Bridge new it was the epic fight now. He groped a spear and yelled, 
"I'll handle this!" He and Arab went out on canoes to the water where 
the great white wail was menacingly. Moby Dink shot water out of 
his hole at Ahab, who fell overbored and was fished up by Ishmale. 
"It's up to me now!" Bridge realized, and stealed his nerves. After all, 
he defected Pokemon. A wail was nothing. 


Mony Dick opened his big moth and Bridge saw the book kens in his 
moth. He realized he had to sacfirice himself...it was the only way 
out of the SCP. He jumped into the wail welding his spear and 
screaming epically. As he toughed the books, he stabbed the great 
white wail and killed him forever. Even though he only knew Ahab 
for a short time, he was glad his caption's vengence was complete. 


He went out of the book universe and knew he couldn't sneak past 
the guards this time, because Lament and Dodrig were looking at 
the screen like last time where it showed his aventures and probably 
reported him to the sight security because there good employees. 
He knew it was nesessery for him to get cot so that people would 
know the epic story of him killing the wail, but he stealed himself for 
trouble. 


He was in a meating with the Od5s, who were lectoring him on using 
SCPs for personal fun. But then one of them assed, "Even though 
this is a broach of protocol and you will be consequenced, I'm 
curious to know how you managed to do such an epic feet like killing 
the great white wail! In the origami story everybody died when they 
tried to do that!" 


"It's simple," Bridge smiled and explanted to the awwed O5. "When 
it's a contest between me and the wiled ocean, I'll always come out 
on top. The result will always be...Dr. Bridge over troubled water." 


DR. COG AND THE PLASTIC FANTASTIC 


One day, Dr. Cog was walking through his lab (being a scientist and 
all), when he found Dr. Crow trying to catch his attention. It was 
never a hard thing to do, as Dr. Cog was usually quite bored, and 
Dr. Crow was a talking dog. 


“You should take a look at this,” insisted Dr. Crow, in a somewhat 
excited manner, “It’s really quite interesting.” 


“Well, | don’t have any experiments running at the time, so show the 
way.” Dr. Cog replied in his usual monotone. 


The pair walked down several hallways, and through several 
elevators (Dr. Crow isn’t good with stairs), the bipedal doctor 
occasionally deflecting attempts at smalltalk. 


“Any interesting hypotheses?” Dr. Crow would ask, “Any 
developments with the exploding crabs, or the self-aware maze of 
pipes?” Dr. Cog hemmed and hawed, it was all work to him. 


After a good many turns and descents, they reached a darkened 
observation room. Behind the single large window was a boy, 
probably no more than ten years old. 


“What is this supposed to be?” 


“This,” Dr. Crow indicated with a wave of a paw, “is a small boy who 
eats only plastics, and is about three times as strong as an average 
child of his age” 


“Interesting. Not particularly dangerous. Administer sedatives, run a 
four month circuit of tests with some of the new researchers, and 
slate the item for destruction if it presents any difficulties.” 


“You know, Cog, we’ve been friends for years, research partners at 
the least. You’ve seen some strange things that | couldn't imagine. 


I've never understood, though, how you can deal with things like this 
so easily.” 


“Like what?” 


“Like asking a dog with glasses to kill a small child if it ‘presents 
difficulties.” 


Already on his way out the door, Dr. Cog replied: “There’s always 
another one tomorrow.” 


Dr. Keith Partridge and the Strawberry Banana Smoothie 
of DOOM! 


July 5th, 2017 


Independence Day, in Sloth's Pit, was a cause for confusion, and 
often mourning. The courthouse had caught fire once again, and 
nobody could enter town hall due to the volume of The Star- 
Spangled Banner playing within its halls causing hearing damage. 
Several dozen homes had seemingly impenetrable concrete walls 
around them, only for members of the town to discover they could 
easily be climbed under. The single firework burst that had been 
shot off would be visible until the start of autumn, Dr. Harold West 
almost lost his right hand when the coffee machine dispensed 
gunpowder instead of a cappuccino, and two members of Sigma-10 
lost the ability to see any colors except for red, white, and blue until 
2018. 


All in all, it was one of the less-catastrophic July 4ths Sloth's Pit had 
suffered in the past decade. But along with it came a new quirk of 
the town, one which Dr. Keith Partridge had been dragged along to 
investigate, along with several Investigative Agents and Dr. Quentin 
Harrison of the Department of Gastronomy. 


Next to the shell of the Vegan Buffet (shut down due to the fact that 
the proprietor thought selling human flesh counted as "Vegan") a 
new building had popped up, wedging between it and the guitar 
shop next door. Its architecture perfectly matched the rest of the 
rustic buildings on Main Street, but the facade of it was painted a 
bright, garish blue, and had steel drum music playing from the 
speakers mounted on its exterior, under a green awning. On the 
windows, pictures of palm trees and tiki masks and beach balls were 
painted on in meticulous detail; Partridge, leaning close to it, could 
see the the gloss on the one of the balls reflecting the child throwing 
it. The signage on the window read: "Volcanic Glacier Smoothie Co." 


"| don't like this," Harrison frowned, finishing off his energy bar. 
Partridge thought that he would need it; with the girth the red- 
headed man had, he was a perfect fit for gastronomy. Bunch of self- 
important food critics, Partridge thought. Even so, he had to agree. 
A brand new smoothie shop popping up right after the 4th of July in 
Sloth's Pit was disconcerting. 


Clive Kim, head of the investigative team put on his sunglasses and 
entered the door, flanked by Partridge, Harrison, and his partner, 
Michelle Kola. Partridge tapped Quentin on the shoulder. "Remind 
me why I'm here?" 


"You're the best expert we have on anomalous tropical plant life. | 
want you to see if there's anything on the menu that would cause 
concern." 


"Harrison, the fact that we are standing in a building that wasn't here 
yesterday is concern —" Partridge stopped as he smelled the sea 
breeze. He looked back at the door, then around him. Where the 
wall of the Sick Rifft guitar store should be was, instead, a vast 
expanse of beach, overlooking clear, blue ocean. There were 
customers seated at the smoothie bar, seemingly unfazed by the 
fact that they were seeing the ocean in the middle of Wisconsin — 
then again, it was Sloth's Pit. This was probably a welcome change 
of pace from the Green Well gastropub, with its burnt, watermelon- 
flavored chicken nuggets. 


Serving the townies was a bronze-skinned woman with flowers in 
her hair, and a T-Shirt advertising the smoothie bar itself. She gave 
the agents a grin, and waved them over. Partridge suddenly realized 
that his shoes had vanished when he came in the door, and he was 
standing on soft, white sand. 


Partridge looked back towards the door, seeing both it and the 
window facing the street still there. He was somewhat relieved that 
the trip wasn't one-way, but at the same time, his reaction matched 
what everyone else was thinking. "Fuck." 


The black spectacles Agent Kim was wearing weren't just for show. 
They had thermographic sensors to detect increases in body 


temperature, a state-of-the-art heart-rate detector, built-in 30x 
magnification, and a sensor that could detect salt content in the air. 
Some people at S & C Plastics termed them "Lieglasses". 


Partridge termed all who used that word 'uncreative’. 'Anti-Shady 
Shades' was a superior appellation for them. Regardless, the salinity 
sensors were useless here, in the salty sea air. The heat sensors 
might also have been thwarted by the fact that, while Kim was 
grilling the woman, the woman was grilling a sandwich. "Ma'am, 
we're with Douglas County health and safety, and... we have 
concerns about this... operation." 


One of Kim's subordinates, Michelle Kola, nodded in agreement. 
"For one thing, having an extradimensional space on main street 
violates town zoning laws. And studies have shown that pocket 
dimensions can have detrimental effects on the quality and safety of 
food." 


"You've just defeated yourself,” the woman chuckled. "Why would 
health and safety care about zoning laws?" 


Partridge rubbed his face and looked at the menu above her head; 
the ingredients in the smoothies were mostly non-anomalous, if 
exotic. Options included dragonfruit, starfruit, pawpaw, (Partridge 
had to wipe some saliva from his mouth at the idea of a pawpaw 
smoothie; it had been years since he had had one of those) sugar 
apple. There were also the standard smoothie affair— apple, 
strawberry banana, watermelon, orange. The "strawberry banana" 
option drew Partridge's attention, however. 


"Can't hurt to ask," he thought, looking at Harrison and handing him 
a vial. "Can you go down to the ocean and collect a sample? If 
there's any phytoplankton in the water, it could help identify where 
we are." 


"Good idea." Harrison nodded, taking the vial and starting to waddle 
down to the water. 


Partridge leaned against the bar, and looked at the 'strawberry 
banana’. "Is all your fruit fresh?" 


"Of course!" 


"Well, as an actual member of health and safety, I'd like to inspect 
the produce. Particularly the strawberry banana." 


The woman gave him an odd look. "Inspect the produce’? That line 
is the exact reason why we no longer offer melon on the menu. 
But..." she turned around and reached into a fridge behind the 
counter, pulling out what looked like a pink fruit from a plant of the 
Musa genus. 


Partridge took it up and inspected it, sniffing at the fruit, before 
peeling it, and looking at the meat of the fruit; it had the coloration of 
a ripe strawberry, but when he touched it, it had the texture of a 
banana. The seeds within the meat seemed to be some combination 
of banana seed and strawberry pips. "Huh." He frowned, turning to 
Kim as he tried and failed to get the woman's name. "Did you know 
that bananas are actually herbs?" 


"Fascinating," Kim lied, shaking his head. "Look, lady, this place 
doesn't have a permit." 


"Are you positive?” the woman asked, taking the fruit from 
Partridge's hands and stuffing it into a blender with ice and milk. "I 
filed for a business license back in December of last year. It's 
hanging back there." She nodded at a certificate behind her, under 
the menu and over the sandwich press, which bore the Seal of 
Wisconsin, and the signature of someone high up in the county's 
bureaucracy. 


Kola tried climbing over the bar to inspect the license, setting her 
Anti-Shady Shades to a filter that could detect the presence or 
absence of watermarks in official documentation such as this. She 
frowned. "Well, I'll be damned. It seems legit." 


The woman behind the bar just gave Kola a very disapproving look, 
before wiping down the counter. As the blender finished blending, 
she poured the contents into a glass, and handed it to Partridge. 
"On the house,” she winked. 


Partridge frowned as he took up the smoothie. Grimm Countenance 


protocols dictated that he shouldn't consume food or drink in an 
extra-dimensional or otherwise anomalous space. Instead, he took 
the contents of the cup and poured them into a large sample jar he 
produced from his pack. "For later," he assured her, handing back 
the glass. 


"Drink it soon," she said, some chiding in her voice. "Or it'll get warm 
and go bad." 


Harrison came up from behind Partridge and tapped him on the 
shoulder, handing him the vial full of seawater. "Here," he said. 


Partridge placed the sample in his bag, and looked at the agents. 
"Not sure we'll get anything else, here. | think we best leave." 


"Come back soon," the woman behind the counter beamed as they 
made their way to the door. 


When they exited onto the blazing, summer street, there was a 
stream of curses pouring out of their mouths; the pavement was 
burning, and whatever anomaly had removed their shoes had 
neglected to return them. 


A tub of ice around the feet later, Partridge sat in his lab, analyzing 
the seawater sample, notes scribbled by him. By all accounts, what 
he was observing were non-anomalous dinoflagelletes, of a species 
native to the ocean around Hawaii. Harrison still hadn't gotten the 
sample of smoothie back to him so he could analyze what, exactly, 
the strawberry banana was. It had been almost four hours; how long 
could it take to run an analysis on something like that? 


He sighed, and turned away from the microscope, picking up his 
phone. After unlocking three different lock screens, he arrived at the 
Site-87 employee phonebook, and from there, scrolled to the H's. 
"Hargrave, Harkness... Harrison." His finger hovered over the 
number, before he remembered how narrative logic worked. Now 
that he was about to call... 


Dr. Partridge's phone rang to the tune of an instrumental version of 
Mean Green Mother From Outer Space. Almost nobody recognized 


the tune, which was a mercy for him; the less people knew about his 
taste in musicals, the better. Partridge picked it up. "Yello." 


"Keith ?"Harrison was on the other end, sounding out of breath. 
"There's... something wrong with that smoothie. You need to c- 
come down to Sublevel 6." 


Partridge stood and made his out of the lab, and to the elevator, 
which was mercifully empty. He kept talking. "What the hell's 
happened, Quentin?" 


"Y-You'll see." 


Partridge hit the button for Sublevel 6 repeatedly. When the doors 
opened, sand and saltwater flowed into the elevator. In the hallway, 
he saw Malcolm Guillard trying to remove a lobster from his office, 
only for it to climb onto him, the weight forcing him into the water. 


Keith Partridge stepped out of the elevator, ducking as the drop 
ceiling caved in and the top of a palm tree appeared, nearly 
depositing a coconut onto his skull. From the fronds of this tree, an 
owl with brown feathers and unusually prominent legs looked down 
at him, before flying off the tree and down the corridor. Dr Jacob 
Kola— Michelle Kola's uncle and part of the parazoology 
department— sprinted past Partridge, giving chase and yelling into 
his walkie-talkie something about a 'stilt-owl’. 


As Partridge walked on, he saw more trees bursting from the ceiling, 
and Partridge yet again wondered how Site-87 still stood; with all of 
the structural damage it had taken over the years, from the giant 
clump of mistletoe that had devoured an entire floor on Christmas 
2008 to the damage caused by the same conifer that had turned him 
into a pear tree in 2014 to the firecrackers that were still found in air 
vents, the site should have caved in years ago. Then again, a site 
collapsing on itself wouldn't make for a compelling narrative. 


Quentin Harrison's lab was occupied not only by him, but by a very 
unhappy-looking, very wet Director Nina Weiss. The cause of her 
sogginess was obvious— there was a waterfall in the ceiling that 
seemed to follow her around wherever she walked. On the table by 
her and Harrison was the sample jar containing the smoothie, whose 


pinkish structure had turned a slight shade of sea-watery green. 
"Partridge," Weiss sighed. "What is this?" 
"It's a smoothie from the place that popped up in town."