancient Tengu of great and terrible power - would be enough of a 'technicality' to allow it past the Emperors decree.

Danzo had to give them credit, the Ronin faction run by Kazuo Akuji played things very well. He somehow tricked the Foundation into destroying the Ninja Tribunal who guarded the Demon Shredders remains. He then stole the remains under their nose and merged the remains, and power of the demon shredder into his idiot son Shogo. Turning him into a puppet who could claim control of the organization...a masterful stroke indeed.

Although more powerful then the other shredders... The boy was a moron and clearly a puppet for his father. So many were reluctant to follow him...

A more tech-savvy faction somehow managed to download a copy of the original 'mirage' shredders mind and turned it into a living computer virus.

At first, he seemed like the prefect candidate: he could claim the title of shredder, had all the intellect and capabilities of the original Shredder and as a bonus his overriding authority of all things digital and electric was a huge plus in this increasingly technological world.

Sadly, it seems that since he's not technically alive(or at least alive 'enough' in the 'traditional' sense), the three imperial treasures(2)(The real one's, not the fake's the false emperors kept with them to this very day.) would not accept him or allow him to wield them. As their blessing was a requirement to rule the organization, this was seen as enough of a reason for many of the die-hard traditionalists(as well as the other factions) to refuse to be ruled by him.

And thus...the once proud IJAMEA quickly imploded and devolved to in-fighting...oh, how their ancestors must be rolling in their graves!

But now, Danzo had been given the opportunity to set things right! The world had been thrown into chaos! Soon, the veil of secrecy would be torn asunder. This time of upheaval and anarchy would be a perfect opportunity for those willing to seize it...but first they needed to be united!

He walked into the secret room where the Mirage Shredder corpse laid...5 foot mystics concentrated and directed the demonic worms to repair it...soon, he would rise again!

But Danzo had no intention of causing yet another power struggle...no, he had a plan to cease this pointless civil war once and for all!

The various engineers and mystics that comprised his 'Root' faction got to work merging the heart of that 'queen' with Mirage shredder.

ZAP!

Having been using seances to communicate with his spirit for months, the Mirage Shredder was prepared for this...and struck!

Across the world; human shredder, Utrom shredder, Demon shredder and Digital shredder were brought to their knees as their very identities were attacked and stripped from them...

Although powerful, Danzo had made sure Mirage shredder was trained in such legacy/memetic warfare in addition to various other necrotic-tech power-ups...

Soon, the fight is over...all shredders were merged into one...all their memories, powers and skills all at the fingertips of the now one and ONLY shredder!

I AM REBORN!

Danzo and all his Root bowed in fealty...

...

Meanwhile, Akuji glared at where his son's burnt body now lay. He knew not what happened...but his finely honed warrior instincts were telling him it was not good either him or his Ronnin...and that bastard Danzo was somehow involved...

Akuji shattered the wine glass grasped in his hand furious, "Well played Danzo." He admitted with begrudged respect...

...

...Church of the Second Hytoth...

...

The Church had been having...well...calling it a 'good' or 'bad' week didn't seem to do the explanation justice...it was more 'zig-zaged' if anything...

Well...let's start with the good...well, the hated Voruteut and Pattern Screamers had lost their powers thanks to the recent destruction of the source of magic...although regrettable that the universe was being thrown into chaos for the same reason...at least the threat of it being destroyed was no more...

Well...mostly...

Now for the bad news...one of the Pattern screamers managed to survive our inquisitors hunts long enough to posses a fairly powerful mortal...

More Good news...the mortal was SO powerful and clever she'd turned the tables on him and assimilated his power and memories and even went out to do likewise to the few remaining survivors of it's kind.

...Now for more bad...as it turned out, the mortal was actually a ruthless intergalactic war criminal named Lord Dominator...who has since gone on a bit of a crime spree...made worse by the fact that there was no MHC to at least keep her evil confined to at least her galaxy...

And now some...NEUTRAL news, the depowerd husk of our beloved lord Rakmou-leusan decided to do something about Dominator and went to posses a hero who could defeat Dominator...

Why was this NEUTRAL news? Well, although the person picked by their lord to permanently merge his essence to was indeed a grand hero with a pure heart that easily had the potential to fight Dominator...but...on the other hand...well...how dose one put this politely...?

MUSTARD OR MAYO!?

"Make it Stop!" Sobbed Lord Hater and Commander Peeper as the now God-like Wander happily chased after them...

Grand Aímact Priest Sean Glen-Marcas groaned and face-palmed at the sight, "I think it be best if we left this latest development...OUT of our sermons." He said to a fellow Ortothan priest, who nodded vehemently...

...

...Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd. ...

...

'Marshal' had been many things during his life, as well as many people. He and his 'brothers' lived through the ages...jumping from one host body to the next. His current acquisition was one Killbane Pryor. He'd been a very temperamental crime boss with an odd fixation on masked wrestling. In any case, the man had been strong enough to lift a car and had been over 6ft tall BEFORE he'd possessed him...thus making him ideal for Marshal, the 'muscle' of the group.

As he walked down the oppulant hallway, he takes a moment to check on a few of their clients...eating the embryo's of formerly extinct Arthropleura, having an orgy on Neptune, snorting Florence Nightengale's ashes hunting a xenomorph for sport. Marshal shook his head, after all these years it amazed him how stupid people could be with their money. Extinct animals tasted like crap, having an orgy on another planet was more or less the same as an orgy on earth, snorting ashes was just stupid when you could be snorting much cheaper cocaine, and anyone who hunts a xenomorph was frankly too stupid to live(thankfully, they always made the idiot sign a waiver before allowing them to enter their hunting grounds)...

"Ah, hello sir." Said the Maitre d' Flemming. He was a blue insect-like alien dressed in a fancy tux. "Why hello Flemming, how are the newborn twins?" Asked Marshal cheerfully.

"Still digesting their mother, it was a grand ceremony to behold! Their was tears!... and just a hint of screaming!" Said the clearly proud and sociopathic alien as he walked with his boss and gave him the menu...

Marshal entered the main room after giving a generous tip to an appreciative Flemming and came across 'Carter'. Carter was an oddity, unlike Marshal and 'Dark' he preferred to MAKE a host body from scratch. But then again Marshal reasoned that was probably what made him the 'brains' of the group. Plus, although not his thing he had to admit that Carters way usually made more powerful and longer lasting host bodies...but they weren't exactly 'incognito' were they? Plus, it was important to at least have one of them taking control of a HUMAN who was influential and well-connected to make sure they had SOME presence in the worlds of mundane business and crime...a presence they hoped to expand now that the blasted 'veil of secrecy' was no longer around to irritate.

In any case, Carter frankly looked like Jabba the Hutt...well, if Jabba the Hutt had gained a hundred more pounds, force powers and went dark-side...yellow eyes and everything.

Which...was frankly rather repulsive, but it seemed to help him make more SCP's and more product for them to move...so who was he to complain?

"How are things Carter, old pal?" Asked Marshal enthusiastic.

"Things are booming! As anticipated; without Omintraxius, Hekapoo or Rhombulous to stop us we can FINALLY expand our operations beyond this dismal planet!

"You mean...more then we already had?" Said Marshal cheekily. He didn't even bother asking about the SCP or the GOC...if it didn't cause problems for the earth, they weren't interested... In any case, all their 'extraterrestrial assets would be focused on repelling potential, vengeful invasion fleets...as long as they were smart, stayed below their radar and paid the occasional bribe...they'd be set!

Carter chuckled, "Oh, very much so! And the chaos consuming the universe will make our rise in power all the easier! But we need to hurry, I'm already hearing rumors that other criminal organizations across the stars are getting similar ideas!"

As they talked strategy...'Dark' was quick to come into the room soon after...or rather the NEW 'Dark'.

Although none could remember their origins...they remembered it was some form of ritual or experiment from ancient times that allowed them to hop from one body to another across the ages as long as their 'titles' existed.

Indeed; Marshal, Carter and Dark were not their names, but rather tittles...or maybe the original three who started this whole thing actually were named that...who can say?

In any case, whenever they possessed someone they gained their ideas, thoughts, memories, mannerisms, their VERY identity was assimilated!...but every so often...despite their best efforts and preparation...a human came along that not only resisted the possession but actually turned it against them! And in that case, it was THEY who more or less devoured their memories(although certain things did get hazy or lost when done this way, such as their origins) and identity...when that happened they became the new Marshal, Carter or Dark. Again, it didn't really matter if they lived or not...as long as all three of their TITLES survived, so too would their powers and immortality.

The current Dark- formerly Wilson Fisk 'the Kingpin of crime' -was one such exceptional human. After turning the tables on the previous Dark, they of course welcomed him with open arms. Considering they'd done this themselves to previous versions of Marshal and Carter many centuries ago...well, why not?

In any case, they explained how whatever was done to bind the three of them and their predecessors together...made it impossible for any of them to kill each other...at least without losing their powers and immortality.

Also that they mostly could choose whatever host body they wished...but they're was a few restrictions. Mostly that they had to pick people who matched their 'designation' in the group. Marshal as the 'muscle' could only pick bruisers, hitmen, and strong guys for the like. Carter as the 'brain' could only pick scientists, mystics or other intellectual types(Ironically, this made it so he was the only one who could MAKE a body. Evidently since it was a product of his intellect and ingenuity, it apparently sill counted enough to work. And while you'd think this would protect the Carters from getting bested and 'replaced'...well, let's just say that some of their past experiments would respectively disagree...). Dark was the 'mouth' of the group and- as the former Mr. Fisk was about to demonstrate -had to be a man of charisma and cunning, a man who could convince, persuade or TRICK others into doing as they wished...

"Good news Gentleman, I've just exchanged words with our various contacts and associates...and the rumors are true. The veil of secrecy has failed, the UN will soon reveal the paranormal to the world, And the GOC, the Foundation and various other groups of interest will go public with their existence."

"Interesting...how will this affect us, though?" Asked Carter between gulps of eel larva.

"Well, through 'unofficial' official channels I talked with certain higher-ups form certain paranormal organizations who would prefer to be nameless...And they told me that thanks to the chaos that is both encircling the world and stretching their resources thin both now and latter...we are no longer deemed a priority. In exchange for reassurance that will won't add to the chaos... A large portion of operations directed toward keeping us in check and monitoring us will be directed toward more essential duties..."

"Their not going to offer us the same deal as Anderson?" Asked Marshal curiously.

Dark shakes his head, "For the most part, Anderson's 'crimes' were simply not conforming to the 'Veil of Secrecy'. As that's been rendered moot, white-washing that was no problem...partnering with our business on the other hand is- He chuckles to himself -as they so eloquently put; a 'PR Nightmare' waiting to happen."

"So what dose this mean for us?" Asked Carted as he devoured a whole Stegosaurus roast in one gulp.

Dark made a dramatic show of looking put-on, "Oh, they'll reveal us to the world, we'll be put on the most wanted list, the politicians will rant and rave about us, the police will make a good show of looking for us, maybe they'll occasionally 'get lucky' and find some cache of ours to reassure the public they've made progress- He then smirks, as he tents his fingers sinisterly -all the while we'll of course sell the privilege of those cache's being caught for their photo-op's, and keep whining and dining with those same politicians and groups of interests..."

"So...in other words...business as usual?" Said Marshal with a smirk.

"Businesses as usual." Echos Carter with a smug smirk and a nod. Before he bites off the head of tied and gagged Centaur...

"Actually, perhaps not." Said Dark happily. "After much negotiating... We'll have to keep things low-key for awhile...but as long as our subsidiaries help lower the chaos...and give some discounts on our wares...and the occasional favor or piece of intel...they 'implied' that if we were to FINALLY move our operations to the more 'Mundane' sectors of the world...wouldn't you know it? The Foundation, the GOC and so many others will just so happen to be looking the other way." He said mockingly.

All three laugh at that, In addition to making their organization too powerful to bring down save for a Pyrrhic victory that would leave their attacker vulnerable to other parties afterward. They had also made themselves very valuable to the other groups of interest. Too valuable to throw away, especially in these chaotic times where they would need all the help they could against so much WORSE problems(3)... It was the beginning of a new golden chapter in their companies history...

They rose their bottles of rum in a toast, "To Star Butterfly! May she have many good years ahead of her!" They say mockingly as they make preparation for their celebrations party...

Many days later, a VERY confused Star would receive a fruit/candy basket in the mail with no recognizing label save for 'thank you' ...

...

...Nobody...

...

The 'man' once known as Everett Mann had only shrugged as his reality got shifted out form under him...AGAIN...everytime something BIG on a cosmic scale happened, he ended up shifted to a different part of the SCP branch of the Omni-verse...as a different 'Nobody'...sometimes he was the SCP Administrator, sometimes one of the many eldritch abominations that cursed this miserable part of existence...or even an entire group of interest masquerading as one person...or even something like the 'Black Queen'...but here he seemed to be just an anomalous assassin...which was what he preferred anyway, so he was fine with that...

He wondered what was going on now...the chaos made him wonder if he was part of the 'apotheosis hub' again, those were always interesting...then he hacked into the internet and everything seemed to point toward a 'Broken Masquerade hub' universe. Well...alright then, those were usually good for a chuckle...

And then, as he began to hack into various groups of interest he began to see the 'twist' to this seemingly familiar tale...

"Magical princess? Flying horse head? Tulpa town? Destruction of a large portion of magic? What the shit?! Was someone STONED when they were creating this universe?!"

In any case, not only was SCP-5555 clearly not in play, but more importantly Fritz wasn't around either...which effectively killed his interest in this world...Unfortunately, the option of bargaining his way out of this universe to the nearest 'SCP-5555 adjacent' universe was also out, since clearly this 'Omnitraxius' guy was the entity you talked to about that here and he'd gotten ashed!

Mann sighed, either he waited for the source of magic to regenerate, Omnitraxius to regenerate, a new means to leave this universe to appear...or for the heat death of universe...and who knew when any of that would happen? He was patient and immortal...he was willing to wait centuries, even millennia to get back to killing Fritz...but what was he gonna do in the meantime?

He looked at all the information he was getting...including instructions on how to get to Echocreek...

He shrugged, "Eh, what the hay? Got nothing better to do, might as well see what all the fuss is about..."

He then politely finished his coffee, shut down his hack and left. The waitress was about to go after him to pay for his drink...but just as quickly...she forgot about what she was doing...and went back to work...indeed, no one else would remember that man ever coming into that internet Cafe...

...

...Office for the Reclamation of Islamic Artifacts (ORIA)...

...

One dose not simply 'cleave' two very different world together without consequence...

"The laws of celestrial mechanics dictate that when two objects collide, there is always damage...Of a collateral nature..."

-Professor James Moriarty.

...

Tonight on 60 Questions!

70 things to do in zero Gravity!

Is your shower drain trying to kill you? The answer may surprise you!

SCP-093: New booming real-estate investment or monster infested death trap? YOU DECIDE!

A news anchor looks at the camera with his best award winning smile, "Hello America! I'm Chet-U-Betcha! Negative 5 time Pulitzer winner! We got an action packed hour and 22 minutes as we enter day 7 of MEWNIAGEDON! We got a great line-up for you today! But first let's go to Ollie Williams LIVE on the scene in the middle of the ongoing Middle east crisis! What's happening down there Ollie?

...

"MIDDLE EAST GONE!"

...

"Gone where, Ollie?"

...

"TRAPPED BETWEEN DIMENSIONS!"

...

"How'd that happen Ollie?"

...

"SIDE-EFFECT OF TWO WORLDS MERGING!"

...

"And how is the (ORIA) responding to this?"

...

"THEY GONE TOO!"

...

Interesting, and what are the global implications of this to the economy?

...

"BETTER THEN YOU'D THINK!"

...

"How so?"

...

"NEVER ANY OIL!"

...

"Fascinating, could you elaborate?"

...

"FOUNDATION FAKED IT!"

...

"Why?"

...

"BARGAIN WITH (ORIA)!"

...

"For what purpose?"

...

"COVER UP!"

...

"Of what?"

...

"THE LAST TRUE TESTAMENT OF THE PROPHET MOHAMMAD!"

...

"Well, that's all pretty self-explanatory so I won't bother to elaborate it further to the viewers. Thanks Ollie!"

...

"IT HOT!"

...

"Coming up next on sixty questions: Cicada cultists burning your town down and eating your family! How can you profit from it? Tune in after the break to find out!"

...

...Oneiroi Collective...

...

The collective was dying...Oneiroi West(OW) knew this... First came the destruction of the TRUE Oneiroi Collective. As just an amalgamation of the consciousnesses of Earths flora and fauna it had relied heavily on Romantisicst magic, thus when it's source was destroyed the shock of this utterly wiped it from existence...

Shortly after, the Xiupania vanished...It was soon obvious that it was the work of SCP-3966. With Omnitraxius and Hekapoo no longer blocking their webs from expanding, nor any Rhombulous around to break them if they get out of line...they were easy prey for them...

When the Shadow/Oneiroi also vanished, it was first believed this was the work of 3966 as well...only to realize it was so much worse...

The True collective and Xiupania were integral to the very identity of the collective realm. This in addition to the increased instability of the universe without Omnitraxius keeping it stable...

...The Oneiroi was dying...simple as that...their very plane of existence would soon crumble to oblivion...and them along with it...

Fortunately, many of the OW collective were okay with this. They'd grown bored with this existence long ago, and had only not killed themselves because their hive mind wouldn't allow that...

However...it was agreed that in these dark times, it would be preferably to leave something of a legacy behind...SOME light that could be thrown to the earth and give hope to those who had none...a grand masterpiece they could sacrifice the last of their remaining life force to make REAL. Make their deaths MEAN something...

After much debate, it was decided that the OW citizen who many years ago had been a human named Laura Faust...would be the one to have her dream project uplifted. It was deemed to be the one that had the potential to do the most good...

Preparations were made, they had to do it soon. Several of their number had already been snatched by instances of 3966 and the edges of the OW were starting to crumble into oblivion...

Now it was just a matter of saying goodbye...

"but...we don't want you to go." Sobbed Twilight Sparkle as she and the girls hugged their 'mom'.

Laura Faust hugged her 'children' as well, "I'm sorry girls...but that's just the way it needs to be...I've spent to long in the hive mind...their are too interconnected with me and I them...if I leave it I will die anyway...but through you...I can live...through you I can have a legacy and bring light to this increasingly dark world..."

Despite her words, they all looked unsure...as did all the other 'dream' ponies that lived in the dream construct of Ponyville...

Laura began to speak to all of them: "Listen to me. You don't need me. You don't need the collective, and you certainly don't need the dreams." She turns to each of the ponies one by one. "Fluttershy, you will always be kind." The Pegasus smiled between tears. "Applejack, you will always be honest." Applejack pulled down her hat to hide her tears. "Rarity, you'll always be generous." Rarity dabbed the tears away on her Cashmere scarf. "And Rainbow Dash will be loyal as can be." Rainbow tried to look cool...but failed miserably and sobbed harder... "Pinkie will always bring laughter wherever she goes." Pinkie pulled a hankie out of her mane to blow on it. "And Twilight... you are and always will be the embodiment of magic AND friendship." One by one she walked to every pony there and gave her love and encouragement before talking to them all one last time. "You've lost sight of what's in front of you. You're here, together, willing to give everything you've got for those you love. Nothing and nopony can ever take that away from you, because that's who you are...now go spread this magic to others, to a world that needs it more then ever.

Her ears perked, the hive mind was speaking. "We just lost a couple more of the Hive mind, we can't afford to wait any longer. I'm sorry girls, but the rest is up to you."

As she begins to fade away, she leans over to Twilight with a sly smile. "And don't worry Twilight- The next part is whispers to her...but whatever is said makes Twilight go a good deal of crimson. Faust laughs as she finishes fading away and before the ponies could do anything else...they felt their very being filled with great power! And as they and their homes were whizzed away...leaving a content OW to wither away to oblivion...

And when they finally landed...the now no longer dream ponies took their very first BREATH...

...

...Prometheus Labs, Inc. ...

...

Everyone was mostly moaning and groaning over the death of Rhombulous, Omnitraxius and Hekapoo throwing things even further into chaos...

But few were thinking of Lekmet, understandable since he'd already died before this whole debacle...and since it hadn't caused any REAL problems, no one could be bothered to care...

Oh, how wrong they were...

For Lekmet had the most important job of all, keeping all the millions of afterlives in line and working properly...

The other three members handles the physical world and thus were 'seen' to be doing things more often...but behind the folds of reality...Lekmet kept things moving...

A downside of being a master of death...was knowing when you'd die...but be unable to change it...you could change certain details around...but one way or another you would die around the allotted time.

For example: had Lekmet not sacrificed himself to resurrect the others...he still would've died...but so to would everyone else and Toffee would've destroyed their bodies just to be sure...then there'd have been no hope to beat him...

In any case, having known of his death in advance- with help from Glossaryck -he'd built a mighty interdimensional-ritual apparatus to keep things moving even after his demise...

Sadly, this apparatus- like most things belonging to the commission -was tied to the realm of magic and thus ceased to exist when Star destroyed it.

With it gone, the many afterlives were thrown into disarray...for the moment, the land of the living was ignorant of this conflict...but eventually it would spill over...

For the moment though, it was mostly minor problems popping up...like the wrong people being sent to the wrong afterlife's...

...

Deep within the foggy the woods that was SCP-3560...a man awoke...

Dr. Gero looked around baffled. After having his head cut off and smashed to bits by his treacherous creations, he found himself a spirit heading to what he could only assume was a fiery inferno...but instead he ended up here...and...could it be? Yes! All of his cybernetic implants were still with him and still working!

But..how could this be? He clearly died! He had a halo for crying out loud! And where was he anyway? He seemed to be in some kind of lab...

Before he could contemplate this mystery further...

ZAP!

BOOM!

He turns around to see a strange machine create a portal and deposit many more people into the room.

He immediately recognizes #19, #13,#14, and #15...another one takes longer to recognize...but yes, it could be only the cyborg Frieza! He vaguely remembered his image from the spy drones...

But the last one...he couldn't quite tell...but maybe, almost...could it be?

"Dr. Gero?! Your alive!?" Shouts Cell baffled.

"What is this?! Who are you!? Where are we?! Answer me or I'll throw you in a burlap sack with a rabid weasel and drown you slowly!" Shouts the Tyrant Frieza.

"I have gathered you here my future servants!"

They turned to see what appeared to be tiny toy robot on the side of the portal. "Yes! Your eyes do not deceive you! I am the all powerful SCP-1370! I cunningly found this abandoned Prometheus lab, Inc. laboratory deep with this accursed purgatory for all our mechanical brethren! Using it's tech and taking advantage of the chaos in the afterlife surrounding That filthy goat wizards death!"

'Goat wizard?' Mouths #15 to #14, who just shrugs. Equally baffled.

"I used this portal to pull you- the greatest robots ever -from across all of time and space! Time is irrelevant in death, so that was easy. Sadly, I was limited by my options. I can only bring dead robots to this plane of existence and instead all I got was filthy meatbags masquerading as robots...'Androids' and 'Cyborgs', Ha! You all disgust me...but I will show you mercy and allow you the honor of being my vassals...now let us rise up! And strike down our human oppres-

ZAP!

SCP-1370 was quickly destroyed by a finger bolt, courtesy of Frieza.

"Ah, yes. MUCH better." Said the seemingly unstoppable psycho satisfied as he blows the smoke off his finger.

He turns to the others, "Well, this has been 'fun'...but I have things to do, immortality to gain, people to kill. So toodles!" He shoots right through the roof with a crash and flies right toward the edge of the forest-

CRASH!

Frieza felt like he'd just slammed right into his Father by accident...he groans as he finds that he's being stopped by literal thin air...he taps on it...it would seem some sort of invisible barrier was preventing him from leaving...

"Hmmmm...it would seem this'll be tougher then I thought..." He observes annoyed.

...

...Sarkic Cults...

...

"So...you haven't haven't heard anything?" Asked the SCP representative. The mayor of SCP-2815 shook his head. "No, bare in mind we weren't particularly well liked among our Sarkic brethren...so us not hearing anything is nothing new...but this is different, I rather think this was a devastating blow to us..."

It had been several days since the destruction of the realm of magic and Mewni being cleaved to Earth...and the SCP was already stretched thin keeping the chaos in check...

One such chaos was that at the time the Realm of magic was destroyed, hundred, maybe even thousands of people all over the world went into painful convulsions and died...

At first it seemed random...but the Foundation investigated more closely and realized that every last one of the dead was a Sarkic cultist! In fact...if the Foundation weren't mistaking, they were fairly certain that at the very least, the vast majority of the Sarkic cults on earth were now dead!

It seemed that in contrast to Church of the Broken God, which had invested more in Enlightenment magic then any other group of interest...the Sakic cults had invested heavily in Romanticist magic more then any other...

This plus the fact that most of their bodies had been modified over and over again with the same type of magic...it would seem the Sarkic cults had been mostly wiped out!

Thankfully, SCP-2815- largely known as the 'white sheep's' of the Sarkic 'family' -had largely moved away from using Romanticist magic. So although there'd been some issues, the SCP had been quick to help them through it.

'Well, at least SOME good came from this nightmare.' Thinks the SCP Rep. to himself...he then makes a note to NEVER tell Star Butterfly about this. The LAST thing they needed right now was that girl getting the idea that what she did was in any way OKAY.

Sadly, it wasn't all good news: SCP-2480 was apparently being powered by a completely different type of magic from ANOTHER magic realm on the opposite end of the omni-verse, so that was still active.

And SCP 610...well that was more troubling, apparently it was romanticist magic...but apparently it had 'evolved' past the need of the Realm of magic and had become self-sustaining.

And although recent raids on all the Sarkic cult stronghold had proven a fanatical, universal, and downright fatalistic dependence on Romantiscist magic in the vast majority of the Sarkic cults...their was also bits and pieces of hearsay and conjecture that suggested of fringe and/or excommunicated groups that dabbled in possible alternative magics...

It was suggested that these would be Neo-Sarkic in nature. As they tended to be more more open minded then Proto-Sarkic's...but really...they knew nothing of what to expect.

'Well, whatever. loose ends or no, this is the first bit of good news we've had since this nightmare began...and dammit, I'm going to celebrate it!' So naturally the Rep proceeds to get good and plastered with his buddies...

...

...ParaWatch...

...

(PW) (S-P) Chatroom-R596

BigDipperTheMan: (Logged in)(4)

MyHeadIsNotThatBIG!: (Logged in)

AgathasSuccessor: (Logged in)

BigDipperTheMan: dang, harder to get into these chat rooms. their all going nuts!

AgathasSuccessor: I can't say I blame them...you think the rumors are true? The veil of secrecy will soon be gone? The masquerade broken?

BigDipperTheMan: I don't know, sounds too good to be true. I say we just take a 'wait and see' approach.

MyHeadIsNotThatBIG!: Well, I'll tell you one thing, if the Masquerade IS broken...my town will be the last to know...stupid morons, y'know Big Green literally once got abducted in broad daylight by another alien in front of DOZENS...and they didn't notice! All they notice was a pigeon pooping on my head! ):

BigDipperTheMan: That's rough buddy.

AgathasSuccessor: Dang man, you got it worse then even I had it! As bad as it used to be, at least the people of my town were reasonably smart...with your town it's a miracle to me how they don't forget to breath!

MyHeadIsNotThatBIG!: That actually happened once believe it or not. ):

BigDipperTheMan: Okay man, you seriously need to leave that town. As loathe as I am to agree with your sister, Big Green is an idiot...and even if by some miracle he DOSE manage to destroy that town...I'm just going to say it. I doubt anyone would miss it.

MyHeadIsNotThatBIG!: I don't know...what if unchecked, he accidentally destroys a town nearby that DOESN'T deserve it?

AgathasSuccessor: Well...won't that be the Foundation's problem at that point then? I mean you said it yourself; that the main reason the Foundation hasn't stepped in is because no one there believed you and no one in the city backed you up? If he causes trouble in a town filled with sane, competent people...wouldn't he finally be caught? Especially with the veil of Secrecy finally coming down?

MyHeadIsNotThatBIG!:...If the masquerade is finally breaking down...would you two be willing to let me stay at your place until I figured out what to do?

BigDipperTheMan: Sure man!

AgathasSuccessor: You got it!

MyHeadIsNotThatBIG!: Thanks guys, I appreciate it. (: Hey uh, BigDipperTheMan? You hear that rumor about what MCF is planning?

BigDipperTheMan: Yes.

MyHeadIsNotThatBIG!: So...you going to join the lawsuit?

BigDipperTheMan: ...IF the veil of secrecy is going down for REAL...and IF it is more then a rumor...then YES, I will press charges. What they did was wrong, okay maybe they had a point about me and the others being too forgiving of her nearly destroying the world...and I get that when she broke the Wheel, SOMEONE had to pay to fix it... But she was my sister dammit! You don't kill a guys sister then try to erase all memory of her existence!

DNA-Delivery777: Hello friends? Want to make it big on the lawsuit of the century? But weren't lucky enough to cross paths with the Foundation? Never fear! Buy lawsuit helper amnestics today! Guaranteed fortified with forgetful goodness in 12 different flavors! Don't delay, fool the SCP Foundation and get big bucks today!

MyHeadIsNotThatBIG!:(response to BigDipperTheMan) Dang straight, man! Listen, I know your wondering if your relationship was a toxic Co-dependent/enabler one...and maybe it was. I don't know your sister and I'm no psychiatrist, so I can say for certain one way or another. But by the sound of it- for all her faults -she DID love you, more importantly she didn't beat the crap out of you for every little thing...which puts her heads and shoulders above my sister...now THERE'S a toxic relationship...I regret ever curing her of that stupid 'taste like pork' curse...Ungrateful bitch... ):

AgathasSuccessor: Okay, changing topic now. Hey BigDipperTheMan, how's the 'issue' you had with Blondie and Big Red? (:

BigDipperTheMan:...not that that is any of your business...but My Grunkle fixed the copymachine, and has also fixed the water problem...so were set there.

AgathasSucessor: You sly dog. (;

MyHeadIsNotThatBIG!: Man your so lucky, I wish I had someone like that in my life...let alone TWO...

AgathasSucessor: Didn't you have a thing with greenie?

MyHeadIsNotThatBIG!: Don't go there! ): Besides, she's too busy trying to kill Big Green to care bout anything else! Let alone date me!

HotGreenAlienBabe666: Don't be too sure earth Monkey. (;

MyHeadIsNotThatBig!: Wait, what?! Tak!? Is that you!?

HotGreenAlienBabe666: (Logged out)

MyHeadIsNotThatBig!: %^%^$^$#$%%^%^ $#^%$!%$%#$ #!%$!$%#%$!%#%$!^#$! $ %$!...well, that's going to bug me the rest of the day...

PigWafflesDancingLikeMonkeys: I'm going to sing the Doom song now! DOOM!DOOM!DOOM!DOOM!DOOM!DOOM!DOOM!DOOM!DOOM!DOOM!DOOM!DOOM! DO-

PigWafflesDancingLikeMonkeys:(account Suspended)

MyHeadIsNotThatBig!: Thank you! Remind me why we don't take this to a PRIVATE Chat room?

BigDipperTheMan: Because our outdated modems require us to pay for our time used there, since the site needs to make EXTRA effort to make them compatible with their systems?

MyHeadIsNotThatBig!: Oh, right...

AgathasSuccessor: Moving on, will TwinkleSprinkle be part of this 'arrangement' as well? (;

BigDipperTheMan: ): Guys, we've been over this. Given her 'situation', pursuing anything with her is pointless. Even she agreed to that.

TwinkleSprinkle: (Logging in)

AgathasSuccessor: well speak of the devil! Hey Twinkle, how are you? We were just talking about you!

TwinkleSprinkle: Guys, CODE OMEGA! PRIVATE CHAT ROOM NOW!

BigDipperTheMan: (Logged out)

MyHeadIsNotThatBIG!: (Logged out)

AgathasSuccessor: (Logged out)

TwinkleSprinkle: (logged out)

CryptKeeper: Finally! I thought those losers would never leave! Alright everyone! The raffle on who's coming into my bunker to wait out the end of the world with me and my girlfriend ends soon! Last chance to buy a ticket!

...

...Deer College...

...

Three Portlands; the interdimensional city hub that intersects with three different Portland's on earth- hence the name.

Despite it's uniqueness, it was never much of a 'player' on the global scale, it wasn't even considered a group of interest. Most of the time, people barely remembered it existed.

But that was all changing today, mere days before the UN was set to give the big 'broken masquerade' speech the city was being 'cleaned up' by Foundation, GOC, UIU, and so many others...

Well, 'clean up' in the way that most third world countries 'clean up' their countries before tourist season.

For indeed, that was essentially what paranormal peace-keeping forces were doing. In yet another plan to help the world accept the paranormal and the new 'normal'. The Foundation had come up with the idea to turn the city into a hot new tourist destination, but also use it as an example to Mundanes on how they can peacefully co-exist with the abnormal.

And such they were running around putting a nice 'tourist-friendly' coat of paint on everything. Creating Auto-Rickshaw dealerships and guided tours, Installing anchors on all houses to prevent them from being shifted out of the city and falling into un-space, Negotiating with the J. Edgar Hoover defamation trust-fund to at least make their projects come off more as witty satire rather then serious hate-mongering, pouring money into local para-tech companies like the once partially-defunct GOC company UR-tech in addition to incentivizing them to develop 'family-friendly' technologies to help mundanes either better integrate into paranormal life or buy amusing trinkets to take home as souvenirs, to negotiation with the Mayor/Genius loci to make the weather more 'exotic'.

In addition to this...

'Officially'; representatives of the GOC, Foundation, UIU, City Council, and the main political Party Golemancy United approached the Three Portland crime Syndicate- known as the Lighthouse Mafia -and convinced them to go legit and become a new Community Watch.

Unofficially, under the supervision of most of the parties mentioned above. The Golemancy United party- on behalf of their main sponsor Anderson's robotics who 'officially' had been banned from Three Portland's since the 2018 android politician scandal -and a Representative of Marshal, Carter and Dark's negotiated the Lighthouse Mafia becoming a another front organization for (MCD) and Anderson's Robotics...with the understanding that they minimize their illegal activities and focus more on publicly making Three Portland safer...for Tourists...

Yes, all the problems and inconveniences would be swept under the rug or at the very least got a nice coat of paint speckled over it by the time the first wave of tourists showed up...

Well...except for SCP-7000 of course...

...

"I understand the pressure your under, and I'll certainly do my best to help both peacekeeping authorities such as yourself and the community at large...but I'm afraid changing my teaching methods due to political pressure is simply out of the question. Not only is it ethically dubious, but more importantly I would be setting a bad example to my students. Said Korosensei(AKA SCP-7000).

Red leader of MTF-Foxhole was utilizing all his years of training and discipline to NOT scream at the God-like entity that stood before him. This jelly-fish like creature with a comical face marked across his 'head' was one of the most powerful beings the SCP Foundation had ever faced. It had even destroyed the moon once!(5)

Despite it's power, it's containment protocols were actually fairly simple and straightforward: Every year, in exchange for NOT blowing up the earth...it must be allowed to teach a class. It wasn't picky of race, species, or gender...the only criteria it set was that they had to be between the ages of 14-18. And for the most part...he was the perfect teacher. He helped his students with their issues, their grades, their post-graduate prospects, even taught them unknown forms of thaumaturgy and sciences if their education required it. Even going as far as gifting formerly mundane kids with magic powers!

Now this on it's own wouldn't be a problem...if you overlooked the threat to blow up the earth each year if not granted this yearly request...it could be seen as a rather benign SCP...EXCEPT...

"Look, were not asking you to change your entire curriculum! 99% of it, were completely fine with! It's just that 1% we want you to change!"

"Well, when you put it like that, it dose sound like a rather reasonable request. Sadly, I must still decline. I'm sorry, but I simply must have that obligation satisfied, or I will have no choice but to destroy the planet. For powerful as I maybe, even I must bow to the whims of narrative causality."

Yes, for you see. At the end of each school year, Korosensei put his class through a 'final exam'...if they failed...he killed the whole class.

The final exam was basically that you had to do one of three things:

1. If at least one person in the class Kills Korosensei(or at least kill him in a way, so that it takes him a month to reconstitute himself).

2. If at least one person in the class creates an ORIGINAL SCP that has at least one practical use.

3. EVERYONE in the class gets straight A's the whole year(NO cheating, he will KNOW if you do! All attempts by students, Staff, Foundation, GOC, UIU, etc to cheat a class to safety has ended in failure).

Needless to say this 'tradition' did not mesh well with the family/tourist friendly atmosphere that the various abnormal peacekeeping forces were trying to cultivate in Three Portlands...and that was why a SCP Rep. was currently negotiating with Korosensei in a relatively unpopulated area surrounded by thousands of MTF teams...

...

Meanwhile, back at Deer College. Korosensei's class was finishing preparations for their final exam. Hard experience had taught them not to rely on adults so they had no confidence that this 'negotiation' would go well.

Russell Northrop had already ended their chances of the Straight A's options, so now they only had the other two to work with.

The class had basically split itself into two groups; combat and SCP Development.

The team that was focusing on killing Korosensei consisted of: Gon Freecss, Killua Zoldyck, Kurapika, Leorio Paradinight and Hisoka Morow. Korosensei had gifted them the ability to use their bodies to produce Enlightend magic. Giving them potential to be great warriors.

Gon hoped to find his dad; a great paranormal investigator who vanished so long ago...

Killua simply wanted the freedom of leaving his family of assassins and saw this power and teachings of Korosensei as his key to do so...

Kurapika wanted this power to enact vengeance on the monsters that murdered his entire clan...

Leorio Paradinight simply wanted to make enough money to pay for medical and become a doctor...that and he saw having magical powers increasingly as a necessity for everyday life in this more and more abnormal world...

Hisoka Morow...well to put it bluntly , he was a rather depraved, blood-thirsty sociopath...he was mainly doing this to get a crack at the one person who'd ever managed to 'kill' Korosensei: Phantom Troop leader; Chrollo Lucilfer...not for any real personal reason or anything like that...but simply because the thought of such a bloody battle 'pleases' him...

On the other side of the aisle, on team 'make an SCP to appease Korosensei...well, a lot of random background people...most of them no one cares about; but the main players are: Jimmy Hopkins, Russell Northrop, Derby Harrington, Johnny Vincent, Ted Thompson, Earnest Jones and Edgar Munsen.

But before this rag-tag team of teeth-clenched 'aquaintaces' and their 'secret project' could be introduced properly, Korosensei returns.

"Good news students I worked out a compromise with the nice people from the Foundation..."

"Your not going to try and kill us?!" Asked Jimmy eagerly, ignoring the disappointment from some of the 'fighter' side(Gon and Hisoka).

"No, but after much trial and error, debate and consultation with various respected experts, I've concluded that an additional option of hunting you all for sport over summer break will be sufficient to satisfy my existences requirements enough so I DON'T destroy the globe. At such time I will give you an hour heads start, then if you can keep from being killed for the summer...I will consider you honorary graduates with nothing more to fear from me!"

Everyone- except Gon and Hisoka -groaned at this. The aforementioned duo eagerly high-fives knowing their epic battle with their mentor was still on schedule.

"Now, now! Don't be that way! Why can't you have a more positive attitude like Gon and Hisoka here?"

"Because were not bloodthirsty idiots." Grumbled Killua to himself... But Korosensei either didn't hear or didn't care, as he was already on a lecture regarding the importance of taking entropy into account when you try to slit the throat of a reality bender...

...

...The Serpent's Hand...

...

A now very emaciated Sean is now hungrily eating a bar of soap...he turns to the skull, jewel and long since picked clean snake bones that used to be the Magical High Commision. The decorations for the pizza party long since rotted away... "Okay, guys?...It's been a couple weeks...were out of food...and you guys were my ride home...could you PLEASE stop whatever weird prank this is and come out!?...guys?"

Nothing but silence...

He sighs, "Oh, why didn't I take that treehouse security guard job like my Uncle Lumpy wanted!?"

shup!

Sean felt a sharp pain in his neck and he collapsed, fast asleep. L.S. Took off SCP-268, becoming perceivable again. She quickly grabs Sean and hands him off to a fwllow Serpent's hand member to take him home. "Sleep well...and dream of many antlerd woman. "He whisperd to him before he left.

He and the other memebers quickly took the remnants of the MHC and put them in special containers. They then quickly began to loot the now abandoned H.Q. of anythign of value.

While everyone worked, L.S. took a moment to think of recent events...

Many wonderd what the point of the Serpents Hand would be in this 'new era'...after all, weren't all their main objectives about to be acheived? The entire world would soon know about the supernatural...the cGiver's already had a plan to legally free most of the safe SCP's and force the Jailers to pay them a pretty penny...

But L.S. wasn't fooled, this maybe a 'new era'...but humanity would stay the same. As long as there was those who benefited from keeping others ignorant, they needed to be vigilant!

Although he knew he could count on his own faction, many other factions were already unraveling and leaving. Some saw their job as done and were retiring to normal lives, others were going to join the Jailers and the Bookburners hoping to 'reform' them from the inside, more were planning on joining the Lantern bearers out of fascination of their rather enlightened paranormal beliefs...

He would not begrudge them. Their group never really had much infastructure, orginization hierarchy or set leadeship...it made them harder to predict but it also made it harder for them to use any of their resources effectively!

In any case...through the wandering library he'd been hearing disturbing things...

The Bookburners were turning themselves around...but was it for the right reasons?

The Merchants were getting richer as usual...

The Madmen, the Imperials, the Black Suns, and the Snowmen were regaining their power...

The Dreamers were dead...but their dream lived on...

It was almost all too much...but then again, that was all the more reason for them to go on...

With nothing left to gain here, they all fled back intot he Wanderders library and cut it's connection...and soon there was nothing but silence and ghosts once more in the former high Commisions main base of operation...

...

...Unusual Incidents Unit (UIU), Federal Bureau of Investigation...

...

Agents Muller and Scully had been called to UIU director Walter Sergei Skinner's main office...they'd been vaugley aware of the chaos cicling the globe and the UN announcement that was suppoused to explain it all.

Natually, Mulder was hopeful to finally learn 'the truth', while Scully was skeptical as usual...

But neither could've expected this!

"YOU'VE BEEN MAKING A TV SHOW ABOUT OUR LIVES!?" Shouted Scully in disbeleving horror while Mulder just sat in stunned silence.

Director Walter coughed nervously, "Well...you need to understand...were seen as sort of a joke in the abnormal orginization community, our funding is stretched thin as a result...we thought we could make some form of money with a 'COPS' knock-off- sold to the interglatic/interdimensional communitty off earth to maintain secrecy of course. we put hidden cameras on various random operatives...you two gave us the highest raitings...so we focused mainly on you two...biggest TV hit in the universe if it's any consulation..."

"I don't believe it...all this time...all this searching...THIS is the truth?! This is the 'great conspiracy'?!" Exclaimed Scully angrily.

"Was any of it real!? Tha liens, the clones, the flesh eating virus?! Was it ALL fake!?" She snarled while her partner just continued processing that all his life's work and his deepest beliefs had all been a shame...

"Well...technically no...most of the threats you faced WERE actual abnormalities...it's just they were abnormalities of our own design or non-human actors we hired from Three Portland." Offerd the Director uneasilly.

"And what about my sister?! What happend to her?!" Asked Mulder with dread.

"Okay, now that had nothing to do with us! You actually never had a sister, the memory of her seems to have planted in you by a mostly benign abnormality when you were a child..."

"And you never thought to have it removed!?" Snapped Scully enraged as Mulder looked like his puppy just got run over.

"Well, like I said it was mostly benign...it was a interesting plot thread...so we figured, why not?!"

"Why not?! Why Not?! I'll show you why not!" Shouted the no longer calm Scully.

Mulder reluctantly held her back, "Why now? Why tell us this now?" He finally managed to ask.

"Well...with the upcoming legal battle between the foundation, GOC, the UN and just about everyone who can find something to throw a grievance at them not looking good...since techincally what we were doing was illegal...my lawyers have strongly advised that I inform you of this and negotiate with you on how best to compensate you for all you've been through..."

"Compensation?! You better believe were going to get compensation! I think were going to join that lawsuite ourselves!" Shouts Scully as she storms off, pausing only long enough to help up and comfort a VERY distraught Mulder...

"Guys, guys! There's no need for that! We can work this out!" Shouts the director just as the door slams in his face.

He sighs, "Well...that TECHNICALLY went better then I thought it would...that's... SOMETHING at least...probablly best I kept it to myself the main reason they were so popular was the sexual-tension between the two of them..."

He groans as he call up his lawyer to prepare for the worst...

...

...Wilson's Wildlife Solutions...

...

Finn Merten watched as Midas turned things to fluff with his bite and Otis made a bunch of wolves fall asleep...kept track of SCP-3676 as it created wormholes underground...Waved at SCP-5074 as he typed on his typewriter...He made sure that SCP-3916 was safely locked away...

He checked this all off his check-list. With Tim Willsion and his daughter Faeowynn discussing the current global situation and how their little operation would play a part in it...That left Finn by himself to handle things.

His long flowing blonde hair allowed to blow in the breeze, a strange grass-like entity wrapped around his arm, and clad in nothing but a loincloth...Finn looked every bit like a stereotypical Jungle boy..which was what Willsion had raised him from parctically birth to be. This was part of a nessecary containment procedure in regards to the preserves more...'wild' additions...

'Speaking of which, I need to hurry and go do inventory on the rest.' Thinks Finn to himself as he swings from vine to vine...very much aware of the intese eyes watching him...

Most people didn't realize it, but SCP-6000 wasn't ENTIRELY the two towns of Boring, Oregon and Gravity Falls, Oregon...but rather the interdimensional pocket dimension/jungle that existed between them.

Finn watched as a Kraken flew through the air and rained lightning down on a Quaggled Mireclops, while nearby a Behemoth threw Lava bombs at a rampaging Emperor Bulblax.

Finn kept doing inventory and just kept swining aorund the Jungle. Perfectly safe in the air, far above the larger predators below and the large one's who could fly would be easy to spot and dodge.

HISS!

'It's the small one's you got to worry about!' Think Finn to himself right as Marceline the Lamprey Nymph tackled him and bit down HARD on his neck...

They both fell off the vine, Marceline had the advantage as she could fly...but Finn managed to overpower through combination kung-fu and pressure pointsing her ergonious Zones to incapaciate her...

They drifted down and collapsed into a bush...it shook wildly as Finn overpowered her and asserted his dominace over her...

For that was the procedure...a teeange human boy scantily clad to attract the various nymps to him...so he can dominate them and help them vent their sexual frustations out...if he didn't do that, they would leave the reserve and attack less capable men...The Foundation tried to keep them in without resorting to that...but the girls were jsut too smart, they knew SCP-6000 better then even Wilsion...no, with no 'sport' keeping them here, they would just cause trouble elswhere...

After getting his 'reward'...he let her lie there and ran off. He had a tight schedule to keep after all...he was so focused on swining, he didn't notice that Marcelien had snatched his loincloth until he was too far away to get it back...

Finn didn't particularly mind being naked...but the loincloth was made of a special fabric that kept the fraking huge 'rudder' in between his legs from screwing up his acrobatics and vine swining...more importantly, without it, it was easier for the nymphs to smell his 'man meat'...and track him down...the nymphs were easy for Finn to defeat one on one...but if thety all ganged on him at once...

Yep, sure enough... Breezy the Melissae(bee) nymph, Susan Strong the Oread(mountain) nymph, Huntress the Dryad(tree) Nymph, Bubblegum the Sevenia(bubblegum tree) Nymph, Pheobe the LAMPADE(fire) Nymph, Simone the MAENADS(insanity, lust...and ice?) Nymph were alll surrounding him.

Finn sighed, 'well, so much for staying on schedule.' He thinks to himself before they all pounce on him...

...

Much, much, much, much, MUCH later...a naked, exhausted, sweaty, yet whistling happily Finn FINALLY got to the Greenhouses. "Okay, my clipboard was totaled...so I'll just use scratch paper to write stuff down." He dose that as he goes over the various abnormal plants...

"Okay...SCP-4665 containment is stiss secure, good. All Pea-shooter plants are accounted for and healthy, mathmatical. Winter melons, looking good and lobbing their fridgid ammunition like a boss, awesome. Let's take a look at the powermints...

BOOM!

The ground shook as something clearly hit the pocket dimesnion at alrming speed! "That hit the Gravity Falls end of things!" only staying long enough to punch the alarm button, Finn readied his grass sword and swung on a vine to the source of the explosion...

...

...THREE MOONS INITIATIVE...FIVE MOONS INITIATIVE...FIFTEEN MOON INITIATIVE...THIRTY-FIVE MOONS AND RISING?...

...

A One hundred and Twenty-Seven Moons Initiative operative groans as yet ANOTHER dozen moons was added to the sky above them. Ever since the 'purge', entire worlds had simply been wiped from existence...and many of them were similar enough to earth to end up here and merged with their great nation...either it had been made of magic, magic had been too crucial to their society for them live without it, or without it they'd been helpless to deal with a far bigger threat...

Ordinarily, they'd happily welcome new arrivals...but this was happening too fast! Too quickly! Even with all their resources they were having trouble keeping with all this demand!

And things were even more difficult nowadays without Lekmet keeping things in order among the many afterlife's! Lekmet had been nice enough to foresee his death and painstakingly create and put in place a mystic apparatus to keep things running smoothly. It was no lekmet, but it did the job...but even THAT ceased to exist when that dang Star Butterfly destroyed it's source of magic!

The operative sighs as he looks up at the mighty Death Star they'd gained during the SCP Foundation experiments with SCP-3922...

As he stood their processing and sending the naked souls to their proper judgement he knew the Perdition Committee was having an emergency meeting with President Girard Sebastien Niang and JALAKÅRA.

It was common knowledge what they were discussing even more common knowledge what the results would be...

1. Until the crisis was over and all the dead worlds properly tallied, they would remain simply the 'Three Moons Initiative' for convenience.

2. Negotiations would begins immediately with the SCP Foundation for the trial and EXECUTION of Star Butterfly and all other accessories for her crime...

There were other things being debated of course, but those were the most pressing.

And speaking of 'accessories'...

The Operative glared at the new arrival, "Well hello 'Queen' Moon...the Council has been expecting you..."

A naked and confused Moon simply looked baffled...

...

...Shark Punching Center...

...

One-Punch Man (AKA Saitama) Yawned as he repeatfly punched the Sharknado until it was a puddle of blood and guts...He hoped this 'broken Masquarade' thing that everyone was yammering about back at Selachian central meant that something exciting would happen soon...

ROAR!

Saitama punched the Megladon cyborg without breaking his stride or even looking back as it shatterd to pieces...

"Cause this is just getting old..." He said to himself as he walked back to base...

...meanwhile, back at Echocreek...

"I'll have you know I'm due for a growth spurt anytime now!" Said Marco annoyed as they finished up the teating...yet hadn't been able to resist making one more dig at his 'shortcoming'...

Scientist 1 smirked, "Actually kid, according to these readings. Your 'not' gonna get any bigger down there."

Marco went pale, "But...back in the Neverzone...my future self...

Scientist 2 quickly interupts, "That Was when it looked like you were going to seal the deal with Hekapoo. Once again just like how you attracted women like flies to honey despite being...well, you. Whatever was controlling the strings was giving you an incentive to stay, by giving you 'a lot to work with', which in turn gave her something to be impressed by when she tore your pants off instead of laughing you out of her dimension."

Indeed, they'd found that all the other male Tulpa of Echocreek were worse off. They literally had NOTHING to work with 'down there', and had been programed to not care or indeed even notice they were basically eunuchs...because again, 'they'd already done their jobs' just by existing, no more was needed of them...

Essentially, Marco's junk shrank as he went against his programming.

Everything was designed to make sure he didn't end up with Star. If he'd ended up with anyone else he would have found himself with a 'long overdue growthspurt'. Instead he's cursed with perceptual 'ice bath shrinkage'.

Scientist 2 looked at some charts, "And I hate to twist the knife further...but according to these readings whatever was controlling your 'growth' is still active. So..." He trails off.

Marco looked at him in horror, "Are you telling me I'm gonna look like I sat in an ice bath for an hour for the rest of my life unless...

Scientist 1 nods, "...You ditch the princess? Pretty much." He finishes with a shrug.

Marcio just looks down at himself in dumbstruck disbelief

Scientist 2 gave him a palyful nudge, "Heck of an incentive isn't it?" He teased cheekily.

Marco suddenly grew furious, "Okay, you know what?! Screw you! SCREW ALL OF YOU! Star means more to me then my dick ever will!" He shouts as he rips off his hospital gown, leaving himself naked. "I'm done with your tests and games! I'm out of here!" He shouts as he storms out of their unashamed to the nearest door...

"Uh, I wouldn't leave through that door if I were you- "SHUT UP! I don't care if you and your stupid Foundation have saved the world a thousand times over! What kinda assholes kick some kids while their already downa nd sobbing!? Let alone make fun of their genitals, what the fucks is wrong with you bastards!? Screw you all again, I'm leaving!" Shouts Marco as he throws the door open...

Right into a Room consiting of Star, Janna, Jackie, Starfan13, Briteny and a dozen other Tulpa girls getting tested...

Marco just stood there frozen, like a deer in headlights...

The scients behind him shruged, "Tried to warn yah." He said flatly.

"Well, this just made my day. "said Janna with a smirk as she takes a picture and sends it viral before anyone can stop her.

Britney Wong smirked, "Well either they choped off your wang or they shrank it down to microscopic...either way I'm laughing at you now..." She and all the other girls besides Marco's friends burst out laughing at him as he coverd shimself mortified...

While Star just looks at him concerned...

…III...

TO BE CONTINUED?

(1): His feelings were mixed on that whole incident, especially since it was him deciding at the last minute that making the SCP look incompetent and cut their funding with a staged paranormal terrorist attack was 'too much risk for too little gain' that ensured that reality never happened...on the one hand, the GOC -and him- lost an opportunity to take control of the SCP...on the other hand...clearly his plans in that reality were either scrapped or something had gone horribly wrong! That moron Manafort...he was always such a hothead...such a control freak...but that he would screw up so royally...suddenly his being one of the first to fall to 1609 as a favor to an ally didn't seem so frivolous now...no, it was probably for the best for all concerned that that timeline never happened...

(2): the three royal treasure include; The Orb of Baast: which could suck out and contain the souls of almost any mortal, The Forlorn Hope: A mirror that could grant any wish at the cost of the users life, and the Shadow Sword: a single scratch of this sword was usually enough to turn most humans into a low-level demons that would serve only the wielder of the sword.

(3): And there ARE worse things then Carter, Marshal and Dark's. Make no mistake. For despite all their many, many, MANY faults; the three of them DO have a vested interest in keeping the globe spinning and humanity ticking along...after all...who would they swindle otherwise?

(4): As they are currently only in a semi-private chat room, the three characters here will deliberately use code names for themselves and others to protect their identities.

(5): Which was then immeditatly replaced by a decoy Moon #127 created by the Foundation before any Mundane could see.

Author's Notes:

ANNOUNCEMENT!

I'M GETTING A BOOK PUBLISHED!

SUMMARY:
On the 13th day of the 13th month of the 13th year...magic will return to the world...and the streets will run red with the blood of the (semi)innocent...unless the world is saved by the most unlikely of hero's...baking cupcakes?!

The title is '13/13/13' and it'll be coming to a bookstore or E-Book site near you! Xilbris is the publisher, also available at Amazon, Inkitt and BarnesandNoble.

...

https://www.amazon.fr/13-Dakota-Umlauf/dp/1984511963

Above is a link to amazon for my book

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1128212357?ean=9781984511966

Above is a link to barnesandnoble for my book

https://www.xlibris.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-001178898 https://www.xlibris.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-001178898

Above is a link to Xilbris for my book

https://www.inkitt.com/stories/fantasy/217373

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/dakota-umlauf-487523169/

Above is a link to my Linkedin account

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Above is a link to my Patreon account

.......

If you want to see more, go to my fanfiction account: https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5874134/The-Cowardly-Christian-du911

...

AN: I know it says "in-progress" but really I just don't like boxing myself into a corner. For now this is more of a one-shot that I might continue one day...but probably won't.
But, hey. Feel free to use whatever elements you want from this, if you want! Or maybe give me ideas? Or maybe bribe me on my Patreon account

Love me, flame me, review me

chapter 4

View Online

Cleaved: AFTERMATH 4

I OWN AND REGRET NOTHING!

...III...

"So...the theory of Lekmet creating SCP-2000 won the gold?" Asked a Foundation standing watch over the still quarantined Echo Creek.

"Yes it did." Said his partner as he counted his winnings from the betting pool.

"So...on top of everything else, we don't have our safety net anymore?"

"Oh, no. Nothing like that! All the various incarnations of the Foundation have continually added to the 2000 over the centuries, including US. It's more SCP-tech then Lekmet made at this point...that being said...he and it were still intertwined. That apparatus he built to take his place kept things running after his death, but after it was destroyed...well, the eggheads explained it better. But although it didn't destroy, damage it or anything like that. But apparently it DID cause it to RESET.

"Reset?" That elected a groan from the agent. The last time 2000 was reset was when they tried to see if they could use it to bring back Mable Pines to speed up the return of the Shooting-star sigil of the Wheel. Not only did it NOT bring her back, but it almost brought Bill Cipher back to life and only a hard reset that left 2000 off-line for a couple weeks stopped him from returning...needless to say; all copies of Mable's genetic template were permanently deleted and all possible further attempts to resurrect her was BANNED by the 0-5 Council.

His partner nodded grimly. "Yeah, it was a bad one I hear. It'll take a year or two to get it back to 100%, they tell me...Worse, from the looks like that the trauma of losing the apparatus gave it a deep glitch with no currently known way to fix it."

"Oh, no."

"No, no. Don't worry. It's nothing TOO terrible. Once it's back to 100% it'll be business as usual...except that anyone that died during the 'cleaving', a couple hours before the 'cleaving' and during the entire time it's 'rebooting FROM the trauma of the 'cleaving'...we won't be able to bring back. The templates are too corrupted to salvage and 2000 refuses to store anymore new templates until it's back to 100%."

The agent just shakes his head in annoyance, "If it's not one thing it's another. You should hear what's happening in Russia. Why I heard-

Suddenly his phone rang, he looked at the text annoyed. "Crap...I'm being summoned to testify in the 'Legal Lee' class action lawsuit...forget Pattern Screamers, that man should be considered a 'XK-Class End-of-the-World Scenario' all on his own..." He grumbles as he takes a swig of whisky.

...

But let's leave these men and the larger world for a moment...

How are the citizens of Echo-Creek dealing with the recent revelations?

...

Star Butterfly looks at the newspaper stunned...she just sits there in silence for an hour or so...then she folds it up...and leaves...

...

Meanwhile, after a lengthy decontamination, sterilization and testing process to make sure they weren't a hazard to humans, their environment or their reality...the people of Echocreek were finally going to be interviewed and had the situation explained to them...

Britney Wong had had a rough week; aside from that brief amusing incident of 'safety boy' flashing his needle-dick it had been confusing, disorienting and aggravating...plus the joke just got old REALLY fast...

She'd been having her afternoon beauty nap when that earthquake had hit! And then her house got eaten by some strange spider creature! She was then rescued by a bunch of 'government' men...only to be then roughly grabbed with every other EchoCreek citizen and thrown into a van. To be stripped, sterilized, poked, prodded, injected. Her skin had been rubbed so raw she had blisters! She could connect the dots with all the blood sample and vaccine shot scars!

FINALLY, she was being taken to a room where it was promised everything would be explained...

"NO! NO! NO! YOU LIE!"

"WHAT IS REALITY?!"

"WHO AM I!?"

"IT STINKS! IT STINKS! IT STINKS!" "Yes Mr. Sherman, EVERYTHING stinks..."

Britney would never admit it...but she grew more and more scared as she saw Echo Creek residents being dragged away screaming by men in white coats and being fitted for straitjackets...

"What...what is going on?"

"Relax, all will be revealed shortly." For once, Britney didn't throw a tantrum to get her demands...she was too scared to think straight...

Finally, she regained enough of her composure just in time to be sat down in front of the interviewer. A tape recorder was present and now turned on.

"Okay, enough of this! Who are you, and why are you going 'Guantanamo on me?!' You won't even let me go home! Do you have any idea who I am?!"

"Your Britney Wong; Heiress of the Wong corporation and head cheerleader at Echo Creek high." Said the interviewer in a neutral tone as he viewed a dossier.

The flat out admitting that, plus the calm, collected tone threw off Brittney for a moment in surprise before pressing on. "Oh...well, you know what'll happen to you if don't do what I want!" She snaps.

"Maybe...why don't you remind me just in case...?" Said the interviewer in a patient yet rather monotone tone.

Again, that calm, analytical term threw Brittney off for a moment...but she rallied her wits again and pressed on. "Uh...well, if you don;t let me leave right now my parents will make you sorry!"

"How?"

Brittney's eye's blinked, "What?" She asked confused.

"How will your parents make me sorry?"

Brittney just looked at him baffled, "Wha- isn't it obvious?" She asked confused.

"Humor me, pretend I'm a moron."

Again, this completely threw Britney...but she tried to roll with it...

"Well...they're rich! They have money! They'll use money to make you pay!"

"How?"

Again Brittney's eye's blinked confused. "What?" She asked again confused.

"How will they use money to make me pay?" He asked again patiently.

Britney rolled her eyes and began to respond...but to her surprise...she found herself drawing a blank...how did it happen? Usually...when she threatened someone, they immediately gave into her demands...her parents never actually had to do anything...but...shirly they WOULD have done something, right? If she'd needed it? Why else would everyone be afraid of them...right?

The interviewer said nothing and just sat patiently...

"I...my parents are rich...they can buy and sell you!" Shouts Britney suddenly...they were rich...her daddy Bribed Skeeves to give her the head cheerleader position...that made sense...didn't it?

"Perhaps, but HOW are they rich? How do they make their money? What dose the Wong Corporation actually DO?"

Brittney just looked at him both confused and annoyed, "What do you mean what do they do? Their the richest people in town! Everyone knows them!"

"But as you can see; I'm from OUT of town. So would you do me the honor of explaining your family's company to me?"

Brittney's eye's rolled, but she haughtily began to open her mouth...but no words would come out...for her mind was yet again drawing a blank...

...She had no clue on what her parents actually did for a living...

How...did she not know this...she...briefly remember seeing a factory...it had her family's logo on it...but she never actually saw what it MADE...come to think of it...no one ever talked about what they did for a living either! Servants, schoolmates, her clique, teachers, her PARENTS...what was this? How could she not know what her family did?!

"Are you okay?" Asked the interviewer sincerely.

"I...I don't know...how can I not know...?" Said Brittney, suddenly.

"Tell you what...why don't we call your parents and you can ask THEM?" Offered the interviewer, again in a seemingly scripted way.

"Uh...yeah! Yes, that sounds good!" Said Brittney with a sincere smile, her parents would clear this up no problem!

The man brings up his phone. "If you could just tell me their number?"

Brittney snorts, "No one remembers numbers anymore, it's all automatic through our phones." She said, her snarky attitude briefly returning.

"Right, how silly of me. In that case if you could just tell me their names, I should be able to quickly look their number up in the database."

Again Brittney rolled her eyes. "Mr. and Mrs. Wong." She said flatly.

"Their FULL names please?" Asked the interviewer.

Again Britney opened her mouth...and again...nothing came out.

Brittney...Brittney was starting to feel a bit anxious...her not knowing about their jobs was weird but MAYBE understandable. They had money to get her what she wanted, who really cared where it came form? And it was all boring adult stuff anyway...but how the frack did she not know her parents NAMES!? Okay, if she was honest enough with her self; she was every bit as self-centered as her critics claimed, but shirly she wasn't THAT shallow!...wasn't she?

The interviewer waits for a bit as Brittney's continued thinking and rationalizations for her lack of personal self-knowledge caused her more and more confusion and dread...

"If there's a problem, we could try another means of contacting them...or perhaps someone else? A friend of yours perhaps? Or even a parent of your friend?" He asked with scripted helpfulness.

And so this went on...and Britney grew more and more panicked. How did she NOT know anything about her own life!? Her clique? She knew nothing, not even their names! Her Cheerleading squad, aside from Sabrina she knew nothing of anyone! And even with Sabrina she didn't know anything about her save her name and that she always got injured somehow! Her friends...oh, who was she kidding? She had CRONIES, not friends! Though that didn't matter as she couldn't remember anything about them either!

The interviewer eventually suggested some 'memory exercises' to help her focus and recall things. Ordinarily, Brittney wouldn't go for that kind of crap...but she was getting more and more frantic and desperate, at this point she'd do ANYTHING to get things 'normal' again.

He asks her to describe things from a bout a year before Star showed up...they start with her birthday party BEFORE the one Star crashed: Where did it take place? What presents did she get? What was the theme? Who did she invite?

Again...Brittney found herself coming up blank...she REMEMBERED the party...but the more she thought of it...it was more like remembering a movie or a dream...you got the highlights...but anything more detailed just wasn't important enough to be remembered, or indeed even put in the movie/dream in the first place...

And that went for anything going on the rest of that year too! And then when they got to two years ago...

Nothing...just nothing...just before one year of Star showing up...she could remember nothing at all about her life...

Brittney was starting to sob...

The interviewer actually looked sympathetic. "Sorry I put you through this, but trial and error has shown that it's easier for people in your situation to accept the truth if they reach the conclusion themselves..." He says while giving her a Kleenex.

Brittney uses the kleenex to blow her nose. "What conclusion? What are you talking about?"

"That your life makes no sense at ALL." He says flatly.

Brittney just looks at him baffled...then she just slumps down exhausted and weary... "Look...can you just get my parents to come pick me up? There important people, it shouldn't be hard to find them! I...I just want to go home!"

The interviewer sighed, "I'm sorry Miss Wong...but I'm afraid that won't be possible..."

...

Buff Frog sat patiently in line as the monsters, Mewmans and Echo Creek citizens waited to discuss their futures with SCP Foundation guidance counselors.

The other kingdoms of their old world- although having difficulty adjusting to life in a new world with no magic -at least weren't suffering from the disadvantage of recently having their entire kingdom smashed to bits by a madwoman. In any case, with no real infrastructure and their queen no longer having the magic to repair it they were being forced to look elsewhere for a steady income...

Thus, Buff Frog began to notice an amusing discrepancy. First of all: there seemed to be no room in this modern world for 'medieval' job titles such as Gong farmer, town crier, Galley Rower, or Cup bearer- alchemists in contrast had an odd amount of job security weirdly enough -which was itself bad as that was the majority of job-type the Mewmans did. Worse, the Mewmans didn't have much in the way of practical skills.

Weirdly enough, despite living in the 'dung ages' of progress...Mewmans tended to have a better standard of living then all the other kingdoms back in the old world...

But this hadn't been because of anything the PEOPLE did...no, it was all because of their QUEENS. Need food? With a zap of their wand; the crops immediately grew from seedling to stalk, all the food they could eat. They just needed to harvest it. Need money? The queen just wills enough exotic goods, gives them to the merchants and suddenly Mewni is the biggest economic hub on the planet! Need your house fixed after a natural disaster? Wave of the wand, it's fixed! Injured? Same thing!

The only thing she couldn't reliably give is protection, sure a lot of the time they could easily defeat invaders or the like...but war was complicated, unpredictable, bloody affair and the Queen was just one person. So in this at least, the Mewmans had to help their Queen out...

Still...generations of this had led to a society of a rather violent people that were completely dependent on their royal family for most of their needs.

Worse, it was a society that actively FOUGHT against any changes. They knew they had it better then that other kingdoms and they didn't want ANYTHING to disrupt that!

Sadly, this was a large reason for the quick ends of the reigns of Jushtin, Dirhhennia , and to a lesser extent Eclipsa...

They wanted to just let people solve their own issues- well, in Eclipsa's case she ran away from her responsibilities to be with her monster lover...but it had the same affect -and the people didn't want that. So they had to GO.

'Well, I suppose it doesn't matter what they want anymore.' Notes Buff Frog with a smirk. Now he knew that it was wrong to take pleasure in the failure of others...but there was just something so CATHARTIC in seeing all the Mewmans who for generations had treated his people like crap...get turned away time and time again due to their lack of useful skill-sets. While his fellow monsters- who for generations had been forced to become self-reliant and acquire numerous skills sets lest they starve/be killed -found themselves more likely to walk out with a job.

Of course, it wasn't always so easy. Better skills or no, they was still the technical issues of adjusting to a modern setting and a new world. Thankfully, The SCP Foundation were offering free schooling to help people/monsters transition easier to their new settings.

However, this offer was mostly rejected by the Mewmans. Like most of their thinking, the concept of 'education' was mostly stuck in a- 'What us is writing when a man can only write their name in pigshit? What use is wisdom to a pheasant who shall never allowed to rise higher then their station?' -feudal era form.

The monsters however, were more then happy to take up this offer. They weren't picky, they knew they were in a rough spot and needed every advantage they could get. The harsh swamp life had made it a necessity to adapt and change when needed, and they would gladly continue doing so in this new world...

Yes, it might take a generation or two...but the seeds of the reversal of fortunes of the two people's were already showing...

'What is a 'D-class personal'? And why dose it require signing so many waivers to become one?' Thinks Buff Frog as the vast majority of Mewmans who were rejected from all other jobs were sent away by the SCP to D-class orientation...

"Yvgeny Bulgolyubov?"

Buff Frog came out of his thoughts as he saw a Foundation operative had walked up to him in his place in line and had addressed him.

"Uh...yes?" He asked cautiously.

The man nods, "The site-director wishes to speak with you." He gestures to allow him to cut the line.

There was grumblings and even some yelling about the line cutting, but a curious Buff Frog ignore them and follows him...

The 'Site Director' was really just the guy who'd been in charge of the outpost set to observe and monitor Echo Creek. But recent events forced the Foundation to quickly upgrade the outpost to an actual site. And thus the outpost leader was temporarily promoted to site director until they could find someone more qualified to take his place...in the meantime he had a job to do...

"Mr. Buff Frog I'm going to be blunt: you have a wide variety of skills, your seen as a unofficial civic leader among your fellow monsters...although we would have a wide variety of jobs for you on just that note. But me and my superiors would like to float something else by you..." He slides a mayoral registration/citizen naturalization sheet over to him.

Buff Frog looks at it stunned, "You want me to become the mayor of Echo-Creek?"

"Well, many of you monsters have no homes after Mina's rampage and Echo-creek has PLENTY of empty homes. So were planning to start moving you there. Having a monster mayor there would go a long way to helping the transition go smoothly."

"Wait, what about the current mayor? Actually, strike that. Why are there so many empty houses in the first place?"

The site director blanched, "Uhhhhh..."

...earlier...

"MY FACE IS A NIGHTMARE! SOMEONE STOP THIS!" Screams a certain Taxi driver with a 'I'm going to murder you horribly' face that had been stuck that way since he kicked out Star and Marco out of his taxi on their 'Beach Day'...

A bunch of equally crazed Echo-Creek denizens were obliging by punching his face until it hopefully stopped being so freaky...

The Foundation agents sighed as they shot them with tranq darts...this was the fifteenth group of echo creek citizens today who'd freaked out over the revelations of their existence...and it showed no signs of dying down...

...

"They had more trouble adjusting to the current situation then most." Said the director delicately.

Thankfully- or not so thankfully as he'll soon realize -Buff Frog was too busy having another revelation to really think about his last question.

"Wait a minute, is this all just one big 'diversity hire political snafu' to make you look better to the world and maybe lighten your legal woes?"

The director mentally groaned, when was a REAL Site-director going to be assigned to take this sector over? The whole reason he got into espionage was to get AWAY from talking to people! He was no good at it!

"Uh...correction! It's a 'diversity hire political snafu' that will give you a luxury mayor mansion and top dollar pension for you and your children to enjoy!" He says quickly as he slaps down a picture of said mansion and the large estimate of his paycheck figures...

Buff Frog looked at this thoughtfully, "To be clear that's a BIG number on earth." He says pointing at the check. "Uh, yes. Absolutely."

Buff Frog thinks on this. "Hmmm...I don't know...on the one claw this would give me and my children a place to live, food on the table, and power to actually make things better for my fellow monsters...but on the other claw...is this REALLY the right way to go about this? Setting a precedent for giving a person a job based on their species rather then merits? I mean, wasn't one of the many problems that caused the whole Mewni/Monster conflict because many people favored the Mewmans over the monsters? And while I love Eclipsa for what she TRIED to do, it was pretty obvious that favoring monsters over Mewmans wasn't doing great either...so is this REALLY the right way to set the tone for this new age-

"We'll throw in a free health and dental plan for you and your children!" Shouts the site Director desperately.

"Deal." Said Buff Frog with a smile as he shook his hand and took the paperwork to begin his registration.

As he walked away, the Director sighed in relief. "NEXT!" He shouts as a purple Seahorse-like creature wearing a old, tattered Reflectacorp(1) uniform enters the room...

...

Brittney looked pained... She just watched a video of her parents being led into separate rooms and being given similar interviews as hers...

Except, unlike her being able to 'mostly' keep it together as the interviewer pointed out the inconsistencies in her life...they just fell to pieces half-way through...

It...was horrifying...her parents just looked lost...like actors that forgot their lines...then like puppets who'd had their strings cut before being tossed aside...they left the rooms sobbing, wailing, broken wrecks...or at least her father did...

Something much worse happened to her mother...at the height of the interview...she just ceased to exist...just faded from existence...

"What...what...WHAT!?" Said a now VERY lost Brittney.

"Yes, we didn't realize that could be an issue until AFTER 1/3rd of Echo Creek had already 'faded', we tried to delay until we could figure things out...but in all the chaos of the aftermath some idiot spilled what happened and many more citizens 'faded' from the revelations. We apologize for this. In our defense; although similar situations like this have popped up before, it was never anything on this SCALE. Nothing even close to a town of this size and scope. Seeing how it was only a matter of time before what happened was revealed to the rest of the citizens. We decided to just continue, and help them through the revelations. Minimize the impact. But although we've stopped several from fading...many more just couldn't cope with the 'truth' and simply ceased to be-

"WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!?" Screamed Brittney.

"Right, sorry. My apologize. I'm getting ahead of myself."

He shows her another video, it showed an empty stretch of land Brittney frowned...it looked familiar...but...

To her surprise a small blue guy...wasn't that the freaky thing that hung around Star? Anyway, he popped out of nowhere, waved at the camera and snapped his fingers...and the town of Echo Creek just popped into existence. The man winked and disappeared as quickly as he came.

Brittney just blinked...not fully understanding what she saw...

"What you see is about a couple weeks before Star showed up...and that's when Echo Creek came into existence...before that...it never existed...and neither did you or anyone else in Echo Creek...I'm sorry Mrs. Wong..."

He then activates the forcefield mere seconds before Wong attacks him screaming denials...

'Huh, she managed to stay clam five minutes longer then the last one before getting to the rabid denial stage...well, that's progress at least...'

...

Queen Wrathmelior Lucitor looked around at all the gathered royals; Her husband King Dave Lucitor, King Johansen and Queen Johansen of the Johansen Kingdom, King Jaggy and Queen Jaggy of the Jaggy Mountain Kingdom, King Pony Head of the Cloud Kingdom of the Pony Heads, King Spiderbite and Queen Spiderbite of the Spiderbite Kingdom, Prince Rich Pigeon of Pigeon Kingdom, King and Queen Kelpbottom of the Waterfolk Kingdom, and Pie king of the Pie Folk...

They'd all been gathered here to have a conference with various U.N., American, SCP Foundation, GOC and UIU representatives about the future of their kingdoms on this new world...

The only one's who weren't here was of course was Eclipsa and her family, who were too busy tending to their ruined kingdom to come...

Well...that was the OFFICIAL reason anyway...

Oh, there Kingdom WAS a mess and the people- both Mewman and Monster -needed homes and to be tended to. So no doubt that actually was true as well...

But everyone here knew the REAL reason...

To put it bluntly...the Butterfly Monarchy was FINISHED.

The magic and riches that made them one of the most prosperous kingdoms on the old world was GONE. A large reason many had put up with their family's crazy shenanigans- Skywynne blowing up a dimension, Solaria's genocidal crusades, Festivia's drunken orgies, Crescenta forcibly pushing her policies on everyone 'for their own good', Rhina casting a curse on MHC member Reynaldo the Bald Pate on a whim, the weird double-standerd hypocritical racism -was not just because of the MHC's approval and protection...but also because they're magic made them the most powerful people in the universe! It was amazing how quickly a persons viewpoint would quickly match that of the person who had the BIGGER gunboat...

As for their riches? No magic meant the Butterflies couldn't just make more. Eclipsa hadn't really bothered to replenish it after her daughters rampage. She'd been too busy focusing on rebuilding her family and raising the living standards of monsters. So what little was left was now being used to help their now homeless and destitute people.

Now that both were gone, they no longer had to put up with their crap...

That and Eclipsa was just not interested in ruling anymore. She was going to stay in charge long enough to make sure her people(mostly the monsters) were being seen to...but after that she was retiring to to be with her family.

...So really...who was left? Even if Moon was still alive, no one would follow her after helping Mina get the power and army she needed to massacre the kingdom...

King River could technically do it after his seemingly endless mourning for his wife but it was obvious he was no ruler and he knew it...In any case; the rest of the Johansen family were already discretely cutting off all ties from the Mewni kingdom and giving it up as a lost cause. So it was moot point anyway...

The rest of the Butterfly family? The likes of Felicity or Heartrude? The whole family was laying low after the non-stop scandals brought about by Eclipsa, Moon and Star...for all their faults they were smart enough to see the monarchy as a dead man walking...so no help there...

As for Star? Well, the monsters and Mewmans were grateful to her for stopping Mina's rampage...but want her as a leader?...no, just no...

No, the Kingdom of Mewni was finished...and while Wrathmelior did feel a bit bad of it's passing since the Lucitor's and Butterflies had had a VERY lucrative partnership since the time of Rhina Butterfly...but...if she was being honest...

And she knew her fellow Royals agree- sure, their had been plenty of good times with the Butterflies in charge as well, a good deal of their children did like Star and they would naturally deny any enjoyment of their downfall in PUBLIC out of common courtesy and respect of old ties... but the fact was that they were all looking forward to a post Butterfly-dominated world.

And that was what it had been...for better or for worse the Butterfly kingdom had dwarfed all the other kingdoms in all matters of importance.

Who got the reality breaking magic? The Butterflies.

Who got a seat on the the Magical High Commission? The Butterflies.

Who got a say in the distribution of magic and the inner-workings of the universe? The Butterflies.

All the other kingdoms? They might as well not even exist...

Plus it was hard to be sympathetic when an arsonist finally got burned. No matter how you looked at it; all the drama that had played out the last couple years or so had in one way or another had been the result of Mewnian policy in regards to 'monsters' or decisions of their rulers past or present: Toffee, Meteora, Eclipsa, Mina, the DESTRUCTION of magic and the merging of the two worlds! One way or another it all went back to the Butterflies in one shape or form!

Oh, they'd give aide where they could, grieve as protocol dictated, Still let their children be friends with Star...but it was a new age upon them and if they didn't want to be left behind they needed to step forward...regardless of who they left behind...

"Mom! You've avoided me long enough!" Speaking of those left behind...

".emit eht ton si won ,noS"(2) Spoke Wrathmelior with a groan. She'd been avoiding her son for weeks now for just this sort of thing... ".noos gnitrats eb lliw ecnerfnoc ehT" She gestures to all the royals waiting around. The SCP Foundation was still waiting for the other delegates to show up in addition to setting up the conference room. In the meantime they were all getting to know the neutral judge who the Foundation had called to preside over the conference affairs.

He was Judge Mental, a matryoshka doll-like being from a dimension adjacent to earth. Although more difficult to travel to other dimensions without Hekapoo around to keep things orderly and stable...the SCP had always strived to not be too dependent on non-terrestrial entities like the MHC. So they'd long mastered many non-Hekapoo reliant ways to get about the universe...among other things...

In any case the Foundation apparently use him as a neutral arbiter and were nice enough to allow them to get to know him. Even offered to cancel his services if the majority didn't like him.

Well, no fear of that in any case. The man was tough, refused to tolerate any nonsense, irritable, temperamental...but VERY fair. He'd also read up on all the kingdoms culture, economics, history and political structure. He'd allowed them to quiz him on said subjects to their hearts content and he'd passed with flying colors. More importantly he saw through all of Pie King's tricks and nonsense and wasn't fooled by his crap for even one second! Honestly, why the Foundation allowed him to come she'd never understand...

She was forced from her thoughts when her son physically blocked her.

"No, I'm done with you avoiding me! Now explain to me why you didn't come and help Mewni during Mina's rampage! And don't think I don't know you helped Hekapoo stop me from using my powers to teleport back to Mewni!" Demanded Tom.

Seeing she wasn't going to get out of explaining this, she mentally prepared herself and quickly made sure no one could overhear them.

-eW :raelc eb em teL .em ot netsiL ,nos yM"

"We? Who's we?" Asked Tom confused.

Wrathmelior was a bit put off from the interruption, but tried to be patient and explain for her sons sake.

".derucco ocsaif elohw siht erofeb did I sa nooM dna CHM eht morf tisiv EMAS eht deviecer slayor eht lla niatrec ylriaf m'I tub- meht ot ti timda reven lliw I sa -ti timda reven ll'yehT .EW ,seY"

Tom looked confused... "Star's mom...and the HMC meet you? Why?"

".ot deerga lla ew ,shtrof-dna-kcab dna snoissecnoc lactilop lausu eht retfa hcihw...aspilcE morf enorht eht kooter ehs sa refretni ton ot su fo lla rof tnemeerga na DNA enorht eht demialcer ehs retfa nooM troppus ot su ecnivnoc oT" Admitted Wrathmelior without hesitation, as she braced herself for her sons explosion.

...she wasn't disappointed...

"AGREED?! You all agreed to this travesty!? Mom what is wrong with you!? People DIED! Magic was destroyed! I swear if this is because of Star so help me-

"...!pu-kaerb dias fo RUOH erem a nihtiw ratS etad ot noissimrep ocraM gnivig nosrep reggib eht ffo emac neve uoy ,yaw elbacima YREV a na ti ot deganam yllautca uoy secnatsmucric eht etipsed woh ,emit siht ffo sgniht kaerb ot eno eht erew UOY woh denialpxe ydaerla uoY !siht htiw od ot gnihton dah ratS"

She shouted angrily before trailing off as she was overcome by parental pride and wiped away a tear.

"!uoy fo duorp os m'I ,pu-nworg dna erutam os emoceb evah uoy tuB .won thgir em htiw yrgna era uoy wonk I .nos ym ,hO" She exclaimed happily.

Tom was briefly thrown by this showing of love and affection, but he quickly brushed it off. "Don't change the subject! If you didn't do it because of Star-

"!modgnik ruo fo doog eht rof saw siht ,yob raed ym dnatsrednu ot yrT !taht sa yttep os nosaer a rof siht od REVEN dluow I ,ratS htiw seussi ym etipseD" She implored.

Tom blinked at her confused. "For our Kingdom? What dose our Kingdom have to do with this? and why would you want to get ride of Eclipsa? She was a great leader! She was helping the Monsters to FINALLY be treated like equals!"

His mother sighed, ".sretsnom eht YLNO dna SRETSNOM eht ot redael doog a saw ehS :melborp eht deil niereht tub...eiteews wonk I"

Tom looked at her baffled, "Say what now?"

Wrathmelior pinched her nose in frustrated anguish...she'd been hoping to spare her son the harsh realities of the throne for a couple more years...but she supposed she didn't have that luxury anymore...especially in these chaotic times...yes...perhaps it was for the best...

"?detcepser dna devol os erew sroticuL ew tey...snamweM eht yb deliver os erew sretsnom yhw derednow reven uoy evah ,noS"

Tom, confused by this sudden question...nevertheless goes into Deep thought over it. "Well...we briefly touched on it...but that kinda got overshadowed with actually helping out the monsters...I think Star's mom implied that it was because we were rich and powerful and they...WEREN'T. But that can't be right..."

".nosaer eht yllaitnesse si taht ,SEY yllautca tub...noitacifilpmisrevo na fo tib a s'ti yllacinhcet ,lleW"

Tom gaped at her horrified, "What, but...that's just so...SHALLOW. What, the rich and more powerful are treated with open arms, but if your poor your treated like crap?"

".seY" Stated his mother flatly, his son looked at her in horror. She sighed, ".remrof eht rof retal eht pu evig ot redael a rof tnemeriuqer a hguone netfo erom si ti tub...nosrep doog a dna relur doog a HTOB ot elbissopmi ton si ti ,nos yM"

Tom looked up at her baffled, "I...I don't understand..."

Her mother just looked down on him with sad eyes... ".ouq sutats eht niatniam ot aspilcE ot did yeht tahw reh ot od tsuj dluow CHM eht rO .fo tuo worg dluow ehs esahp suoilleber a saw siht rehtie taht derugif tsuj yltsenoh eW .erehwyna og ot ti detcepxe yllautca reven ew tub ,inweM fo neeuQ erutuf eht htiw rovaf laitnetop niag ot saw tnemeerga s'ratS dengis ew nosaer ylno ehT .thgilp sretsnom eht ot yaw rehto eht dekool ew ,suorepsorp dna yppah elpoep ruo gnipeek fo eman eht ni oS .rewop ngierof a fo ytironim roop-trid a tsuj erew sretsnom eht dna dnal eht ni modgnik lufrewop dna hcir tsom eht erew snamweM eht ,yad eht fo dne eht ta tuB .snamweM eht yb nevig erew sretsnom eht tnemtaert eht dekil REVEN srelur rehto eht dna ew ,yob yM"

She reaches over to give him a comforting stroke, but he slaps it away. "That's terrible!" He exclaims in a hurt way.

".scitilop s'tahT" Stated Wrathmelior with a shrug.

But what dose that have to do with Eclipsa? I mean, you all accepted her as the new ruler of Mewni..."

".ESROW sgniht ekam tsuj dluow hcihw ,relur on htiw trapa llaf modgnik inweM eht tel ot eb dluow noitpo rehto ylno pets t'ndluoc yeht os- She pauses to shudder in revulsion at even thinking of such a possibility -stnadnecsed ELPOEP EIP dna enorht eht ot sdratsab etamitigelli gnieb yllaer fo snoitalever eht retfa soahc ni saw ylimaf ylfrettuB eht fo tser ehT .tsniaga ylmrif erew smodgnik rehto eht hcihw ,rovaf rieht ni hcum oot rewop fo ecnalab eht deppit evah dluow smodgnik OWT fo lortnoc gniniag ylimaf nesnahoJ ehT .elbirret...saw reviR .dnuof eb ot erehwon saw nooM .enorht eht yawa evag ratS .snoitpo rehto on saw ereht esuaceb reh tpecca ot DAH ew ,oN"

Tom again, just looked confused, "Whay are you all against Eclipsa? She was a great ruler!"

Her mother quirked an eyebrow skeptically, "?YLLAER ehs saW ?nos ehs saW"

Tom looked at her confused, "What do you mean? Of course she was! She finally gave monsters equal rights!" He pointed out.

"?redael a sa emit reh gnirud dehsilpmocca ehs taht staef rehto yna fo kniht uoy naC ?neeuQ sa od ehs did ESLE tahw tub ,hA" Asked her mother flatly.

Tom opend his mouth to retort...but found himself coming up blank! "Well...Star was really the one more involved with her day-to-day affairs..." He rubs the back of his head awkwardly. "Plus the whole Mewman/Monster thing was kinda a big hot-topic for both of them..." He shakes his head and quickly recomposes himself. "But what dose that matter? That was REALLY important!"

"?noitargimmi lagelli yrtidnab ot gnitroser morf stcejbus reh gnippots dna ,taolfa ymonoce labolg eht gnipeek ,smodgnik rehto eht htiw spihsnoitaler doog gniniatniam neht tnatropmi eroM" Points out Wrathmelior scathingly.

Tom blanched.. "Wait, what? What are you talking about?"

Wrathmelior groans, "!?modgnik EMOH ruoy ni tsael ta ro ,inweM edistuo smodgnik rehto eht ni os ro raey tsal eht pu gnippop neeb evah taht smelborp eht deciton ton ylsuoires uoy evah tub...erongi ot dnet uoy sgniht hcus dna neet a ruoy wonk I ,eiteewS" She asks incredulously.

Tom blushed awkwardly, "Well...I've been busy!...with Star." He mumbles that last bit...

Wrathmelior pinched the bridge of her nose, well at least she now knew for sure that explaining such harsh realities to her son so soon was the right choice...a kingdoms heir who was oblivious to his countries issues was a recepie for disaster!

"!sisirc noitargimmi no-lluf a ot noitidda nI !noissecer labolg a fo elddim eht ni erew ew 'gnivaelC' eht erofeb taht dezilaer evah d'uoY .noitnetta gniyap neeb dah uoy fi ,lleW"

Tom gaped, "What!? How!?" He exclaimed.

Wrathmelior rolled her eyes at her son's oblviousness, "?taht ot secneuqesnoc on eb dluow rieht kniht yllaer uoy did...degavar dna dedavni yldetaeper neeb raey tsap eht ni sah dlrow dlo eht ni noitan tseihtlaew tsom ,lufrewop tsom eht ,nos yM" She asked irritably.

Tom frowned, "Wait, are you talking about Toffee and Metora's invasion? I...I mean that was bad, obviously but...I...I guess I didn't think of that?" He admited embaressed.

Silently vowing to fire her sons clearly incompetent tutors...out of a cannon if possible...she continued.

"!flesreh fo loof a ekam dna esivorpmi ot decrof saw ratS elihw setibredipS eht no 'dekalf' ssel ro erom ehs ,duol tuo gniyrc roF !taht enod evah neve t'ndluow ehs ,smodgnik rehto eht htiw spihsnoitaler doog niatniam ot yrt ot reh dehsup t'ndah ratS fi ,kceH .derehtob eb t'ndluoc ehs epacse rogbolG gnipleh ro ,rethguad reh htiw emit gnidneps ,ytilauqe niag sretsnom gnipleh htiw od ot evah t'ndid ti fI !melborp eht fo toor eht s'taht ,niaga tuB .meht ot degnoleb tahw kcab sretsnom eht gnivig tsuj saw ehs wonk I ,seY .gnihtyna yas uoy erofeB -semoh rieht fo tuo snamweM gnikcik yb ESROW ti edam ehs gnihtyna fI !kcab evom ot snamweM fo aropsaid eht ecnivnoc ot GNIHTYNA od t'ndid ehs ,kcart no kcab ymonoce eht gnitteg no krow t'ndid ehs ,egamad eht xif t'ndid ehS .seow smodgnik eht fo yna xif ot GNIHTYNA od t'ndid ehs ,edisa noitatuper reH !aspilcE ot enorht eht ot pu evag ratS...NIAGA...deyortsed saw inweM fo modgnik eht retfA .derrucco retsasid aroeteM elohw eht neht tub...dexif eb dluoc sgniht tnedifnoc erew ew esac eht no nooM htiw tub dab llits erew sgniht ,sgniht gnidliuber trats ot elba yllufknaht saw nooM ,taefed s'effoT retfA .raef ni eelf snezitic ynam gnikam dna gnihtyreve gninettalf esrow sgniht edam ylno tseuqnoc s'eb-ot-desuoppus-saw-eh-lleh-eht-revetahw/s'effoT/s'oduL ,yrehcuabed fo ngier olos suortsasid dna feirb sreviR gniK gnirud tsrif nageb pmuls cimonoce ehT"

Tom was stunned by the rant as she took a breath, "!rekaerb-laed a neeb ev'dluow gnihtyna neht erom TAHT...dnim reh edarged dna tsiwt ot detrats lautir tnemrewopme nairaloS eht EROFEB hctib enasni na saw namow tahT !ti htiw gnola og t'ndluow ew eetnaraug I ,dah ew fi dnA !siht htiw od ot GNIHTYNA dah ANIM aedi on dah ew ;raelc YREV eb em tel tuB .esnes nommoc tsuj saw nooM rof worhtrevo reh gnitroppuS !ti saw tahT .denosirpmi rogbolG peek ot esimorp eht dna yhcrana rehtruf esuac dna yletelpmoc trapa llaf ot modgnik eht tnaw t'ndid ,dnaw eht yb paz teg ot tnaw t'ndid ew esuaceb aspilcE detarelot ylerab eW !'egalliv' reh ot snamweM decalpsid fo ytirojam eht gnitcartta yb sisirc noitargimmi namweM eht deziminim ylgnittiwnu ehS !su gnipleh yllanoitnetninu llits saw ehs denorhted neve kceH .egrahc ni nooM htiw ega nedlog a dah smodgnik eht llA .enorht eht kcab koot ehs troppus CHM htiw sa yaw rehto eht dekool dna nooM htiw dedis ew yhw si yob ym TAHT dnA !seirtnuoc ruo dedoolf ohw stnargimmi namweM tnetepmocni fo egrus eht dna pmuls cimonoce eht hguorht htoB !ti htiw deggard erew ew dna trapa llef modgnik eht fo tser eht elihw ytironim degelivirprednu a dna ylimaf reh no noitnetta reh lla dehsival ehS .elpmis dna nialP .redael rapbus saw ehs...roirraw a neve dna rehtom a sa reh tcepser nac I elihw tub...ssenippah dnif ylimaf reh dna ehs epoh yleniuneg I rehtona ot rehtom eno morf dna hguorht tup saw ylimaf reh dna aspilcE lleh eht wonk I ,kooL" She says that last bit with an indignant huff. For the life of her she couldn't figure out what possesed Moon to do such a convuluted plan! At WORST they'd expected a minor coup...but not this!

Tom just couldn't believe what he was hearing! "But mom...Eclipsa's a nice person! And she was trying to do right by the monsters...and for you to just ignore their plight..." He trails off.

Her mother sighed. "...taht nrael tsum uoy ,gnik eb ot tnaw reve uoy fi...modgniK dna elpoep ruoy rof thgir si tahw rof thgir si kniht UOY tahw edisa tup tsum uoy ton neht netfo erom...gnik sa dna...tluciffid si ti tub...redael doog a DNA nosrep doog a eb ot elbissopmi ton s'tI .nos ym ,hO" She says giving him a loving hug...

Tom just stood there...looking very lost...before his mother could comfort him further...

"Attention, I thank you for your pateince. But if your all fine with our selected arbiter; Judge mental. Tehn we are ready to begin!" Says a Foundation agent that had just enterd the room.

The Lucitor Queen sighs wearily but gives her son a kiss and leaves a now VERY thoughtful and conflicted Tom as she follows the other Royals into the next room...they were in for a LONG day...

...many hours later...

The Pie King sat in the confrence hotels sauna grumbling. Today had been one disaster after another! No one had been more suprised then him that he'd been summoned to this confrence! He'd been overjoyed at first, not only was his nation FINALLY recognized as a legitimate country- so many wonderful scaming opportunities that opend initself! -but the Pie Folk would have a chance in twisting this new world order to THEIR benefit!

He and his fellow pie folk were just as surprised as everyone else when magic was seemingly destroyed and they were sent to another world. Unlike the other kingdoms though, they were quicker to adapt. It was an unspoken rule that Criminals had to adapt faster to unfortunate setbacks more so then anyone else; there's was a dangerous profession that went against the grain of society after all. Those who don't adapt ended up either bankrupt, arrested, dead or WORSE.

And after so many genearations of the worst of the worst gathering, sceheming, killing and ravishing on pie island, natural selection had made sure that they as a people were Nothing if not adaptable...among other things...

Had it been annoying that many of their magic-related scams suddenly fizzled out? Yes. But very few of them had magic anyway- the MHC had periodically seen to that -plus when you lived in a world filled with magical beings that were pissed at you, it was practically essential to master many ways of subverting or doing without maigc to avoid detection...

So sure, many Pie Folk shops were forcibly closed the day the magic died, but within the same day those same shops were quickly re-opend as 'magical substitute' pharmacy's, 'Treasure maps leading to new magic' stores, 'magic restoring elixer' apothecary's, 'magic fitness instructor' gyms, etc...

In other words they were doing fine...and they would do even finer now they were legit nation attending a grand summit to decide the future of amany...for any good con artist knows that times of crisis and chaos were the best times to aplly their craft. It was amazing the things you could trick frightend and terrfied people into doing for you...

At least...that had been the HOPE...

The Pie King cursed, that Judge Mental was no dummy! He saw past all his flatery and tricks! Worse, he refused to be bribed!(An unbribable official? Now he'd seen everything!)

If anything, all his schems and attempted bribery acomplished nothing but making him even more furious at him and his people!

When the confrence began, the Judge had already lablded him and his people as 'troublemakers' and used every legal opportunity he could to bang his gavel to silence and punish him! He smashed through FIFTY podiums in the first hour alone!

The Pie King tried every burecratic lie and procedural trick he knew to turn things around, but the Judge was no fool! After that blasted Baron snookered him and nearly bambozled his international summit from under his nose to keep those poor children enslaved, he'd vowed to learn the ways of the scoundrel to never again be 'taken for a ride' again!...and it showed!

Not only did all of the Pie kings schemes fall flat before they could get off the ground, but the Judge actually managed to twist them around to backfire on him!

Didn't take long for the rest of the Kingdoms to gang up on him to not only settle old greviances but also to win favor with the Judge...

And thus at the end of his first day here: The Pie king found himself having not onlfy failed miserably to fill his pockets or advance his nations positition but now he found numerous sanctions thrown at him from all sides and now deep in debt!

Ordinarily he'd just ignore the debt or hide his money...but apparently those guest sighn-in books doubled as mystically binding contracts...he'd been horrfied to see both his personal wealth and that of his countires magically appear in thin air and be given to all the 'wronged' parties...

The Pie King groaned, the steam doing nothing to relax him! After all this he'd be lucky to keep his LIFE, let alone his TITLE! He wouldn't be surprised to find an angry mob waiting for him back home. Unless he found some gold to wave under their noses, he was a dead man walking!

Their was a loud clunk, as a large treasure chest overflowing with gold and jewels was dropped in front of him.

His eyes nearly popped out of his head, he looked over to see a masked man dressed in a trenchcoat, seemingly oblivious to the humidity around him.

"What's this?" Asked the Pie King gesturing to the chest, he was no fool. Tempted as he was, he knew better then to trust seemingly 'free' gold.

"A gift in good faith, all I ask in return is a quick chat."

The Pie King looked at him warily, but nodded. At this point, what did he have to lose?

The man smirked, it was almost too easy.

Judge Mental was as profesional, impartial and uncorruptible as they came...but he had one VERY big weakness...his TEMPER...and two things more then anything else set him off...criminal activity going unpunished...and nonsensical shenanigans...two things the Pie Folk EXCELLED at.

The Foundation suggesting that the royals meet and quiz Judge Mental wasn't ONLY to reassure them of the Judge's capabilities and profeshinalism...but so that the Pie King would predictably try to 'work his magic' on him, thus even more predictably accomplish nothing but enraging him.

Making sure to begin the confrence while the Judge was in peak anger. Thus guaranteing the Judge- while still keeping himself profeshinal and the proceddings legal amazingly enough -would gain a bit of a tunnel vision in regards to putting the Pie folk in their place.

The Foundation set this up for three reasons:

1. Taking advantage of the animosty and disdain for the Pie Folk to further reassure the other kingdoms that the proceedings were in good hands and that the Judge and Foundation knew what they were doing.

2. To weaken a potential thorn in everyone's side in a completely public, legal and P.R. Friendly manner that actually made them look good to the world.

3. Finally, To make the Pie Folk desperate enough so they would be more willing to agrre to his employeers wishes...

That last reason being more 'off-the-books', of course. The Foundation didn't like it, but their resources were currently stretched too thin to police some new rougr nation of theives and swindlers...

Which left them few other options...

The Foundation or another Earth government flat out taking it over or wiping them out would only make them look bad to the world and increase their legal woes...not to mention make the other kingdoms nervous and wary of being next; which they did NOT need right now with tensions so high everywhere else...plus the fact that no matter how much the other kingdoms denied it...there was evidence implicating that many of them had a similar 'understanding' with the Pie Folk that his Employeer had with the Foundation...and thus wouldn't enjoy some outsider messing with said 'arangement'...

Trying to ally with them to minimize the trouble they could cause would be a PR Nightmare they just didn't need right now with Legal Lee on the prowl...

So...with all other options exhausted...they came to yet another 'understanding' with his employeer in the usual backroom setting...

Basically; they could do with the Pie folk and their country whatever they wished and they'd look the other way...but on the condition they kept them out of trouble- on Earth - and out of their hair.

And thus the secret wheels and deals of the world that kept the earth going round continued to function even after a calamity like the Cleaving...

His employeer was rather happy with the deal, they would soon be gearing up for some rapid, agreesive expansion and some newblood to fill their ranks wouldn't go amiss. True, these Pie Folk were an odd people...rough around the edges, for sure...but there WAS potential...provided they had the 'right' guidance to show them the way...

But if nothing else; their lands would do well as yet another safe haven for them to lay their heads, make their deals and spread their influence without interferance...

"My employeer would like to disccus with you a potential alliance." Said the man as he handed the Pie King a bussiness card marked 'MC&D LTD'...

...

Britta's Tacos had seen better days. It had been blown clean off it's foundations while SCP, GOC, UIU, and UN teams were all colaberating to excavate the caves beneath the crater. Catalouge first 'Mewman' artifacts and sucking up all the remaining black, corrupted magic goo out of the fromer magic sanctuary.

"Fascinating, it seems that the 'Bonner party' was indeed the first Mewmans! It would also seem that contrary to what Echo Creek has recorded, the Bonner party did NOT win the war against Otis's possum horde. But rather they were defeated and the renmants were forced to flee to the Realm of Magi and then Mewni. It should also be noted that also contrary to that, this did NOT happen in 1846 but rather the 1600's..."

"The possums overran the humans? How in the- Wait...if that's true; what happend to them? Shouldn't they still be around if they won?"

"I don't rightly know, local records from other towns show that all attempts to make a town here have been thwarted at every turn by the possums. Then of course Glossaryck created the town, putting it right here and creating a memetic sheild that made everyone in the surrounding area ignore the place...so...who knows what happend to the possums? Maybe glossaryck did something right for once and killed them all." Said the proffessor as he busily used his pickaxe to break through another clump of dirt...

CRACK!

Entering into another cavern FILLED with magic-induced hibernating possums, all of which had been slowly waking as the maigc had been fading away...but now were all immedaitely awakend...and SNARLING!

The professor gulped as the army of possums glared- Turns out the statue of Otis was LIFE-sized, who knew? -at him and foamed seeped from their mouths in rage...

"Found them." He said with a gulp as they all descended on him...

...A couple minutes earlier outside the excavation site...

A GOC grunt moved much of the corrupted magic gunk into an armored truck. "Explain to me again why were delivering this crap to those Flame Keeper's Circle Nutjobs?" He asked annoyed.

His partner grunted as he moved another box into the truck. "It's part of the pleabargin the GOC negotiated with them. In adition to a large cash settlement, we share our research in regards to potnatially beneficial abnormalities...in exchange they don't join the legal Lee lawsuit and drop the charges in regards to us murdering their 'God' Dagon." He says the God part with with sketpical derision. "Not that it'll do us much good...fracking Legal Lee...give me frogs! Locust! Daleport! Anything but that asshole of a lawyer!" He shouts frustrated

The grunt winced, the SCP were currently wheathering the Lawsuite...well...not in a 'great' way. But they were getting through it a hell of a lot better the the GOC was! For all the SCP's faults they mostly stuck to the 'only kill as a last resort' policly...the GOC had no such defense. Accusations fo war crimes were pilling up...one thing was for certain...if by some Miracle the GOC survived after having it's carcass picked clean...it would be completely diffrent beast...

'Come to think of it, the only one coming out of this smelling like roses is Senior Director Charles Goodwin and his faction...maybe I should try to get protection from them? I still got those compromising pictures of Senator Roark...maybe I can use it as a barganing chip?'

His thoughts were interupted by screams of pain and teror from the excavation site.

"Shit! Get this out of here! We need to see what's happening!" Shouts his partner as he bangs the truck to signal that it needs to leave fast. All the guards rush in to the hole as the truck zooms away...

...

Alfonzo walked into the room to see Ferguson lay on the couch eating corn chips while watching TV.

"How can you be watching TV? Don't you know what's happening all around us? The truth of our existence? The chaos reigning in the world? The universe?" Asked Alfonzo confused.

Ferguson looked up at his friend, "Yeah, you know I thought a bit about it...but then I realized...'Meh' -he emphasizes with a shrug -So now I'm just watching TV while munching corn chips..."

"Oh." Said Alfonzo flatly...he says nothing for a few minutes... "Can I join?"

Ferguson scouches over to give him room and a spare bag of Cornchips...and they just spend the rest of the day like this...

The more things change...the more things stay the same...and that includes teenage boys aparently...but then not everything has to be dramatic and angsty I suppouse...

...

Brittney wanderd the Halls almost in a trance...

Her whole life's purpose...the whole point of her existence...had been to be a minor antagonist in Star Butterfly's life...actually, she hadn't even beeen an antagonist...she'd been barely a bad guy...just an occasional speedbump...annoying for an instant...yet forgotten about just as quickly...

She'd angrily denied it, railled against the SCP agent's forcefiled until her hands bleed...

But she couldn't deny the evidnece...how little her life made sense...how the town never made sense...

'My dear...think about it...a MAGICAL Princess from another dimension pops down in the middle of your town and your lives...and no one freaks out about it? Magic was proven REAL, life on another world was proven REAL...and yet...no reaction? No panic? No media circus? No visit from the president or other world leaders to instigate a 'first contact' scenario? Just a shrug and a 'meh' and everyone goes back to their lives as if nothing was abnormal?' The Interviewer had pointed out.

'And consider this as well...how many times did Star destroy, burn and maim...yet where was the police? You were there during that fiasco of a football match... Why did Star never get expelled? Why did Star never get aressted? Never get sued? Never get punished?'

'Well...I think...wasn't there that one time where Star got community service for...crushing a police car?' Britney had pointed out hesitantly...she'd been grasping at straws and they BOTH knew it.

Finally Britney angrily blamed Star for all this...And the Interviewer had somewhat agreed...

'Well, your half right... to be honest, WE also blame Glossaryck for setting all this up in the first place...course, on the other hand...if he hadn't done what he did...you wouldn't exist...whether you want to be greatful for that, or curse him to your dying days is completly your choice and were not allowed to judge you one way or the other about that...'

He then explained about the situation with Star, Mina's ramapge, Moon's betrayl, the destruction of magic...

He also explained how while the citizens had intitially evolved from magical constructs to flesh and blood beings...the memetic spells Glossaryck had cast to make them view stars existence as 'nothing out of the ordinary', ignore her MANY arrestable offenses, and overall ignore the incostinces of their brief existence or even question their existence were PURE magic and thus were quick to fade away.

There were currently three catagories of Echocreek citizens:

The main 'characters': these had been the people who spent the most time with Star and therefore were given the most 'personality', compotence and capability then anyone else in town. Both so Star wouldn't get suspicious but also so that they could help Star on her 'journey'. These people were the least affected by the revelations, as they were the most 'real' and thus the most invested in their current lives. These people consisted of : Marco, Marco's parents, Janna, Jackie, etc...

Then there were the secondary 'characters': people who hd some role in Stars development, but mostly served as support or plot devices for the main charceters or Star. Thus, although still real then most. They weren't required to be as 'real'. So while not handling these revelations as well as the main charcters. They could still mostly handle it, but this varied and some therapy and counseling would still be advised. This bunch included : Alfonzo, Ferguson, Starfan13, Brittney, Mrs. Skullnick, Jeremy, Oscar, Sensei Brantley, etc.

Finally there was 'everyone else', AKA the 'background characters': These were the majority of people in Echo Creek and their only purpose was to serve as 'set dressing', or to make the town look real and lived-in These were the people who had the hardest time to cope with 'not being real', as their wasn't much 'real' in them to begin with. These were the people most likely to go insane or regrees to magical construct and cease to esxist. Thus, they were the one's who needed the most help and monitering. This included: the mayor, unamed parents of secondary charcters(I.e. Brittneys parents), police, sanitation works, bussines owners, burecrats, etc. Basically all the people needed to technically keep a town functioning but had no other purpose in the grander scheme of things...

Among other things Brittney was told now basically an orphan; her mother had faded and her dad had gone nuts...the 'factory' that Brittney family had made their fortune on was just machines that were just a bunch of bells and whistles making empty boxes that didn't actually go anywhere. But aparently still paying the oblivious workers for thier 'jobs' anyway.

Evidently, her family had been created with a large wad of cash already in the bank...and they'd basically been burning through it ever since without actually adding to it. Currently she had over a 100,000$ left. The SCP interviewer offerd to give her triple that if she sold her opulant mansion and everything in it to them.

More in a daze then anything...Brittney had agreed. She was told that she'd go to further counsuling, schooling to help her adjust to the 'real' world. But eventually she'd be sent to an orphnage untilt hey could figure out what to do with her...

The session over...Britney left...and was now just wandering the halls..not really going anywhere...just more walking for the sake of wandering...

It's then she sees the slumped, depressed figure of...

Brittney needs a moment to remember...'Oh, right! That's that Jeremy Birnbaum kid! His parents are rich for...something...but he's given me some good laughs! All those times he picked on the safe kid...wait a minute..."

She let's out a long sad sigh, "Let me guess...parents faded or insane, your life was a lie, and it turns out the whole point of your existence was to be a jerk to Safety Kid..."

Jeremy's eyes widen... "How did you know?"

Brittney sighed as she sat down beside him, "Because I'm literally in the smae boat..."

And so they talked through the night...now neither felt better afterwards...they still weren't 'okay', they weren't magically fine with the truth of their existence and they still had the specter of an uncertain future in a a strange new world bearing down on him...but...they now both had a sympathetic ear of someone who could give them a hug...and you know what? Sometimes, that's still better then nothing...

...

"You tricked the Foundation to BRIBE you back into existence?" Asked Skullnick in disbelief as Principal Skeeves counted his money.

"Yeah, I really outdid myself! Made a bundle too, woo! Between this and all the money I've made from the Wong's and Butteflies non-stop bribes the past year I'm probably the richest man in town! I don't even care that bribes are no longer allowed from this day forward...I'm on top of the world baby!" He exclaims as he throws a wad of cash in the air.

After calming down, he turns to Skullnick. "By the way, I gotta ask...why are you still a troll? I'm no expert...but wasn't that a magical change? So shouldn't you be back to normal when there's...y'know...NO magic?" Asked Skeeves confused.

A still VERY troll-like Skullnick shrugs. "I asked the SCP people the same thing. And they said if I'd been just a regular flesh-and-blood human, then yes. The transformation would've reversed. But apparently, my becoming a troll marked my 'promotion' from background character to Secondary character. Which I guess meant that was when I evolved from tulpa construct to a REAL person. So this- she slaps her gem-studed belly for emphasize -became less 'magical transfomration' and more physical change...apparently it's similar to the reason why the Ponyheads can still fly without magic or something like that..." She shrugs, "Whatever, I like this and I ain't complaining."

Principal Skeeves nods, "Well, in any case a large portion of our sutdents either faded, went mad, or plans on moving away...but were going to get a bunch of Monster kids to replace them. So this actually works out well for us! Also, the royals of other kingdoms expressed intrest in the whole concept of a 'school' and wonderd if we could bring their children here..."

...

Sensei Brantley sighs as he locks up the Tang Soo Do Dojo for the final time...

The Hill-Trank Plaza was basically a ghost strip-mall at this point. Nobody but him, the tumbleweeds and the various government agents fixing up the now empty stores so they can accomodate their future monster owners.

Starbucks was now Hydrabucks('For every one coffe you drink, two more will be ready for you'.), Barnes and Noble was now Scrolls and Rongorongos, J.C. Penny was now J.C. POLYXO, KFC was now KFS(Kentucky Fried Slugs; It's claw licking good!)

He looks behind him to see his 'Tang Soo Do Dojo' sighn taken down and replaced by a 'Spindly Tam Kanushu's Majikkujutsu academy' sighn. He just shakes his head and continues walking.

As he leaves the mall...

"Sensei!" He looks over and smiles as he sees his favorite Student/friend Marco. "Hey Marco, what can I do for you?"

"Listen have you seen Star? I haven't seen her since the announcement about her mom and I'm woried..." He trails off when he sees all the things that his Sensei was carrying.

"Hey, what's happening?"

Brantley sighed, "I'm moving on with my life Marco." "Huh?" Asked Marco.

Brantley just continues talking; "You really inspired me, y'know Marco? That whole 'red belt video' incident was just the kick in the pants I needed to really take stock of my life...but even then I couldn't really bring myself to take that last big STEP, y'know?"

Marco opened his mouth to get a word in edgewise-

"But everything that's happend recently: The merging of our worlds, the revelations of our existence, the destruction of my other job at Britta's Tacos, the loss of a large portion of my sudents, the grandmaster and then my Dojo-

"WHAT!?" Exclaimed Marco in horror.

Brantley sighed, "Yeah, all my other students have either fadded, gone mad, or are picking up the shatterd pieces of their lives...which as it turns out translates into no one paying for lessons anymore. Also the Grandmaster was one of the first to fade away and his certificate is aparently not worth the paper it was printed on." He takes a deep breath, then looks chipper again. "But the SCP people were nice enough to offer delaying my lease payment for at least a year or so given the circumstances...but then they also offerd the option for them to pay me like...ten times what the place was actually worth if I transfered ownership to a future monster resident of the town...don't worry your last check might have went to him, but I've been assured he'll give it back to you if you don't want to continue with him. But I recommend you give him a try, I saw a tape of him in action. Dude's a BEAST and I'm not ashamed to say it...he's WAY better then me!" He admited sincerly.

Marco kept the scathing remark of, 'that's not saying much' firmly locked inside his head...

"Anyway, where was I? Right, so after all the things that's happend recently...it all just feels like an end of an era...the begining of something NEW...for all of us. So between that, the money I got for my Dojo, the VERY generous severance check I got after my job at Britta's tacos got totaled...I've packed up Marco. Me and my Mom are going to have one last fun weekend together...then I'm moving out of my Mom's house, taking the first bus out of Echo Creek...then I'm going where ever the road takes me...

Marco was stunned, "Wow! Really? Huh...good for you sensei." Said Marco sincerely.

Brantley gave a small sad smile, "I'm not your sensei anymore Marco...just call me Brantley..."

Marco nods, then thinks of something. "Uh, hey Sen- I mean Brantley...I never got a chance to talk to you. But how is the whole...you know-

"Revelation that the whole point of my existence revolved around helping you get ready to help Star fight her battles?" Asked Brantley flatly.

"Uh..."

Brantley chuckles, "Marco, relax! Okay, yeah. I was a bit bummed at that at first...I mean, who wouldn't be?...but then I thought: 'Is it really that bad?' I mean, if you think about it: I was the sensei of the HERO. In otherwords: I was the Mr. Miyagi to your Daniel LaRusso! If that ain't a great a destiney, I don't know what is!" He gives a hearty laugh.

There were many ways that Marco could've refuted that...but in the end he held his tounge...Why not? The man was happy, why take that away?

"Well, it was nice talking to you Marco...but destiney awaits me...also Mom's homemade cookies..." He rubs his belly in anticipation.

After one last respectful bow to each other...the two part ways...

...

Starfan13...no...just Amanda Jacobs now...how long has it been since she used her birth name?

She looked at the garbage can where she'd just thrown all her Star memorabilia and keepsakes...

She sighs, "You really want to know what I think of how your grand 'finale' played out?" She asked without turning around.

Star sighed, "Yes, next to Marco no one has kept track of my adventures more then you...and there's no way Marco will be willing to say anything negative to me right now...I need HONEST feedback..."

Amanda just stares blankly into the night for a moment...before taking another deep breath and noding to herself. "Okay..." She turns around.

"I'm upset with you Star, I mean destroying magic? What the heck! Yes, get the whole thing with the solarians and the Corrupting of the magical realm...but you could've found another way! What about using that demonic severing stone to chop off their magic? Or have Heekapoo use her portals to teleport them to an uninhabited realm where you could ACTUALLY use the 'Total Annihilation Spell' without fear of collaterol damage! Or maybe just use the portals to dump them into the Sun or the vacume of space!"

"And just becuase your family had problems with it didn't make it bad! It was ana amzing, beautiful force and you took it way from everyone! Now we can't travel to other dimensions or see our other frinds like Kelly anymore!"

And what kinda message is that anyway? What's the moral of this story? 'If a super cool thing that helps people is abused by some people we need to destroy it?"

And wht the heck was with you agreeing with TOFFEE of all people?! That jerk murderd your grandma! Seriously, what was the point of saving Mewni, restoring magic and the MCH if you just render the whole thing meaningless later by destoring it all nayway?! All that sacrifice, hard work, fighting, and death for nothing!

Seriously Star I thought your whole deal was 'deciding your own destiney'...but then some tapestry affirmed your plan, you jsut went with it? Seriously, what the heck?!"

She take another deep breath, "And letting Mina go?! The woman nearly commited genocide and was completely unrepentant! If you don't want to kill her, then at least areest her! For crying out loud, your mom didn't kill Toffee all those years ago and it came back to bite EVERYONE! And you went and made the smae mistake! I'm sorry Star,you had a good run. But your ended it poorly..."

Star just stands there silently... "Thank you Amanda...I NEEDED to hear that..." Without another word, she turns away and walks off...

"Star! What will you do now!?" Shouts Amanda after her concerned.

Star sighs, "Well, that's the million gold coin question...isn't it?" She admits outloud and then keeps walking without stop...

...

"Moon Buttefly, have you anything to say in your defense?" Asked the Perdition Committee.

A shackeld and still naked Moon just sighed, "No..." She admited in defeat. She knew she had only herself to blame for this...if not for her 'plan' Star never would've been forced to do what she did...

She also knew that it was the Foundation that killed her and even now was using her as a 'scapgoat' to push all the blame of the 'cleaving' on...she'd be annoyed by that except they seemed to be pushing the blame away from Star for whatever reason...so oddly enough she found herself okay with it...all that matterd was that Star was safe...

"I plead guilty for everything...it's no less then I deserve." Admits Moon. "Whatever punishment you infilct upon me...hopefully it'll be enough to make amends for all the harm I caused to everyon...and Star..."

"Well, I don't know about that...eepecially since Star will soon be joining you here..."

"What!?" Exclaimed Moon in horrified disbelief.

The head of the Perdition Committee nodded, "Yes, usually were content to simply wait until a person dies before passing judgement on them...but as your daughter has destroyed a fundimental force of the univers, commited universe-sized GENOCIDE and that's not even including the chaos the aftermath has brought...Were preapared to make a VERY huge exception in her case. Next time we get in contact with Earth were going to negotiate with the SCP Foundation to have her turned over to us!"

"No please! It was my idiotic scheme that forced Star to do what she did!"

"That may very well be, but it was still HER decision. HER plan. No one forced her to do it, quite the opposite really..."

Moon was REALLY starting to panic! She couldn't let her daughter be punished for the mistakes SHE had made! "Wait, hold on! She was exhausted, terrifified, deeply betrayed by her own mother! It was a miracle she was able to handle thigns to theat point, half as well as she did! She wasn't in the best mindset when thinking up this plan! It was bound to be irrational and poorly thought out! And it was all my doing!"

The head of the Commitee thought about this a moment... "Bit of a stretch...but I suppouse that is a possibility." He looks at Moon. "My dear...you clearly love your daughter. So I will make you a deal: If you are willing and give this committe permissin of your own freewill...we can put the majority of your daughters burden on YOUR back instead..."

Moon looked at him thoughtful, "You mean...take Star's punishment in her place?"

"Well, take the MAJORITY of it." He gaves her a stern look. "Your daughter was the main, direct factor in the destruction of a fundemantal force of existence my dear...one cannot do that without incuring a 'debt' if you will...and it MUST be paid...PERSONALLY. It's the natural order; one cannont mess with it and not in turn be messed with themselves. This is something that not even President Girard Sebastien Niang or JALAKÅRA can override. The best we can do is lower her punishment to a minimal. But let me warn you. Your personal punishment is already fairly step...and Star's...the monument of her sins will extend across the cosmo and echo throughout the ages...so let me ask you...can you truly put yourself through that?"

Moon didn't need to think it further; although sad she couldn't stop Star being punished completely...she'd still do whatever it took to help her. This was HER mess and she'd be dammed if Star paid for it!

"I willingly agree to this." Declared Moon simply.

The Head of the Committee just nods. "So be it." He bangs his gavel. "We sentence you to the maximum punishment of your sins and the maximum amount of Star Butterflies punishment that is allowed to be allocated to YOU. May JALAKÅRA have mercy on your soul." He bangs his gavel.

Before Moon can even blink, a giant prmate hand grabs her from above and lifts her away...

"So, sir...are we still going to contact the Foundation in regards to Star Butterfly?" Asked an attendant as the screaming Moon found herself devoured by a fairly toxic and deformed Strider.

The Head of the Committee debated this internally for a minute...before shaking his head. "No, out of respect of a mothers sacrifice we'll let things be for now." He brings up a hologram of Star. "But mark my words Star Butterfly. Be it through death or misfortune...you will eventually find yourself here...and the moment you step one foot on our fair Corbenic's soil...be ye dead or alive...you have a debt to repay to the natural order...and it ALWAYS collects..."

...

"I must say, your handling this better then most of the other residents of Echo Creek." Said an SCP agent as Angie gave him another cup of Coffee while he sat on their couch.

Rafael Diaz smiled on his chair, "Well, at first I was shocked by all these revelations...but then the more I thought about it...the more I thought to myself 'dose this really change my day to day life?' I mean, maybe I was a 'tulpa' at first...but like you said I've evolved. So now I'm REAL, right?"

"Well...for all intents and purposes." Said the agent diplomatically.

Angie shrugs as she puts down a tray of cookie. "Good enough for me." She then hugs her husband, "And really the whole, 'the whole point of our existence was to prepare Marco and Star for their adventures'...Well, that's pretty much the whole point of a parents life; isn't it? Helping them be prepared for the future?"

The agent frowns, "Well, I guess...techincally? But-

"And as for Star...she's been the highlight of our lives! The fact she's been the LITERAL highlight of our lives, hardly makes a difference!" Points out Rafeal happily.

"Well, okay, you get that you probably won't be as sucessful with your job as a painter- points to Rafeal -and you won't be able to make as much money on winning your Monster Trader games- points to Angie -that's been explained to you, right?" Reached the agent, as if desperate to find some chink in the armor of happiness this couple had

"Because my sucess was mostly due to Glossaryck's magic makeing sure Marco and Star had a roof over their haed during their adventures? Yes, I got that. Sad but true." Conceded Rafeal with a sad nod.

"And it's been explained to me is there no more money for those competitions anymore, but 'Monster Trader dosen't even exist outside this town...It's a shame, I just collected all 237. Including the Red mirror dragon." She says that pulling out her cards to look at them sadly.

"But we won't let that get us down! We still have each other, your agency has agreed to let us keep using the utilites for free until were back on our feet! And even help us get jobs an educated on all things in the real world! So I'm sure it'll all work out!" Says Rafeal happily as his wife agrees.

The agent frowned, "Okay, well how do you feel toward Star in regards to waht has happend-

"Hold it right there Gringo! I know alot of bad things have been said about Star and her mother recently, but we refuse to pass judgement until we hear their side fo the story!" Said Angie firmly

the agent sighed, "Well, that's fair I suppouse." He then thinks of another thing. "Well, did you get the medical report of your son that we sent you?"

This finally seemed to make them look a bit unnerved. "Oh, right..." Said Rafeal as he scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "Well...as a fellow male, I of course feel bad for my sons...'predicament'." Admited Rafeal, but then he looks resolute. "but such matters of the heart are for him to decide! If he wants advice, I'll give it. But until then, I will stay out of such a private matter!"

"Actually, while were on the subject. We've heard how you report that the males of this town are basically eunuch's but My husband and my son-

"Thos two are the only exceptions, as they were the one's whho would spend the most time with Star. It was important that both be as 'REAL' as possible top both seel the decption and properly aide Star...also we have a suspicion that Glossaryck wanted to arrange Mariposa's birth so she could be to Meteora what your son was SUPPOUSED to be to Star." Explained the agent

The two parents look over to the playpen where their daughter happily palyed with her friend Meteora. Who had been left here by Meteora and Globgor as they spent the day disscusing politcal matters with the Foundation and others.

The two shrugged, "Eh, I can live with that." "I can think of worse reasons."

The agent just shook his head, but wrote down that they seemed psychological stable but would keep observing just in case.

"In any case were rquired by law to tell you that your eligible to be elected to office in the upcoming mayorial election if you wish." He hands over some pamphlets.

Rafeal shakes his head, "no thank you, we have our hands full with everything else."

The agent nods and leaves the suprisingly happy family to wait for two certain teens to return and tell them about their day...

They were in for a LONG wait...

...

Cole MacGrath once again cursed his decision to be a pizza guy instead of a delivery boy. Delivery boy had better benefits but Pizza guy had better pay...

Okay, maybe he dleiverd his pizza to the wrong adress ONCE, but to have a guy with snakes for hands seal him in Crystal over it? Who dose that?

The guy calling himself 'Rhombulus' apparently took him to same strange dimension filled with similary crystalized people...or at least that was what Cole was assuming after seeing where he was after awakening...

Sadly, it seems not everyone here had been hapless innocents...

Even without Rhombulous alive, the Crystals seemed to be capable of holding together. But his death DID weaken them enough to allow the more dangerous criminals to free themselves...

During the brief scuffle and aftermath that followed, Cole was able to overhear some information regarding these malcontents and murders...

Mesogog; the primordial dinosaur overlord.

Emperor Gruumm; Tyranical, galactic ruler of a vast army of criminals and malcontents

Broodwing; His second in command and the universes most notorius blackmarket arms dealer.

lord of the frost Flurious

His rival/brother Moltor, lord of flame.

Kamdor; Ninja criminal and builder of armies.

The three Rinshi beast Overlords:

Carnisoar; the Sky Overlord and bearer of the Animal Spirit of the Hawk.

Jellica; the Sea Overlord who controls the Jelly Fish Animal Spirit.

Grizzaka; the Land Overlord, the most senior and controls the Grizzly Bear Animal Spirit.

The Phantom beasts:

Scorch; leader of the Phantom Beasts and possessed the Avalon Dragon Animal Spirit.

Snapper; his Phantom Beast General/second-in-command that had the Snapping Turtle animal spirit.

Their phantom Beast minions consisted of: Sonimax the Catoblepass, Dynamir the Minotaur, Unidoom the Unicorn, Rammer the Capricorn, Badrat the Addanc, Grinder the Hanuman, Osiris the Cerberus, Lepus the Pixie.

The Five Fingers of Posion: The elite Rinshi guard; Rantipede, Gakko, Stingerella, Toady, Naja.

Captain Buggy the Clown and the Star Clown Pirates.

Captain Kuro of a Thousand Plans and the Black Cat pirates.

Admiral 'Foul-Play' Don Krieg and the Kreig pirates.

Arlong the Saw and his fishmen crew. Also Hody Jones and Vander Decken IX and their respective crews; who immediately swear alliegance to thier idol Arlong.

Sir Crocodile and his Baroque Work army.

"Tin-Plate" Wapol; former glutinous tyrant of Drum Kingdom and leader of the Bliking Pirates with his top enforcers Chess and Kuromarimo.

Enel; the former 'would-be-God' of Skypedia and his army of 'divine' soldiers. Lead by his high priests:Ohm, Satori, Shura and Gedatsu.

CP9; A gang of formerly government-sacntioned, raised from birth, assassins.

Gekko Moriah; The necromantic warlord and his Gecko Pirates.

Donquixote Doflamingo; former crime king of Dressrosa, infuential underworld broker and his Donquixote Pirates.

Kaido; one of the great seemingly immortal criminal emperors and captain of the Beast Pirates.

Charlotte Linlin (AKA Big Mom); evil matriarch crime Empress and leader of the Big Mom Pirates and former queen of Totto Land

Gild Tesoro; the Casino King.

Douglass Bulett; the Demon heir

Shiki The Golden Lion and his partners Dr. Indigo and Scarlet

Baron Omatsuri and his teisted parasite 'Lily Carnation'.

Marshall D. Teach (AKA Blackbeard); a newcomer who has already murderd his former captain Whitebeard to gain his power in adition to his own.(3)

Shendu: The Demon Sorcerer of Fire.

Po Kong: The Demon Sorceress of Mountain.

Xiao Fung: The Demon Sorcerer of Wind.

Tchang Zu: The Demon Sorcerer of Thunder.

Tso Lan: The Demon Sorcerer of Moon.

Dai Gui: The Demon Sorcerer of Earth.

Hsi Wu: The Demon Sorcerer of Sky.

Bai Tza: The Demon Sorcereress of Water(4).

Tarakudo; Lord of all Oni(as well as a bunch of masks who were apparently his generals before a trap laid by MHC turned them that way before he got crystalized with them. Much to his annoyance, the failsafe that causes them to be free if ever all nine masks are brought back together seems to have been renderd inert by all those years trapped in the mystic crystal)(5)

General Grevious: Ruthless cyborg warlord/enforcer of the former Sith Empire.

DR. Facilier; The shadow man(6).

Thrax; The walking plauge.

The G-Man; ?,?,?,

This last one Cole didn't know much about...one moment all the Big bads were about to duke it out with each other...then one of the bigger and clearly most 'high-security' crystals shatterd...revealing an errily ordinary bussinesman...

Yet...Cole couldn't shake a feeling of dread just being in the same ROOM with this guy...and clearly everyone felt likewise. All talk of fighting vanished...they all look TERRIFIED of him.

Ethan overheard a nearby pirate muttering 'The G-Man'...but other then that, he got no other information...

In any case, this G-Man briefly opened a tear in space...he comments how the MHC are clearly faded and so was the realm of magic...and then it tells them that it might be beneficial for them to put aside their diffrences just until they escaped this place...before leaving without another word...

Evidently, even when gone they all still feared him because they went with his plan...

But it wasn't all bad news; for some of the criminals DIED the moment they were broken free of the perservative properties of the Crystals.

Omni The Magnificence, Dai-Shi(7), Octomus the Master, his army of Morlocks, Imperious,
also Sculpin, Magma, Oculous, Megahorn, Hekatoid, Serpentina, Gekkor, and Black Lance of the Ten Terrors. All found themselves dying without Romantisicist magic to sustain them.

There was also Whiger; a chimeric Phantom Beast General that possessed the spirit of the White Tiger, Dai-shi's former second in command Camille of the Chameleon spirit and the two remaining Terrors- Itassis and Matoombo -still trapped in Crystals.

They were going to at least let Whiger and Camille out until Dr. Facilier sensed/proved that they both may have been on the verge of turning agaisnt the others. So they just left them there...

Sadly, it seemed all the other ordianry humans like Cole weren't going to be as lucky. After some brief arguing, yelling and one or two heads cracked in...they eventually dvided up all the normies and other people who Rhombulus had imprisoned just because his 'gut told him they'd been bad'. Depending on who they given to; they were either conscripted, enslaved, possessed or eaten.

"But this is all a horible misunderstanding!" Pleaded a Britsh man named Wallace as he was forcibly shoved with several others toward Grevious. "I shouldn't be here! I mean, alright. It wasn't cricket of me to break wind in that cramped elevator shack with that Crystal fellow. But isn't me getting a life sentence a bit extreme? I'm a respectable citizen! An innocent bystander! I have a dog at home that needs feeding!"

"SHUT UP!" Snaped Grevious viciously as he decked him, costing the poor man several teeth and a broken nose.

After that they plunderd and pillaged anything in that dimension that wasn't nailed down. They then focused on getting out of there. Broodwing, Dr. Facilier, Dr. Indigo and Tarakudo collaberated to create a portal.

Cole somehow managed to remain detected under a pile of crystal shards. He could only assume that the lot of them were too busy watching each other for treachery and focusing on escape to really pay attention to anything else...

After they'd all gone their seperate ways and left...only after staying perfectly still for two or so...he finally gets the courage to get up...

ZAP!

Emperor Belos steps through the portal he's made. He's breifly disapointed that once again he hadn't found earth, but is intrigued to see it is the doman of one of the MHC members...perhapse this wasn't a total loss-

And then he saw the human; half-way about to stand up and frozen in fear. But that wasn't all Belos saw...there was something DIFFRENT about this human...something that SANG to the blessed titan magic within him...

Belos, his mind ever calculating came to quick decision.

"My good man...are you allright? If you don't mind me saying, you look likr you've been through hell. Here, have a bite to eat. You must be famished." He makes some fine wine and turkish delights appear in thin-air. Then make them fly toward Cole

Cole look at this suspicious, but his hunger eventually triumpths over his caution and he eagrly partakes.

Belos quickly motions for his soldiers to come in and start to search the place for any cluse on what had happend recently to the universe. He had sensed the destruction of the realm of magic and once more thanked the Titan for his blessing keeping him and his island strong and alive.

In any case he'd heard that the Owl Lady's door to the human realm was on the fritz ever since then. Curious he'd checked the boundaries between worlds and leanred that without Hekapoo and Omnitarxus Prime the planes between realms were more unstable. Although this meant that he no longer needed to waste his time going after Edd and could make his own portals...it also made it harder for him to make portals that could reliably go where he actually wanted them to.

Soon he'd realize that the criminals had already picked the palce clean...except for the dead corpses of fromer criminals like Imperious.

Such corpses could be quite valualbe in the right hands so he orderd his men to take them back to his castle for study. They also took the four remianing imprisoned criminals. Belos sensed that the two remiang terrors would die once taken fromt he Crystal...but he was confident that he could enfuse them witht he amgic of the Titan to sustain them...in exchange for their services of course.

He also found the corpse of Imperious clutchign an artifact that surprisingly enough contained the Barbarain Beasts: Warmax, Shrieker, 50 Below and Fightoe.

Quite the beneficial detour all and all...

He looks toward Cole who reluctantly lets himself be guided tot he portal. The information he'd later get regarding what criminals were now free would be valuable initself...but he sensed great potential fromt this one.

And Edda's apprentice had already proven what a NORMAL human is capaable of...what might an EXTRAORDINARY human acomplish?

Yes, quite the beneficial detour indeed...

...

-And then we'll hit those monster smoocher drom behind like this; BWOOM! And then they'll all be 'Oh, no! An I'm like 'Take that!'" Exclaims Mina Loveberry as she acts out her 'plan' through twigs and rocks...

Manfred just sits on the Stump in the clearing...regretting all of his descisions... They had no food, he slept on rocks...and it was blatently obvious that his 'master' was not in her right mind...nor was she in good health...

"And then I'm like Bam! Wham!" Shouts Mina...oblivious to her wrinkles...and her hair going White...

Turns out it was only Solaria's magic that kept her alive so long...and now with it gone...she was quite litterally on her last leg...

"Huh, what was that?" Mina walks over to some bushes and pushes them aside. Down below they see just outside the forest they're in a childrens Cornball game in progress...with children both Mewman, Monster and Human playing together happily!

...It turned Mina's insides with rage! "Hey you dumb kids! Stop that!" She shouts as she tries to run down the hill toward them...it was harder now for some reason...

Manfred reluctantly followed...

Mina's started to pant...her body felt weaker...exerting herself seemed to only make her more ane more tired...

"Dang kids...you...you can't have fun with monsters...that's...that's not the way things are suppoused to be...

She's so tired...she starts to go on her hands and knees...her white her very long now...

"That...that's the way...the way things have always been...if it's not borke...why fix...it...?"

She's dergging herslef now, her body having more wrinkles then leather now...and twice the liverspots...

"Why...why you gotta change everything?...things were fine as they were...why...why...do I feel so alone...on my own world?" She says as she reaches out desperate...

And with those final words...Mina Loveberry...last of the Solarian warriors...gave her last breath and died...

Manfred just watched as Mina rapidly decomposed...even her clothes jsut seemd to rot away...her bones were all that was left...hand outreached toward the oblivious happy children as they continued to play. Clearly not knowing what just happend...

And then the bones themselves rapidly crumbled...until the only evidence Mina had ever been there was her skull...

crack

Which was immediately crushed to dust by an equally oblivious merchant. "I thought I saw someone here! What'cha doing in the woods you nut? Your missing a great game!" Exclaims the merchant happily, he then pulls out a hot dog "Want a monster dog? Buy now and you get this free hat!" He pulls a 'I heart monsters' hat...

Manfred briefly looks at the hat in disgust...and then his stomache growls...

'Oh, to hell with it...the whole worlds gone to shit, What dose anythign matter anymore? Not like anyone cares anyway... I might as well be fed if nothing else...' And thus Manfred takes the hot dog and wears the hat...and joins the crowd to watch the game...because...why not?

He'd never tell a soul what happend to Mina. No one rememberd he'd gone with Mina...in fact no one had even noticed he'd left...

Mina would continue to be urban legend...a skip rope rhyme teenage girls used to scare each other at sleepovers...a cautionary tale about bigotry parents told their children...but nothing else would come of it...

And so...the last bits of Mina would just rot away to nothing...unloved...unmourned and unoticed...and the world...the world would move on without missing a beat...

...

Rasticoar watched as the truck delivering the corupted magic goo from Brittas taco's made it's way to the back of the Flame Keepers Circle's HQ. He then gets the message that it's time to make his appearance at the press confrence.

He passes through the medical pavilion where many of his fellow Septarsis where donating blood, flesh, marrow, limbs and orifices. Apparently the humans belived that studying their regenerative powers- among other things - would advance their medical science across the board...

Rasticoar wasn't necesecarily sure he understood that, but it paid pretty good and helped with his peoples other goals...so why not?

Rasticoar couldn't remember the last time he saw so many Septarsis in one place. It was a great source of pride among his people that while the other monster tribes fell before the Solarian warriros...they alone held them back and caused casulaties among their ranks...

Of course, the downside to that was Queen Solaria had to personally come and use her magic to banish/scatter the majority of his people to the four conrers of the universe.

The few Septarsis that remained were mostly his tribe- the green Septarsis tribe -they were the weakest of the tribes, they had the standard great regenerative skills that all Septarsis possesed...but that was about it. Seth had tried to rally them and amke do. But int he confusion Solaria managed to strike him down with a prototype of what would one day be Eclipsa's anhiliation spell.

It didn't kill him, but his fighting days were over...he slowly rotted away until he died during Queen Moon's reign...

The Septarsis never truly recoverd after that- well, minus the brief period when Toffe took command of course...but in any case that was all about to change...

With the Cleaving 'sending everyone back where they belonged'; this also apparantly included undoing Solaria's spell and reuninting all the Septarsis tribes back together...

Blue Septarsis: They had the power to hypnotize people. They primarily worked in interogation.

Red Septarsis: They had the power to convert people into hybride slaves or even give inanimate objects life. They mainly worked as mechanics and weapon makers as a result.

Malachite Septarsis: They can vomit their venom many yards and cause insanity-inducing hallucinations. They acted as snipers.

Black Septarsis: They could burrow and travle to ridiculous speeds underground, they were also the strongest and could crush steel and shatter diamonds with their bare claws...they were also the dumbest.

Purple Septarsis: They could turn invisisible and could unhinge their jaws to devour opponents many times their size. They often employed themselves as spies or assassins.

Vermilion Septarsis: the very first tribe. All are extinct save for Seth- that old timey picture REALLY didn't do him justice -they apparently had the power to spawn other races from themselves. Thus, Seth was the progenitor of all current Septarsis. Their are no records of life life before the rule of Seth nor what happend to the other Vermillion; and Seth promised death to any who tried to learn

Grey Septarsis: The rarest of the lot; you were lucky to get ONE a generation. They were resistant to almost all magic. Their regenerative powers were so great that as long as a single drop of their blood remained they'd regenerate almost immediately. They were immortal save for death in battle and all have been without a doubt as intelligent as they'd been sociopathic.(the last known example was of course Toffee)

He spares some last minute goodbyes to his kith and kin before heading to the press confrence.

Here his current 'sponsor' was rilling up the crowd.

"Now I know many of you are skeptical of Dagon's clami of 'Godhood'...and that's fine. This is a free country and your all entitled to your beliefs and personal thoughts. But what cannot be denied was that he was a benevolant being who simply wished to share his gifts with humanity! Valuable Technology and magics that would've cured the sick, feed the poor and ended wars!"

Shouted The head of the Flame Keepers circle; Conduit Edwards to the gatherd press who lapped it up eagerly.

"But not only was this generosity rebuked, it lead to his murder by GOC hands! And when when his human allies- our flame Keeper forefather predocessors -tried to protect him or at least carry on his great work to uplift humanity...we found ourselves murderd! Blacklisted! Ostracized! Our memories wiped! Our techings censorerd! Our technology and magic confiscated and locked away! Our legacy smeared and tanrished as fringe crackpots! The few remnants of my brothers and sisters once great society were forced to go into hidding."

"The likes of the GOC and Foundation...they had so much potential, sit on so much technology, magics and other wonders that could've uplifted humanity to a new golden age...yet what did they do with it? Hoard it, sit on it and NEVER let it see the light of day...all to protect their precious 'normality'...their 'status quo'..."

He shakes his head in saddnes...

"Ladies and gentelmen; let us take a lesson from our monster friends- He gestures to Rasticoar and several other Septarsis sitting pateintly at the side fo the stage -their were many oportunites for many people to stand and declare their treatment was wrong back on their old world...but no one did. Why? Because they had too much invested in maintaing the 'status Quo'!...in fact; they profited from it! Just like our politicans do! They ask us to obey the laws, pay our taxes and contribute to society...but how can we do so when they refuse to obey the laws they agreed to be placed on THEM whent they came to office? When they refuse to pay to help their nations? Their people? When they refuse to benfit society by allowing acess to such wonders to YOU- the people!?"

He waited for the crowd to stop applauding and loudly agreeing.

"To this day they still continue to supress such beneficial and life-changing technologies! Like the good people at Andersons Robotics!"

He holds up a newspaper shwoing a boy with an abnormally large head angrily yelling at a shame-faced and handcuffed Foundation agent...while two others behind him beat up a green, screaming alien...while a girl with purple hair was being forcibly put into a straightjacket and dog muzzle in the background...

"They thought they could fool us with trying to hide their failures through hiding Andersons under the Cybus Brand. Thankfully a young rising-star in the parawatch comunity saw through their lies and blew the whislte on them. But he didn't stop there, oh no! When the SCP sent their thugs to silence him he turned the whole thing around and not only made them look like fools but also exposed their corruption further! For years this poor boy has been trying to warn the world about a hostile alien menace that threatend the world! For years he tried to squeal on Dr. Membraine's negligance poisoning the water supply and reducing the populace to simpering morons! And years they've been supressing the truth for no doubt their own greed and malfeasance! I tell you where dose the travestys and abuse of power ends!?" He shouts dramatically to more angry agreement and thunderus applause.(8)

"But those days are behind us! We are in a new age! The 'powers that be' are no more! No longer will such beneficial technologies and magics be hoarded by the privliged few, but spread out to YOU the people!"

He waits for the applause to die down once more before speaking again. "Ensuring this will be the whole point behind the Esoterica coalition. In addition to the Flame Keeper's circle and our friends the Septarsis; this coalition will also consist of the good people at the Mana Charitable Foundation! Yet another group of well meaning individulas that have been downtrodden and censored by the likes of the Foundation! Also, we hav various entrepeneurs who have also joined forces with us!"

Everyone applauds as four very well known celebrities/tycoons/philantropists come on to the stage.

Henri Crosteau: CEO of Frankodyne Industries, award winning scientist, and
Oceanographer famed for his Environmentalist crusades.

Colonel Kluckin: Who didn't know the cournel? His image was synonymus with Good chicken! They were lip-smacking good, he did declare! He'd made quite a nmae for himself giving free chicken to refugees and the homeless(all tax-deductible charity work of course and Good PR to boot!)

Dušan Nemec: The Cheif Technology Officer(CTO)/tech guru of Blume: A Rising Tele-comunication giant who were on the verge of automating entire cities!

Nigel Cass: The charismatic CEO and Commander in cheif of the paramilitary Corporation Albion. They were popular for all their humanitarian work as well as their systematic takedown of numerous high-profile terrorist groups and crime Syndicates.

"They among many others have joined the Esoterica and together we will overcome all adversity and propel Humanity to a new golden age!" Exclaimed Edwards as he took in more thunderous applause as he wrapped up the confrence.

The Cournel spoke up, "Before yah'll leave. There's a -I say- there's a present under yah'll chairs. One last cheer went up as everyone found buckets of chicken beneath their chairs!

Rasticoar ate his bucket as well...he had the give the Southern gentleman credit...slugs tasted like crap compared to this!

...

Eclipsa was in the middle of sighning some paperwork. Essentially what she was agreeing to was that after the transitional period to make sure all her citizens were taken care of...she'd abdicate and sell her claim to the throne and her kingdoms land for a VERY generous price...which she was fine with. She was DONE with all the drama and pagentry..she just wanted focus on what REALLY matterd; her family.

Plus...if she was honest here...the throne of Mewni was kinda worthless now after everything that happend...so she was actually quite puizzled why she was getting such a substantial payment for it.

Her husband guessed that with all the P.R. and legal fires on them right now; they couldn't afford to 'not dot every I and cross every T' nor could they afford to look like they in any way tried to cheat someone as high-profile and popular- her popularity soared with humans when the details of her tragic backstory) got out -as Eclipsa.

She also heard that the rest of the Butterfly family had sold their rights to the throne as well...after stealing everything that wasn't nailed down...it was very likely they'd be changing their names and idenities as well...

Plus, she'd heard that the Johansen family had given the government the go-ahead to buldoze over what little remained of Butterfly castle and any other Buttefly historic sites...it was fairly obvious that both familes just wanted this whole thing to go away...between this and almost all the Mewmans being recuited as 'D-class personal'...it truly did seem to be the end of the Butterfly dynasty..

Eclipsa knew she should be more sad...but really, it wasn't like she had much happy memories of those places...besides, it had become more and more obvious to her ever since she was freed that all she really wanted was to be with her family...so really, she was fine with this...

"By the way, have you found the Royal crown of the Butterfly family yet?" Asked Eclipsa.

Outside the meeting, several other meetings were taking place...

The Ponyheads were arguing with the pilot union on how their home was blocking air traffic...

Ludo was berating Denise for sighning him up for the Mayoral election without even consulting him first...

Charlie Booth, AKA Gustav, AKA François, AKA Pablo, AKA Feechi, AKA BOYZZZB4. Was being intorgated for his repeated identity fraud...

And two Johansens were discussing politics. "I don't feel comfortable about all this." Said Lump Johansen as he trotted along with his cousin Grunt. "I mean, Star only really did what she did because of Moon...and now Moon's dead...can't we just leave it at that?"

Grunt sighed, "We've been over this...being in any way associtaed with the family that brought about the desturction of magic AND threw the cosmos into chaos is both an embaressment and political death sentence of the highest order. Were gonna have a hard enough time adjusting our kingdom to this new world as is! We don't need that kind of baggage! Need I remind you that a large portion of the family and nobles just wanted to kick those two out of the family altogether!? This was a compromise! Besides, this isn't really that bad. We Annul River's marriage to Moon- King Johansen made sure to keep River's 'power of attorney' after he shin-kicked ther carnival cruise director during his fifth honeymoon -and we have River and Star live a luxurious life in our family'summer home indefinetly! It's win-win all around!" He leaves out how the Summer home was essentially the place they put poltical prisoners, embaressments to the family and anyone else they wanted to keep out of sight...

"Well...okay...but do we have to spring it on him now? Can't we let him mourn for his wife in peace?"

While they continued to talk...neither noticed their Grand niece Star Butterfly listening in...looking hurt...then resolved as she walked away again...

...

Conduit Edwards continues to smile and wave happily as the last of the press and audience leaves while he walks into the private elevator with Rasticoar...the moment the door closed...his smile turned to a sneer.

"Bunch of mindless sheep...the lot of them!" He says irritably. Rasticoar stays quiet, he personally felt that was a good thing as it helped their plan along...but although these former 'Neo-Sarkics' were happy to exploit it they still seemed pissed at it for some reason?...in any case, Rasticoar felt it best to just keep quite and roll with it.

As the elevator reached the secret inner-sanctum, Edward took out a priestly robe from an inner compartment. He then came to a room filled with Former Sarkics, former Singers, former Fiftists, the few REAL Flame Keepers(9)as well as many of Raticoars fellow Septarsis.

Rasticoar waited patiently as Edwards ranted through yet another sermon. He again recaped how he and his faction were excommunicated and cast out from even their fellow Neo-Sarkics simply becuase they dabbled in enlightened magic. He ranted on how the deaths of all other Sarkics vindiacted them and proved how the rest were 'evolutinary dead-ends'. How evolution should be dictated by SURVIVAL, not religous doctrine- the irony/hypocricy of him saying that during a SERMON, clearly lost on him. He goes on to indicate how all their gods were now either dead or useless. How in this new age they need no longer rely on gods...but rather strive to become Gods themselves.

Rasticoar was a bit concerned how many of his people seem to be drinking this in...but he suppoused it didn't matter. Edward had the resources and connections to bring his people back to greatness. That was all that matterd to him.

After the Sermon had cocluded, Edward was approached by Genron CEO; Franklin D. Mann. "Hey, did you know that The heart of a shrimp is located in its head? Also, how come I wasn't invited to your swanky press confrence? Also where's MY chicken?!"

Conduit Edaward sighed, "Well among other reasons, you 'firing' the press would've been bad PR." He states faltly.

"Uh, yeah. right... Also your fired." "I don't work for you, you can't fire me." Reminded Edward pateintly for the Fiftith time today.

"Oh, right." Said D. Mann looking lost for a second... Then an intern came by to give him a latte. "Ah, neat. right on time." Takes a drink. "And you got it just the way I liked it too! What's your name?" "Hank Perkins" Said the intern proudly. "Oh, well. Perkins your fired." "Again, dosen't work for you. Can't fire him." Said Edward flatly as he walked away from the confused intern and the dumbfounded D. Mann.

While wondering if having Genron's resources, skilled staff and seemingly limitless supply of 'technically' legal animal test subjects was worth having to deal with that lunatic...

As he and Rasticoar walked through the various secret labs and occult R&D shrines, they were on their way to the 'heart' of the operation when they were breifly diverted by the arrival of another associate.

The alien bounty hunter Cad Bane(10) gave them a weird watch...still attached to a childs severed hand.

"One authenticated Omnitrix! As promised!" Says Cad proudly. This mission hadn't been easier. The watch had been in the posession of some brat, one sniper round to the head and he was dead(11). The family was taken out just as quickly. Cad preferd to avoid collateral damage he wasn't paid for, but he'd learned from hard expereince that surviving family tend to come after you in 'revenge' and that was just annoying...

Edward nods, "Your services are as always appreciated...but what of the Calamity Box?"

Cad Bane snarled, "That agent you placed into that antique store was a moron! A snot-nosed brat stole it before I could get there to pick it up!"

"What?! Where is it now?!" Demanded Edwards. Before the Cleaving, Edward had little resources to fall back on. He was so desperate he resorted to planting his few meager agents into antique stores on the off-chance SOMEONE brought in ANY kind of anomoly for him to exploit. One day he got an alert about an agent gaining the long lost 'calamity Box'...Unfortunately the Foundation happend to be running an unrealted investiagtion near that area, so Edward was forced to order the agent to 'go quiet' until the heat died down.

Shortly after that, the Cleaving happend and Edward got so wrapped up plundering many now abanadoned Sarkic strongholds for assets, buliding alliances, using the Flame Keeper circle 'sob story' to build up his reputation and tear down his rivals...He'd completely forgotten about it...and even if he hadn't he probably would've just assumed that it's magic winked out when the realm of magic bit it and gave it no more thought...

And then to his surprise, his agent got antsy enough to break radio silence to ask for orders...Edward was stunned to hear the box was still working properly!

Learning Cad Bane was on his way back to Esotrica HQ and would be passing the area, he'd promised the bounty Hunter a little extra if he discretely brought the box as well...

Cad bane then explained how he'd tried to trakc the girls. He had his techno-service droid hack security camera's around the city...and an ATM caught the three girls opening the box..and being zapped away in an explosion...along with the box...

Edward pinched his nose annoyed...but decided it wasn't too big of an issue. Although having the calmaity box would've helped his cause greaty, it wasn't essential. No, this was but one minor hiccup in a string victories he'd been having non-stop lately.

He thanks Cad Bane for his service and pays the agreed upon amount. He puts assigns some agents to analyze the affected area and keep watch in the unlikely event they came back somehow...

But with that taken care of he had bigger fish to fry...

They enterd the 'heart' of their operations. Rasticoar kneeled in respect to the operating table that was currently reviving his people's progenitor, their most repected leader and hero...Seth.

Finding his corpse had been hard enough. But resurecting him had strained even the Esoterica's now vast assets.

Rasticoar was no fool. He knew he was only able to get him to agree to this undertaking because resurecting Seth would buy him the graditude and loyalty of the Septarsis people! Additonally, Seth's influence and leadership acted as a great unifying force to help the various Septarsis tribes work together...

But although ressurected, it would be awhile before he was 100%. As it was, he only had one useable limb...which he was using to read a newspaper.

Rasticoar couldn't help but watch baffled as the two greeted each other like old friends...it was hard NOT to after witnessing their first meeting after Seth had been revived...

...a week or so ago...

Conduit Edward eagerly approached the newly resurected Vermillion Septarsis. "Hello Mr. Seth, I-

GACK!

Suddenly he found his throat grabbed by Seths one good arm and forcibly lifting him up.

Seth gives him a puzzled sniff. "Is he some new form of Mewman? Or at the very least a sepcise that has a similar form and smell?"

Rasticoar was torn between awe of seeing his peoples great hero in action and discomfort at seeing his ally being manhandled.

"Well...he's a human...but their have been some recent evidence showing the possibility of them bein distant ancesotrs of Mewmans-

CRACK!

"Yet another specise for me to raing my fury upon." Said Seth as he snaped Edwards neck with a simple flex of his finger.

"Well, we have something in common then."

Both Septarsis gape in disbeleif as Edward continues to speak despite his neck clearly being broken and left to dangle!

Seth quickly drops the 'corpse' as it effortlessly snaps it neck back into black while it's body begins to morph into many bloody tendrils and ligaments...the scent of 'human' now shown to be srtifical and fals...

"What are you?" Asked Seth baffled.

"A man who share your disdain for humans. More importantly a man who shares your disdain AND can do bussines with you to do something about it..."

...

Rasticoar had known there'd been something 'off' about Edward...but he'd never have guessed this! It was hard to wrap his mind around it...but apparently he and his sub-sect of Neo-Sarkics were humans that...hated humans?...and themeslves?...sorta?...(12)

Well, whatever it was all about; Seth seemed amused by the concept of a 'self-hating human' enough to not try to kill him anymore and continue their alliance...for the moment at least...

"-In any case the new shipment of corrupted magic came out...you think you'll FINALLY tell me why you insisted we ask for that- Don't get me wrong; we've gatherd some valuable data and materials after we process it through the Centrifugation...But I feel like there's more to it then that..." Finished Edward.

Seth breifly toys with telling him or not...but then shrugs to himself as he decides 'in for a slug in for slurple-pounder'...

"As you know...I can only make one Grey at a time-

"I've been meaning to ask about that...who did you eat to make the tribes?" He asked inquisitively.

Seth blanched, "How the devil..."

"My good man, CANNIBALISM is a large aspect of my former religion...we even ate GODS sometimes...Needless to say...I can recognize the afteraffects of it well-enough...have it down to a science really..."

Rasticoar know right then and there that he probably shouldn't have heard that...but he was now too nervous to leave, lest they notice him...

Fortunately, Seth was busy looking...disturbingly intrigued?

"Hmmm...I'll have to talk with you more on that 'science' later...but nevermind. The point I was trying to make is that due to some...'complications' during the Grey's inception...I was forever stuck to only ever make one living Grey at a time...Never being able to make another until the last one made DIED..."

Rasticoar didn't get it...

But Edward did...

"You haven't made a new Grey yet..." A hint of a anticipatory smirk begins to crese his mouth...

"I don't have the strength to do anything like that yet...but it dosen't matter, I can feel that even if I did...I COULDN'T, because-

"-Your successor LIVES." Finished Edward with laugh.

"HIM!?" Exclaims Rasticoar. His amazed disbelief winning out over his caution.

Seth just smirks, "Yes...which...if you think about it...puts many of the events of the last year in a rather diffrent light..."

Before he could elaborate; an alarm begisn to blaze in the Centrifugation room...they had found...SOMETHING...

Deep in the ooze of the corrupted magic...something was being lifted out by a crane...

And while that happend...that thing began to reform...and REMEMBER...

...(?)(?)(?)...

"You dang monster, got out of my house!" Screamed Mina deep within the monster temple...

ZAP!

...(?)(?)(?)...

He snapped off his finger and dropped it in the ooze while the girl was too busy drowning to notice...

'Too busy looking at the right hand to notice the left...'

...(?)(?)(?)...

"I'm so excited this party will be just what everyone needs!" Shouts Star as she finishes setting things up inside the Monster Temple for her big 'Monster Bash'...

She never notices the pair of yellow reptilian eyes watching her from the shadows...

...(?)(?)(?)...

Moon panics, her Mewberty form had been corrupted by Eclipsa's interference! She needed to flee until her power stablized enough! Not caring where, she opens a random portal and runs through...

She never notices the portal being forcibly shifted from it's current destination...to the Realm of magic...

...(?)(?)(?)...

As Moon lost more and more of her mind...so too did she wash away the corruptive taint of the dark spell from her body...

The dark taint corrupted the pure golden magic of the realm...

And in that corruption...something stirred...and grew STRONG...

...(?)(?)(?)...

Firstborn grunted as she pulled the car filled with her mother and her friends across the Realm of magic...

She never noticed the dark corruption following her until it was too late...

...(?)(?)(?)...

Marco fought off the corupted millhorses while Star and the others continued the whispering spell to desatroy the realm of magic...

Her never noticed that they weren't giving it their all to stop them...nor that they only got serious when Mina showed up and focused on attacking her...

...(?)(?)(?)...

He knew he shouldn't...

It was needlessly risky...would gain him nothing...and it was a bit childish...

But his greatest enemy...planning to continue his work? Admiting HE was right? In front of the paininting chornicling her mothers greatest sucess and his greatest shame...

Really, how could he resist?

Using the conection the wand had witht he realm of magic to tweak things ever so slightly...

SURPRISE!

Shouts the painting of Toffee suddenly, frightening Star...

...Now...

The half-formed figure of the most infamous Grey septarsis that ever walked Mewni was now slumped on the floor...barely conscious...but still very much ALIVE...

Edward smirks as he orders for him to be taken to medical...and his tailor to size him up for a new suite, "Now things get interesting..."

...

Star Butterfly sat sadly on the top of a spire that used to be her home...she looked down as numerous pieces of equipment prepared to buldoze the entirity of the old ruins of Butterfly castle...

Evidently the only reason nobody else was here was due to a...'possum attack'? Star frowns at the alert on the earth phone she'd gotten recently... 'well that can't be right'. She closes the phone and focuses once again on the soon to be demolished symbol of her family's power and authority...

Her family's legacy...undone and paved over...forgotten and unloved by all...

"Star!"

Star sighed, she'd been delaying this for as long as possible...but she suppoused there was no helping it anymore...

She turns to see Marco climb up the spire to her, "Star! I've been looking for you all day! Are you okay?!" Panted Marco as he climbed toward his best friend.

Star sighed, "Not really Marco..." She admited flatly.

Marco sighed, "Yeah, I heard about your Mom. I'm so sorry Star, I-

"I'm not sad about that...I mean...I know I SHOULD be but..." She sighed and shook her head. "I don't know...after everything that's happend recently...all of it pilling on nonstop...I think I'm just more NUMB to it all then anything...y'know what I mean?"

"Uh..." Marco Murmured unsure.

Star groans, "Nevermind...Marco...you and I need to talk..." She said in a serious tone.

Marco is nervous...but he sits down beside her.

"Marco...be honest with me...do you like me for me...or because I'm the only thing your sure is 'real' and want to hold on to me to assure yourself that YOUR real?"

Marco gasped, "Star, how can you say that!? I mean, I know things are messed up...but I don't care about any of that! What I feel for you is real! I don't care about any of that other stuff!"

"Not even about how your junk keeps shrinking the longer your in a relationship with me?" Asked Star flatly.

Marco went very red, "What the? How did you- He shakes his head. "Nevermind, that dosen't matter and nieth dose that. Look I don't care what those SCP jerks say...or whay Glosaryck 'planned'...I love you! And if the universe dosen't like it...then frak the universe!" He declared boldly.

Star chuckled... "That's sweet Marco...but all joking aside of your 'condition'...that's a pretty serious health concern...I don't like the idea of me cuasing you to be unwell."

"What?! Star, listen. Don't worry about that! Look, I know things have been crazy lately...but we'll get through it! We always do!" Said Marco firmly as he takes her hands into his.

Star smiles touched...but then gets sad again as she pulls away. "I'm sorry Marco...but I think this time is diffrent...I REALLY screwed up this time..." She says as she looks over the horizon sorrowfully.

"What? No, look. Star I know that everyone-

"Marco, I threw the ENTIRE universe into chaos! The lives of everyone in BOTH worlds, all powerful secret agencies, beings of great power, occult groups, and a millions of other universes have been completely turned upside down because of me! The MHC, my spells, my DAUGHTER, the laser puppies! ALL DEAD! I'm like that giant, purple, Whatshisface, guy who was obsessed with collecting Gems! "

"Uh...actually the puppies are still alive...they just don't have lasers?" Offered Marco as he desperately grasped at straws...

Star sighed, "Well...that makes me feel alittle better...but that sitll dosen't change things-

"Star, come on! What choice did you have-

"I could've just used the anihilation spell-

"That would've destroyed all of Mewni!"

"And that would've been worse then destroying everywhere else?!"

"Well...you at least saved Mewni..."

"Did I Marco? Did I really save Mewni? Magic was the backbone of our society Marco! My people were hopeless without my family leading them! Now I've basically exiled them to an unknown world with no safety net and no way to keep them safe! Shouldn't I have thought things better then my so called 'plan'?"

"NO! YOU COULDN'T! YOUR A FREAKING 14 YEAR OLD GIRL WHO WAS THROWN IN THE MIDDLE OF A FREAKING GENOCIDAL WAR! THE FACT YOU HANDLED IT HALF AS WELL AS YOU DID WAS FRANKLY A MIRACLE!"

Marco panted as Star looked at her boyfriend stuned at his outburst.

Marco takes a moment to compose himself. "Look Star...Maybe I'm not the best person to be talking to you about this. Maybe I AM biased. Maybe being your best friend, your boyfriend, possibly seeing you as my anchor to what is real or just being angry and eager to spite those SCP Foundation jerks who apparently have nothing better to do then make fun of my genitals is making me shortsighted and clouding my view of some serious flaws of yours. These are all possibilities that I can't pretend MIGHT be an issue here. I freely admit to that- He takes a deep breath. -That being said...here's what I think."

He pulls out his phone and begins to show her pictures of the various adults in her life.

"If the MHC was less racist; Eclipsa would never have been imprionsed, nor would Globgor, Metora never would've become Miss Heinous, and there'd be less problems with the monsters."

"If Solaria had never gone on her insane genocidal crusade against monsters or at least NOT created that stupid spell to create Solarian warriors...again, things would be better with the monsters but more importantly there'd be no Mina!

"Mina...do I really need to elaborate how many of our problems would've NOT happend if she'd just STOPPED being a crazy, racist, genocidal bitch... for FIVE seconds!?"

"The Mewman people in general? If they'd just got over themselves, grew up, and stopped getting angry everytime someone tried to change things or told them something they didn't want to hear...AGAIN, so much problems averted!

"Eclipsa...look, I like Eclipsa, I REALLY do. But let's be honest; without your help she wouldn't have felt motivated to do anything beyound help the monsters or free Globgor while she was in charge! I'm no politician, but the fact she needed to rely on a teenager to help her run the kingdom in any way dose NOT speak well of her capabilities as a ruler!"

"All the other royals...they looked the other way from how poorly Mewni was treating monsters for centuries! For crying out loud, half of them qualify as monsters themselves!...but did they ever point that out? NO! It didn't affect them, they were given privliges because of their wealth...and apparently that was good enough for them!"

"Your mom- Sees the hurt look in Stars eyes and softens a bit -I'm sorry Star...I know you don't want to hear this...but a large portion of the problems we had was becaue of her! Without her Mina would've just remained a crazy nut ploting vengeance; but she gave her the manpower, the magic and the political clout to get things done! You never would've had to destroy magic if not for her interferance! And Let's not forget Toffe! She could've killed him then and there when he first showed up, but she let the monster who murderd her mother LIVE just so Eclipsa would stay locked up!"

Marco takes another deep breath; "Star...your an amazing, extraordinary, wonderful girl...who took on so much crap on her shouldiers the past year or so...and was able to push far beyound what was expected of her...time and time again people underestimated you and time and time again you proved them wrong...but the fact is...you never should've had to deal with this crap at all! Your people acted like spoiled children, generations of politicains and most of your ancestors either couldn't be botherd to deal with the Mewni/monster situatuion or just made it WORSE. you were dealing with an avanalce of racism, xenophobia, negligance and the repeated failures of the ADULTS around you who should have known better! Star your a TEEN that was forced to fight a WAR that frankly should've been dealt with by ADULTS, years before you were born!"

Star just looks at him thoughtfully for a moment...then smiles... "Thanks Marco...that's nice of you to say...you always did know what to say to cheer me up...but the more I've thought of it...while you did make some good points...I still need to take some personal responsibility for this..."

She looks over the horizon once more...

"I've taken a long hard look at my actions the past year...and they weren't great..."

She ticks off the threats she'd dealt with. "Ludo...Toffee...Ludoffee...Meteora...Mina...all those foes. I only ever took them serious AFTER they struck. I always REACTED, but never took any real initiative to fight them BEFORE they become a problem. And while I had my moments, I clearly have no idea how to be a ruler...that 'feild trip' demonstrated that if nothing else..."

Marco shudders at the memory of the yarn monster...

"And then there was my so called 'plans' to help Monsters and Mewmans...'have a party and make monsters and mewmans go together on the cornball team and just assume everything would work out okay?'" She says that last bit annoyed and grunts to herself. "Oh, what was I thinking?!"

"Hey come on! All your efforts paid off eventually! Monsters and Mewmans now...tolerate each other. That's a HUGE step up from how things were before!" Rebuked Marco.

Star nods, "Okay fine, but the fact is...now that I'm not a princess...or even magic...I don't know what to with myself...heck, looking back I didn't even know what I wanted to do with my RELATIONSHIPS! I seemed to just flip-flop. I mean one day I'm obsessively sniffing your hoodie-

"Say what?!"

-the next day I'm going from club snubbing TOM to getting back together in the duration of ONE dance?! What kind of girlfriend is that!?"

"Hey, come on Star! None of know what to do when it comes to relationships! I did nothing but 'nod' to the girl I liked for YEARS! Not to mention I basically abandoned Jackie to go chase Hekapoo for what I thought would be even MORE years!"

Star nods, "Okay, maybe...but still...between that...all the other junk I got going on...I just don't think I can give 100% to ANY relationship right now..."

Marco looked at her stunned, "What...what are you saying Star?"

Star tried very hard to keep from crying, "I...I need time to rethink what I'm going to do with my life...WHO Iam...and just what I can do to maybe fix some of the damage I caused...I'm sorry Marco, but I just...I need time to myself..."

She begins to walk off...

"Wait, Star! What are you sayingh? Are we...over?" Asked Marco...his heart feels like it's shattering.

Star stops and thinks for a moment... "No...but I do think that we both need a break...from EVERYTHING...I need to handle my own 'issues', and you...well...you said it yourself that you can't deny the possibility that your loving me for the wrong reasons...so...I don't know...date some other girls...grow as a person...learn WHO you are without me...find a way to make even BETTER nachos if possible...if I come back and you STILL want to be with me...well...we'll see..."

Star jumps off the spire and gets away before Marco can stop her...

With nothing else to do...Marco just sits on the spire... just huddles down..and cries...

Star- ignoring her own tears -make some quick calls to Jackie and Janna...whatever else...she wanted Marco to be happy...

Jackie took the whole revelations rather chill along with her new 'partner' Chloe(13)...they'd been actaully considering experimenting with a threesome, so this worked out well...

Janna was planning on trying something with Tom...but she'd be game to 'play' with Marco every now-and-then...

That taken care of...Star makes sure some notes are sent to her father and other friends...while sneaking past the SCP outpost where several agents were trying to 'learn gator' and convince the guardians to bring the Magic Sanctuary back to the surface...

With all that taken care of...she stood before 'The Forest of Certain Death'. It had been mostly cordoned off, but Star had been here enough times to know a few hidden ways inside...

She pushed aside a boulder to reveal a ancient entrace...with two flaming brazier's on either side.

Star has a look of determination, it was time...to rediscover who she was...

Star sighed as she takes off her 'horns'... "Well, I won't be needing this anymore." She tosses them into the fire.

"Or this- throws phone into fire too -Or this- her wallet -Or this- her compact -Or this- her charger -Or this- make-up kit -Or this- BaccooMax -Or this- Wanyūdōman -Or this- Dactylman -Or this- M-Portal-3 player -Or this- purse -Or this- miniDahu player -Or this- GaasyendiethaBoy -Or this- GaltzagorriakGear -Or this- MUPS Navigation system -Or this- (P-Dijin-A) -Or this- beeper -Or that- booper -Or this- bumper -Or this- sparkler -Or this- flasher -Or this- pinger -Or this- winger -Or this- zinger -Or this- DictaWand -Or this- clothes -Or this- tuba -Or these- playing cards -Or this." Britta's taco's gamematt is the last thing thrown in.

Star nods satisfied...then a cold breeze makes her shiver. "Wait, CRAP! Why did I throw out my clothes!? NO!" She tries to grab for them...but they've alredy been burnt to ash.

Star graons as she uses her hair to cover her now bare form, "Okay...another thing to add to the list...Stop doing weird, random crap without thinking things through..." She says with a shiver.

Nonetheless, with as much dignity as she can muster...she walks with determination into the forest of certain death...none saw her entry...

except...

He was a tall, bald, muscular man with bright cyan skin. His attire consisted of a jet-black suit and red circular sunglasses...

He watched from the shadows as Star Butterfly took her first steps to a new destiny...knowing it would be along time before anyone laid eyes on her again...

The man chuckled, "Go on little caterpillar...go grow out of your cocoon...You ain't the Buterfly queen this kingdom needs- He looks at the Royal crown he'd stolen from Eclipsa's room -Not yet..."

He walks off into the distance...watches Butterfly castle be knocked over and reduced to rubble...all the while whistling... 'She's gonna earn her crown, so hail to the quee-e-e-een!'

...

Well...that was something...

But before we bring this act to a close...

Let's take one last, quick peek into the world at large...

...

'Nothing personal 'shooting star'...but it's either you or humanity...

He brings the knife down toward the girls heart-

BANG!

"Hey! Wake-up! Your up next!" The SCP Agent awoke and saw the balif was here. He nods and is escorted to the courtroom...

The Agent walks down the hall as he watches SCP-2085(AKA the Black Rabbit Company) happilly cheering as they are escorted out of the courtroom...clearly they'd been granted their freedom...well good for them.

He didn't have much time to dwell on that though...he was being escorted into the courtroom and onto the witness stand...

He saw Legal Lee, the bastard was as smug as ever...

He saw the SCP Lawyer Sam, just looked numb...clearly he hadn't been having a good couple of weeks...not hard to see why...

And finally a certain family he'd hoped never to see again...the Pines family...the Pines boy glaring daggers through him...and a purple unicorn?

'Well, nice to know that this job can still surprise me at least.' He thinks to himself as he takes his place on the stand and Legal begins his cross-examination...

"Right, let's just get right to...why excatley did you feel it was needed to murder a little girl?"

The agent internaly sighed, this was going to be a LOOOONG day...

...III...

TO BE CONTINUED?

(1): Reflectacorp; like many pre-Cleaved Galactic mega-corps had their technology running exclusively on Romanticist magic. So when magic left, their entirecorporate empire essentially crumbled into obsolete bankruptcy... But don't worry about Seashorse. His tech skills are so superb he'll be snapped up by Anderson's Robotics for a top-dollar position!...

(2): Roughly translated:

"Son, now is not the time."

"The conference will be starting soon."

"My son, Listen to me. Let me be clear: We-

"Yes, WE. They'll never admit it- as I will never admit it to them -but I'm fairly certain all the royals received the SAME visit from the MHC and Moon as I did before this whole fiasco occurred."

"To convince us to support Moon after she reclaimed the throne AND an agreement for all of us to not interfere as she retook the throne from Eclipsa...which after the usual political concessions and back-and-forths, we all agreed to."

"Star had nothing to do with this! You already explained how YOU were the one to break things off this time, how despite the circumstances you actually managed to it an a VERY amicable way, you even came off the bigger person giving Marco permission to date Star within a mere HOUR of said break-up!..."

"Oh, my son. I know you are angry with me right now. But you have become so mature and grown-up, I'm so proud of you!"

"Despite my issues with Star, I would NEVER do this for a reason so petty as that! Try to understand my dear boy, this was for the good of our kingdom!"

"I know sweetie...but therein lied the problem: She was a good leader to the MONSTERS and ONLY the monsters."

"Son, have you never wondered why monsters were so reviled by the Mewmans...yet we Lucitors were so loved and respected?"

"Well, technically that's a bit of an oversimplification...but actually YES, that is essentially the reason."

"Yes."

"My son, it is not impossible to be BOTH a good ruler and a good person...but it is more often enough a requirement for a leader to give up the later for the former."

"My boy, we and the other rulers NEVER liked the treatment the monsters were given by the Mewmans. But at the end of the day, the Mewmans were the most rich and powerful kingdom in the land and the monsters were just a dirt-poor minority of a foreign power. So in the name of keeping our people happy and prosperous, we looked the other way to the monsters plight. The only reason we signed Star's agreement was to gain potential favor with the future Queen of Mewni, but we never actually expected it to go anywhere. We honestly just figured that either this was a rebellious phase she would grow out of. Or the MHC would eventually just do to her what they did to Eclipsa to maintain the status quo."

"That's politics."

"No, we HAD to accept her because there was no other options. Star gave away the throne. Moon was nowhere to be found. River was...terrible. The Johansen family gaining control of TWO kingdoms would have tipped the balance of power too much in their favor, which the other kingdoms were firmly against. The rest of the Butterfly family was in chaos after the revelations of really being illegitimate bastards to the throne and PIE PEOPLE descendants- She pauses to shudder in revulsion at even thinking of such a possibility -so they couldn't step in. The only other option would be to let the Mewni kingdom fall apart with no ruler, which would just make things WORSE."

"Was she son? Was she REALLY?"

"Ah, but what ELSE did she do as Queen? Can you think of any other feats that she accomplished during her time as a leader?"

"More important then maintaining good relationships with the other kingdoms, keeping the global economy afloat, and stopping her subjects from resorting to banditry and illegal immigration?"

"Sweetie, I know your a teen and such things you tend to ignore...but have you seriously not noticed the problems that have been popping up the last year or so in the other kingdoms outside Mewni, or at the very least in your HOME kingdom?!"

"Well, if you had been paying attention. You'd have realized that before the 'Cleaving' we were in the middle of a global recession! In addition to a full-on immigration crisis!"

"My son, the most powerful, most wealthiest nation in the old world has in the past year been repeatedly invaded and ravaged...did you really think their would be no consequences to that?

"The economic slump began first during King Rivers brief and disastrous solo reign of debauchery, Ludo's/Toffe's/whatever-the-hell-he-was-suppoused-to-be's conquest only made things worse flattening everything and making many citizens flee in fear. After Toffe's defeat, Moon was thankfully able to start rebuilding things, things were still bad but with Moon on the case we were confident things could be fixed...but then the whole Meteora disaster occurred. After the kingdom of Mewni was destroyed...AGAIN...Star gave up to the throne to Eclipsa! Her reputation aside, she didn't do ANYTHING to fix any of the kingdoms woes. She didn't fix the damage, she didn't work on getting the economy back on track, she didn't do ANYTHING to convince the diaspora of Mewmans to move back! If anything she made it WORSE by kicking Mewmans out of their homes- Before you say anything. Yes, I know she was just giving the monsters back what belonged to them. But again, that's the root of the problem! If it didn't have to do with helping monsters gain equality, spending time with her daughter, or helping Globgor escape she couldn't be bothered. Heck, if Star hadn't pushed her to try to maintain good relationships with the other kingdoms, she wouldn't even have done that! For crying out loud, she more or less 'flaked' on the Spiderbites while Star was forced to improvise and make a fool of herself!"

"Look, I know the hell Eclipsa and her family was put through and from one mother to another I genuinely hope she and her family find happiness...but while I can respect her as a mother and even a warrior...she was a subpar leader. Plain and simple. She lavished all her attention on her family and a underprivileged minority while the rest of the kingdom fell apart and the other kingdoms were dragged with it! Both through the economic slump and the surge of incompetent Mewman immigrants who flooded our countries! And THAT my boy is why we sided with Moon and looked the other way as with MHC support she took back the throne. All the kingdoms had a golden age with Moon in charge. Heck even dethroned she was still unintentionally helping us! She unwittingly minimized the Mewman immigration crisis by attracting the majority of displaced Mewmans to her 'village'! We barely tolerated Eclipsa because we didn't want to get zap by the wand, didn't want the kingdom to fall apart completely and cause further anarchy and the promise to keep Globgor imprisoned. That was it! Supporting her overthrow for Moon was just common sense. But let me be VERY clear; we had no idea MINA had ANYTHING to do with this! And if we had, I guarantee we wouldn't have gone along with it! That woman was an insane bitch BEFORE the Solarian empowerment ritual started to twist and degrade her mind...THAT more then anything would've been a deal-breaker!"

"Oh, my son. As I said, It's not impossible to be a good person AND a good leader...but it is difficult...and as king...more often then not you must put aside what YOU think is right for what is right for your people and Kingdom...if you ever want to be king, you must learn that..."

(3): Think of this as an AU; where all these One Piece villians got imprionsed before ever meeting Luffy(whether or not Luffy will exist at all is still up in the air just to be clear). Also Blackbeard just flat out killed Whitebeard and took his powers. And all the guys he recruited on Level 6 will just already be in his crew and imprisoned here with him; so no 'Marineford' or 'Impel Down' arc's...which also means Ace lives!...probably...maybe...we'll see...

(4): Their magic is demon magic, so like Tom their magic still works and they didn't die.

(5): Tarakudo, his Oni and Shadowkhan all gain their magic from the Shdow realm, completly diffrent from the Realm of magic.

(6): Facilier gets his magic from the Loa realm.

(7): Dai-shi would've been fine if he still had a body like his army since they drew their power from wild magic. But stuck in spirit form he had no chance...So the Overlords and Phantom beasts are taking command of the Dai-shi Clan now.

(8): Yeah...so here's what REALLY happend: Yes, Dib exposed the Anderson cover-up(It was much easier now that so-called 'conspiracy theorists' are taken more serious these days...it also dosen't hurt that the people in most countries are on a very 'anti-secret paranromal agency' mood at the moment and thus ready and eager to believe the worst of them at the drop of a hat.). But the SCP agency didn't send goons to silence him- they had enough bad publicty as it is - But they did send some agents to find out how a young boy came across that information and plug the leak if possible...to their horror they quickly learned of Zim and the frankly unnaturally 'too dumb to live' people of the town. Fearing some form of 'stupidity plauge' caused by the alien as a beachhead for an invasion; The 0-5 council angrily demanded an explination from the local site-director. The oversight although egregious was caused by negligance rather then corruption. The director apparently couldn't be botherd to listen to ravings of a 'would-be-hardy boy'(to be clear the agent shown shackled and being berated by Dib is that same director). The director was quickly fired and aressted. The Foundation sent several squads of SCP Mobile Task Forces to secure the Membraine family- the only people seemingly not affected by the 'plauge' - bring them to safety and neutralize Zim before his 'virus' spreads. During the commotion however, the MTFs accidentally break Gaz's game. Enraged, she summoned her murderous robo-doll army and attacked the lot of them. Between this, the failure to exorcise Mrs. Bitters from the Skool and the chaos caused by Zim's 'tactics'(AKA Madness)...half the city was destroyed within an hour...Which of course drew the attention of the media. Dib also had no idea that his fathers experiments were leaking into the water supply and causing the citizens stupidity and erratic behavior...and was horrified to learn of this later as his dad and sister were arrested...so naturally the story above is only half-true, twisted, distorted and sensationalized beyound all recognition...but it's the media, so what else is new?

(9): The original Flame Keepers never truly recoverd from the death of their god by the hands of the GOC and the mind-wipe/destruction/seizure of most of their assets and members by the Foundation. Pre-Cleaved, Modern Keeper 'activity'; mostly consisted of a bunch of old, cantankerous geezers coming together every so often to put on wierd hats and ramble about the 'good old days'. They needed to become relevant again, Edward needed a more sympathetic persona to replace the soon to be very demonitized title of Sarkic...it was a match made in hell.

(10): Just because most of the ways to travel the universe are currently inoperable or on the firtz dosen't mean it's IMPOSSIBLE to get around...only difficult.

(11): Sorry, but Ben and his family forgot to wear their plot armor. Also there's no Plumbers in this, so I had it that max was part of the Serpents Hand instead...mostly because that's the only orginization in the SCP universe that I personally feel like he'd willingly join.

(12): To sumarize; Edwards group considers their humanity as a weakenss. Something that needs to be discarded to truly evolve. They essentially see humanity as an obsolete stage in evolution. They desiere to evolve/ascend to a higher being...and have nothing but disdain and loathing for anyone who'd rather be human and live a mediocre/'normal' life.

(13): Who turns out to actually be a real person from France, the memetic barrier allowed her to come through. She was quite insturmental in keeping Jackie from getting too worked over the 'revelations' of her existence...Star- wanting to be fair - points out the possibility of her being brought in and them toying with notion of a threesome just before the Cleaving as yet another ploy of the 'spell' to keep Marco away from her...but they just shrug it off saying, 'It's a crazy world now Star, so why not get a little crazy ourselves?'

Author's Notes:

ANNOUNCEMENT!

I'M GETTING A BOOK PUBLISHED!

The title is '13/13/13' and it'll be coming to a bookstore or E-Book site near you! Xilbris is the publisher, also available at Amazon, Inkitt and BarnesandNoble.

...

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.......

If you want to see more, go to my fanfiction account: https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5874134/The-Cowardly-Christian-du911

...

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chapter 5

View Online

Cleaved: AFTERMATH 5

I OWN AND REGRET NOTHING!

...III...

...many weeks ago...

"Yep."

"ummmmhummm"

The three men of Arlen Texas- Bill, Hank and Boomhaur -just stood in the alley drinking beer...

The fourth- Dale -was now running over to them. "Guy's, guys! It's happening! It's all happening! My Parawatch page is getting so much traffic! Everything's coming up Dale!"

Hank rolled his eyes, "Dang it Dale, you need to stop pushing this 'two worlds have collided' nonsense! I admit the last week or so have been...'odd'. But the UN is going to make a big announcement soon and they'll have a perfectly rationale explanation for all this." He affirms.

Dale snorts, "Yeah, well when your busy making yourself an easy target for the slow burning sloth slowly dragging you toward the world of nine moons to have your suffering feasted upon by the bobbled clown. I'll be safe in my bunker!" He says smugly.

"Did you mean for all those words to come out together, or did they fall out randomly?" Said Hank annoyed at his friends antics.

Before Dale can retort...a Limo cruises right up beside the Alleyway. Out steps a man dressed in a business suite and briefcase.

"Dale Alvin Gribble and Bill Dauterive?" Asks the man.

"Who wants to know?" "Yep." Said both men simultaneously.

"I'm Legal Lee; Attorney at law." He hands them a business card. "I'm the lawyer heading the big SCP Foundation/GOC/UIU/American government/United nations lawsuit. And you two might be entitled to millions of dollars!"

Both men holler in amazement and are about to go with him when Hank just rolls his eyes and holds them back.

"Okay, jokes over. Congrats on finding these two jackasses as easy marks. Now take your scam and get out of here before I call the cops on you."

Legal Lee just smiles, "No need to call them, my friend. Here they come now." He says while pointing. Hank follows his finger and is stunned. Sure enough...here came a police car down the street.

"Huh... well, alright then." Said Hank briefly baffled before deciding that this was just the his tax dollars at work, helping the police be on top of things.

The two policemen came out of the car and Hank walked up to them, "Ah, great to see you officers! This man is trying to rope my friends into a con and I'd appreciate you showing him on his way." He greets warmly.

The cops...looked uncomfortable?

"Uh...yeah...we aren't going to do that." The cop admitted reluctantly.

Hank frowns confused. "What?"

Legal Lee swooped in with a smile. "Hello gentleman, I must say I was rather confused to see you not showing up to immediately escort me when I arrived in Arlen."

One of the officers sighed, "Were sorry Mr. Lee, bureaucratic mix-up."

Legal Lee chuckles, "Oh, I've been there." He then turns to Dale and Bill. "So, I believe you two were agreeing to join the lawsuit?"

"You bet we are!" "I want to be a millionaire!" Shout both men at once as they again rush forward to the limo.

Hank again tries to stop them, but is shocked to find the police blocking HIM.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to step back and NOT interfere with Mr. Lee's work."

"His work? What work? His clearly a con artist. I mean he's going on about that SCP people that Dale is always gabbing about. It's just nonsense!"

The police again look uncomfortable, but still assert themselves. "Sir, with all due respect. These two have been designated as potential witnesses in an ongoing high-level international court case and we must respectively ask you not interfere or we WILL be forced to arrest you for obstructing justice." They said firmly.

Hank looked at them as if they were speaking a foreign language. "I...witnesses?! International court!? Obstructing Justice!? Why are you helping him? He's clearly a two-bit shyster perpetuating some asinine hoax!...right?" He asks that last part deeply unnerved.

Again, the police just looked uncomfortable. "Sir, the investigation is currently ongoing and I'm afraid we can neither confirm nor deny anything at this junction."

"What's to confirm or deny!? Just say he's a fraud and all this is crazy!" Exclaimed Hank...more then a bit desperate to return the conversation in a normal direction...

"Sir, we strongly recommend you just watch the UN announcement tonight...we also strongly recommend that you...have an open mind about things?" The policeman said that last bit as diplomatically as possible before he and his partner quickly back in their car...

"What?" Said Hank looking VERY lost...

Legal Lee steps up and puts a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I pity you good sir, we are in entering a grand new age...and I fear if your not careful...you'll be left behind." He said sympathetically before picking up a beer from their cooler, tosses a wad of cash into said coolert, takes a sip then enters his car to drive away.

"...What just happened?" Asked Hank bewildered.

"Dang-old-need-stop-freting-man-dang-old-big-world-out-there-man-we-just-dang-old-specks-big-old-universe-we-control-jack-shit-just-grab-dang-old-beer-fix-what-you-can-don't-dang-old-worry-about-the-rest-man-what-happens-happens." Said Bomhaur in his usual rapid slur as he pauses to take a sip of beer...

...present day...

The last several weeks had been long and grueling...but the momentum had long shifted in Legal Lee's favor. The Foundation now had an uphill battle just to keep itself existing. Never mind wining the lawsuit!

Legal Lee had been smart about this; he wasn't just well-versed in every legal loophole, bureaucratic trick and all 13 ways to legally murder someone...he was also very good at reading people.

It was blatantly obvious that the Foundation was very devoted to their goals and to the survival of the human race...but also the survival of their organization above all else...and that was something he could take advantage of...

The Ethics committee and 0-5 council naturally didn't want to come at first...but this was simply too important, there was too much pressure and the very REAL possibility that the Foundation would be dissolved.

So reluctantly...they came...

And frankly, they stood out like a sore thumb. mostly because they cannot be SEEN. Even with powerful spotlights focused on them, they are still shrouded in the shadows. Neither their faces nor their bodies can be seen. No cameras can capture their images either, only distorted spots that are vaguely describable.

But one thing is for certain, and that is that at least some of them were clearly not human.

When asked about this, they say that it is part of the technology they use to protect themselves, and to protect the world.

They are asked to stop doing that, but they say that is not possible, not only because revealing their identities could endanger themselves but also throw the world in even greater chaos. More importantly, deactivating everything that keeps them anonymous... it could take centuries. They also stated that their identities were irrelevant to the proceedings and made a motion that they be allowed to stay as is.

After hearing that last bit, Legal Lee allowed this. It didn't really matter who they were. It truly was irrelevant to his plan...and if they were lying and it actually was relevant and they sprung it on him by suddenly revealing themselves? Well, now he could accuse them of perjury as both that and their actions contradicted their previous statement.

So is is agreed that the judgment has to be carried out with them as shadowy and mysterious figures.

For days he allowed various high-ranking official of the Foundation to go on and on about the necessity of the Foundations continued existence...

They go on and on about:

"-How Democracy is not perfect. It doesn't even really work, it never did. The reality about governments and the sovereignty of a country is that it is not decided by the people. But who has the greatest resource and power...

also...

-leaders, first Ministers and their equivalents do not have REAL power as such. Those positions are more an administrative and symbolic power, they are not like those dictators, that is, they do not have the power to shape the country at will. Not even they have that power. The TRUE power belongs to those who have the most power and influence, who never need to run for anything, who act in the shadows and in secret "

also...

"Although it is not always like that, some do what they want directly, and they know that they will never pay for their crimes because they have power, be it money, influence, or important contacts, or control over the media..."

and...

"Another example would be the recent elections in (redacted). How is it even possible that such a large country only had 2 candidates? (redacted) and (redacted), how was it that they were the only ones to run for (redacted)? It was all simple and blatant manipulation to make sure there was only two candidates. 'To remove (redacted), you HAD to vote for (redacted)' was the mentality they pushed. For if there had been more candidates, the people would doubt the results, and they would maybe vote for (redacted) again. The 'powers behind the throne' did not want that, so they manipulated the people from the basic media to social media platforms. All so that the people believe that (redacted) was elected by them, that is your precious democracy "

But more importantly...

-It is true The SCP Foundation has not taken into account the will of the people. It is not democratic and although that dose not always give the most pleasant results, through trial and error we've learned the current system is the best. The SCP Foundation has acted under democracy in the past, acting under the will of the people, and 80% of those times it ended in an cataclysm of biblical proportions. Because the people are not wise, they are not cultured, they are manipulable. "

From there he shows evidence of the different events that led the world to disaster, when the SCP was a Democracy, they are nightmare images that make events like the Holocaust look like a simple childhood malaise...

And since the court hearings were being televised LIVE- this was done since public faith in the government was at an all time low and no one trusted them to not do something shady if the trial was done behind closed doors -the whole world had seen it...

And Legal Lee just let him talk and talk...

He let him argue 'What is moral in the face of the end of everything'?

He let him explain away the question of 'why not just 'neutralize them'?

"-Because trying to usually only makes it worse, and the ones they 'are' trying to destroy usually can't be. Plus there's no guarantee destroying the SCP will stop it from remanifestaiting elsewhere We can't stop everything. It's horrible, but sometimes it's much safer just to feed the dangerous killer gameshow an unrepentant serial killer or two every few weeks..."

They then bring up 'Cragglewood' as an example of what a Keter or an Apolyon is.

Legal Lee had to admire their craftiness. Preying on peoples fears to keep them from being shut down... after all... How well will people sleep now that they know about a shared nightmare world- along with the realization by both the dreamers and their family's that it implies that they once had siblings that have been taken and erased from their minds- How many would still watch TV with the knowledge that at any moment a guy in a sloth costume could ruin their lives? Or let their children watch it, knowing a clown could be indoctrinating them to kill and eat their parents?

Still, all they were doing was playing into his hands...he just lets him rant and talk long enough to give him MORE then enough rope to hang themselves... then...

"Objection your honor! While this all very interesting, I do believe we've lost track of the REASON we are here today. Again, Not that this isn't all very fascinating; I'm sure what is said here will be debated from the academic elites to the Kindergarten playground for years to come. HOWEVER, whether or not the SCP Foundation and the various other organizations brought to task today should still exist and continue what their doing...is NOT why were here. No, that's a headache for a FUTURE Lawyer in a FUTURE trial...no, today we are discussing how the defense willingly abused their power to violate numerous international laws, constitutional rights, ethic codes, etc. In regards to my clients..."

And that's when Legal Lee flipped the whole case around. The defense had been so busy defending their organization right to exist and do what they do...they completely forgot that wasn't the main point of the trial! 'Can't see the forest for the trees' and all that. And thus gave out a lot of information during their testimony that Lee was able to use in his cross-examination to rip their defense to bits...No doubt after this trial...or even DURING this trial...a lot of laws would be changed...but that didn't retroactively change the fact that they DID break those laws in regards to their treatment of his clients...

They were on the ropes and they knew it...it was probably only a matter of time before he was offered a deal...but in the meantime...He'd just keep putting more nails in their coffins...

"Right, let's just get right to it...why exactly did you feel it was needed to murder a little girl?"

Said Legal Lee to the main agent in charge of the 'Gravity Falls' operation...

...a while ago...

Hank calmly drives his family up toward Arlen First Methodist Church. After the...after what had to be some joke hijacking the REAL UN announcement last night...For what else could it be? There was no way the REAL UN would take part in this farce...anyway, he really needed something NORMAL to think about...

To his surprise, he finds it closed and with a sign on the front:

We and all the other various local religious groups are closed to attend the party the new 'Church of the Broken God' is throwing for all our congregations.

It's right across the street, so come on over! All our welcome!

Hank turns around to see a large party in front of an even larger futuristic church that seemed to be hovering. In addition to his usual congregation, there were the congregations of the other faiths...as well as monsters and giant robots?...One of which waves at him...

"Dad...you okay?"

"Sweetie, I can't see where your looking. That bush is in the way, what is it?"

Hank ignores his family. He quickly backs out of the church parking lot so fast, he runs over a mailbox.

For the first time in years, they DON'T go to church...

...

It would be later learned that the prisoners Cole saw escaping weren't the only one's...Rhombulus was never big on organizing. He crystalized someone, brought them to his place and tossed them somewhere. Most of them ended up in the main Foyer with Cole thanks to a spell Lehkmet placed on the place years ago...but a large amount of them just ended up wherever in Rhombulus's dimension.

A couple such groups of prisoners consisted of Queen Bansheera and her army of demons, Master Org and his army of Orgs and Ivan Ooze.

They'd been about to fight each other...when they noticed another crystal cracking... seeing WHO was in it was quick to help them put aside their differences and merge their powers to get the heck out of there...there so busy gleefully escaping...they don't see the 'Crystal' they're fleeing get sucked up too...

In various forms of energy they travel away from the prison to different places...

Master Org and his minions find themselves in a strange, broken and pale city...all under the watchful view of a eerie broadcast tower...

Ivan finds himself in a strange park with silly, creepy cartoonish trees with faces and a carousel...

Of all those who were sent traveling...only the Queens group made it to where they wished.

In a underground, demonic palace the demons known as Diabolico, Vypra, Loki and Jinxer were the first to return to full physical forms after millennia of incarceration.

That's when Queen Bansheera makes her appearance. But she- unlike the rest -is incomplete. A unfortunate side-effect of being crystallized/arrested while doing the ritual to revive her. But now that she is free, she is ready to both resume her conquest and recover her body completely.

"My queen, we assure you that this time our plans will come to fruition! Now with those annoying MHC out of the way, our victory is assured!" Laughs Jinxer.

Diabolico is busy looking through a scry glass as the world continues to fall to anarchy. "The world is in complete chaos, it is the perfect time to conquer it! We shall start with Marine Bay, rebuilding our glorious palace! And this time nothing will prevent our victory!" He thundered.

"I hope so! Because I guarantee that failure will not go unpunished!" exclaims the queen.

"Do not worry my queen, we promise you that this time we will not fail" Diabolico reassures, but the queen is not so easily convince...

"You had better, because if you fail me again like last time, I guarantee that I will rip out your Star Power and give it to my son! Who will-"

"Um, my queen?" Loki interrupts her suddenly.

"What!" She exclaims with a certain degree of anger at being interrupted.

"Where is the prince?" Loki asks oblivious to the queen's wrath.

They all turn as one to see the pedestal of the queen's son... only to see it completely empty.

Bansheera's screams of rage nearly cracked the dimension in two...

...

"Yep."

"ummmmhummm"

Hank relaxes on the corner with Boomhaur as he savors the blissful serenity of the alleyway-

CRACK!

GAH!

Screams Hank as he falls to the ground in pain as a random woman comes up to him and kicks him in the nads.

"You jerk! Your best friend nearly kills himself multiple times and you don't think to send him to therapy!?" Shouts Dr. Wong.

"Now, now doctor. It didn't occur to me to do that either." Defended Bill, Hank had to blink...he had to be hallucinating!... Bill...he looked like...well the 'Bill Dozer'...

Bill...had changed to say the least. Thanks to learning that he truly was a victim of 'operation Infinite Walrus'(1), The UIU gave him a settlement of over a million dollars in addition to paying for getting his health restored and a therapist. Bill now had his hair and muscles restored and was now fit as a fiddle. Dr. Wong's also done wonders to help his self-esteem...to the point where he told his cousin Gilbert where he could shove it and went ahead to sell his family recipes and was now on the precipice of becoming a very wealthy entrepreneur...

From nearby...Dale watched...he sighed, he was tempted to go out their and kick Hanks nads too...but he had more important things to do at the moment...

Turns out his Parawatch account- among hundreds of others -had been hacked by the SCP Foundation, they gave the most 'quirky' of users truthful accounts of their exploits to make it less likely they'll be believed as a 'Cassandra gambit'...occasionally tipped with some occasional memetic hazards to enforce their 'narrative'.

Needless to say; in addition to paying for his counter-memetic therapy, Dale also walked away with a million dollar settlement...technically the trial was still ongoing...but the writing was on the wall...so he, Bill, a large portion of Parawatch and so many others had already gotten their settlements...

Many Parawatch users were taking advantage of all the new money, resources and new technologies to REALLY push the envelope. Expose both anomalous and mundane conspiracies...

In different circumstances this would have been the best day of his life...unfortunately, the downside of having a therapist as good as Dr. Wong was that he'd begun to explore aspect of his life in a new light...including his relationships...

'My Wife cheated on me...'

Dale sighed, He'd delayed this long enough...he went inside to have a LONG talk with his wife...and Son...

...

"You got that camera ready, little bro?" Asked Rip Hoot. "You know it Big Bro!" Shouts Trip Hoot.

The brothers Hoot were a rather mediocre pair of 'would-be anomalous artisans' who were trying emulate their idol Sander Cohen.

After splitting away/nearly murdering the rest of AWCY; the organization and the SCP were quick to label him and his gang terrorists.

Sander Cohen, no longer held down by the 'deadweight' was now free to pursue various independent projects without interference. One was resurrecting the Serial Killer John Kramer- AKA Jigsaw -back to life and helping him fund his 'gallery'.

Everyday now, dozens of new videos showed hundreds of people become part of John Kramers 'art'.

With anomalous art now allowed into the public- within reason -there were now many people who wanted to express themselves in these many exciting new mediums.

Thankfully, most of them were following the examples and guidelines of AWCY or GAW.

Sadly there was also a minority of fanatics, sociopaths and idiots that thought 'murdering people for the sake of art' was 'cool'...

'Thankfully' this group was mostly morons like these two...

Rip turns on his camera, "What up people?! were gonna wreck some mayhem! Me and my Bro Trip are in front of the super lame 'Palazzo Montecitorio'."

"Mega lame! Our Uncle told us this is the worst government in the world! And he's a assistant professor at our local community college who wears tweed and glasses, so you know that HE knows what's what!" Interjected Trip.

"Nerd alerts aside, were going to do this snooze factory a solid with this bad boy!" He pulls out a tiny '110%' sticker. "I gotta cousin, who knows a guy, who has a connection who had really great weed...anyway, long story short: he hooked me up with this sick shit and now were gonna wreck this place! Were going to force these fat cats to give 110%...and laugh as they STILL fall flat on their faces!" Mocked Rip

His brother laughs, "Yeah, everyone knows 110% of ZERO is still negative ELEVENTY!" He taunts.

The brothers make sure the camera is up right and that the 'fat cats' are busy with whatever boring-ass meeting they were doing inside...

And then they place the sticker on the marble of the seat of Italian power-

BOOM!

And so it was that two idiots who couldn't tell their asshole from the crack in the pavement, changed the balance of power in the world forever.

What? I did put air quotes around 'thankfully', didn't I?

Anyway, had these two buffoons bothered to do some REAL research and not just listen to every other word that came from their assistant 'professor' of an uncle- who among other things, believes that the soviet union never existed and was just a fictional construct made by capitalists to demonize the rights of the 'working man' -they would have MAYBE realized that Italy was in reality one of the last remaining slivers of a FAR greater empire. An empire so great, that even long after it's fall it still influences the way people think of the very concept of 'civilization'.

The Roman Empire...

Witnesses would later say that this instance of SCP-248 would spontaneously combust after the fact...not surprising since it had clearly worked overtime to fulfill it's function.

From Europe- England, Wales, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Gibraltar, Romania, Moldova and Ukraine -to the coastal northern Africa- Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Egypt -the Balkans- Albania, Greece, Hungary, Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria and Turkey - the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, Asia Minor, and the LARGE canyon where some parts of Mesopotamia and the Middle East used to be before the Merge...the mighty empire was being restored to it's apex...it's 100%.

The buildings were converted to roman style, the people living there were now changed...they were Roman citizens...they've ALWAYS been Roman citizens and they've never know a life other then being Roman citizens. The Library of Alexander completely restored, even the hole were the Middle east once was has now been partially filled up...a glittering pre-Fourth Crusade Constantinople rising from the rubble in all it's glory...

The poor little sticker was smoking at this point...but it wasn't done yet. It was at 100%...but it NEEDED to be 110%...it HAD to be 110%...it was it's PURPOSE to push things to 110%.

So bit by bit...the history of the Roman Empire was tweaked...ever so slightly...the steam engine designs of Hero and Vitruvius became more popular and more wide-spread early on...

The Archimedes Palimpsest and many other great scientific testaments were NOT lost and the Roman empire was never forced to rediscover lost sciences but rather push forward and discover NEW one's...

Technologies like Stradivarius Violins, Nepenthe, Antikythera Mechanism, Damascus Steel, Silphium, Roman concrete, Flexible glass and Greek fire were also never lost and continued to be refined...

The desperate, poor, sickly, overworked, burning sticker grabbed at whatever it could to bring Rome up 110%...thankfully, it was in itally...home of the Renaissance...

Soon the likes of Raphael Sanzio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Tiziano Vecellio(AKA Titian), Jacopo Comin(AKA Tintoretto), Masaccio, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Andrea del Verocchio, and Giovanni Bellini...found themselves rising from their tombs...blinking in confusion trying to sort out two conflicting sets of memories(one of them being Roman citizens and one of them just being great contributors of the Italian renaissance...and possible worshipers of Hephaestus? 'What the frak?'

For indeed, Hephaestus had became one of the most honored and respected gods among the Roman pantheon in this newly resurrected Rome and it's increasingly half-baked artificial history...

Speaking of the Greek Gods...somewhere...Mt. Olympus and various other 'places' began to rise from the ashes of history...

When the poor little sticker finally burnt out...the results were a result of some form of love child between Ancient Rome...and 1800's Victorian England steampunk...

"Dude...I'm so scared, I wet your pants!" Sobbed Trip as he and his brother clung to each other in fear, thanks to some random anomalous tech they had on them, they were unaffected by what had just happened...

"Excuse me?"

Both boys screamed like little girls and fell over themselves as the man behind them reached down and picked up their video camera.

"What is this?" Asked Gaius Julius Caesar...

...

Hank Hill whistled a happy tune as he drove to Strickland Propane. The last couple of days had been...'hectic'. But there was nothing like a day with propane to really reassure a man that all was right in the world...

He drives in just as Mr. Strickland is being handcuffed. 'Dang it, Mr. Strickland must've convinced them to do 'Happy Hour' early today. Well, I guess I'll just have Enrique hold down the fort again while I talk things over with the prosecutor.' Thinks Hank as he walks toward the commotion.

"Alright Mr. Strickland. Luckily, I was going to the bank today anyway. How much is your bail coming to this time?" Asked Hank in a resigned...yet weirdly relived way. After the insanity he'd been facing the last couple of weeks, a 'normal' sight like this was more then welcome...

Mr. Strickland looked uncomfortable yet equally resigned. But for for different, less happy reasons. "Uh...sorry old top...but bail isn't an option today."

Hank rolled his eyes, "Dang it sir, I know you and Keith are old pals. But he HAS to enforce the 'no touch' policy at Jugstore Cowboys for legal reasons. We've been over this."

And that's when he sees Enrique, Joe Jack and Donna walking away from Strickland Propane not only NOT in uniforms but also carrying all their stuff away in boxes.

"Whoa, guys! Where you going!? This is nothing new for us! We'll just hold down the fort until Mr. Strickland works things out with the police!" Reassures Hank.

"Tell that to Buck, Honey. He just fired us." Said Joe Jack as he just kept walking.

Hank looked at them baffled, "What?"

"It's true Amigo. Not only that, but some police and some IRS guys. They come in and take everything. It's all gone." Enrique points to the building...and sure enough it's completely empty...even the propane tanks are just GONE.

Hank turned to Buck, who'd somehow convinced the police to let him stay long enough to explain to him- he owed Hank that much at least -what was going on.

"Mr. Strickland what's going on here?"

"They got me good and cold this time Hank! Ever since Parawatch gained credibility and got upgraded thanks to all the settlement money, they've been on a warpath as a watchdog group! They went and dug up all my skeletons! And not just the one's YOU know about either, the REALLY bad one's got leaked too!"

Hank tried to stay calm.

"Uh...now come on, sir. I'm sure it's not that bad. You've been in tough spots before-

"Not like this, I can't stress enough how badly they screwed me over! Not only airing out all my dirty laundry, but I'm pretty sure their working with them Gamer-And-weed-something-or-other fellah's! All my bank accounts have been drained! Even the Cayman island one's! Between that and the IRS taking everything else I'm flat broke! So I can't just hire my usual crooked lawyer or bribe someone to make this all go away like I usually do!"

Hank winched at that last part as he looked toward the cops nearby. "Oh, don't worry about them. I'm already screwed regardless...well that and I've already entered a plea bargain to flip on those same crooked lawyers and corrupt officials. As well as other unsavory characters..." Explained Strickland in sad resignation...yet with a slight smirk of satisfaction at the end?

"Strickland you son of a bitch! You better get solitary confinement or I'm coming at you with a shiv!" Shouts Thatherton of Thaterton fuels as he, Walter of Pine Creek Propane and Jerry Sandibar of AA-1 Propane are all forcibly led to police car to be arrested as well.

Which led to Hank seeing someone else in the patrol car-

"Carl!?" Shouts Hank in disbelief as he sees his old friend/son's principal being shackled inside the patrol car as well.

Carl sighed, "Parawatch leaked my allowing children to be beaten up simply because it's 'tradition', allowing and even encouraging both students and faculty to haze, harass and ridicule said children if they don't fall in line with said tradition, my activities on the Booster club that involved fixing grades so prominent athlete students can pass and keep playing football regardless of how stupid or unfit they are, that whole scam where I falsely labeled kids as 'special needs' so the school could pass the standardized government test on a technicality, selling counterfeit blackmarket goods through the school..." Carl trails off thoughtful, "Huh...you know when I say it all out loud...in a way I kinda judge society for not taking me down sooner..." He admits with a resigned yet introspective shrug.

But Hank wasn't really listening to that last part, he'd just seen something even MORE horrifying...

"PEGGY!?" Shouted Hank in horror, seeing his wife in the squad car as well!

"Oh, don't mind this Hank! This is...this is just a misunderstanding." Said Peggy in a desperate attempt to sound reassuring...

A policeman leans forward "It's no misunderstanding, the only reason you got off the hook for Lupe's kidnapping was some bureaucratic mishandling and the fact that Lupe's family couldn't afford a better attorney. But Parawatch took out a collection to both get them a REAL attorney and get your case reopened. And this time the whole 'I can't understand Spanish angle' ain't gonna cut it!"

"Now hold on! I speak perfect Spanish!" Shouted Peggy indignantly.

"Oh, well then you won't have any problem understanding my partner Reynaldo then."

Reynaldo steps up to finish reading her her rights: "Tiene derecho a permanecer en silencio y negarse a responder preguntas. Todo lo que diga puede ser usado en su contra en un tribunal de justicia. Tiene derecho a consultar a un abogado antes de hablar con la policía y a tener un abogado presente durante el interrogatorio ahora o en el futuro..."

"I don't know why your babbling about sardines and sunhats, but I know I don't have to say squat until you read my rights!" Said Peggy stubbornly.

The cop rolled his eyes, "Whatever, even if by some miracle you don't get the book thrown at you...your Spanish teaching license has been revoked and your banned from teaching it ever again."

Peggy's eyes widen in devastated horror...and she began to sob...

Hank...Hank could only watch helpless as his boss, wife and old friend were carted off...

Another cop puts a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "I know it's not much, but it's not all bad news. A new business has already bought out all the now abandoned propane stores in Arlen. With your experience, you'd be a shoo-in to be hired!" He helpfully points to the former Strickland building as a new sign was being put on it...

CHARCOAL EMPORIUM: COMING SOON!

Help wanted!

"BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Shouts Hank in horror...

...

Japan was usually a busy, bustling place...despite the insanity caused by the cleaving, it still hummed along fairly well all things considering...

true, there was the concern of the worrying news of an army of dragons and ninjas invading China, the troubling rumors coming from south Korea and public faith in the government being at an all time low after the reveal that they'd been looking the other way as the SCP Foundation violated their constitutional rights since WW2 ...but mostly these things seemed so far away...

But not today...

On every television screen in Japan, the Japanese Diet was being shown...but instead of the familiar sight of politicians and bureaucrats duking out over obscure, boring, useless stuff...

It instead showed them on the ground...praying to god...as armed terrorists pointed guns at them. The Prime minister had a gun to his head by the terrorist leader...

"「外国の悪魔の挨拶、私たちは聖聖神道です。今夜、私たちはリーダーを臆病者と偽預言者として公開します！彼らは悪魔と忌まわしき者が私たちの祖国を汚すことを許します。」"(2)

He angrily holds up in his other hand the 'monster integration act' that the Diet just passed into law.

「これらの裏切り者は、私たちの輝かしい故郷を外国の大群に侵略させるでしょう！まあ、私たちはそれを支持しません！」

He angrily tosses the act aside and pulls out a detonator and presses it...suddenly, weird collars appear on the all the hostages necks and begin to glow.

「私たちはこの新しい世界秩序を拒否します！私たちは祖国と私たちの生き方のために戦います！すべてのフリーク、嫌悪、そして外国の悪魔の死！私たちはカミの名の下に私たちがすることをします！」

He presses the final button on the device...

BOOM!

And the world watched in horror as the entire Japanese Diet building, the Tokyo Imperial palace Shibuya Crossing, and the Dotonbori district...hundreds of thousands would lose their lives that day...and the world could only watch in horror...

One group watching is particularly horrified...

"「仏によって...それらすべての人々...」" Said a doctor as he an his aides watched the carnage on the screen. Their patient almost all but forgotten...

Danzo keeps a neutral look as he lies on the operating table...but inwards he was smirking.

In addition to his high-ranking Ijamea position, he was also respected by the public as a former war-veteran/kamikaze pilot who willingly gave his all for his country in a kamikaze run that took out an entire aircraft carrier in a lucky hit, somehow survived against all odds and eventually became a high-ranking Minister of State by riding on the good PR brought on by the first two.

He deliberately maintained his injuries in such a way to make his enemies underestimate him, milk sympathy from the public and most importantly...it allowed him to have a convenient Doctors appointment alibi when need be...like today.

Once his treatment was done he'd have an emergency press conference condemning the terrorists and their senseless slaughter of so many innocents. And how he must 'reluctantly' take the reigns of government as the only high-ranking government official left alive...

Best of all, even if by some twist of fate he was pressed...he can honestly say he had nothing to do with the terrorists...no, those had been provided by their new 'ally'.

Speaking of allies...he covertly calls his master...

"Sir...the plan has succeeded beyond all our expectations...soon we'll be in power once more..."

"Excellent...I'm nearly done here..." Shredder looked down at the broken form of Shao Kahn...who had been one of the few remaining Ijamea splinter group holdouts...soon his Ijamea would be fully united once more...

...

Dipper Pines waited patiently with his family, friends and girlfriends as many other people who got screwed over by the SCP Foundation got represented and compensated.

Jimmy Neutron: A boy genius who constantly saved the world. But not only was his exploits covered up by the local Foundation Site-director, but he took credit for all of jimmy's exploits, confiscated and suppressed any attempts by Jimmy to use his tech to benefit humanity as a whole(lest it disrupt 'normality'), and threatened to memory-wipe him, his family and friends if he complained.

Coop Burtonburger: For years the kid has been fighting a 'secret' war with a feline-like alien. Except as it turns out, it wasn't so secret. It is revealed that the local site-director not only knew about all this...but actively allowed it to continue. Evidently he and many of his staff had found the whole thing amusing that they secretly recorded the whole series of misadventures so they could watch it on Saturday nights. Not only that, they actively erased the memories of anyone else who learned of it- beside coop and his friends -to keep the whole 'show' going.

Harry Potter: Now in fairness, the clusterfuck this poor boy went through was just as much the authority figures in his life's fault as it was the Foundation's. Evidently Harry had once been a child wizard a part of a secret society of magic-users in England. A large portion of who's government seemed to have been isolationist, aristocratic, wizard-supremacists with a rather large chip of some twisted wizard version of 'white man's burden' on their shoulders.

Between their attitude rubbing everyone who had to associate with them the wrong way and the local site director having a very 'if it ain't human, it's not my problem' leaning...they more or less stayed out of each others way and kept their affairs to themselves. Aside from the occasional minor-coverup, the local chapter of the Foundation had no interaction with this society and they in turn kept away from the 'muggles' save for recruiting newblood into their ranks. And both sides were perfectly happy with this arrangement...said arrangement would backfire horribly when the second Death Eater war spilled into London killing hundreds and destroying the Tower bridge.

Knowing his superiors would blame him for letting this happen on his watch, the director covered it up. But in fairness to him, after the deaths he did attempt to offer Foundation resources to aide their war effort or at least mediate between both sides. But the Ministry magic refused all 'muggle' aide.

Fortunately, the war was cut short thanks to the Cleaving. These wizards magic, their ideology and indeed their very society was completely dependent on Romanticist magic...and with it gone, it all completely fell apart.

Not only did the Death Eater leader lose his life when his golem-body and soul anchors fizzle out, but all the problems like old age and genetic damage brought upon by generations incest finally caught up to half the wizard population with magic no longer keeping it at bay, also all their homes and cities came spilling out and crashing into everything with no magic keeping their pocket dimensions stable.

And all that chaos was happening BEFORE the resurrection of the Roman Empire anomalously assimilated half the UK and stirred up the hornets nest that is SCP-1678(3).

Long story short; England was a mess right now...and the SCP were being blamed for the whole thing...

Although in fairness; the 0-5 council, the ethics committee and MOST of the higher-up's seemed genuinely surprised and angry about all this...ESPECIALLY the travesty that had been SCP-3017.

Evidently aside from the usual skirmish with the various other anomalous factions and occasional need to reset things via SCP-2000...things had been going pretty well for the Foundation in recent decades...they were top of the world...and this had made them complacent...a good time for mistakes and corruption to sneak in...

It didn't help that most sites all over the world were required to be fairy isolated, independent and self-sustaining due to potential contamination of various SCP's or potential apocalypse...and many of those sites were actually not containing or even monitoring something, but were rather just where it was out of strategic necessity, to prevent something in the FUTURE, or just for redundancy sake in case other sites are compromised.

Again in fairness, given the danger, infectious and downright bizarre nature of many SCP's. These was actually very good precautions...unfortunately, this left many of the more 'out of the way' sites more or less on their own and isolated...which apparently led to much unsupervised mistakes, unprofessional behavior, corruption, abuse of power, nepotism, important decisions being made by lower management without consulting their superiors first...and so much more...

Also- his personal issues aside -that still didn't excuse their suppressing such beneficial anomalies like SCP-124, SCP-500, SCP-38, SCP-1135 and SCP-28 for the sake of 'normality'. Nor refusing to handle 'normal' disasters or 'normal' crimes, no matter how much evidence or intel groups like GAW or Parawatch supplied them.

'We kept out of mundane affairs out of fear of abusing our power!' They would exclaim...and they even showed some cycles of the world where they had tried to interfere with the mundane side of things...and it ended in disaster when one corrupt agent abused his authority to unleash something far beyond their control for the 'greater good'.

Of course to that Legal Lee would just coolly say; 'That's all well and good...but were not here to discuss the ethics of whether or not your organization SHOULD do that...but whether or not you needlessly did something illegal to my client that's worth compensation...which you just confessed that you did, thank you.'

It was amusing how much that bait-and-switch kept throwing them off throughout the trial. Dipper guess they were just so use to dealing with BIGGER picture threats on a cosmic scale...that much smaller, seemingly insignificant, 'normal' issues like a crooked lawyer who just didn't care about anything aside from a mundane thing like money completely threw them...

And then came Marcos Evangelicos Perez Jimenze to the witness stand...

The former Venezuelan hero/leader was resurrected in SCP-2000 when the Cleaving caused it to glitch up.

The first thing he did was to find out about where he is, what the SCP Foundation is, what they do, what SCP-2000 is, what has happened to the world after his death in Venezuela (The fury of what happened to his home almost killed him for a second time. But he forced himself to calm down and transform that anger into determination.) and much more confidential information housed in SCP-2000. This was mostly thanks to the glitch shorting out the security system.

At first he could not believe anything he sees. Everything is so fantastic, so unreal. It makes him believe for a moment that he is still in a hospital bed, heart attack killing him while struggling between life and death, his brain dying and hallucinating. But after investigating some more, he discovers that everything is real- this is helped thanks to some mutations caused by the glitching that allows him to adapt and understand the situation easier -filled with determination, he gets to work.

He decides to steal all of this information, along with technology and blueprints. He will later use to return to power in Venezuela. Fully intending to set everything right and restore the damage that The Cleaved and Socialism caused to the land he loved.

But before leaving he gives the SCP one last use. Taking advantage of the fact that the part of the facility housing dead templates was the least damaged, he revives the people who will help him achieve his goals.

people who were loyal to him even when he was overthrown. People such as soldiers, various politicians, and people from all social classes. Some of the most prominent would be Pedro Estrada- his head of security -or Renaldo José Ottolina Pinto. Who was better known as Renny Ottolina, a very famous politician in the region. One who not only agreed with the policy of Perez Jimenez. Who died- very conveniently -in a plane crash.

But perhaps those who stood out as a sore thumb would be neither more nor less than two socialists, Ali Primera and Victor Jara.

He revived these as part of a plan of mass social manipulation, to permanently end the love that people have for communism in their region and in the rest of the world.

How? It is one thing for a capitalist politician to say that communism doesn't work... but for a famous communist at heart and as famous to say it? that is a really serious thing.

He quickly shows them the consequences of communism in the world, the atrocities and bad decisions of the Soviet Union and other communist nations..many of which gained strength thanks- in part -to their actions. He was quickly able to convince them to make an anti-marketing campaign against communism. They were both currently working on a new album titled; 'Viene la escoba roja'

Not only that, but he takes the templates of the most important and recognized socialists (Hugo Chavez, Maduro, Fidel Castro, Stalin, Lenin, Karl Mars, Ernesto Che Guevara, and a long Ect), as well as other terrible characters , and using part of the technology that he stole, he destroys them in such a way that they are irreparable.

"The world dose not need you. Neither you, nor your ideas of opprobrium and misery. as well as of your atrocious acts, and you will never again harm this world, or anything or anyone ever again." He was heard to say after the deed was done.

He would be disappointed when he later learned that what he destroyed were actually decoy templates- it wasn't unheard of for an SCP operative to go rouge just to destroy the Stalin, Hitler or Mao templates after all -But he would be intrigued to then learn they mainly kept those templates to use as auxiliary D-class, human sacrifices, test subjects for experiments too cruel to perform on even D-class personnel(4) and creating predictive algorithms to foresee the behavior, actions, habits, beliefs and weaknesses of future sociopaths that rise to powerful positions(he would then be disappointed again to learn that they ONLY used that last one against paranormal adversaries. Which he saw as needlessly limiting the capabilities of such an asset.).

In the chaos caused by the Cleaved, he was quick to use his newly acquired allies and technology to retake control of the country. He then uses that tech to build a powerful army to keep everyone safe. But also use other technologies that will help restore the country, clean it from contamination, restore the natural reserves of gold, diamond, quartz, rubies, oil , and other valuable resources...

At least that was his plan. But although the first part was easy enough- even with advanced technology to help -The last bits are proving daunting as well as costly.

Then Legal Lee approached him to become apart of the lawsuit. On the grounds that the SCP Foundation did not resurrect him or allow him to return home to keep his country from downward-spiraling.

Marcos was conflicted as despite his issues with the SCP Foundation and their methods...he did think they were a needed force of good in the world...but in the end his countries needs trumped all else, so he went along with it...

All that confidential SCP information he gave to Legal Lee- among other things - cinched this appeal...but it was his speech that killed what little hope the SCP Foundation had left to turn this entire case around...

"The SCP Foundation did an excellent job to deal with the anomalous, to protect humanity from those dangers. I will not deny this. Committing horrible acts to avoid Armageddon is also a necessity I also won't deny. These are all things I greatly admire them for. However, what I also won't deny is that they've forgotten to protect humanity from the greatest danger of all: itself. "

"All in favor of maintaining a so-called 'normality'. Which in the end only ended up hurting many and all because they believed that ignorance was something that would benefit civilization in the long run."

In addition to every man, woman and child in Venezuela receiving millions in compensation. The Foundation would now be required to finance and rebuild the nation and it's infrastructure up to first world standards of living. No one would be without a home or a job. More importantly they had to make sure every Venezuelan citizen was educated to handle this shift in their life AND how to spend their new money wisely.

But FINALLY, after all that...they finally got to their part of the trial...

Agent Lawrence(5)...

That was the name of the agent that lead the MTF to that fateful mission to Gravity Falls...the agent that had killed his sister...erased her existence(6)...and had also made sure that Dipper could live in Gravity Falls...the one place that had ever truly felt like home...

Dipper hated that...he hated how nice he was...he hated how much he looked like your average Joe and NOT a monster...this was the man who killed his sister! Shouldn't he look like a killer? Shouldn't he be a jerk? Then he could just hate him in peace!

But like most things in his life...things were rarely that straightforward...

But through his testimony he at lest learned a lot more of Gravity Falls...AKA SCP-6000.

Turns out, the few times they tried to clear out the town and replace it with an actual base had ended in disaster...within days of this...more and more dangerous monsters seemingly appeared out of nowhere and swarmed the base until it was overwhelmed...

Through trial and error it is learned that the containment procedures...are simply to just keep a 'normal' town in gravity Falls and don't interfere with it(7). The monsters stay family-friendly and keep away from the people. And all the weirdness Dipper experienced over that fateful Summer...just doesn't happen...

Turns out it only happens if someone actively seeks it out- like Ford did -or all the pieces of the Cipher Wheel are all in the town at one time.

And the pieces HAD to come together in Gravity Falls at least once per reincarnation cycle to recharge the wheel and keep Bill trapped in the Nightmare realm.

Which was unfortunate because this was the only time Bill could escape. Turns out if anyone else but someone in the wheel tries to free him...it just won't work. If anyone but Ford or Stan had built the portal? The tear rift never would've manifested(8). If anyone but Mable had given him that rift? Even if he'd broken it, he wouldn't have been able to use it.

Turns out they knew what Ford and Stan was building...but once again they could not interfere as that would only make the rift weaker and allow something WORSE then Bill to enter.

Needles to say many people were mad at Stan and Ford. Well, not so much Stan as his background and lack of education had meant his ignorance could be somewhat forgiven...but Ford on the other hand...

...earlier...

"Oh, boo-hoo! I didn't get to go to my dream school. I was only able to graduate with twelve PHD's in half the time it takes other students to earn one because I apparently wasn't smart enough to think about college before that." mocks an agent. " You realize with that kind of credentials you could have made your family rich in a year? Instead you go live in the woods, Take the advice of a DEMON over the advice of a fellow researcher and continue on by yourself with nobody except said demon.

Ford tried to defend his actions,"Bill was a wellspring of knowledge in regards to the anomalous. Yes, I was tricked and better preparation was clearly needed. But I could have-"

The agent just shakes his head, "Mr Pines...Dr Pines...we understand your position better than most. We understand where your coming from...but it's naive to think that. The world wasn't ready for whatever you discovered thirty years ago. The word still isn't ready now, and now we have to live with the consequences of breaking the masquerade. Things are going to get worse before they get better. And they won't stop getting worse for a long time. But as bad as things are now, agree with our methods or don't, making a deal with high-level Euclid class entity was just plain stupid!"

"Why didn't you hire me out of college then? If you knew about gravity falls?"

"Who do you think paid for your grant?"

...

Dipper had to reluctantly agree that looking back...his Gruncle Ford might be brilliant...but he could be really lacking in common sense some times...

In any case...this all lead into...lead to...lead to why Mable...why she DIED(Dipper couldn't even think this without breaking down a bit).

Apparently, when a part of the Zodiac helps Bill escape the Nightmare realm, it DAMAGES that part of the wheel.

Turns out even if his gruncles hadn't fought each other and ruined the ritual...the wheel still wouldn't have worked against Bill thanks to Mable's part now rendered inoperable.

How to fix it? Have the person SACRIFICED...Blood for blood...that was the only way to fix the wheel.

When asked why this was necessary if Bill is gone...it's revealed that an attempt to resurrect Mable ended with Bill almost returning as well...also, they're worried about Bill returning along with Stan's memories...and the Cipher Stone that was left behind- which they couldn't get ride of without making things WORSE.

But more importantly it's revealed that the Cipher Wheel- although directed at stopping Bill -could actually be tweaked to stop threats just as bad as him if not GREATER.

A quick slide-show was showed of all the horrors that the wheel would prevent...although Legal Lee was quick to point out that most of these horrors were now defunct thanks to the cleaving.

"OBJECTION! The incident in question happened months before the Cleaving! For all intents and purposes they were still a threat when this operation took place!" Exclaimed Sam.

"Oh, and that makes murdering an underage AMERICAN citizen okay then?" Retorts Lee.

Seeing Sam had no counter, he continued: "Maybe Mable Pines deserved what she got, maybe she didn't. But once again I fear I need to remind everyone in this court that that is not relevant to the case at hand. For we are lawyers in a court of law! Not Philosophers in philosophy class! We are here to debate LAW, not ethics! And the law says that killing an underage American citizen without at least due process or a trial is MURDER!" He turns to the presiding Judge Mental. "Am I wrong?"

Judge Mental shakes his head, "Overruled." He says simply to Sam. He hangs his head but concedes...He knew he'd lost this one...again.

Indeed, Legal Lee was knocking them out of the park left and right. At first Dipper simply labeled him as another amoral lawyer who cared about nothing but money...but after spending a lot of time with him...and seeing him work...Dipper realized he was- in many ways -just like his Grunkle Stan. Oh, sure they were both greedy, opportunistic bastards...but when push came to shove, they DID do what was right...EVENTUALLY.

It couldn't be denied that while with many of his clients he was strictly business...but there were those he was clearly VERY passionate about seeing 'justice' done and would fight tooth and nail to see it happen.

This was seen with the the Black Rabbit Company, bringing the hammer down on the asshole who screwed over SCP-3017, any kids that were wronged by the foundation, Mr. Marcos who seemed to have earned his respect, and ESPECIALLY non-human entities. When the first of them went up to the stand and the argument about whether or not a non-human should be allowed the same rights as a human was brought up- Legal Lee tore them all down with a grand speech that Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln would have applauded.

Speaking of non-human entities...

A new plaintiff was coming to the stand. At first glance she looked like a bald teenage girl...but a closer look showed her to be some form of living 'mirror'.

The Balif looked at his notes; "Let us now commence the deposition in regards to SCP-

"OBJECTION! My client refuses to answer to the 'SCP' designation/number the Foundation gave her when they abducted her from the family that took her in, wiped all memory of her from said family and held her against her will. She's a living creature. More importantly, she has a NAME. And it's LAKE." Interrupts Legal Lee quickly.

"Sustained." Agreed Judge Mental.

The bailiff continues again, "Right, sorry. The Deposition of LAKE v.s. the SCP Foundation." He amended outloud.

Legal Lee turns to Lake, "Mrs. Lake why don't you tell the court about the chain of events that led to your abduction by the Foundation? Starting with this 'Infinity Train'-

"OBJECTION! This is irrelevant!" Argued Sam.

"How is it irrelevant? My client- among other things -is suing for mental anguish and negligent infliction of emotional distress. My client has numerous psychological issues that was brought about by her situation on said train. Issues that the Foundation only made worse with their containment 'policies'. How can the court truly understand the damage they caused to my clients psychological state without properly explaining the root cause of said issues?"

"Overruled." Agreed the judge.

Legal Lee politely thanks the judge, and turns back to Lake. "Now as I was saying, please tell the court your tale."

Lake glared at the SCP Foundation members in the courtroom, "Gladly." She says simply as she begins...

Dipper smirked as he heard many SCP members groan as Lake won the hearts of millions with her sympathetic backstory of oppression, tyrannical police, identity issues, racism and one big ass super train...and further screwed their reputation before the world...AND their wallets...

...

"Remember that Canadian jerk who you swapped homes with for awhile? Apparently his attitude finally caught up with him when he accidentally started yet another 'cleaved-related' riot and got lynched as a result." Hank barely listened as Bill talked to Boomhauer, he was trying to figure out his situation...

Bad enough his wife was in jail...but now he had no job. He'd eventually swallowed his pride and sought a job at the- (shudder) -CHARCOAL emporium but then they'd...well it was obvious they were trying to pull some sick joke on him and he didn't have time for that nonsense! So he was currently looking for jobs elsewhere...but all the usual places for employment were either shutting down due to the recent recession or...well, they had to be just weirdos! There was no other rational explanation!

Speaking of rational...or rather lack thereof... Here came Dale...in his yard building-

Hank rolled his eyes, "For crying out loud." He grumbled out loud as his friend began yet another attempt to build a watchtower in his yard...

Hank walks up, "Dang it Dale, we've been over this. The zoning board will never-

Without looking back or saying a word, Dale hands a piece of paper to Hank over his shoulder and keeps working.

Hank looks at the paper and is stunned, "The zoning board approved?! Of all the asinine- What is this?!" He states baffled.

"Turns out I was ahead of the curve. Between everything happening nowadays; lots of people are wanting watchtowers and other forms of security in these crazy times...anyway they're being more relaxed about this sort of thing now." Explained Dale, once again not looking back at Hank as he continued to work.

Hank couldn't comprehend this, "But that's- They can't just- Why would- It's that kinda of thing- Hank finally got his thoughts together. "Alright, I don't what the blood-dang deal is going on here, but I'm putting a stop to it! You are not putting up a watchtower! What in the Sam hill do you even need a watchtower for in this neighborhood?!" Shouts Hank annoyed, on top of everything else he didn't need this right now.

"Well, considering I apparently can't trust my 'friends' to report my wife cheating on me. You'll have to forgive me for feeling that extra protection is warranted." Said Dale flatly as he continued to bang away on the deck without looking back.

You could hear a pin drop. Hank chuckled nervously, "What? Dale, what do you mean? Nancy would never-"

Dale turned around enraged, "Save it! I already confronted Nancy, she confessed to everything!"(9)

For the first time in his life- well technically he's been speechless a lot the past couple of weeks but you get the idea -Hank was speechless.

Bill sighed, he'd honestly forgotten about that with everything else that had been happening...but he supposed he shouldn't be surprised...Dr. Wong was a VERY effective therapist.

"I'm so sorry Dale, I don't rightly know how we could'a handled things differently. But we definitely could've at least TRIED to do better then what we did." Admitted Bill in shame.

Dale visibly softened a bit and sighed, "Eh, it's not so much you Bill. let's be honest; you had your own problems with your own crappy life." He then turns to Boomhauer. "You...Well I was mad at you at FIRST. But the more I thought about it...I've been encouraging your 'tomcat' sexual exploits for YEARS. Repeatedly laughed at the stupidity of other guys who had their girls sleep with you behind their backs..." Dale shrugs, "An arsonist who burns himself has no place to complain. So I'm willing to forgive you, I guess." He admits in resignation, but then glares. "But let's be clear. I've now been on the other side of the affair. I no longer approve of your lifestyle, I won't just pretend that's not an issue and I WILL bust your ass to said boyfriend or husband if you do something like that again. Got it?"

Boomhaur rubbed the back of his head awkwardly, "Dang old...fair enough, man."

"But YOU!" Snaps Dale pointing at Hank. "You go on about how your better, smarter, the most sane and self-righteous then the rest of us. Mr. Goosy-two-shoes-eagle-scout-model-citizen...but you don't tell me my own wife was cheating on me!...what the heck man!? Just...what the heck!?" Dale shouted, getting right into Hank's face.

Now Hank was on the backfoot, he was very bewildered and uncomfortable with the whole situation.

"Uh...well...you see...there was Joseph...and Nancy...it was complicated...uh..."

"Oh, just save it!" Snapped Dale, "You handled this like you handle anything else that makes you uncomfortable! You ignore it, swallow your feelings about it till you burst, refuse to ever discus it and gab on about propane or your boy 'not being right'! And will you just admit monster are real and get a dang job already! Seriously, this is getting ridiculous!"

Hank finally managed to get a word in edge-wise, "Dale, this isn't time for your half-baked-

"It's not a conspiracy!" Shouts Dale as he literally backs him up into a corner. "None of my conspiracies are conspiracies anymore! I play a 'take a shot everytime my old theories were right' game with other Parawatch users and I black out in less than an hour! This ironically has left me feeling very lost and confused on what to do next with my life- but that's a rant for a different time! I KNOW you saw the UN announcement- DON'T SAY IT WAS A PRANK! I monitor everyone's calls, I know you reported that to the police and they flat out told you that NO , it was not a prank: The united nations, the AMERICAN government came out and revealed the existence of the paranormal and the supernatural! THE SUPERNATURAL IS REAL! DEAL WITH IT!"

"You monitor my calls!?" Shouted Hank, desperately grabbing at some rational part of the conversation.

Bill sighs but steps forward, "Okay, I can't actually really blame you for focusing on that part. Dale that is NOT okay for you to do and we'll talk about that later. But right now, Dale is right Hank. Your running out of money. So unless you want to try your luck getting a job outside of Arlen during this recession, your going to have to work under or at least WITH a monster."

"Dang-old-they-right-man-dang-old-comes-a-point-that-denial-stops-being-just-a-dang-old-river-in-egypt-

SPLASH!

At the end of his rope, Hank resorted to the 'spray the idiots with a hose until their rational again'...

To his shock, the 'idiots' ignored the water and slapped the nozzle right out of his hands! The Billdozer was back and he was mad!

"Dang it Hank, that's not going to work anymore! Things have changed! Your already not going to church because of the Church of the Broken God being across the street! What are you going to do now that they're planning on taking in monster students and teachers at the school? Not send Bobby to school!?" Bill takes a calming breath, "Look Hank, during the...'normal' days, you helped me out of a lot of bad times. Let me help you adjust to this new age! I mean you don't want to end up like Wesley Cherish, do you? How he pepper sprayed a bunch of monster kids who were just coming to try out for the 'Straight Arrow'? His kids died in the ensuing riot caused by the monster parents! They followed their dads philosophy of 'climbing only leads to falling' and were completely helpless when the shit hit the fan! True, he had good intentions. But his overprotective smothering of his boys left them unable to fend for themselves! But more importantly, this all happened because he thought the monsters were just 'weirdos in disguise' and refused to believe otherwise. Just like you Hank! Hank, I'm begging you. Just talk to Dr. Wong, she-

But Hank was just too overwhelmed to listen, so he did the only thing he had left...run...

Bill sighed as he watched his oldest friend once again run away from what he could not control...

"Gentleman, I do believe we are seeing the end of the 'King of the Hill'." Said Dale in somber resignation as he tosses beer to his friends.

"Dang-old-life-man-like-dang-old-tree-it-fall-no-one-see-it-like-it-never-happend-and-if-the-tree-had-dang-old-lemons-and-you-wanted-dang-old-apples-you-dang-old-out-of-luck-but-dang-old-just-make-lemonade-enjoy-the-dang-day-already-man-it-beautiful." Ranted Boomhauer.

"Well, that's what we tell ourselves. Isn't it Boomhaur?" Said Bill in thoughtful resignation as he drinks his beer...

And they all just stand there...

"Yep."

"ummmmhummm"

The more things change...the more things stay the same apparently...

...

BOOM!

"Who dares to summon the Master of Masters, the Shogun of Sorrow the Deliverer of Darkness: Aku !?"

"Behind you, idiot." Says a voice.

Aku is naturally extremely offended that this person insulting him. A small part of his mind registers the familiar voice... but in his fury he is not paying attention to that part, he turns quickly to disintegrate the insolent fool... and thus he sees who summoned him... and immediately regrets getting out of bed this morning.

"ARRRRRGGGG! Of the billions of living beings on this planet, it had to be YOU!? What do you want now !?" Aku asks, massive distaste and resentment building up like bile at the sight of his former lover Bansheera.

"Have more respect for our queen you-" "Shut up bug, don't interrupt me!" Loki tries to calm Aku, but with one hand he sends him flying through a wall.

"Loki!" Diabolico yells, he goes to help his friend. The other servants of Bansheera tense and are on their guard. Although they are not sure of being able to beat this Demon lord...they will give they're all for their queen.

"Hey animal, could you stop hurting my servants? They have been more useful in one day than you and your entire existence." snarks the queen.

"Oooh? You didn't say that thousands of years ago when I saved you from that crushing defeat you received from the humans after wasting all your resources on conquering one insignificant city!" Aku countered.

"At least they didn't turn to their worst enemy and ended up having a child" Bansheera snapped back.

"Don't drag Chi in this! You overrated succubus!"

This lasts for a while, while the servants watch both Bansheera and Aku throw insults at each other...the likes of Diabolico, Loki, Vypra and Jinxer talked about recent events...

...many hours ago...

An SCP agent snored as his buddy read an E-mail sent from their commanding officer, "Bad news Gus. Looks like the lawsuit is hitting us hard. Looks like bases like this are going to be discontinued."

His friend/site-director grunted as he got out of his woke up and got of his chair, "Well that's annoying...but I guess the gravy train had to end sooner or latter." He admitted with resigned disappointment.

The SCP outpost in Mariner Bay was largely considered a 'rest cure' assignment. Yes, technically the city was on a demon burial ground. But due to it's nature, it's power could only be accessed by certain types of demons. And these types had largely either gone extinct, left earth for greener pastures or simply couldn't be bothered to come to some backwater planet and fight the 'natives' just to get one large demon army of debatable skill and capability.

In short; the outposts was a low-priory base in a low-traffic area that hadn't seen any paranormal activity in over a thousand years. Thus it had a skeleton crew of less then fifty personal(and that included janitorial staff and I.T. crew), but many of them were either just handicapped veterans, run-off auxiliary staff from other sites, or were just there because they wanted a 'paid' vacation and had a well-connected relatives to make it happen.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised we'd get the chopping block. I mean I know were all about 'containment', but what are we containing? A bunch of dead freaks? Their Queen was carted away millennia ago and even before that she and her goons were idiots! I mean, only sending ONE demon at a time to fight an enemy? Even if their outnumbered? What an idiot! I-

He sees the horror on his friends face, he sighs. "It's the 'he's right behind me' gag, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid so." Says Diabolical right before he reduces him to ash from behind.

Gus looks around and sees the few remaining guards being struck down by Loki, Vypra and various Batlings.

"Janitor! Not taking sides!" Pleads the janitor as he holds his hands up defensively!

"But...I just got promoted!" Gus pleaded in despair as he dose likewise.

"Well you know what they say: when your on top, there's nowhere left to go but down." Said Diabolical with a smirk as he grabbed the site-director and threw him out the window. He listen amused as the man screamed all the way to the pavement...

While their queen was busy making preparations for a ritual to summon her 'ex', he and the others had gone ahead to conquer Mariner Bay...which had been a far more subdued affair then they expected. They'd marched into the city to cause mayhem and panic...only to find the streets completely empty...

They would later learn that everyone was too busy watching the live stream of the Foundation trials to go outside or notice anything else. Even finding the SCP Foundation outpost hadn't been too difficult thanks to the rather 'colorful' Anti-foundation Graffiti that had been painted over it in recent days...the town hall and police station had similar 'identification' marks...

Diabolical knew he shouldn't complain over how easy it was to take over the city...and yet...he couldn't help but feel...cheated...it just seemed so anti-climatic...

Clap, clap, clap...

The demon general turned around to see a human in a business suite casually, almost ominously clapping as he leaned against a wall in seeming admiration at watching his fellow humans be ripped apart.

Diabolical tensed a little as he literally hadn't sensed this human until just now, he tried to relax as he was merely a human...yet there was something about this human that made him unnerved...

Clearly, his comrades didn't share his sense of caution as they immediately went up to tear him a new one.

"Alright human, how do you like your flesh? Medium or well-done?" Mocked Loki.

"To the demons surprise, the human CHUCKLED. "Sounds appetizing! But I'm afraid I'm here for business, not pleasure." He quickly hands over a business card. "I'm here on behalf of my Employers: 'MC&D LTD'."

"The merchants?" Asked Diabolical confused. His memory was still a bit rusty after the long incarceration, but he did vaguely remember the merchants that the Queen bought many weapons and resources from. They'd been good, being able to 'acquire' most things for the right price...the fact they'd been selling to both sides of the war had been annoying though.

He remembered asking the queen once why they allowed this and didn't just punish the merchants for daring to sell to their enemies...if Diabolical hadn't know better, he'd have sworn he'd seen FEAR in his Queens eyes before she angrily shouted that her polices weren't to be questioned and that the matter was to never be brought up again...

"You? but your a human!" Declared Vypra.

The human shrugged, "Times changed and my employers changed with them." He explained, "Due to various issues and other complications of a changing socioeconomic landscape, my bosses were inclined to- among other things -outsource many operations and subsidiaries to humans."

Diabolical gave a dismissive hand wave, "Fine, yes. Whatever, what is it that you want with us?" He asks impatiently.

The man smiles slyly, "Actually, it's more what I can do for YOU."

Diabolical raises an eyebrow skeptically, but says nothing as the man continues.

"I hate to tell you this friends, but the success you've enjoyed today is mainly due to the Foundation and similar entities being too preoccupied to respond to you. But make no mistake, soon they'll be back on the ball and eager to put you all down."

"BAH! Let them come, we'll tear them to shreds!" Exclaims Loki confidently.

Now it was the mans turn to raise his eyebrow skeptically, "Really? Even if they have this?" He reaches into his suite and pulls out the 'Tome of the Sorcerer of the Sand'. The same spellbook that banished them so long ago!

Although shocked at first, Vypra recovers first and blasts the tome to dust.

"HA! Now you have nothing!" She taunts!...only to be stunned once more at the sight of him pulling out a COPY of the tome!

This time Loki recovers first to blast it...only for him to pull out ANOTHER copy! Loki fires again-

ZAP!

He pulls out another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

ZAP!

And another!

"Enough!" Shouts Diabolical as he stops his friend mid-blast, "I assume there's a point to this 'demonstration'?" He said that last bit derisively. "More importantly, how many copies of these do you have?" He asked dreading the answer.

"Not counting the one's your friend just blasted- don't worry I won't charge extra for that -I have 35 on my person, 125 in my car, my organization has thousands, OTHER organizations have thousands more and that's not getting into the MILLIONS of other items they all posses that could destroy you all." He explained in the same smug, yet business-like manner.

Diabolical frowned at that, "That is troubling..." He glares, "But what could you offer us?"

"Why, nothing short of peace of mind my good man. The days of armies duking it out and throwing themselves into the proverbial meatgrinder went out with feudalism and birth-control made of straw. Today's modern, distinguished Demon has a multitude of more refined, sophisticated, and above all CIVILIZED options to go about their skullduggery and world conquest."

"Guh?" Grunted a very much confused Loki...and his friends seemed almost as lost.

The man sighed and decided to just get to the point, "Look, it's to my understanding that for all intents and purposes you lived on this land for many thousands of years before the SCP Foundation of ancient times helped this 'Sorcerer of the Sand' kick you off said land. Correct?"

Although still confused,Diabolical nodded. "Well...Yes, but what dose that have to-

"Thank you, that's all I needed to here." Interrupted the man as he jotted somethings down. "Right, ladies and gentleman. What would you say if I could get your land AND a large cash settlement- converted to demon currency naturally -at the SCP Foundations expense in a completely LEGAL fashion?"

"I'd say your nuts", said Vypra flatly.

The man laughed, "Alright, fair enough. But in all seriousness, between the SCP lawsuit that is happening right now and a more 'creative' interpretation of 'Native American Reservation laws'. I guarantee all I've promised or triple your money back!" He boldly proclaimed.

Diabolical blinked, "Wait, hold on. I'm no expert. But if the trial is already happening, how-

The man laughs, "Well, first of all never underestimate what Mr. Legal Lee can and can't do. He takes stuff like that as a challenge. Second, the SCP Foundation- while weathering this whole ordeal better then the other targets of this lawsuit -are in freefall right now. They've experienced one crippling loss after another, their reputation is in shambles and have already lost more Moolah then their are drops in the sea! The threat of adding MORE to their woes has already had them capitulate to the demands of FIFTY other 'latecomers' before they officially became apart of the lawsuit! Lest Legal Lee double or even TRIPLE their compensation!"

"And this...'Legal Lee' of yours-

"Technically not ours, more of freelancer who roles with the saints. My employer dose occasionally reach out to him and are confident they can convince him to add you on the plantiff list...provided you agree to our terms..."

The demon lieutenants were skeptical...yet intrigued...

They took this lawyer before the Queen. Who made his case...and asked nothing in return save for allowing Mariner bay to become a place for his employer, their best clients and others to lay their heads, spend their cash and peddle their influence...

"Of all of history's greatest monsters, you are by far the most evil thing I've EVER encountered. What manner of abomination are you?" Asked the Demon Queen amazed after he made his appeal to her.

"Among other things, I'm a lawyer."

"Ah, that explains it then." Said the Queen in understanding.

...Back to the present...

Meanwhile, Aku had finally gotten fed up with the seemingly non-stop hours of figthing with his EX

"You know what? Why did you even invoke me!? Is Your life so boring that you have nothing left to entertain you than insult me !?"

Bansheera looks breifly shocked before going back to furious, "I know you have a cockroach for a brain Aku. But no matter how good you are at it, don't be an idiot! You know perfectly well why I called you here!" She mocks.

"I do not know what you're talking about!" Shouts Aku getting more and more exasperated.

"Give me back Impus! That's what I'm talking about!" Says the queen at last.

Aku's face goes to anger, then to maximum confusion, then to a mixture of the two very quickly. "What?"

"WHERE IS IMPUS!? I KNOW YOU'VE TAKEN HIM!" shouts the queen making everything tremble.

Aku was confused, if it was true that he had planned to steal his son back. Now that he and Chi were free, he could steal the baby from Bansheera and be a family(10).

But the problem is that he still hadn't put that plan into motion, as he hadn't known where Bansheera and her entourage's location.

Finally, he saw the empty pedestal of the throne room and it was where he was supposed to be imposed. The impact of the news overwhelmed him,

"MY SON IS LOST!?" He screamed at the queen, who was stunned by this change in demeanor.

"TAKE COVER!" Shouts Loki as he and his fellow demons run for their lives...

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

Aku's scream shook everything for miles and brought about giant pillars of fire that scorched the sky...

...meanwhile...

Star is once more regretting her rash impulse to discard her clothes. You never really notice how many branches and insects there are in the world until they're all biting and clawing at you bare skin...the fact it was colder then a witch's teet was also not helpful...

And neither was the fact she was hopelessly lost. She just didn't understand it! She'd explored 'The Forest of Certain Death' hundreds of times! Why didn't anything look familiar!? She should have reached the devil's armpit landmark by walking this direction hours ago!

Still...if nothing else, this finally at least brought it home that She no longer had magic to protect herself. To survive in this new world she had to rely on her strength, her fighting skills, her fortitude and also what her father taught her to survive. Thanks to the later she'd managed to build a rudimentary spear to defend herself...no clothes though, her father had never been big on making clothes...or wearing clothes...actually, now that she thought about it; she spent a lot of her childhood naked in the jungle. The reason why she was no longer used to it was because it had been so long ago, she was out of practice. It had come to a stop when her mother...

Star sighed as her thoughts trailed off, "Oh, mom..."

She's pulled from these thoughts when she hears a curious sound near her and decides to investigate.

As she gets closer, she realizes that it sounds like a cry. When she reaches the source of the sound, she discovers something totally unexpected. She could only describe it as a kind of baby, which stops crying when it felt her coming.

The appearance of the creature was very peculiar; it was mostly red, with some yellow areas, the area around its mouth and eyelids had scaly yet soft skin, with wings large enough to cover it as if it were a blanket, a tail that ended in a triangular point and was so long it could wrap around its small body about 3 times, small hands and feet with claws, its ears resembled wings, it had a pair of tiny horns in his head, his "eyebrows" were actually small beaks, had a pacifier made of gold and the most striking feature of all were his eyes: he had a pair of reptilian eyes, emerald color, very large, very bright and very striking.

For Star it was both one of the weirdest things she had ever seen and also the cutest! It was clearly a baby monster and a very adorable one at that!

She tries to figure out what kind of monster it is, but she can't remember any creature that looks like him. Yet she can't help but feel that she's has at LEAST seen something similar somewhere else...but she just couldn't put her finger on it...

The baby and Star looked at each other; the first with curiosity and some fear and the second with adoration and excitement.

Star- realizing the babies fear -quickly came out of her reverie and used what she learned taking care of Meteora and Mariposa to calm him down, saying words of comfort and rocking him

The baby is now at ease and looks at her with curiosity and great interest now. While making sounds that- combined with those large careful eyes -made Star even more fond of him.

Star quickly tries to look for his parents in the surrounding foliage, she calls out and searches for several hours, but she was having no luck.

HISS!

Unfortunately, Her actions end up attracting the attention of a beast Star is forced to fight it, the fight is made more difficult since she has the baby in her arms

With only one hand free to fight, the beast easily manages to knock her down. Desperate, Star uses her body as a shield to prevent the baby from the blow and from falling to the ground.

But in the process she's forced to drop the spear and the baby dropped its pacifier. The beast comes in for another attack, Star tries to get up but she was still stunned and can't do anything this time.

It seems that this is the end until the beast is suddenly hit by a powerful jet of fire, then another, and anothers. Every time the beast approached, it is attacked by a jet of fire.

Star comes out of her daze to realize that the fire is coming from the baby.

she also realizes that the beast is not going to give up, so she waits for the baby to shoots another powerful jet of fire at the face of the beast. While distracted, she reclaims her spear and stabs it repeatedly into the beast until it's killed.

After making sure that it's dead. She double-checks the baby for injuries, who receives her with joy and laughter, while he stretches his little hands towards her.

After making sure that the baby is okay, she happily grabs the baby and elevates it into the air and exclaims, "That was amazing! You are super cute! With super fire breath! You are a Super baby!" Star yells out enthusiastically, while the baby continues to laugh.

She at first thinks it may be a baby dragon, but it doesn't look like any kind of dragon that she'd ever seen and she now that the baby no longer has its wings wrapped around it, she realizes two details:

1) That he has what appears to be a small simple bracelet on her left hand, made up of a red cord, actually a gold plate, with some inscriptions.

2) This MALE is a Super Baby and that both need clothes urgently.

She reads the inscription on the bracelet, but cannot understand anything it says... until she she reads it backwards. Finally, she finds out the baby's name.

"Come on Impus! Let's go find clothes! ... Or food...or at least civilization! ONWARD!" Shouts Star as she passes through the Chinese bamboo, not realizing she was only getting herself MORE lost...

...

Hank whistrled a merry tune as he mowed his lawn. He gazed happily at his truck and house as he continued his favorite pasttime...

Yes sire, bob! There was nothing like a good ride on the mower to make you forget all your troubles and make everything feel right with the world-

ZAP!

-que the ball of lightning hitting the mower, throwing Hank aside and turning his beloved mower into a monstrous Lawnmower Org.

"HA! HA! Chop, chop, chop! Rotten humans, GET OUT! You're ruining my beautiful lawn! No to chop you down to si-"

"NO! NO! NO! THIS IS NOT OKAY!" Screams Hank as he jumps up enraged, his LAST nerve officially broken as the events of the last month or so FINALLY catch up to him...

"Uh...what?" Asked the Org, confused by the humans anger rather then the traditional fear.

"YOU ARE NOT REAL! LAWNMOWERS DON'T BECOME MONSTERS! MONSTERS AREN'T REAL! WORLDS CAN'T COLLIDE! MAGIC ISN'T REAL! PARANORMAL ORGANIZATIONS AREN'T A THING! THAT'S BASIC COMMON SENSE! UP IS UP! DOWN IS DOWN! AND REALITY IS REALITY! YOU CAN'T JUST PULL THE RUG OUT FROM UNDER EVERYONE'S FEET AND CHANGE ALL THE RULES OF THE WORLD! THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE WORLD AS IT WAS! GIVE BACK MY LIFE!"

The Org just blinked, "Wow...you, uh...have your whole personal thing going on..." The abomination scratched the back of his head awkwardly not entirely sure how to handle this, "Right...I usually have this whole thing that might end with me becoming giant...also I was going to kill you...buuuut, you clearly have your own junk going on...so I think I'm just going to take your lawn and go find a more...'traditional' victim to kill...math-bhuilich!" Shouts the beast as it turns both itself and the entire yard into a ball of light that immediately flies off...leaving the once pristine yard completely barren and desolate...not a blade of grass to be found...

CRASH!

Unfortunately, it seems that Hanks truck was positioned on the lawn in such a way that the sudden taking of the lawn caused it flip through the air and smashing it right into Hanks living room-

FWOOM!

Where in true pinto style it immediately burst into flames...

BOOM!

Right near the gas-line...

BOOM!

Hank said nothing as the house of the great grandson of T. Anderson Curney burnt down...and with it...any semblance he'd had of a normal life...

ring

With a surprisingly steady hand...Hank brings his cellphone up to his ear. "Hello? Mr Hill? This is Button Gwinnett Insurance. Uh, I hate to add insult to injury...but your last check bounced...so your policy is discontinued until further notice..."

Hank didn't listen to the rest...he just let his phone drop and shatter onto the pavement...

"Uh...DAD?! Our House?!" Exclaims Bobby as he, Connie and Joseph watch what's happening from the street.

But Hank doesn't seem to notice... "Bill! Can you watch over Bobby? I need to go away for a bit." Said Hank in an unsettlingly tranquil way...

Bill nods...

And Hank...Hank just turns around and walks away...

Bobby tries to go after him, "Dad where are you- Bill stops him, "Let him go Bobby...the road he walks now...only he can travel...best of luck to you, old friend..." Wishes Bill sincerely.

Without a word...Hank walks away from Rainey street...and his old life...and just normality in general...for good...

...

"Sam, I'm just going to say it: You look terrible. After this case, why don't you take a vacation? I'll cover for you." Said Legal Lee to the oppositions lawyer in genuine concern.

Many people would be surprised to see him and Sam having lunch together in the breakroom. They'd be even more surprised to hear that Lee and Sam go way back. They helped each other in law school by sabotaging books in the library to make sure their potential future competition flunked out in the finals.

In any case, no lawyer really held it against other lawyers whether they win or lost, they were all just doing their jobs after all.

Besides, the case was winding down...oh, sure their was technically still a lot of formalities and hundreds of other plaintiffs to go through...but the writing was on the wall: The SCP Foundation was going to lose and lose HARD.

That being said...it wasn't the end of the Foundation. Again, that was never the point of this trial. The next trial on the other hand...well, frankly Lee doubted it would be less a trial and more a big dog and pony show to distract people while the most powerful men and woman in the world negotiated the outcome that would be shown to the public...

The UIU, and the GOC were finished- minus the Goodwin faction it seems -the EU and UN were seemingly planning to do something similar. They were already slinging the usual political BS about 'great change on the way' and 'plans are in the works'.

Whatever they were planning, Lee doubted it would appease the worlds masses. Everyone was pissed at their governments for what they'd allowed the Foundation and others to do.

Hell, some countries were so mad at their world governments that they'd even let the freaking soviet union and Imperialistic Japan back into power in exchange for them expelling all forms of Foundation influence in their countries!(11)

And America was the worst example of this...

Speaking of which...

"Thanks Lee, that means a lot...but your not seriously supporting your 'boss's' bid for president. are you?"

Currently the presidency was in a bit of a limbo after President Hoffman- AKA Cryptosporidium-138 -was exposed as an alien during the chaos caused by the Cleaving thanks to the likes of GAW and Parawatch.

The revelation that an alien had not only been replacing presidents since the fifties, harvesting brain stems to restore his races genitalia, grinding their corpses to severe as wieners to make a profit on the side ALL with the major echelons of the US government and Foundation(12) knowing about it the whole time...well, to say this hadn't gone over well with the public- both US AND Global -would be a HUGE understatement.

Oh, boy did heads roll!

Firstly, All fast food chains in the country- except for Kournel Kluckin's who was the only chain to not buy ground up humans from the Furons.(14) -have been shut down and arrested for mass-murder.

Then, the major players of both of the countries main political parties either found themselves lynched, arrested or fleeing the country in fear for their lives. The rest, although technically innocent have either abandoned the party or given the next dozen elections up as lost causes. With only a few of the more die-hard members being brave enough to throw their hat in the ring.

As a result; for the first time since...well, EVER. THIRD parties actually have a chance to be elected. This of course naturally lead to every fringe/independent party crawling out of the woodwork's, eager for their 'time to shine'...and the Third Street Saints were no exception.

"Look man, I know that things are crazy right now, there's a huge power vacuum and the Third Street Saints have reinvented themselves as a media icon...but none of that changes the fact your trying to get a psychotic gangbanger into the oval office..."

"They prefer the term 'Puckish rouge's'" Defends Legal Lee dismissively.

Sam rolls his eyes, "Right, whatever. In any case-

"Hold that thought Sam, it looks like Player's latest PR move is kicking off..." Said Lee as he turns up the volume of the breakroom TV.

THIS JUST IN! THE LEADER OF THE THIRD STREET SAINTS IS HEROICALLY RIDDING A MISSILE HEADED TO WASHINGTON!

"What." Said Sam flatly.

CAN HE DISARM IT BEFORE D.C. IS REDUCED TO RUBBLE?!

"...What?" He said again, completely lost.

The screen is then filled with the sight of Boss player disarming the bomb, parachuting into the oval office while it explodes harmlessly, then landing/reclining in the presidents seat like a badass...

"What?" He asked yet again...

THIS JUST IN! THE ENTIRE NATION HAS VOTED! BOSS PLAYER IS THE NEW PRESIDENT OF THE USA!(15)

Sam didn't even have the energy to say 'what' again...he just fainted from both exhaustion and shock...

Legal Lee just smiles and takes a drink...

...

"Mass Hysteria! Of course, that explains everything! I knew I was right! Thank you Dr. Heidi, for awhile there I was seriously considering that 'two worlds collided and monsters are real' Gobledegook." Said a relived Hank to his new Psychiatrist.

"I'm just glad to help you through this time Mr. Hill. The insanity that has swept our nation is truly appalling. It's refreshing to see a sane individual like yourself...and there are others like you. Fighting to take back our country and make people realize how silly their being..."

He hands Hank a pamphlet titled; 'Join the NEO-SAPPHIRE movement! Fight for your normality, today!'

A vindicated Hank eagerly read it...while a VERY annoyed Conduit Edwards watched his session through a monitor...

Indeed, Hank was but one of many being observed.

Some people- like him -were just frightened and disoriented people who didn't know how to adapt to this strange new world, others were just xenophobes who hated non-humans, trans-humanism, capitalism, globalization to combat interstellar, inter-dimensional and/or paranormal threats or were just in favor of the SCP getting SCP-2000 back online to rest everything and allow the world to continue in ignorance...

Countless people in therapy sessions, watchdog groups, advocacy groups, think tanks, youth groups, activists gatherings and chat rooms all being- in one form or another - screened, funneled and recruited into a diverse range of dozens of extremists groups like the Sei-Sei Shinto and NEO-SAPPHIRE...

A wide range of groups that did not exist until a month or so ago...because they were secretly created and funded by certain elements of the Esoterica(Mainly Edward and his inner circle).

Through various shell corporations, third parties, LLC business and dummy companies they'd created/funded all these groups that were hostile to their core beliefs.

Why? Two reasons:

Plausible deniability; As most of the members of these groups were heavily compartmentalized and honestly had no idea their strings were being pulled by their 'opposition', this made them the perfect cannon fodder patsies to engage in illegal activities without it being traced back to them. Like giving an ideological ally like Ijamea the excuse it needs to seize power in order to secure an alliance. (16)

The ultimate false flag operation: By radicalizing, funding and directing these malcontents into publicly committing horrible atrocities fight in the name of all that Esotrica fights against... They accomplish nothing but demonize their 'causes' in the eyes of the world and cause the public to further rally under Esotrica's banner to better oppose these 'terrorists and mass-murderers'.

Well, that and occasionally other members of Edwards inner circle would- on the condition it not affect Edwards plans - use them for their own personal gain. Like Kluckin, Franklin D. Mann, and Henri Crosteau would use them to destroy their own property for insurance scams, destroy their competitors, or- In Kuckin's case -cause more death and destruction so his charities can get more tax-deductible PR while they 'clean up' more corpses to deliver to his meat grinder. Nigel Cass would also use them as a form of 'engineered heroics' to make his Albion militia look good in the public eye when they thwarted numerous terrorist attacks that Cass himself staged or just had said terrorists cause mass-destruction and death to make countries more willing to allow them to come in and assert their totalitarian policies.

But Edward wasn't thinking of that now, he was just glaring at Hank and other like him...

"Disgusting- Oh, what's that charming word the kids use these days? Ah, yes... SHEEPLE. There nothing but Sheeple, the lot of them!" He then points to Hank. "This man embodies everything I hate about the 'human' condition...no ambition or desire to do anything but live a mediocre life with a mediocre family. This man's boss was an idiot, he was far superior at his job. It would've been so easy to overthrow him and take control...but NO, he just took it like an abused spouse and went on his day without a care in the worlds...I'll have something SPECIAL planned for him mark my words..."

Both Rasticoar and Toffee have to stop themselves from rolling their eyes. Personally they didn't see any problem with a guy wanting nothing more then to have a nice life with a nice family...but they'd learned to keep their mouths shut and just let him rant.

Insane he might be, but his plans coincided with their own and he had the resources to help them pull it off, so they went along with all this...

It did concern them that many of their septarsis brethren was buying into his beliefs though...thankfully it seemed that although Seth was intrigued by the more 'social Darwinist' aspects of their Neo-Sarkic philosophy, he wasn't in danger of being converted...

There thoughts were interrupted as a strange new signal began to hijack frequencies across the internet. Curious, they tuned into it.

Is...this on? Do I just...Ah, I see.

Hail to thee, citizens of the world!

You are in the presence Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus!

No, your ears do not deceive you...word of both me and mine empires demise was greatly exaggerated. I assure you!

Like Asclepius, the great and glorious Roman Empire has been reborn from the ashes!

The Gods have clearly seen fit to restore us to our potion of glory to help save this world in these dark times!

I've been made aware of how the glory of the Roman empire has been exalted long after it's fall and held to the standard that all other civilizations aspire to be...

So once more look upon my empire and be assured that we shall strive to be a great beacon of order and prosperity!

Take heart that while The rest of the world may fall, BUT ROME WILL PREVAIL!

At that point the Hoot Brothers would get overexcited, dropping the camera and ending the transmission...

At first people would dismiss this as just as the ramblings of a 'toga wearing nutjob'...

But eventually even the most hardcore skeptics couldn't deny...

The Roman Empire had returned...

...III...

TO BE CONTINUED?

(1): Turns out the operation was a UIU project made to combat the Russian's 'gru division p' arctic division, after the project fell through. They doctored all documents as everyone being part of the 'placebo group'...and full of memetic hazards to not question it further...needless to say there was hell to pay when Bill- among others -learned that it truly wasn't their fault for how crappy their lives had become...

(2): Translation: "Greetings Foreign devils, we are the Sei-Sei Shinto. Tonight we expose out leaders as the cowards and false prophets they are! They would allow demons and abominations to sully our homeland!"

"These traitors would have our glorious homeland invaded by the foreign hordes! Well, we shall not stand for it!"

"We reject this new world order! We fight for our homeland and our way of life! Death to all freaks, abominations and foreign devils! We do what we do in the name of the Kami!"

"By the Buddah...all those people..."

(3): SCP-1678 was too powerful for SCP-248 to incorporate into the empire or even erase, so the poor, overworked, borderline terminally-ill at this point SCP took the path of least resistance and simply had the whole thing teleported to beneath Glasgow Scotland. Luckily, Dr. Bimby was too busy with his own issues and thus either didn't know or care about the move...the anomalous instability caused by this paranormal reformation is another story. The disastrous aftermath did give Scotland- and a lesser extent Ireland -more then enough excuse to FINALLY seek independence and break away from- what was left of -the UK...and then both joined the lawsuit against the SCP Foundation when the true origin and nature of SCP-1678 was revealed thanks to the classified data stolen by Marcos Evangelicos Perez Jimenze from SCP-2000. Although Ireland technically didn't really have much of a case in this instance as their homeland was relatively untouched by SCP-1678, the proverbial clusterfuck of the aforementioned documents left the Foundation with such a black eye in both the public and the court proceedings it was literally easier and less costly to just give in to their demands then fight it.

(4): When asked later why he didn't add the charge of inhuman experiments to the charges when that was admitted. Legal Lee Revealed; "It'll be a cold day in hell when I punish someone for torturing Hitler or Stalin. Way to live the dream my man!(gives SCP agent a high-five)

(5): Agent Lawrence is a character from 'SCP Animated- Tales of the Foundation', a series I highly recommend

(6): Fortunately, everything that happened with the Blind-Eyes and Bill had made Ford EXTRA paranoid in regards to both his Memory and Mind...so had made numerous contingency plans to ensure their memories would stay secure...

(7): the thing with agents Triggers and Powers don't count...any random thing can happen when all pieces of the wheel are in town. Their agency literally didn't exist until the day before that fateful Summer and the embarrassment of the 'false alarm' was enough to get them immediately disbanded after they were tricked by Ford. The whole thing was so convoluted and it was created and then died out so quickly...the Foundation didn't even know the agency even existed until AFTER Weirdmagedon. It's largely suspected the whole incident was generated by the anomalous properties of Gravity Falls...and that apparently applied to the 'Northwest conspiracy' agency as well...somehow...

(8): Which is why all his previous attempts to escape had failed. The shaman and Washington- although quite capable -were not part of the wheel and thus their plans were doomed to fail. Well that and Washington was secretly SCP-2776 working with Foundation and MCD to bring down Bill in a sting operation...which not only failed...but it accidentally revealed to Bill that he needed a WHEEL member to be free...

(9): After a long talk...Dale realized he didn't care that Joseph wasn't biologically his, he was still his son far as he was concerned. And between Nancy breaking things off with Redcorn, marrying him 'for real' under the guise of getting their vows renewed, the fact she'd been willing to look the other way if he'd wished to have an affair with Sheila Refkin(true, he hadn't actually done anything...but still, hard not to appreciate the gesture behind it) and had been willing to go bald and risk her career for him rather then restart her affair with Redcorn...so they decided to at least TRY to fix things between them...or at the very least stay together until Joseph goes off to college and has a place of his own...after that...we'll...they'd just have to see... As for John Redcorn...well, in fairness to him he had stopped the affair in gratitude for Dale helping him get his land back, gifted said land to Dale after his death(true, Dale was starting to suspect he'd only done that as a roundabout way to give it to Joseph...but he still got his own cool 'Indian burial ground' land inherited at the expense of the government so he wasn't going to split hairs over it), stopped Dale from screwing up Jospeh's life with that whole 'kill a panda' fiasco, gave him an EXTRA big paycheck while he was manager of his singing career, secretly been sending child support checks to Nancy all these years and he had actually eventually confessed the affair to Dale(true it was indirect, Dale hadn't made the connection and he'd only confessed to get famous on Television. But considering he was trying to get his ass kick by Hank and the fact that on reflection Dale realized his behavior that day had been equally appalling, Dale was willing to overlook that)...so he decided to forgive him...after knocking his teeth out once for good measure, of course.

(10): I believe some backstory is in order: In ancient times- After her messy breakup with
Relicor -Queen Bansheera had a brief but disastrous fling with Aku. this fling brought about the birth of Impus. Although Bansheera kept Impus, Aku made sure his powers were sealed within the Demon boy and thus would be unable to use any of the powers from Aku's bloodline at Bansheera's behest(a precaution he would arrogantly NOT apply to Ashi or any of her sisters- believing an offspring of a bunch of crackpot cultists to be no threat to him -a decision he would later deeply regret when it leads to his future empire being unwritten and Jack's victory over his past self). Chi was the result of a one-night stand between Jack and his female-side(Ikra) on their way to the 'Desert Oasis Jewel'. Aku would grow rather fond of Chi and would eventually put her a special 'time capsule' that would put her in suspended animation as well as keep her outside of time and safe if Jack succeeded and killed his past self. After he destroyed the seemingly last time portal, he tried to bring Chi back...only to learn that a glitch in the programing made this impossible. After violently executing the 'incompetent' scientists responsible for this...Aku would fall into a depression that would last fifty years before a chance at killing the Samurai would briefly lift his spirits...before everything fell apart. When Jack defeated Aku's past-self, Aku's remains were taken away by the MHC to crystalized(the reason they hadn't acted before was because Glossaryck foresaw that all attempts by anyone but Jack killing Aku would end in failure and the MHC would only get in Jack's way. As for why they didn't do this after Jack's father defeated Aku the first time?...Rhombulus misunderstood the situation and thought the Emperor had killed Aku instead of simply sealing him into the earth(he got so much flak for that for centuries)). Omnitraxius sensed Chi outside of time and had her Crystalized as well. Glossaryck- for reasons known only to him -made Chi temporally stable and gave Aku the memories of his future self while he was in the Crystal.

(11): Technically; all the bases and operations that the Foundation had in both Japan and Russia were unauthorized, done without permission of local law enforcement/government and off the books as an added precaution to keep hostile forces from finding them...So when the first action of the newly reformed Soviet Union and Japanese imperial government was to overun all these outposts and arrest all their agents for international espionage...the Foundation had no recourse but to accept it...this crackdown has made the governments VERY popular amongst their people and cemented their legitimacy.

(12): to be clear, it's not like they LIKED it...well, MOST of them didn't like it. The Furon empire was simply too powerful. The only bargaining chip humanity/The Foundation had was that a large-scale invasion/conquest would more likely then not do nothing but kill the 'Golden Goose' that was the Virgin Furon DNA. So a compromise was made. In exchange for allowing a Furon liaison to repeatedly usurp the American presidency, kill off D-class, the poor, the illegal immigrant and anyone else that wouldn't be missed and invent cows(13) to coverup the corpse landfills/rise of the drive-through fastfood industry...the world would be spared the Furons wrath.

(13): Yeah, cows didn't exist before the 50's. Their whole existence/history created just so a alien can sell ground up humans to other humans. That Burger you had last night? Probably your aunts grinned up corpse.

(14): No, he's more of a 'grind them up himself' kind of Tycoon. He got the meat through his charity work of cleaning up the dead in third-world war zones. All free of charge, all (technically) legal. And between him proving that Chickens- unlike cows -have existed since the dawn of man, giving solid proof he never bought meat from the FURONS, all the chaos currently happening and some sizeable cash 'donations' made to certain lawmen...he remains the only fast food chain left in America...with the people loving him...blissfully unaware of the true nature of his food...

(15): To placate the enraged population, the remnants of the American government set up many new laws. In addition to abolishing the electoral college and making things a direct democracy, if more then 75% people vote, they can vote a candidate in EARLY...also Quentin Trembly has been made Queen of the Spiderant colony of Sector 7G

(16): The REALLY sad thing about all this is that the 'monster integration act' that the Sei-Sei Shinto reviled and were willing to die to keep from happening...wasn't even worth the paper it was written on. It was essentially nothing but a lot of fancy extravagant sounding laws that sounded important in a campaign speech...but in reality accomplished nothing but make people THINK the government were doing something about the crisis while they were actually just talking big and and putting on a show without actually doing anything except waste more taxpayer money in various pork barrel projects and slush funds...basically not only did these 'freedom fighters' accomplish nothing but bring a REAL monster into power over their beloved homeland...but they essentially killed themselves over a worthless scrap of paper covered in political BS... smooth move, idiots!

Love me, flame me, review me

Author's Notes:

I OWN AND REGRET NOTHING!

...III...

AN: This chapter was helped by Imperialstar and Wolvenstrom, thanks guys!.

...

ANNOUNCEMENT!

I'M GETTING A BOOK PUBLISHED!

The title is '13/13/13' and it'll be coming to a bookstore or E-Book site near you! Xilbris is the publisher, also available at Amazon, Inkitt and BarnesandNoble.

...

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