It was dark out. Hours had passed, not minutes. She pushed the 
body off of her. There was enough light for her to see bodies around 
her, some of them sporting bullet holes in the center of their 
foreheads. Whoever had won the skirmish had started executing 
people, or else shooting the bodies to make sure they were dead. 
Yasir had covered her, protecting her in death. She didn't even know 
his clan, his full name, or if he was even working with the MCF. 


No one had shot her, but the force of Yasir slamming into her had 
broken something in her. She had never broken anything other than 
an arm or a leg. She brought a hand to her nose, gently pressing 
against her nose and mouth, checking for blood. "Oh, good," She 
murmured, seeing fresh black stains in the moonlight, followed by a 
strong surge of pain. Broken nose rather than internal bleeding. That 
would only make it harder to breathe. 


"Oh, good,” She whimpered, and started to pull herself up to her 
feet, trying to ignore the childish panic running through her as she 
started tasting and smelling blood in every breath she took. She 
stopped moving at the sound of gunfire. Scattered shots, followed by 
a volley of semi-automatic fire. Professionals. 


The Global Occult Coalition had arrived. 
"Targets in sight," Agent Bijl of Strike Team Phalanx didn't hesitate, 


raising his rifle and firing off a shot at the shadowy figures. Both 
drew back. 


"Check your fire, might be civilians!" 


Bijl furrowed his brow. He hated hearing that. Killing civilians held a 
certain horror for most people. He couldn't help but not feel the 
same sort of concern, but it was still a pointless exercise. He was a 
professional killer; killing wasn't something he took lightly, or took 
pleasure in. At the very least, he preferred an enemy that could fight 
back. 


Gunfire came his way, bullets thumping against his cover and 
spraying a fine mist of dust on his Black Suit. The two shadowy 
figures had emerged again, short and gangly. They couldn't have 
possibly been older than thirteen, yet both were firing in his 
direction. AKs, sloppy aim. Child soldiers. He hated that even more. 


"Last Hearth, we have children here," He called in, firing at the 
figures without hitting, trying to suppress them. 


"Civilians are being evacuated from the area," The voice of Team 
leader Umber "Last Hearth" came over the wire in bland response, 
"You are authorized to engage any remaining contacts in the 
vicinity, civilian or otherwise." 


"| didn't say civilians, Hearth, | said children." 


A long silence passed. The shadowy figures didn't pop up again to 
fire. He could hear them talking in hushed, panicked voices from 
behind the alley. 


"Confirm, Phalanx 1-8, are they armed?" 
"They are armed, Last Hearth." 


"Engage all hostile contacts, Phalanx 1-8. One has a weapon, they 
all have weapons." 


What the fuck, man? He'd shoot anyone who tried to shoot at him, 
but they were kids. What was he supposed to do? 


"Hearth just tell us to waste these kids?" Another soldier asked. Just 
then, the shadowy figures burst out of cover. They were firing wildly 
as they made a run for a squat shack several meters back. Five 


shots rang out from behind Corporal Bijl, and both figures dropped. 


What the fuck, man? He whirled on the others, but they were 
already moving. 


"Fuck. Fine," It was just Somalia, he reminded himself. Just another 
sub-Saharan war zone, "You don't see the green and white, you 
don't fire! Copy?" 


As night began to fall, Frank was still running to the hospital, trying 
to remain away from GOC teams. There were fires in Laascaanood, 
shots everywhere, black choppers, a small war. He saw the flare of 
an apported bomb suddenly appearing and immediately blasting a 
house several blocks ago. He heard more and more blasts behind 
him; the refugee camp. There were bound to be AMISOM soldiers 
there. 


He wondered whether or not the GOC would make a distinction 
between those who shot at them and the rest. Probably not. They 
were already bombing a city with civilian inhabitants, right? 


He gritted his teeth as he ran faster towards the hospital. 


He almost collapsed before reaching the place, but he finally got 
there; it looked like the militants had gotten there with explosives or 
shot a gas tank, because two of the MCF pickups had caught fire 
and another one was already turned upside down and smoking. 
There were a few corpses, mostly locals and a few wearing MCF's 
colors, laying around. 


Many of them were just out of the hospital, about to force their way 
trough the makeshift barricade hastily covering the main gate. 
Fortunately enough, they seemed to be out of explosives; a man 
was goading the group to attack the place. Dodger's stranger, 
maybe. Except she never mentioned a beard on him. Some of them 
were already trying to break the strong glass over the windows, 
reserving their guns for the inevitable slaughter that came to those 
inside... 


Frank took out the gun. It was a pretty shitty pistol, but the preacher 


guy was pretty evident, standing over the mass. He pondered his 
options. 


He could make the shot. He could take the bastard out. Then die a 
horrible death by rioting mob, of course, but that was not a problem 
to him... 


Frank came closer to them, discarding the MCF vest as he got 
closer to the man. He was standing over a few piled boxes. Two of 
the militants noticed him, saw his weapon. 


Suddenly, he felt the stream of authority and power, the intimate 
comfort of a gun. He had missed that. He knew it was an armed 
mob and they would not respect a Westerner with a gun any more 
than one without a gun, but he did not cared. 


The men who saw him were shouting. He raised the firearm to take 
aim — 


There was a screeching sound behind the hospital. It was like a 
metal bud, blooming into a flower, petals chafing each other as they 
unfolded. 


Then, there was a roar. Then, thundering steps. At that point, the 
mob looked unsure, none of the people in front of the hospital were 
paying attention to Frank and he knew what was coming. So he 
decided to get away from the mass of people before Olympe 
‘walked’ around the hospital. 


Olympe decided to jump over the hospital instead. Frank pushed 
through the terrified crowd, in the middle of their confusion, and 
found a place to hide behind a half-demolished cube Torres had 
grown there as an extra supply room. From there, he watched the 
show. 


The Old Orange moved faster than usual, walking with potent strides 
over the sturdy Vestan building. It stopped right before the mob, 
standing over the edge of the rooftop, right over the barricade. 


Frank noticed Olympe had applied a dozen pieces of scrap metal 
over the canopy and several joints. The Old Orange looked like a 


or decreasing in size as it consumes or sheds material. SCP-682 
gains energy from anything it ingests, organic or inorganic. Digestion 
seems to be aided by a set of filtering gills inside of SCP-682's 
nostrils, which are able to remove usable matter from any liquid 
solution, enabling it to constantly regenerate from the acid it is 
contained in. SCP-682's regenerative capabilities and resilience are 
staggering, and SCP-682 has been seen moving and speaking with 
its body 87% destroyed or rotted. 


In case of containment breach, SCP-682 is to be tracked and re- 
captured by all available Mobile Task Forces, and no teams with 
fewer than seven (7) members are cleared to engage it. To date ( - 
- ), attempted breaches have numbered at seventeen (17), while 

successful breaches have numbered at six (6). (See Addendum 
682-D). 
Addendum 682-B: Portion of recorded transcript of 

<Begin Log, skip to 00h-21m-52s> 

Dr. : Now, why did you kill those farmers? 


SCP-682: (No verbal communication) 


Dr. : If you don't talk now, we will remove you from 
this attempt and place you back into- 


SCP-682: (Incomprehensible) 
Dr. : Pardon? (Motions to move microphone closer) 
SCP-682: (Incomprehensible) 


Dr. : Speak up. (To Personnel D-085) Move the mic 
up closer. 


SCP-682: ...they were (Incomprehensible)... 


Dr. : (To Personnel D-085) That microphone has only 
so much gain, move it closer to it! 


jagged steel gorilla; now it was the beast its creators had intended it 
to be. 


Frank heard the machine scream Olympe's words, spoken in Arab, 
Somali and French. 


There were insults. Threats. 
Then, there was simply a mindless howl. 


Most of the men had tried shooting at the Old Orange, but Olympe 
simply ignored them, or at most mocked them, challenging them to 
keep firing. Few of them took up that challenge. 


And when mindless shouting had driven most of the militants away, 
the Fifth Coalition Donation dropped from the roof top, crushing what 
remained of the toppled pickup. 


At that point, no one was left to keep fighting. 

Frank stood and walked slowly towards the Old Orange. "Frans!" 
The machine spinned, its pilot barely visible underneath the metal 
armor that surrounded him. "Salut, Frank. It is not combat if | just 


threaten them, right?" 


Frank laughed and rised the gun, clasped in his hand. "Hey, | was 
about to shoot them! You might as well be Volunteer of the Year!" 


"Keep it with you, just in case," the Coalition ex-operative said. "I'm 
going out. To follow them, roam a bit. Patrol, you know." 


"What about the battery?" 


"It's unloaded. I've got hours of battery, Frank. Don't worry about 
me." 


"They blew up the trucks, Olympe. They'll try to do the same to you." 


"Sure they will!," the machine seemed to shrug. Frank noticed how 
asymetrical the motion seemed. "And I'll be glad to find out they 
think this is just another pickup truck to be blown up, 'cause | just 


mounted enough metal panels on this thing to turn it into a tank." 
"You have no guns." 


Old Orange's left ‘fist' reached into the engine of the destroyed 
pickup it was standing on. It then clenched tight, a horrible crunching 
sound indicating how metal was mass in its manipulators. Frank 
uncovered his ears once it stopped. 


"Good hunting, | guess. Be careful." 


The biped vehicle dropped from over the pickup and walked away, 
treading with ponderous steps. Frank ran towards the hospital and 
screamed: "It's me, Skipper!" 


"Frank! Have you seen my brother?!" Martino cried out in response. 


She could walk fine, only having to deal with the aches and bruises 
on her legs. But trying to run would easily wind her. Asthma, she 
thought to herself, not for the first time, /t's always been asthma and 
| kept putting off doing anything about it. 


At least she had a gun now. Few people bothered to look her way, 
but with a mud-caked AK-47 cradled to her mud-drenched breast, 
she was functionally invisible. Whatever had happened the night 
before, it had escalated. Gunfire was everywhere now, and the GOC 
had deployed. Either she'd been out for longer than she thought, or 
someone had told them the situation was out of control. Ironically, 
the GOC's arrival made that a self-fulfilling prophecy. 


What she saw as she dragged herself from block to block was like 
scenes from a documentary, unfolding on either side. Just down the 
block in one direction, a young man caught another unaware, and 
bashed the back of his skull in with the butt of his assault rifle. He 
ran her way, but ducked away into a hut before she could consider 
raising her own weapon. Directly in front of her, an older man was 
shooting down a narrow niche. He looked her way, waved a hand, 
and shouted out in Arabic for her to follow him as he went in to the 
niche. She didn't see any sign of him as she passed it by. 


Another few blocks, and she saw a naked woman hacking two men 
apart with a machete. Either they'd been trying to rape her, or she'd 
been playing possum as they looted her, thinking her a corpse. She 
ran at the sight of Dodger. 


The closer she got to the hospital, the louder and more frequent 
came the shouts and cries in Somali and Arabic. One side had more 
Arabic than the other. Somewhere around, a speaker was issuing 
orders or a Call to prayer, tinny echos adding confusion over the 
already chaotic place. Despite this, she saw nothing else, no one 
else. 


Preacher guy, she figured. Guy on the back of the truck. No fillings, 
or otherwise amalgam fillings. Newer, non-metal. She hadn't spent 
much time looking at Somalians' teeth, but her gamble had paid off 
—guy had to be a fraud. 


I'm right again. She looked up, seeing light starting to creep through 
the billowing smoke, and the sounds of helicopters droning between 
hard cracks of gunfire. A couple of dark forms darted over the town, 
recklessly low. Drones. One of them sprayed a line of bullets for an 
obscene length of time over the other side of town. Beyond overkill 
for a case of local warlords and gangsters. One of the drones was 
suddenly lit up, catching a well-placed RPG and smashing against 
the other, the sorcerous engine's screams drowning out any victory 
cry given by the shooters. The wreckage started littering buildings 
below, setting more fires, and driving off the victors as the flames 
spread quickly. 


| wish | could be wrong more often. 


She had steadily made her way back to the hospital. She expected it 
to be swarming with civilians looking for help, seeking shelter. There 
were dozens of those. Not quite hundreds, but close. Some of them 
even had guns slung over their shoulders. No one was shooting 
here just yet, but there was more than enough of them armed to 
start a massacre. She made her way across to the entrance, people 
parting for her. She belonged here. Some were starting to press 
onto her, begging for help, as if she were one of the doctors. 


As Dodger came into the hospital, she saw Opal's broken shape 


sprawled on a collapsible field pallet. Her face was riddled with 
shards of glass and horribly bruised; she bled through her ears and 
nose, and her arm was covered in a large plaster of different 
bandages, all of them reddened with blood. Even under the 
dressing, she noticed that the limb was twisted in a shape that 
couldn't be natural. 


Locke was there, looking the most rattled by the badly maimed 
woman. Mirror Universe Locke. Dodger nearly spouted out. The 
other woman rushed up to her, as if Dodger would keel over at any 
moment. Surprisingly she found herself already off her feet, and 
being carted away. She looked down, "Oh, good," That must have 
been that sudden stabbing of pain a while back; blood was leaking 
from one of her boots. She couldn't feel most of her toes. 


Priss let Dodger go, to be settled in with the dozens of others 
already being treated. She called out for her sister, then 
disappeared. Dodger closed her eyes, and again lost sense of 
herself as she was somewhere else when she opened her eyes. 
She still couldn't feel all her toes. Her feet were both wrapped in 
bandages, one thicker than the other, so she couldn't tell if she'd lost 
anything. Oxygen was being carried straight through her 
straightened nose. Westinghouse was over her, clutching one of 
those Wondertainment birds. 


"Oh hey, Frank." 
"Not so pretty anymore, huh?" He noted. 


She smirked up at him, glad at least she could breathe more clearly. 
Whatever was on her nose was holding her nostrils up, giving her a 
piggish look, "You saw Enrico?" 


"| saw. | told Martino. Wanted to get to the Myrmidons and do 
something reckless. Had to sedate him. We'll try to recover the 
bodies later, if this calms down. What the hell happened, Dodger?" 


"His team was disposing of the tainted meat. People in the 
neighborhood started burning the MCF food and supplies they were 
handing out, thinking it was infected like the meat. Someone's been 
spreading rumors and stirring up shit about us. I'm pretty sure |