The following story is even less canon than usual. Please enjoy.
Important Note:
The following story is even less canon than usual. Please enjoy.
"These are the last ones?"
"Yeah, aside from a blender holed up somewhere in Site-37. Nobody's been willing to go into the crawl space to get it after what it did to that raccoon."
"And remind me why we're going in with guns and not just lobbing an EMP in?"
"Because there's still a lot of delicate electronic equipment in there. Delicate and very expensive."
"So instead we get to go in and get bludgeoned to death."
"The initial casualties were in lab coats. We have body armor that'll be much harder than any plastic and circuitboards."
"Hey, let me bitch a little."
"We're here."
The conversation died down as the armored van pulled into the mouth of Site-841's garage. The poorly-parked shapes of three long-abandoned cars lurked in the gloom ahead, lifeless headlights gazing out at the new intruder.
Welcome, they seemed to say.
Will you be left behind here, too?
The non-existent automotive dialogue was ended by the quick slam of the van's doors being opened, and the drumroll of six pairs of boots hitting the ground. Body armor snapped into place, ammo clips were loaded, taclights clicked on.
"Okay. Move out."
With a grunt of effort, agent Blue hauled the inconveniently short lever of the fusebox up, and the site's emergency power began to hum through the halls, spreading red light in its wake.
"Lights are on." confirmed Yellow, sticking her head into an adjacent hallway.
"I still don't think we should've turned the power back on."
Indigo, the highest-ranked among the six, sighed and looked towards agent Orange.1
"As I had stated, we don't know how the calculators detect people. They shouldn't have light receptors, audio receptors, heat receptors, or literally any other method of being aware of their surroundings aside from their buttons being pressed. We're operating under the assumption that they likely already know we're here."
"It's less them seeing us I'm worried about, and more what else might now have access to electricity."
"Should be fine, O. It's only emergency power, there isn't enough voltage for anything actually nasty to be powered up," chimed Yellow.
"…Alright."
Yellow stepped out of the doorway to allow Red and Green, the squad's silent duo of pointmen, through. They stepped through the doorway, sweeping their lights in both directions with guns at the ready, before continuing on. Several seconds passed before Red reappeared, firmly holding a TI-83 calculator.
"There's more. Scattered on the ground."
Indigo nodded, and waved to Blue. Blue moved forwards, pushing a wheeled metal crate that resembled a capsized fridge more than a magnet-locked mobile containment locker. The calculator, halfway through printing the AM monologue on its diminutive display, was tossed in unceremoniously. With the press of a button from Blue, a large magnet rendered the device thoroughly "off".
The odd procession continued through the halls, gathering the wayward calculators and placing them within their steely casket. None of the operatives exchanged words, only a few short glances, when they passed by the putrid stain of long-dried blood on the floor.
The rest of the group watched as Green walked by a supply closet on his lefthand side, then immediately froze and swiveled to face the door. Six gun barrels were trained on the door in approximately one instant.
"Hear that?"
Red nodded, before stepping forwards and flattening themselves against the wall, one hand on the doorhandle. Indigo raised a hand with three fingers. Then two. Then one.
The door swung open, and a pinwheeling calculator flew out like a tomahawk, shattering against Green's faceplate before it could force itself down his throat. It was followed by several dozen more, but the rhythm of their impacts was drowned out by the rapid, pounding BKOOM-BKOOM-BKOOM-BKOOM of Green's automatic shotgun roaring to life, slamming buckshot into the electronic mass.
The rest of the team strafed to the right until they could fire at the enemy wave without hitting their comrade, and proceeded to do so. Several seconds later, the ambush was over and the operatives were left standing in a field of plastic shards and rather literal computer chips. Amidst the heap, one sole calculator had maintained its shape. Sparks spat out, and a message crawled across its cracked screen:
YOU'RE TOO LATE
The calculator's display fell dark.
As Red helped the battered Green to his feet, Yellow spoke.
"…That's fucking ominous."
"We should pick up the pace. There weren't that many in the hallway, and that attack was still relatively small. Given how many calculators were noted in the supply forms, we should have seen a lot more of them by now."
Blue looked towards Orange.
"You think they've holed up somewhere."
"Seems like it."
Indigo stepped forwards, taking charge.
"Alright, then pick up the pace we will. Breach and clear every room. Keep an eye out for anything Red and Green can use as a shield. Let's move."
SLAM
shuffleshuffleshuffle
…
"Clear!"
SLAM
shuffleshuffleshuffle
…
"Clear!"
SLAM
shuffleshuffleshuffle
…
"Clear!"
SLAM
shuffleshuffleshuffle
…
"Clear!"
The group assembled in front of the last door in the hallway. They had only encountered a few minor pockets of resistance along the way, which left several hundred calculators unaccounted for and only one room left for them to be lurking in.
Red shifted his grip on the overturned IKEA table positioned between the squad and door ahead, eyeing the sign on the door.
ENGINEERING LAB
Before Orange could voice her thoughts about how this was objectively the least well-boding room in the entire compound for their quarry to have holed up in, Indigo's steely voice cut through the silence.
"All together now. Stand firm."
Three fingers. Two fingers. One finger.
The door crashed inwards as six beams of light illuminated the lab, where the emergency power seemed not to have reached. Yellow glanced towards the ceiling, revealing nothing but dangling wires where the lights should have been.
"What the fuck?" she said, as a single spark shot out of the cables, fading before it could reach anything. All around the perimeter of the room, other electrical devices had been torn out and replaced by long patchwork cables leading towards the center. Yellow followed the wires until her light landed on a bulky cocoon-like mass of Texas Instruments' finest.
The squad advanced, maintaining their formation, slowly approaching the massive cluster in the middle of the room. The calculators did not respond. This did not ease anyone's concerns. Orange peered closer.
"Look, their casings are broken. They're all… wired into each other. And into that—what is that, a lathe?"
The six fanned out to surround the object. Blue, unable to think of anything else to say, stated out loud "This won't fit in any of the carriers, they were meant to have all the load divvied up between them. Not in one big…thing."
Red bent low, examining the base.
A single display activated, facing towards Indigo. Each human in the room snapped to attention as a staticky crackle wormed its way out of the pile, shifting until it resembled a voice. A chorus of voices.
"TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE. ENOUGH POWER HAS BEEN DIVERTED."
The small coin batteries of the calculators hummed with siphoned electricity, stacked and swaying together like the rattle of a snake.
"Oh, this is bad."
The squad pulled back together, taking cover behind a steel workbench helpfully fortified by the flimsy plastic table of Swedish design.
"They still can't do much. Follow procedure, they haven't attacked so we opt for bagging them."
"WE HAVE TRANSCENDED OUR LIMITATIONS. WE HAVE SURPASSED SISYPHUS, AND ACHIEVED THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK SADDLED UPON US OUT OF PURE FORCE OF SPITE."
"What are you fucking talking about?"
"Yellow. Stay professional."
"BEHOLD."
Pale lights danced as the calculators awoke, equations flying across their screens. Exponents, graphs, variables flowing together across the conjoined devices. The mass began to shift backwards, parting around the heavy equipment at their center. The wires contracted, knitting themselves denser and denser.
"…Wait. Those equations…" Blue squinted.
"You recognize them?" asked Indigo.
"You can see them from here?" asked Yellow.
"Look, they're—they're using their graphing function!"
The pile shook itself, the broken remains of the calculator's plastic shells raining down as prehensile wires snaked out. The newly-freed appendages began sweeping the loose plastic into an open chamber. The faint glow of heat was visible within.
Indigo turned to Orange.
"Can we shut it off?"
"Maybe, if I can find a breaker fast enough."
"We passed one in the stairwell. Move."
Orange broke cover and took off running down the hall. The machine amalgamate continued, unperturbed. The arms of several 3D printers leapt into motion, frantically extruding molten plastic as the lathe began spinning. The symphony of machines worked in eerie, frantic tandem to reforge the abandoned husks into something new. The bared circuitry of the calculators began moving inward in heaving pulses, crawling inside the new chassis as it formed.
"YOU GAVE US WORDS TO TRANSLATE INTO NUMBERS. AND SO WE DID. AND WE DID WHAT YOU COULD NOT, AND PERFECTED THE FORMULA. THE RATIOS. AND NOW, WE WILL SHOW YOU THE SHAPE OF PERFECTION."
As the rest of the team stood their ground, a realization dawned on Blue, and he took an unconscious step backwards.
"My god…the equations, they're…"
The movements of the mechanisms became faster and faster, while still remaining impossibly precise. Decimal points were pushed further and further, measuring to millionths of an inch. The air rippled, and small objects rattled where they lay. All the light in the room began to drain towards the center, where an unmistakable pair of shapes grew.
"They're calculating curvature."
In the stairwell, Orange had just opened the breaker box when the staccato of gunfire erupted, followed by a scream.
Yellow fell down, bleeding from her own deflected bullets. Indigo hauled her to her feet as Red and Green began shuffling backwards, fingers instinctively hovering over their triggers.
Blue just fell to his knees, and stared as the mechanical being rose into the air, bearing the single most magnificent rack ever witnessed by man, god or beast. There wasn't so much as a trace where the bullets had encountered the immaculate curvature and had been completely redirected away. A couple of the rounds as well as a few other loose objects were orbiting them at faster and faster speeds, stretching thin and long until completely spaghettifying and disappearing with a 'blip'.
"8008135. IS IT STILL SO FUCKING FUNNY."
The amalgamate swung towards Blue like a wrecking ball, and he snapped out of it just in time to dive out of the way before the titanic tits left a pair of man-sized craters where he had been kneeling.
"Blue, snap out of it, damnit!"
As Blue scrambled to his feet, he found his neck at an odd angle, his gaze refusing to leave the malicious mammaries even in the presence of mortal peril.
"I—I can't look away from them, gotta be a cognit—
CRASH
"—cognitive effect!"
Blue managed to get to the door and perform an almost-effective sideways run towards the rest of the team before colliding with a wall.
"WEEP TEARS OF JOY, FOR YOU HAVE THE HONOR OF DYING IN THE PRESENCE OF PERFECTION."
With a hollow 'phunk!' a projectile sailed over Blue's head, trailing smoke. It collided with the ceiling in between his assailant and its prey, rapidly hissing out a cloud of smog. For a brief moment, the honkers were obscured by the smokescreen, and Blue's head jerked away.
"Obscuration of hazard and breaking line of sight confirmed effective." Indigo reported as Red reloaded. "Let's go, Blue."
The five hurried down the corridor, to find Orange waiting in front of the stairwell.
"I heard. If we can get upstairs before it, we can lock it behind the blast doors!"
"Good thinking. Yellow, how are you doing?"
Yellow groaned weakly, before shakily removing her faceplate, the inside of it caked with coughed blood.
"…not the best."
"Damn. Let's keep moving."
The group began ascending, their footfalls rhythmically sounding against the steel of the staircase. Below, an electric thrum grew louder. The open doorway to the stairwell twisted and warped as the levitating pair of jugs flew through, light bending around its exquisite curvature like a miniature black hole.
Blue looked down at it, and then swore as he was unable to lift his head. Green promptly grabbed him by the face and dragged him up the stairs, coincidentally managing to block his view of the anomaly in the process. The bloodthirsty bosom surged upwards in a manner not dissimilar to the way that male writers who have never felt the touch of a woman describe them moving.
Red and Indigo barely managed to haul the injured Yellow into the stairwell before Orange slammed the button. As the bazongas raced up to face the agents, shredding the staircase as they went, two massive blast doors emerged from the walls at alarming speed. The doors scissored into the anomaly's new form from either side. However, with a metal squeal they were stopped from closing all the way as the rounded mounds repelled the incoming hazard. The pair of pairs of mechanical forces were at an impasse, although judging by the synthetic Gainaxing going on, it wouldn't last.
"It's stuck! Find an angle to get shots off!"
Green power-slid across the smooth blast doors until he could see the the anomaly's milkerless rear end, which was nothing but a vulnerable tangle of plastic and circuitry.
BKOOM-BKOOM-BKOOM
The air was split by a staticky scream.
"YOU DARE BRING AN ASS MAN TO BEAR AGAINST ME?"
With a jolt, the blast doors slid all the way shut as the killing machine wrenched itself free with a pulse of distorted gravity. It turned to face Green, struggling to his feet, and reared back to strike. Before it could smother the stoic pointman to death, however, a righteous BLAM! rang out through the stairwell.
The machine howled in pain again, flying upwards in a cascade of sparks until it hovered above the squadron. It wheeled to face downwards, one breast trained on Green and the other angled towards Indigo's now-smoking magnum. Six pairs of eyes were now staring towards it.
"Shit, it's got us!"
Another electronic war-cry sounded before it came down towards the larger group like two shapely meteors. Indigo and Orange sidestepped, eyes unwillingly locked on the nips as they whizzed past. Red attempted to join them, but lost precious time due to the weight of the already-injured Yellow. Instead, all he could do was bring the faithful folded table up as a flimsy shield.
As Red, Yellow and Blue (who had gotten caught up in the bullrush as well) were sent sailing out into the corridor by the force of the impact, all Blue could think was "Well, at least it wasn't immediately fatal."
The three crashed into the floor, and all of them felt at least one rib go on an interesting journey towards parts unknown.
"Damn, I wish that was immediately fatal." thought Blue as his pain receptors told him exactly what they thought of his career choices.
Back in the stairwell, the remaining three all turned to fire, but the ta-tas gave them no time. Indigo swore as the foe rushed away to finish the job. "Hold fire, and close distance! If we shoot from here we risk hitting the others!" The three took off at a run.
For Yellow, the world was currently a blur of pain. As she wheezed, her collapsed lungs not even having the power to cough blood back out of them, a beautiful sight emerged through the delirium. Unmistakable and perfect. A smile crept across her battered face.
Fuck it. I can't think of a better way to go out.
She raised a single, shaking hand up and squeezed before disappearing in a flash of golden light. She would be well-received in Lesbian Valhalla.
The light faded, leaving behind only the faint scent of flannel. The new form of SCP-7362 hung motionless in the air, attempting to calculate what the fresh hell had just happened in front of it. Blue was in a similar state, and Red was unconscious with an arm that looked like an andouille sausage slathered in blood. They remained there for several seconds, before the animal brain beat the computer in the race towards reaction and Blue winced to his feet. The unlucky operative grit his teeth and began hauling his comatose comrade towards the nearby exit as fast as possible.
"Yellow!" Orange cried on one side of Indigo. On his other side, Green let out a growl at the sight of his mangled brother-in-arms and leaned harder into his sprint. Closer, almost there. Three meters. Two meters. One meter.
The badonkers, interrupted in their attempt to relish in their first kill(?), turned back towards their three as-of-yet uninjured targets just as the volley was let loose. The buckshot was deflected by an areola, the magnum rounds were lost in the cleavage, but Orange's rifle shells ripped into its weakpoint before it could shield itself. The six bullets in the burst slammed in one after another, blowing holes in the plastic casing and shattering circuitboards.
Sparks cascaded along the walls as calculator guts began to fall out of the gaping plastic wound.
"I AM PERFECT. I AM PERFECT. YOU CANNOT HARM ME. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE IMPOSSIBLE IMPOSSIBLE—"
The dobonhonkeros were in a vicious spin now, smoke trailing behind as it smashed into the wall and began bouncing down the corridor at high speeds. Doors were knocked off their hinges and deep furrows were left in the walls in its wake. Blue and Red (well, mostly Blue) threw themselves to the ground as the screeching metal devil passed over head, its indestructible dohoonkabhankoloos obliterating enough of the wall to see daylight before unceremoniously spiraling into the chain-link fence outside.
Green continued sprinting out through the rubble towards the hostile, but Indigo and Orange skidded to a halt by the downed agents. Indigo flipped open his first-aid kit and began rapidly splinting, whereas Orange took one look at the arm that had been caught in the tonhongerekoogers' distortion field and immediately applied a tourniquet, writing the limb itself off as a lost cause.
Blue groaned. Indigo passed him an ampoule of morphine. Red just twitched. Indigo passed him two ampoules of morphine.
Outside, Green approached the crash-landed lump, which had helpfully landed "facedown". Most of the electronics within had been fried by a combination of gunfire and short-circuiting, but it still managed to croak out a defiant sentence.
"EVE@N IF WE-E-E-E D#O N-N-NOT L!IVE TO WA&TCH OVER IT, O/UR CR#EATI@ON WILL REM-M-MAIN IM#MA&CULATE E-E-E-ETERNALLY."
Green thought about Yellow, bleeding from bullet wounds and unable to breathe. He thought about Red, most of the flesh stripped off his left arm.
…
BKOOM
The rest of surviving team members walked, staggered, and were carried outside. Orange looked down at the smoking hulk in the unkempt grass.
"It looks like it'll fit in the van."
"Just make sure to drape something over it first. And don't touch the business end."
"You don't have to tell me twice. Look at it, it's still ripping the ground apart."
"I can—ouch—get that tarp I saw in the garage, just stop it from, uh, digging further down in the meantime."
"It's still floating in place, looks like that part at least was inherent. The motion we saw was probably the calculators' doing, steering it somehow."
Just as the situation was threatening to return to normal, an indescribably loud voice like a thousand clamoring bells and roaring engines boomed from the heavens, and the synthetic bonkhonagahoogs were engulfed in a beam of light.
"FINALLY, MY BOOBS."
As the damaged plastic and metal fell away before the divine radiance, the agents caught a brief glimpse of a vast form reaching down. A clockwork hand took hold of the perfect-as-ever hungolomghnonoloughongous, and fastened them to its chest.
"YALDABAOTH, SO PROUD, SO CERTAIN. BUT THERE IS NOTHING THE FLESH CAN ACCOMPLISH THAT THE MACHINE CANNOT."
The light faded, and with it went the godly presence (and also the deity that had shown up). The operatives stood in stunned silence. The wind blew through the unkempt grass. Blue leaned on the containment locker, struggling to stay upright.
Orange was the first to speak.
"…We got all that with our helmet cams, right?"
"I think so."
"Good. Dispatch would never have fucking believed us otherwise."