Fifthdation - SCP Foundation

Susan Gaile grew up in military, was schooled in military, and fought in military. Anything she sought to find would inevitably find itself struck by her bullet. Top of her class and best of her squadron, she was a natural choice for the Foundation to pick as a member of MTF Mu-7, and she herself was delighted by the offer once she found out what exactly she would do. Finally something could challenge her, like a Chaos Insurgency agent, or a dangerous anartist, or even one of the monsters she had seen during her binging of the archives.

Instead, she found herself looking for an anomaly that confused even the Foundation’s best minds. Some reality-warping thing had breached into the Georgia region, and the best clue the Foundation had as to what this thing was had been its documentation, which only had a testing log. The trail to find it was made a little more clear by a series of abundant disappearances, wildfires, and sudden extranormal events occurring in certain areas. Specifically, the little town of Starburg had a high concentration, and a little wooden outhouse had a particularly high hume count.

Susan, along with the rest of Mu-7, surrounded the outhouse. Some were meant to remain outside for additional support if necessary, but most were ready to enter the tiny structure when given the signal. Susan was the one to give that signal. Sweat dripped down her head, the bulky armor along with the stress of uncertainty making it much hotter than it would’ve been otherwise. There seemed to be an aura of dread emanating from the outhouse, like it shouldn’t be there. Nonetheless, she had two options: stay outside or stay with the Foundation, and she’d be damned if she didn’t stick with her greatest job yet.

“Everyone check your mics, we have no idea what’s in there, we’re going in on the count of three,” she shouted, “One…two…THREE!”

Susan and her team barged into the outhouse, and were greeted by an inescapable void. The void, which seemed to be an impossible mixture of colors, sucked Mu-7 in like a vacuum, yet the members could still perfectly breathe. All around them was darkness, so much that all light was immediately consumed. Susan attempted to push herself back to the entrance, but the door slammed shut and faded away into nothingness. She and her teammates floated in space as Susan scrambled for her radio.

“Back-up, open the door, I repeat, open the do-” Susan stopped as she suddenly didn’t have a mouth. Her screams muffled through her skin as the door suddenly opened, only for it to suck the rest of Mu-7 in and close again. Soon, everyone was screaming silently, and it wasn’t long before other parts of their body started to morph too. Susan felt like she had ten fingers on each hand, 5 hands on each arm, 5 arms seemingly attached to nothing, merely orbiting around Susan. First she went blind, then deaf, then her nose disappeared, and soon she was a slowly suffocating blob of weird body parts. Despite the horror, she fell into an odd euphoria.

“This is it,” she thought, “This is death. I see the thorns of oblivion. Who will be my saving grace?”

“I will,” a voice spoke softly, “Stay away from the black, let go and embrace with me.” That’s the final sentence Susan heard before the colorless green blinded her.

The only remnants of the outhouse the Foundation found was a door-frame without a door, and smoke consuming the trees.

Julia Reach looked at her computer screen and couldn't believe her eyes. Headlines boldly popped up with extraordinary headlines. "Species of Giraffe goes extinct", "Pod of Whales boiled alive in Pacific Ocean", "Bubonic plague found in bakeries across America". Was the world ending? Maybe, but maybe it was all a dream. Yeah, that was it. She was sleeping at home, still in her bed, and she was dreaming being at work. All she needed to do was play along.

At some point, her throat became parched, and she went to the water cooler outside. When she walked outside her office, she noticed something odd out of the corner of her eye. Something wrong.

She turned and saw it. It was hard to describe it, it looked like a lion with a snake's head and tentacles for legs. Five tentacles to be exact. The creature slowly walked toward Julia on four legs. Julia slammed the door and started to climb out the office window. Quickly, she descended a ladder and started to contact the boss from her phone.

"Come on, pick up, pick up," she mumbled as the phone rang.

"Hello?" a voice on the other end answered.

"Sir, this is Dr. Reach, there's some kind of animal on the loose, it resembles a li-"

"Shsb dtefa."

"…what?"

"Shsb dtefa. He's your's now. In fact, you should go back inside and meet him."

"What are you talking about?"

"Look at it with your own eyes, Julia. The anchors, they can't decide between this world and the Fifth World. You're gonna have to decide for them." The call stopped, and Julia felt a chill on her back. She turned around, only to see the site was no longer a site. It was a monster, constantly forming and disforming, altering and unaltering, everything collapsing upon itself. The only comprehensible aspect was Five. Five doors. Five humans. Five worlds. She stared upon a hole into a different reality. She played her part, and now she would end it before the new show began. The dream was real.

"The Anafabula seeks to enter in. You can't let it. Let the worlds die in fives."

Lawrence O'Neil eagerly waited outside a grand door, the door taking up half the wall and decorated with jewels, diamonds, and starfish. He had spent months roaming the giant Cathedral, also known as the First Southern Fifthist Church of Georgia, ever since it started growing. It grew naturally, like a flower blooming, but it was also fast. The walls moved like floods over Lawrence's home town, and quickly every structure in town was warped and melted into one of the many rooms in the complex. He heard that the Cathedral covered all of Georgia now, but those were only rumors.

Occasionally, he'd find an animal or two stuck in the floor boards, their faces conjoined with the wood, left to die in the massive halls after being swept up by the Cathedral. Even more rarely, he'd see a human walking the halls like he did, slowly succumbing to it as well. Lawrence didn't quite know what it was, but it caused all of this, from the growth of the Cathedral to the transformation of water into smoke to the transformation of smoke into stars. Whatever it was, he awaited its arrival behind that grand door.

A short lady, wearing a fancy hat and a purse, walked up next to Lawrence. The two awkwardly waited in front of the door until one broke the silence.

"Hi, I'm Abigail," spoke the lady. She put her hand out in front of her, and Lawrence obliged with the implied handshake.

"The name is Lawrence, how are you?" responded Lawrence, who swore that he could feel more than 5 fingers on her hand. Abigail sighed.

"You know, just a bit tired from all the walking. I heard the White House was consumed by the holes. The last words they heard the President say were 'My god, it's full of god!' Ain't that just crazy?"

Lawrence laughed in response. "Nothing's been crazy to me since the sky turned a brilliant pink. I'm glad the President found what he was looking for. What was his name?"

Abigail shrugged. The two waited again in silence for a couple more minutes. Abigail, quickly tapping her foot, suddenly realized she forgot something. She quickly reached into her purse and grabbed a book.

"Have you read the newest edition of Star Signals? It's a whole new way of achieving your dreams!"

"Everyone has a copy. It's more sold than the Bible now."

"What's the Bible?"

"I have no idea." The door started to open, revealing a gargantuan nave with thousands of pews. The two walked in, calm but excited, and took their seats. The nave came to a hush as a man walked onto the stage. That is it was roughly a man, although it seemed like it had come to him before. It walked with an indeterminate amount of legs and spoke with an indeterminate amount of mouths in different languages, yet everyone could hear him clearly.

"It appears y'all've taken the hearin's to heart! I applaud. But, brothers and sisters, now is time for the final test, the Fifth test, to enter the Fifth World." Hoots and hollers were heard across the nave. "For I have heard that some of y'all are seven-footed Anafabulists here, and that just ain't right. YOU, right there, I know you can see me," he pointed to Lawrence.

"Uh, yes, Reverend," Lawrence said as he clumsily stood up.

The reverend laughed a hearty laugh, during which the whole audience joined in the laughter, before stopping entirely. "I think you mean Reverend…Archon…Celebration…BIG CHEESE HORACE!" Lawrence fell back in his seat. "Oh, don't worry 'bout nothin'. I'm just tested ya. You ain't no seven-footin' Annie-fah-boo-list, I can tell. But YOU!" he shouted, as he pointed to Abigail right beside Lawrence, "You look like you're 'bout to get yourself in trouble."

A mass of congregation members started to stand up and walk toward Abigail, swarming her and restraining her body. Lawrence felt compelled to join the mob despite his previous friendly relations, it felt like the right thing to do. Together, the group pulled Abigail, kicking and screaming, over to the center of the stage, dropping her on the ground.

"Now, you look like those black thorns have got you already. Good thing we caught this one in time. Fuckin' shame we have to let you go, you looked like just the RIGHT kind of sister. Ate dh jed fkekz df Fifth." A hole opened up from beneath Abigail, and she fell into the darkness silently. One could see the thorns ready to devour the world at a moment's notice, even Big Cheese was afraid, but it was quickly closed and peace returned once more. "Now, are y'all ready for your wishes to come true! This ain't no lie, brothers and sisters. Star Signals don't lie! This is a new kind of truth entirely! EMBRACE THE STARS!"

In that moment, the difference between conscious and unconscious was ruptured, dreams became real, life was a nightmare, the Hole swallowed the Cathedral, and the Fifth World began to take shape.

Doctor Marks sat in his office chair, swinging around with the side of his head resting in his hand. He stared at the remaining rations he had left; around 3 months left for survival. He had already heard the news that SCP-2000 was replaced with a five-cornered black hole, so there was little point in trying to go outside for new food. Besides, all the other sites besides Site-5, the site he was in, had been lost to it. Site-5 was equipped with over a hundred reality anchors, though everyone knew they didn't do anything. Many of the simple anomalies had been salvaged, but nothing useful. Some CDs, an unbreakable lamp, a cat that only existed in half, an old copy of Star Signals, and a wax candle. He forgot what the candle did, and it didn’t really matter. In here, he would die the only sane man in the world. It didn’t matter if a few anomalies were laying around. Might as well play some music to lighten the mood.

He put in one of the CDs, he had long since forgotten what they did. As the jams of old blues songs played, the wax candle started burning, and from it came a voice.

“Hey there, brother, long time no see,” spoke the candle in a slow smooth voice.

Marks jumped in his seat. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Listen now, no need to get in a fuss. It’s not like you’ll have much more life to fuss over.”

Marks got up and grabbed his chair to hit the candle, but he only dropped to his knees in pain. Something was growing in his forehead, and his vision suddenly grew much more vast.

“See now, brother? Listening to the classics gets your brain going. I’ll have you know I wrote this one.” Marks continued to writhe in pain.

“What…the fuck…do you want?” yelled Marks, now with a constantly increasing field of view.

“I don’t want nothing, brother, but your soul yearns for more. The Archons know the way to salvation with the starfish, away from the grasp of the thorns, and this is only a realization of that.”

“I hope all you Fifthists fucking die!”

“There ain’t no death in the Fifth World. We’re leaving this world behind, it has run its course. Unless Anafabula comes and fucks up everything, embrace the smoke, brother.” The candle smoked more and more, and the flame became brighter and hotter. “I know I am.”

The candle exploded into a flaming supernova, torching Marks alive. Site-5 was incinerated, and the screams of Marks quickly stopped within the roaring inferno. All at once, the fire disappeared, and all that was left was a CD player, a five-eyed corpse, and the music of smooth blues playing over the ashes. As the CD came to an end, the five-eyed corpse reanimated to say his final words.

“Wow, that was really cool!”

Frederick Eaton, previously known with any significance as D-7645, was the last human in the universe to not be consumed by it. He had become the last D-class a long time ago, after the Foundation drowned all of them in a mass suicide. One could still hear the joyful screams. He lived in a sleek white room, covered in paperwork and blueprints he barely understood. It was easy enough to get in, the password was 55555. Inside, he had a laptop with the entirety of the Foundation’s archives saved in it, nothing expunged. He scrolled through the entries, one by one, looking at all the anomalies that, by this point, were either destroyed or morphed by it. Frederick was the only person to learn what it was as well, an anomaly known as SCP-3125. Somehow, the world was morphing into an unrecognizable form, which was mainly caused by 3125, though caused by some other anomaly. Frederick himself didn’t understand most of the jargon on the file, but he knew enough that he could tell that only it could do something like what the universe had experienced.

Outside was nothing but a void of colorless green and bright pink, mixing together into eldritch abominations that could only exist in the Fifth World. The room Frederick stood in was the only trace of what was before. Despite his status as a hopeless reminder to no one of a forgotten world, Frederick took solace in the one thing that could counter SCP-3125.

He couldn’t describe it, yet he tried his best to do so. A mixture of thorns, black, the number seven, and total oblivion. This is what defined SCP-2747. If SCP-3125 sought to remake, then SCP-2747 sought to destroy, and if SCP-2747 could be summoned then maybe SCP-3125 could be stopped. But how could he do so? The void outside was anything but black, and little in the way of thorns existed in the room. Frederick looked around.

A pen, a black pen at that. Something sharp, like a thorn, and capable of the oblivion of words. He started to walk over to the pen. A horrible screech breached the room as some horrid cloud leaked through the walls. It formed into a wolf-like creature with a starfish-like head and a human-like voice.

“There is no oblivififth death is refifth embrace the stars plasma plasma plasma plasma plasma,” the creature spoke in a calm voice as it viciously chased Frederick. It tackled him to the ground, knocking over the table and dropping the pen on the floor. They scrambled like dogs for the pen.

“Do not seek seven fifth fifth smoke signals the answer is not you I am a go-fifth.”

Frederick snatched the pen out of the air and began to write over SCP-3125’s documentation. “SCP-3125 is defeatable. SCP-2747 can de-”. The wolf bit into his back and launched him to the other side of the room. He held the pen in his hand tightly.

“The transition transition transition transition transition is almost fifth you fifth we all not seven thorn help seek smoke today.” The creature began to charge Frederick, but he quickly got up and sprinted to the document.

“-feat SCP-3125. There are seven true archons. Seven seven seven seven seven seven seven. Thorns will defeat SCP-3125. Black wi-” Frederick ran around the room as he wrote, but another monster leaked through and caught him in its teeth. It resembled a giant sloth with five arms, five heads, and five legs. The sloth and the wolf fought over the body of Frederick, but he kept writing. “-ll defet 3125. Defat 3125. obliVion obliviOn ObliViOn dfeat 3125 blak blakc black bla-”

The sloth and the wolf tore Frederick in half. The wolf consumed the legs while the sloth spit the torso out. “Fifth fifth fifth fifth fifth the world is ending the world is near fifth fifth fifth fifth fifth.” As the wolf approached him, the glass of the room started to break. The void leaked through more than ever, smoke filling the nearly lifeless eyes of Frederick, as the heat began to turn unbearable. The wolf recoiled from the heat while he, in his fleeting moments of life, grabbed the pen and finished the document.

“-ck black black black.”

First it was SCP-3125's documentation, then it was Frederick, then it was the room Frederick stood in and the creatures inside it, then it was the void outside, then it was SCP-3125. Each disappeared into the black, one after another, consumed in the mighty thorns of Anafabula. Nothing would be spared. All would be destroyed.

The Fifth World was skipped over, and a new Seventh World took its place.