CAPSLOCK COLLUSION

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CAPSLOCK COLLUSION

Dr. Clef: I think you've all gone soft, and you're coddling these things. I'm going to recommend you send the whole kit and kaboodle to Site-19.

November 17th, 2008

SCP-6121. A set of fifty-or-so animate hollow mascots, all doubtlessly having some provincial cultural significance that Alto Clef, master of disaster, didn't get, being from the superior country of America. Formerly under the purview of the bleeding hearts up in Canada, now officially within his dark domain.

There was a beaver that was stuck in a loop, either bemoaning its situation or describing a means by which it could control a body of water. There was a frog that was trying to fit one of four baby chicken mascots into its mouth. All fifty of them were ridiculously Canadian, except for the ones that were Winter Olympics mascots, but then again the Winter Olympics were Canadian anyways.

None of them understood the severity of their situation.

Least of all the owl. It didn't have wings, presumably because it was Canadian.

"HOOT HOOT MOTHER FUCKER! YOU GOT A BONE TO PICK WITH ME?"

Its voice was loud and lacked intonation. Frankly, he'd expected it to make more puns. "You're not at owl what I expected."

That seemed to rile it up. "YOU WANT TO FIGHT. YOU WANNA?"

He imagined that if it had hands, it would have made fists. As it was, it just stood there menacingly. All of them looked ridiculous, in his humble and not-at-all biased opinion. They were mascots that weren't good at mascotting. A sad and sorry lot.

There was only enough room for one over-the-top, larger-than-life catchphrase-dropping renegade in the Foundation. He took a long drag of his pipe and flicked his blowtorch on.

"YOU MUST BE A COMMIE RED." said a soldier mascot. He hadn't even realized the Canadians still had a military. "COMMUNISTS USE FLAMETHROWERS BECAUSE THEY'RE DIRTY COWARDS."

"Alright, you first," Clef said, brandishing the blowtorch. "Some of my best frenemies are Russian."

"COMMIE REDS LIKE YOU DON'T SCARE ME. BETTER DEAD THAN RED."

Clef set the soldier mascot on fire by holding his blowtorch right between its eyes.

"BETTER DEAD THAN RED."

The fire was quite red, all things considered, and the fumes smelled like burned cloth and plastic, a welcome change from the smell of burning meat.

"BETTER DEAD—"

The fire burned a hole straight through the soldier mascot thing, and it fell apart into two pieces.

The other mascots grew eerily still. Clef turned to them, a smile on his face and a blowtorch in his hand.

"…HOOT," said the owl, just a hair softer.

It seemed like they could feel fear. He hadn't expected that.

It almost seemed a shame. Almost. For a decommissioning, this was straightforward to the point of being pathetic. They weren't teenagers high on their own delusions, or perverts with the power to reshape reality for personal gratification. They were just silly and wacky and unpredictable.

"Takes a thief to catch a thief," he mused to himself.

All things considered, decommissioning by blowtorch was a classic. Kind of mundane. Outright boring.

The way he saw it, he had exclusive control over the fate of these poor bastards. On paper, he'd been assigned to decommission them, but he hadn't done the paperwork saying he'd use a flamethrower to do it yet (though frankly he usually never bothered with any of the paperwork since the results spoke for themselves.)

They were mascots made out of cloth and they burned fairly easily. Even so, they were capable of doing some fairly strenuous physical activity even though they were hollow shells of cloth without anything resembling muscles. But they were still cloth, ultimately, and likely weak to wear-and-tear.

No one said the decommissioning had to be quick. Nobody came to Doctor Alto Clef if they wanted decommissionings that weren't spectacles.

He'd always wanted to see Big Bird die in front of screaming children. Maybe he'd get a chance for the next best thing.

He lit his pipe with his blowtorch and took a long drag.

"How do you all feel about katanas?"


About A Decade Later

Alto Clef's life had gotten considerably more boring since the end of the 2010s. There had been some glorious years where he had gotten away with whatever he wanted, but those were long past. And as a senior researcher in the Foundation, the leader of MTF Tav-666, and one of the few surviving causes of major interpersonnel incidents in the span from 2008-2014, most of his time was spent on paperwork. Paperwork to make sure the modern era didn't go nearly as poorly as the past had.

These days, he spent an agonizing amount of time working with Maria Jones, Director of the Recordkeeping, Archival, and Information Security Administration. She was a great person to have on his side, and a very annoying enemy.

"What do you want, Maria?" Clef said, not looking up from trying to balance a pencil on its tip. "I'm busy."

"I'm seeing some discrepancies in our files with regards to a decomm you performed in '08."

Today, Jones would be playing the role of an annoying enemy.

"Oh, God," Clef said. "Please don't remind me. This headache, again. Do you have any idea how fast and loose we played with decomms back in that decade?"

"Yes. Yes, I do. All too well."

Clef grimaced. "Just tell me the number."

"6121."

Clef shrugged. "Never heard of it."

He leaned back in his chair performatively but fell out of his chair when Jones slammed a sheaf of papers down onto his desk. "The mascots, Alto. The Canadian ones. The ones you burned. With a blowtorch."

"Are you sure that was me? I mean, come on. That's just so small scale. I once blew up a glass dome on the moon to vent a horny teenager into space for doing some very "sus" things with his powers, and you're telling me I used a blowtorch? Seems a bit out of character."

Jones didn't seem to appreciate his clever and not-at-all overdone video game reference. "How about you tell me, Alto?"

He shrugged. "Doesn't seem like my style."

"It's not, Alto," Jones said. "You'd do something far stupider and far more transgressive."

"No? No. No!"

"An army of humanoids, roughly capable of blending in with crowds in urban environments—"

"They were absurdly loud talking mascots."

"Capable of acting on their own—"

"Debatable."

"With no clear paper trail of their destruction."

"I probably threw them in a landfill or gave the rags to Goodwill!"

"Alto, if you raised a secret army behind the back of RAISA, the Council, and the Ethics Committee, that would be — how should I put this? — bad."

"Of plush mascots? Come on. Why would I do that when I've gotten you all to sign off on Alpha-9, and I could raise the army in plain sight? Do you really think I'm that stupid?"

Maria Jones gave him the stinkeye, before walking out of the room.

When he was sure she'd left, Clef opened up his SCiPNET messaging client.

All-Sites Interlink

A_CLEF_01: Jones is onto us.

AMIK: DAM.

FLIPPY_FROG: IS SHE A CHILD?

A_CLEF_01: She's a grown woman and you can't eat her.

AMIK: DAM DOCTOR, THAT'S DAM UNFORTUNATE

OOKPIK: HOOT HOOT I'M STILL A MOTHER FUCKING OWL

A_CLEF_01: Very perceptive.

OOKPIK: THANK YOU

A_CLEF_01: You have said a variant of that line fifty times a day for the last ten years.

OOKPIK: HOOT HOOT I WILL BE HAUNTED BY MY ACTIONS FOREVER HOOT HOOT

A_CLEF_01: I'll figure out what she has on us. Sit tight. Await further orders.

He grimaced. Despite his best efforts to get the forty-nine members of the "CAPSLOCK CREW" (as he fondly thought of them now) killed/dismembered in dramatically satisfying ways while decommissioning reality benders and other rogue threats to normalcy, they'd all miraculously survived. Every last one of them, except the racist. At first he'd thought it would be really funny and a useful distraction for them to explode into balls of fluff, but they were a lot more useful than that. Disarming — from their cute yet misshapen appearances. Disorienting — from their disproportionately loud voices. Deadly assassins — they were surprisingly good at cutting the throats of people who mistook them for inanimate costumes.

And the thought of turning on them now — it just felt wrong. And he wasn't even sure he'd be able to win.

He needed to see why Maria Jones wanted them dead. And the best way to get information out of Maria Jones was to annoy the crap out of her.

"Maria," Clef said. "Maria. Maria. I just met a nerd called—"

"You finish that sentence and I invent Keter Duty as a punishment," Maria Jones said.

"Sorry. Give me — one second — I need to process this. Did you really just say — Are you really threatening me with 'Keter Duty'?"

"No. I am threatening you with inventing a punishment called Keter Duty commensurate with the worst rumors of what Keter Duty was a decade ago, solely to get you to shut up."

"Wow. A real knee slapper. You sure you never considered a career in comedy?" Clef said.

There was something of a verbal dance between the two of them — unfunny, out-of-date jokes serving as zingers, verbal barbs that only a thin-skinned child could possibly get offended by, spoken by two people who could be far more incisive.

Maria glared at him. He blustered forward.

"Tell me what's going on with this crackdown. I mean, 6121? I decommissioned them two decades ago. Why are you bringing them back up now?"

Maria's glare had softened from scornful to analytical. Clef was familiar with her ways. She was doubtless figuring out exactly how much she could afford to tell him without telling him just enough to figure out what she was hiding. He rather enjoyed their little games, when he didn't have too much to lose.

"SCP-6690. A series of anomalous events starting in 1991 and ongoing until the present day. A major reason the Foundation involves itself in children's programming."

"Brainwashing children, you mean."

"You know perfectly well I mean making children's television shows," Maria said. "Starting about three decades ago and through the present day, any actors associated with Barney the Dinosaur have been subject to high probabilities of bodily harm."

"How'd we get involved?"

"Standard observations after inordinately high frequencies of injury reports," Jones said. "A decade or so into the investigation, we got a call from an unlisted number telling us to observe Sesame Street. We're pretty sure it was a member of the muppet community. After that—"

"Wait one goddamn second. Did I seriously hear you say—"

"You did."

"So why haven't we—"

"That's classified."

Clef, of course, already knew the answer to his question from a previous life. The Global Occult Coalition had a reputation of taking a hardline stance against threats to normalcy, but it was more than willing to let the Five Fae Cities have seats upon its ruling Council of 108 as a thank-you for their assistance in the Seventh Occult War, though little more. The Hensonians, colloquially known as muppets, were recognized as distant cousins of the fae for some obscure and ridiculous reason, and for that were given similar rights to appear in the public sphere so long as they were able to justify their existence.

And of course, as he knew personally, it was somewhat difficult classifying anomalous entities with GOC diplomatic import as targets for containment.

"So… what did these living puppets give us?"

"Also classified. Point is, there's been a low level alert on record regarding any phenomena of the type — Hensionian-like lifeforms, Wondertainment-adjacent beings not created by Wondertainment, cute mascots — since the 90s."

"Yeah, well," Clef said nonchalantly, "You know, I hear that the GOC, they had a thing against colorful mascots for a bit there too. Anomalous ones."

Maria pursed her lips. "Yes, I think I remember a rumor or two about a Wondertainment cereal mascot getting dismembered. A tragic waste of life. Regardless, two weeks ago, two D-Class associated with the 1976 film Let My Puppets Come, held by the Foundation pending their extradition to the GOC for some ridiculous obscenity charge, broke into the storage container of SCP-1545 at Site-40 and absconded for parts unknown."

Clef snorted. "Oh, come on. That's… a llama costume, right? How far could two heavily-medicated prisoners sharing a llama costume get on foot?"

"We suspect they had outside assistance. One candidate, rogue instances of SCP-3508. Plush toys associated with the defunct Group of Interest 'Accelerate the Future', capable of learning at exponential rates. Collectively, 3508 has currently declared the Foundation their enemy."

"If they're plush toys, how much harm could they really do? This is ridiculous."

Maria pulled up a video on her computer and turned the monitor to face Clef. He winced as he watched a few incidences of SCP-3508 speaking in cutesy baby talk as they crushed a man's finger and disemboweled him with a circular saw.

Clef shrugged. "Eh, he'll walk it off. I've had worse. I'm almost more annoyed by those voices. Sound like Justin Bieber back in '08."

Maria looked at him with utter disdain that he was long used to. "For the love of God, grow up. Please."

"Ok, so what? They know how to use tools. They're also a foot tall and highly flammable."

"That's what you're here for, isn't it? Our resident expert on how flammable stuffed animals are," Maria said sarcastically.

"I still don't see the problem. Can they teleport?"

"No."

"Can they reproduce?"

"No."

"Are they still being made?"

"They still appear at stores sporadically. Their exact source is unclear."

"Still don't see the problem. Burn them when they show up and hope they don't bond with any child prodigies."

"There have been," Maria said, "increasing amounts of evidence that they're undergoing some form of cultural development. Tool use, as you put it. Long-term strategy. Hints of the development of religion."

"What, do they have Sunday mass now?"

Maria ignored him. "SCP-1048. I'm sure you already know the basics of this story. It was also infamous a few years back. Cute teddy bear, allowed to wander around Site-24, rips the fetus out of a pregnant woman and turns it into a walking weapon of mass destruction. Arguably still somewhere in the former Site-24, which is why we've been decommissioning it over the past few years."

"Gonna burn it down with the things still trapped inside?"

"That was the original plan," Maria said. "However, there's concerns that we've been going too slow. There's evidence that 1048 or its constructs breached the site relatively recently. It was content for the longest time, but it's escaped now."

"You've got my attention now," Clef said. "So all of these things happened recently?"

"A disturbing trend has emerged," Maria Jones said. "The muppetfolk have grown increasingly tense over changes outside of their control. Their society is flaring up with tensions."

"We've all been on edge these past few months."

"Then you've got these evolutions for these anomalies all breaching containment or actively shifting from their current modus operandi. Something is happening, Alto. And I want no loose ends from twenty years ago to bite us in our asses."

"Say hypothetically I had just a slight moment of weakness. That I hadn't burnt them all to plastic fumes and they were still out there, somewhere. What's the worst that could happen?"

Maria told him.

The worst did, in fact, sound quite bad.

"…What do you want me to do?"

"If you know where they are, go and finish the job. And if you don't, tell me, so I can do mine."

All-Sites Interlink

A_CLEF_01: Hey guys. How do you feel about the color red?

MY_LITTLE_LOUISE: THE COMMANDER HATED THEM.

HOWDY_THERE1: HIS LAST WORDS? SO OLYMPIC!

SUKKI_NOKKI_LEKKI_TSUKKI: THANKS FOR SPARING US

A_CLEF_01:Alright. But what about you guys?

MY_LITTLE_LOUISE: YOU OKAY, BOSS?

A_CLEF_01:Of course I'm OK. Why wouldn't I be OK? How would you even be able to tell, this is a terminal.

SNIT: YEAH WELL YOU TYPE SLOW.

A_CLEF_01: You fuckers are cheating you use voice typing.

ITS_MAGIQUE: I HAVE NO HANDS AND I MUST TYPE

A_CLEF_01: You're not still mad about the soldier guy, are you?

OOKPIK: HE WAS RACIST. HOOT HOOT. I'M STILL A OWL.

Clef breathed a frustrated sigh. He liked the CAPSLOCK CREW, but they were, ultimately, disposable. He'd intended to push back against Jones at first, but there were a few threats he couldn't take lightly. Yet as cloth beings, very few memetic triggers worked against them, and if he ordered a memetic battery it would definitely tip off Jones. The best he could do was try a word association test.

All-Sites Interlink

A_CLEF_01: Let's play a game. Training exercise. I say a word, yuo all message me privately with the first thing to come to mind. Scarlet.

OOKPIK: UGLY.

MY_LITTLE_LOUISE: PRETTY

REX_O_SAURUS: RED

  • [35] ADDITIONAL MESSAGES

A_CLEF_01: Spears.

SNIT: SHARP.

PERCY_PENGUIN: POINTY.

DONT_VUCKO_WITH_THE_VUCKO: BARK

[58] ADDITIONAL MESSAGES

A_CLEF_01: Bride.

ITS_MAGIQUE: MARRIAGE

HOWDY_THERE1: WOMAN PRETTY

COSMO_GALAXY: MMMM UNGHH MOANS

FLIPPY_FROG: BABIES FIT IN MY MOUTH

  • [77] ADDITIONAL MESSAGES

A_CLEF_01: Seven.

WILBUR_DUCK: QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK

COSMO_GALAXY: MATH IS HARD

SUKKI_NOKKI_LEKKI_TSUKKI: FOUR. CHEEP CHEEP…

  • [109] ADDITIONAL MESSAGES

He scrolled through the hundreds of messages worth of backlog. Nothing jumped out to him. The associations were all about as expected.

One last test.

All-Sites Interlink

A_CLEF_01: Montauk.

AMIK: A DAM GOOD BEACH.

WILBUR_DUCK: OCEAN.

PERCY_PENGUIN: LONG ISLAND.

OOKPIK: SOME DEAD GUY MAYBE IT SOUNDS LIKE A NAME?

He exhaled shakily in relief. He'd forgotten how badly these sorts of things affected him, how he'd retreated deeper into shells of persona and performance to avoid confronting his past. How they got driven to the forefront at his lowest moments. How to avoid the darkness in his heart, he would retreat to a deep and forgotten place deep within his mind, where the scent of clams and boiled cream wafted past his nose, and the dark shadows of Gotham provided endless opportunities to strike.

There was no time for that now.

All-Sites Interlink

A_CLEF_01: Alright. Execute contingency plan Zeta Omicron Omega. Emergency contact only.

  • A_CLEF_01has logged off.

DONT_VUCKO_WITH_THE_VUCKO: BARK?

REX_O_SAURUS: I THINK HE WAS SEEING IF WE'RE SCARLET KING CULTISTS

ITS_MAGIQUE: OH YEAH, THOSE WEIRDOS SENT US A PAPER MAIL A WHILE BACK!

AMIK: DAM, ANYONE READ IT?

SUKKI_NOKKI_LEKKI_TSUKKI: AS IF!

SUKKI_NOKKI_LEKKI_TSUKKI: NOT A CHANCE!

COSMO_GALAXY: NO GODS NO MASTERS! NO GODS NO MASTERS!

SNIT: WHY ARE WE STILL USING IRC WE'RE IN THE SAME ROOM

PERCY_PENGUIN: PACK YOUR BAGS LOSERS WE'RE GOING ON A ROAD TRIP!


Identifier: SoI-669 Estimated Population:
Scientific Name: Clotho Sapiens1 <1000

Threat Level: Green


Concerning Individuals

  • Height Range: 0.1-3 m
  • Weight Range: 0.1-30 kg
  • Exterior: Nylon fleece, similar synthetic materials. Varies between individuals.
  • Circadian Cycle: Does not apply; SoI-669 does not require sleep, instead entering extended periods of reduced activity tied to public awareness.
  • Life Expectancy: Unknown. Members of SoI-669 are subject to everyday weathering associated with cloth materials but individuals are capable of self-repair.

It is unclear if instances of SoI-669 possess consciousnesses that can exist outside of their bodies (souls, spirits, personality matrices, etc.), nor whether these consciousnesses maintain continuity should those bodies sustain incapacitating damage but be repaired at a later date. Research at this time is not feasible.

Special Considerations of Populace


All members of SoI-669 intending to make public appearances outside of internationally-recognized territorial ranges must notify the Foundation of their intent. Any members of SoI-669 detected outside of internationally-recognized territorial ranges will be detained, interrogated, and handled in accordance with all extant treaties.

Members of SoI-669 are permitted to work in the entertainment industry provided that proper misinformation protocols and all applicable treaties are followed.

Consult with the Department of External Affairs should additional containment considerations arise.


Description


Species of Interest 669 is an autochthonic textile-narrativic self-replicating species of unclear origin. SoI-669 has some connection to American artist Jim Henson, though the exact nature of this relationship is largely ambiguous.

SoI-669 is not uniform in body shape. Individual members of SoI-669 have highly-variable body shapes.

The reproductive cycle of SoI-669 is unclear…

Diplomatic Considerations


SoI-669 is recognized as a fae subculture by the Global Occult Coalition. The reasons for this are currently unclear. Comparative mythological approaches suggest a possible common ancestor, while other prominent theories include that this is for preferable taxation treatment or to be able to claim benefits reserved for displaced peoples. Accordingly, a representative of SoI-669 has held one of the voting seats of the Council of 108 allotted to the Five Fae Cities per the Köln Agreement (1945), given the loss of Avalon. However, they currently vote in tandem with the Walt Disney Corporation per the 2004 Henson-Disney Accords,2 the terms of which are still under investigation (see Current Status of Disney Allies, Vassals, and Protectorates within Council of 108).

Direct action against SoI-669 communities is therefore limited, as overt aggression risks outright war with the Global Occult Coalition.

Habitat


Members of SoI-669 live in insular communities, such as "Grizzly Farm," "Sesame Street," "Happiness Hotel." These communities often serve as centers of entertainment and artistic development. The Foundation is only permitted to act within such communities with explicit permission given the diplomatic status of SoI-669; wide-ranging permission has been granted for containment efforts directly related to the production of mass media entertainment since 1991.

Local authorities in SoI-669 communities are willing to cooperate with the Foundation, but exercise a considerable amount of discretion and are highly willing to conceal containment eligible individuals.

As such, any breaching entities taking harbor in SoI-669 communities are to be considered uncontained and unfeasible to recover.


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