"We can't stay here forever." I declared to those people who were eating.
Since this was a corporate office that didn't offer any meals, the employees were expected to bring their own. As such, SCP-1915 warped reality to make meals appear within the confines of the large refrigerator in the employee break area.
The meals were actually pretty fancy, as though they were made by and for actual people. A little heating via a microwave and it was done.
More than that, apparently these prepared meals are refreshed every morning at nine. This combined with the unlimited water that came from fountains helped survivors of Site-17 survive.
Everyone looked at me. The storage room that was once filled with sounds of chewing and eating turned quiet.
SCP-953 was the first to break the silence.
"And how do you propose we do that? God is angry and will smite us the moment anyone tries to leave this fortress. That's if our fortress doesn't subsume us into his fantasy if we have the unfortunate luck of meeting him."
After finishing, she returned to eating the duck liver sandwich held in her remaining hands. SCP-953 didn't even care enough to pretend to hear what I was about to say.
"I can't just stay here." I said firmly nonetheless, "I've made a deal with the SCP Foundation where they'll keep some survivors I've rescued inside secure sites and maybe even start rescuing any survivors. I can't just stay here forever."
"..."
No one else said anything until Lieutenant Ralph placed his finished meal box off to the side and took out a single USB stick from seemingly out of thin air.
"The layout of the entire Site-17 facility is in this USB stick. I will give this to you if you can ensure that I escape intact from SCP-343 and make contact with my organization."
Doctor Chen stood up with a concerned expression on his face, "Lieutenant Ralph, why do you have that? Only Site Directors and O5s are supposed to have knowledge of the Foundation facility."
Ralph ignored him and walked up to me.
"I am a member of the Chaos Insurgency on a deep-dive infiltration of Site-17." Ralph grabbed the base of his neck and pulled, revealing his previous face had been a mask, "My mission is clearly defunct given how Site-17 has been overrun by 343. But there should still be some precious data within this USB stick that my organization and you, Kukulkan, will surely find useful."
The new Ralph appeared nothing like the old one. He had a scar extending the left side of his mouth. His eyes were purple instead of green, and his hair was black.
All the security guards pointed their automatic rifles at Ralph. I moved to shield Ralph with my body, stepping between the guns and the Chaos Insurgency agent.
"Kukulkan, step aside and let me kill this traitorous son of a bitch." Kathleen growled out.
"I can't allow you to do that."
My reply was met with increasing hostility. From the corner of my eyes, I spotted SCP-239 leaning over a metal shelf to spy on the scene.
"Kukulkan, as a part of MTF Tau-5, you are obligated to apprehend and terminate any member of the Chaos Insurgency you find," Chen said, hiding behind the four security guards.
Part of Tau-5? Oh wait, shit, I didn't introduce myself properly! Was that why these people appeared to be so much at ease with me since they had mistaken me for a member of Tau-5?
"That's not entirely accurate." I stared right into Chen's eyes, causing the old man to flinch, "Perhaps a better word used to describe me is a contractor. A mercenary if you really want to be accurate about it."
"A mercenary?"
That was asked by Jeremias. I could see sweat drops falling down his head from how nervous he was.
"When everything had gone to hell about a week ago, I found out that I am immune to the corrupted sun. There, I began to rescue as many survivors as I could around New York. I made contact with a traveling Tau-5 two days ago and the price I named for my service is a secure place to put the survivors I've rescued."
I didn't tell anyone of the second part of my price since I figured if I did my job really well the Foundation would see losing my services as more costly than beginning rescue operations for any survivors worldwide.
"A noble goal," Ralph said smoothly, "For a hero."
Ralph instantly understood what I wanted to be. He knows I'm not the type to betray someone then.
No wonder he's an infiltrator if he can read someone else this easily.
"Enough! Kukulkan, stand down." Chen tried to order me, "Even if you're a mercenary you're still contracted to the SCP Foundation, and I am the highest ranking Foundation staff and I order you to step away and let us terminate this mole."
"This USB is linked to my life status. If I die, it will instantly melt its internal circuits and destroy any possible data you can retrieve."
"Kukulkan, you will stand down or your contract with the SCP Foundation will be terminated."
"You do realize that Site-17 is sealed away from the outside world? No one would know what you do."
That caught Cain and SCP-953's attention. SCP-105 still played with her food despite all this.
"Kukulkan, if you step away now, I will give a good word to my higher-ups at the SCP Foundation ensuring your survivors are given the best accommodations possible."
Chen must've realized the logic behind Ralph's words and instead played soft instead of hard.
"You could just say how SCP-343 overran the facility and it took everyone with him. No one would know of anything you do here. No one can escape with SCP-343 patrolling everywhere that isn't SCP-1915's containment cell."
The room was getting increasingly heated, and any words that came out of Ralph and Chen's mouth was only spilling oil upon the fire.
The tension in the room was so thick I could almost grab it. Everything was reaching a boiling point where I knew someone was going to break and a shot was going to be fired.
"Kukulkan, I will give you one last chance and pretend none of this happened: step away from the Chaos Insurgency agent."
I spotted Sergeant Daniel Hill moving his index finger to pull the trigger.
"STOP!"
Before his finger could move more than a millimeter, SCP-239 popped into the scene and froze everyone except me and Cain.
It was as though the world was a video and someone had pressed the pause button with how frozen everything was. Well, that's if you can't hear the faint heartbeats coming from everyone.
SCP-239's eyes purposefully skipped me and looked everywhere other than me.
"No fighting! Enjoy some candy instead."
Instantly, the guns inside everyone's hands turned into a large swirling lollipop.
It was almost comical seeing heavily armed people holding lollipops.
"Now, I'm going to resume, but I forbid fighting amongst the troops of the Zvezdnyy Rebenok."
Everyone unfroze, and they started heaving in oxygen.
Did SCP-239's command to 'stop' cause people to stop breathing? Yet their heartbeats remained untouched?
With that, SCP-239 hurried away and back to hiding behind a metal shelf.
After the fiasco of my discipline, SCP-239 stopped talking to me and became more reclusive while SCP-191 just slept. I mean, SCP-239 actively tries to avoid me.
And this is hours after the event.
My lips thinned. I'll be honest, it hurts how SCP-239 hides from me compared to her previous behavior.
Looking back, I saw how Kathleen tried to stab the lollipop that replaced her guns into Ralph, only to be stopped by an invisible force field.
Fighting did indeed stop. So I'll deal with this later. The reality bender comes first.
Gravity loosened its hold on me as I flew toward the place where SCP-239 was hiding.
"Listen," I started, and was about to continue before seeing SCP-239 gone from where she disappeared.
I closed my eyes and used Quetzalcoatl's Authority over the wind to peer into every inch of SCP-1915's containment cell.
There, I found SCP-239 hiding underneath a desk.
I moved. Quicker than thought, quicker than most eyes can perceive, I flew right out the door.
Papers, chairs, computers— anything not nailed down flew with me when I passed by.
I stopped right at the entrance of where SCP-239 hid. That desk inside a cubicle.
Before she could teleport away, I grabbed her left arm.
"Ah! I'm sorry for running away, Kukulkan," SCP-239 cowed away from me, holding up her hands between her face and me, "Please…" She weakly pleads, "Please, Kukulkan, don't hurt me. I stopped them from fighting, right? I left my Igrushka— that disabled girl alone. Did I do something wrong?"
I felt my heart shatter at how weak and dead SCP-239 sounded. She didn't even call me Polkovodets.
I… didn't intend for this to happen.
I mean, physical punishments were a thing in my childhood. Whenever I stepped very much out of line like say play fighting with the neighbor's kids, I would be punished. Though it hurts, the punishment my parents dished out was never excessive.
And so I made sure my punishment was never excessive. But it seemed to have a much larger impact on SCP-239 than I intended.
I promptly let go of SCP-239.
"Wait! Before you go, let me say that I'm sorry."
SCP-239 didn't move.
"Listen, I'm… not a good parent. I mean fuc— dang— I'm nowhere near parent material. You were winning in that argument and I didn't know what to do to get my point across."
"So I was right?" SCP-239 meekly asked.
I paused for a few seconds and mentally reviewed how I was going to go about this.
"With great power comes even greater responsibility. You are strong, Zvezdnyy Rebenok, and being so strong you are capable of incredible cruelty even if you didn't intend to."
"How?"
"Not everyone is as fortunate as you or I, to be able to regenerate lost limbs or senses. Imagine if a horrible freak accident happened to a human one day and caused him to lose a limb, was it their fault that this unfortunate accident befalled upon them?"
"No…"
"But by your logic, they are no longer human."
"That's because they aren't."
"...Hmm…"
This didn't go as I expected.
In my mind, I thought I would be able to convince SCP-239 that disabled people are still human with a single talk.
It appears that was a dream. A childish dream.
How naive of me.
I wanted to punch myself. If it was that easy to change someone's mind then there'll be no more wars in the world.
"To you, they may no longer be human, but to others whom you promised to defend as the Zvezdnyy Rebenok, the Witch who will defend all of Humanity, those who still retain their everything… in their eyes those disabled people are still human."
SCP-239 furrowed her brows.
"But why? If they aren't like you fully capable humans then why do you still see them as you?"
I gave SCP-239 a sad smile, "Humans are full of contradictions. Even I am full of contradictions."
"I could just wish everything be much simpler."
She really could. SCP-239 was already a no-limit reality warper before her teenage years. Just imagine how much more powerful could SCP-239 be if she grew up to become an adult.
"The world is inherently a complex structure, Zvezdnyy Rebenok. To wish it to become much simpler means to destroy a fundamental aspect of the world."
Complexity comes from the interaction between a large number of parts. To remove this would mean to remove those parts. Or just stop those parts from interacting.
"I… I see. And was that why you hi— hit me?"
"I hit you because I was getting frustrated at how you weren't seeing from my perspective. I didn't realize you were a person with your own boundaries and ideas and for that; I am deeply, deeply, deeply sorry."
As I spoke, I guided SCP-239 out of underneath the table and into a chair. There, I placed a gentle hand on SCP-239's shoulder. My eyes were full of sincerity.
"The world isn't black or white. It is full of complexity and shades of greyness."
I slowly swung my arms to better gesture what I was saying. Hovering there in the air, I crossed my legs and sat on nothing.
"Um… my Tolkovodets, what does that mean?"
I raised a finger to emphasize my point, "It means the world isn't purely 'bad' or 'good', and that there are areas that breach into both good and bad."
"Like?"
I looked down at SCP-239, "Like say the fact that other humans consider those who lost a limb to be still human."
I'm using SCP-239's logic. It occurred to me that I couldn't impose my own logic on the girl, so instead I'll change her worldview by using her own logic.
"I see…" SCP-239 cupped her chin, and I could see behind her shimmering grey-green eyes the gears inside her head started turning.
"So I should just turn those disabled back into humans then!"
Uh… that's not a direction I expected her to go down.
Seeing my questioning eyes, SCP-239 proudly elaborated, "As you say, my Polkovodets, that the world is complex and those whom I sworn to protect as the Zvezdnyy Rebenok will surely be mad at me just like you at my casual dismissal of those disabled. If I can't simplify the world then I shall simplify those who are disabled by reverting them back into being human!"
That is… some logic right there.
"Am I right, or am I right?"
"..." I let out a sigh, causing the confidence to deflate out of SCP-239 like a balloon losing air and her body to almost wilt, "You're… partially right. You just need more experience. Being here in this facility for your entire life has left you blind to how complex the world actually is."
Like what my parents said to me, SCP-239 will probably get it more with age and experience. Right now, this is probably her limit.
"Tell you what, let's restart. As your Tolkovodets, I shall do more than just command your army, I shall tell you what is acceptable by the general populace and what isn't, is that fair?"
"Hmm… alright! Let's reset everything." SCP-239 said as she nodded.
We shook on it. It was a bit funny seeing the difference between the sizes of my and SCP-239's hands.
Thank goodness SCP-239 isn't an angsty teenager or a smart child, since she could've definitely gotten more out of that deal than what she already did.
"By the way, what did you mean when you say 'I can break all the rules'?"
"That's because you can. Just look at you rejecting all my powers." As though to put her words into reality, everything around SCP-239 except for her clothing turned into candy, "completely rejecting me should be completely impossible according to my uncle before he turned into my Arka Nemezida. Yet you're breaking that rule. I think you can ignore everything."
I can… ignore everything?
"Could you elaborate on that more?"
"It's like you're a living enclosed micro-universe in the shape of a human. You can reject any rules because you're something that makes all the rules. You have a star inside of you as well."
"..." The gears inside my mind started turning. Was she talking about ORT's heart when she said I have a star inside me? And those rules… is she talking about how aliens in the Nasuverse don't possess the same concepts like death as humans do?
"Though that star is strange. It doesn't behave like a normal star as wherever its light touches it changes everything. And it seems to grow brighter or dimmer according to your mood."
I had to exert extensive control over my facial muscles to prevent any twitching. Did SCP-239 imply I'm similar to the corrupted sun?
I decided to end this, "I see. You've given me a lot of ponder about, Zvezdnyy Rebenok."
She really did.
I can break all the rules, huh? Just like ORT, the Ultimate One of the Oort Cloud.
Now just how do I break all the rules?