I reached a speed half that of light.
At this speed, relativistic effects become visible. Everything behind me was dyed a light coat of red while everything in front of me was sheathed in a very thin coat of blue. Everything behind me seems to almost get darker while those things in front become brighter.
My Lorentz Factor reached over 1.1, time dilation became a noticeable thing as flowers of nuclear fusion bloomed all in front of me.
Moving at 150,000 kilometers a second, with the air around me moving at only 500 meters a second, the molecules had no time to get out of the way and were forced into each other.
The Coulomb force, or the electrostatic force, that kept protons of opposing atoms away from each other was being overpowered easily. The nucleus of each atom came close enough together that the strong nuclear force took control and fused the very light atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen into much heavier atoms, releasing a tremendous amount of energy along the way.
I became a nuclear fireball. The hallway around me glowed a bright shade of white before being vaporized by the raw heat radiating from my body.
It took several billionths of a second to reach SCP-343.
My fists were just mere inches away from SCP-343.
"—!"
I was stopped. The coat of nuclear fire that surrounded me dissipated like steam from a pot of boiling water.
I furrowed my brows as I grit my teeth.
"Gah…" I groaned out as I tried to push even further. But nothing was happening. I was stuck, frozen still in space.
"Argh…" I pushed more than I've ever pushed. "Ragh…"
I glared at the mass of tentacles in front of me. Drops of molten metal came down from above as the hallway slagged akin to a candle inside an oven.
If I was still human, I think I'd be sweating from the physical exertion.
This was in ways similar to an arm wrestle. I was trying to overpower the changes done to the local space caused by SCP-343 while the thing tried to keep me away.
SCP-343 must be using his magic instead of warping reality because if it was reality warping it wouldn't have worked on me as Wyldscape Defense rejects all such things.
I saw my fist move forward. Millimeter by millimeter. I was steadily approaching the writhing mass of tentacles that used to be one of humanity's greatest heroes.
"RRRRAAAAAARGH!"
I screamed out in exertion as I pushed even harder. At this point, I can easily shatter entire islands like they were dinner plates.
I felt a sudden overwhelming force pushing my entire body away from SCP-343. I tried to fight against it, but just like a human trying to stay still as a tidal wave crashing into them, I was swept off my feet by this spatial tide.
SCP-343 flung me down the hall through many dozens of walls like an arrow before I dug my fingers into the ground and held on.
My hand dug long trails on the concrete floor like field tillers. This combined with my flight capabilities and I slowed down from a quarter of light speed within the span of a single hallway.
Looking up from my position, I found out SCP-343 flung me kilometers away to the other side of Site-17.
Everything that I passed when SCP-343 flung me was glowing a bright shade of orange. The heat that came from my movement was so great it caused everything in my path to start melting like meat under the sun.
SCP-343 must've realized that this was a losing battle. And so decided to throw me away. Not like it'll matter.
I got up, standing proud.
*Flump*
I was just about to fly back into battle before my right arm all the way up to my shoulder dropped to the floor.
"Huh—?"
In rapid succession, all my limbs were severed. Everything below the left elbow was gone. My legs all the way up my thighs were gone as well.
It was such a surprising turn of events that I fell to the floor as a mere body and a head, wondering just what had happened.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHH!"
I screamed in pain while wondering just what the hell happened. What the actual fuck is happening?
Biting down, I stopped the screaming and gained temporary ownership over Quetzalcoatl's Authority over knowledge.
I instantly knew what had just happened.
Cosmic strings. SCP-343 just launched multiple cosmic strings at me.
Cosmic strings are one-dimensional topological defects. Lines of mistakes in the fabric of spacetime that came from the universe transiting from a higher energy state into a lower energy state.
With the width of a single proton, a 100-meter-long cosmic string weighs the same as Mars. They can cut through pretty much anything and everything since cosmic strings are just the bigger brother of Magnetic Monopoles.
My eyes widened at what I had just been told by the Authority. That was absolutely ridiculous!
My limbless lump of a body started hovering as I flew. Phantom sensations of limbs still there made me instinctively want to move them, only for nothing to occur as they were on the floor.
It was very disorientating and confusing, feeling like you have an arm there but not.
I spotted SCP-343's rapid approach to my position. That large mass of tentacles will reach me in mere seconds.
I conjured up a ball of incredibly hot plasma. Everything around me was melting into a puddle. Streams of liquid iron and steel dripped down from the ceiling as everything pooled underneath me.
Without my hands serving as a focusing lens, it becomes very difficult to properly aim the plasma.
Nonetheless, it's still doable.
Just as SCP-343 was within 500 meters of my position, I unleashed the ball of superdense plasma so hot nuclear fusion began to occur at the core.
It might as well be a miniature star at this point.
A stream of starstuff came out like a flamethrower of god. Everything around me instantly vaporized as the air ionized to over 100,000 kelvin from the radiation coming from the miniature star I conjured up. The hallway became much, much wider, more like a cavern at this point was everything that's not me boiled away.
Suddenly and without warning, that ball of nuclear energy stopped existing.
Wait a minute… according to Quetzalcoatl's Authority over knowledge, it wasn't so much as the ball of plasma stopped existing but rather, SCP-343 changed the local physics on a fundamental level wherein the strong nuclear force stopped existing.
Without the strong nuclear force holding the nucleus of atoms together, nuclear fusion cannot occur. In fact, the very atoms themselves cannot exist as the strong nuclear force serves as the glue that holds quarks together.
I tried to conjure up more plasma, but they kept on disintegrating into clouds of loose Up and Down quarks that fell through the floor thanks to the pull of Earth's gravity.
Wyldscape Defense doesn't extend to my plasma it seems.
I looked down at my limbless body. Instead of any crimson flesh and white bones in the stump of my arms and legs, all I saw underneath my skin were crystals. Green-blue crystalline flesh that possessed the same color as my hair and solid bones of emerald green.
I would've been very horrified if not for the one level in Stress Defense.
I mean seriously, this is the first time I've ever lost any limbs. Not to mention all my limbs.
The things are regenerating, thankfully. The emerald bone grew the fastest, followed by the crystalline flesh that sheathed the bone like leaves for a tree.
But they're not fast enough. At the rate they're going, I think they'll take minutes to fully regenerate all my limbs.
Shit.
I then borrowed Quetzalcoatl's Authority over the Wind and used them as an 'exoskeleton' of sorts that'll plot my severed limbs by controlling the airflow around it.
It was… working… somewhat. The constant erasure of coherent atoms by the lack of the strong nuclear force that binds everything together forced me to create more air molecules on the fly.
It was a cat-and-mouse game of constantly losing and gaining new air molecules.
I was winning.
It was definitely a morbid scene. I, hovering in the air as a limbless cripple, my previous limbs all floating around me unconnected to the main body…
Doesn't matter.
I saw how SCP-343 was less than a hundred meters away.
I can't run. I have to buy time for Zvezdnyy to escape. Even if I could, SCP-343 could just restrict me by warping space with magic.
"..."
There is a way of defeating SCP-343, but it involves waiting for the sun to fully subsume the Magic God and disrupt any thaumaturgical or reality-warping shenanigans.
Fuck that. I wanted to say, but only silence came out as though I was in the depths of space.
It may be pointless, but I threw all my severed limbs at SCP-343.
Though there was no sonic boom given how air molecules no longer exist, those limbs still traveled faster than any man-made aircraft. Combined with their durability, they smashed into the writhing mass of molten flesh tentacles SCP-343 had for a head with a collective force greater than 50 depleted uranium rounds fired from a tank.
Nonetheless, it was pointless as I was consumed by a tsunami of molten, sun-corrupted flesh that ignored the very hot and melting corridor around me.
"...G…"
I bit back a silent scream. No flesh entered my mouth no matter how much they tried.
I can feel flesh entering my nose like water. I can feel the flesh entering into my vagina. I can feel the flesh entering into my anus.
UGH! Disgusting.
I tried to fight against it, but all I could flail around was my stumps. I tried to shake my head to stop those flesh tendrils from entering but SCP-343 then restricted my movement by controlling space itself.
SCP-343 is desperately trying to absorb me. But two levels of Wyldscape Defense aren't letting up. It's preventing my transformation.
So I still hovered there, my movements stopped as I was restricted by SCP-343's magic.
I can feel the flesh entering into my mouth through my nose. I can feel flesh entering my stomach. I can feel flesh filling up my intestines. I can feel flesh filling up my vagina. I can feel it filling up my lungs— my everything.
I felt claustrophobic. One level of Stress Defense was enough to prevent the initial panic, but now it was overwhelming.
I have to get out.
I have to get out.
I have to get out!
_________
After getting out of sight of the hallway, Zvezdnyy Rebenok looked down at the USB stick in her hand. There, she pressed a circular portion of the device and suddenly found a bright light piercing into her eyes.
"Ah!"
The girl turned the light away and found out she was holding it wrong. The bright light was the hologram projector.
There, right in front of her, was a holographic layout of the only home she'd ever known.
It was fascinating to look at.
"There," Cain said after looking at the hologram for less than three seconds. The immortal pointed out a direct way towards a large hangar, "This is the most direct path."
Chen immediately interjected, "What are you talking about? The local topography could've changed thanks to SCP-343 to prevent the most direct path. Instead, we should choose this way."
Chen pointed at a much longer way using a cart.
Instead of contributing to the argument between Chen, Cain, and the others, SCP-239 merely closed her eyes and uttered the words, "I wish I was in that submarine hangar."
Instantly, the group found themselves inside the same hangar that accepted the Tau-5 team days ago.
There were lumps of flesh all over the hangar. Beings that used to be humans under the illusion brought about by SCP-343 are now vacant and revealed for what they really are.
However, there was a submarine in the middle of this hangar, though it was a bit too small…
"I wish this submarine was large enough to accommodate all of us."
In a flash, the submarine became bigger. What was originally the size of a large SUV now was as large as a school bus. Shape-wise, it's just like a Cold War-era military submarine the Superpowers employed, only much smaller.
"Damn girl, you're powerful," Ralph remarked as he looked upon the submarine.
SCP-239 smiled at the compliment. The only thing on the girl's mind was to follow and mimic the steps of her Polkovodets.
Cain grabbed a ladder from the side and placed it next to the submarine. Opening the hatch, the immortal climbed inside and found everything to be familiar.
Looks like the Foundation based that submarine on old technology from Prometheus Lab.
He can certainly work with this.
Outside, Ralph was the last to enter. Just as the man climbed up the ladder, he found the hatch on top of the submarine closed.
"Hey!" The man yelled as he banged on the door, "I'm still out here!"
There was no reply. A deep pit opened up inside Ralph's stomach as he realized what was happening.
They're leaving him behind.
The fuckers!
Ralph took out a single pen from his jacket. A single twist and the end of the pen where one writes stuff with opened up like a flower with claws being the petals. Attaching those claws to the closed hatch, Ralph pulled on the pen to reveal a glowing core hidden by the pen's superstructure.
"Dejame Entrar."
Ralph then pushed to close the pen and suddenly, he found himself on the other side of the hatch, falling until he held onto the bars of the ladder inside.
That was a special device used by Chaos Insurgency infiltrators to secretly get through any locked door. A perfect fusion of para-technology and thaumaturgy, each deep infiltrator is given only two.
They were meant to be used sparingly. Disguised as a normal pen, these babies can pass through X-rays without an issue.
Slowly lowering himself on the ladder, Ralph tried to silently step down—
"Huh, guess the rat knew how to burrow more tunnels."
The end of a gun barrel was aimed at Ralph. Kathleen. Ralph raised his hands, internally cursing about how he shouldn't have gone to bed with this woman. She loves too easily.
"SCP-239's enforcement is still there. You can't hurt me."
"You raised your hands. Let's test that shall we?"
Doctor Chen suddenly walked in, "There you are— what are you doing, Specialist?"
"Killing this scum of the earth."
"Save it for later. We're about to head out and we need someone to monitor the engines."
Kathleen grits her teeth, before after a few more seconds, she puts away her gun and walks away, presumably towards the engine room.
"Thanks," Ralph said as he looked at Doctor Chen.
"Don't thank me. You can thank us by giving all the information you have on the Chaos Insurgency."
Ralph gulped. The submarine started to sway as water filled the hangar.
It was an attempt to equalize the pressure inside this sealed hangar and the pressure at the depth of the ocean floor. If the hangar just opened without any pressurization, water will rush through the gap and destroy the hangar like a water cutter.
_________
The waxy meat tastes horrible. I couldn't see anything aside from the darkness as flesh encased me in a sarcophagus. I couldn't hear anything since flesh filled my ear canal. I could only feel.
Being Kukulkan, my sense of touch is much more than that of an average human.
I could feel the flesh violating me. I can feel the flesh spreading itself to every corner of my body. I could feel it wiggling inside me. Brushing up against the sides of my intestine. It felt disgusting as SCP-343 tried fruitlessly to subsume me into him.
This must be what rape is like. This violation of the sanctity of my body.
(AN: Play: Wildfire by Hoyomix. Play it on loop)
Everything would've been so much worse without that one level of Stress Defense. The claustrophobia alone would be maddening. Every inch of you covered in the suffocating embrace of wet, smooth flesh…
This fleshy tomb… Oh god, it's so disgusting. I felt soiled. I felt defiled. I felt sullied. I felt degraded. I felt vitiated. I felt perverted. I felt corrupted. I felt dishonored. I felt despoiled.
I wanted out. Surely, Zvezdnyy has already escaped, right? Can I finally use my Noble Phantasm to break out of here?
No wait, there's no magical energy here. The SCPverse's magic system doesn't work off stuff like mana. I can't suck up an entire continent's magical energy to fuel my appearance as something similar to a Luminous Body.
But… am I, not ORT's heart? Can't I use that to power my Noble Phantasm?
As that realization dawned on me, I realized how I could spot a tiny, miniscule break in this darkness.
I… I see— light?
There, in the darkness, was a single bright source of light. Against this darkness, a bright star, that bright cold star of ice and rocks… that cloud of comets… stood out with great ease against this pitch-black backdrop.
I 'reached' out towards it, and I try to fully grasp it.
I clenched my eyes shut as I felt the warmth of a star entering every cell of my body, filling it up with energy.
A type of energy that no one on this planet has ever seen before.
A wave of crystalization erupted from me. It transmuted this tomb of molten, fused flesh into a cocoon of crystals. Then, that cocoon shattered into nothingness.
Like a butterfly, I returned. My limbs returned.
I returned to a field of crystals and strange, blue fire as I tapped into a minuscule portion of my true power as the Heart of ORT.
Reality around me was filled with distortions. Physics broke down at the edge of my body as though I was a black hole.
In a sense, I am a relative of black holes given how I don't belong to this world. I am a fundamental alien to the Common Sense of Man. Earthly concepts reasonably shouldn't even apply to me, but because of Malla, the collective consciousness of Lostbelt 7, the 'Alaya' of the Deinos, made Kukulkan the Sun Goddess in an attempt to replicate the 'Gods' of Pan-Human History, I became closer to humans.
Yet nonetheless, I am at my core, Archetype: ORT. I am the Cerebral Corpus of the Oort Clouds.
I am the Apex of a single, long-gone world. Like what Zvezdnyy Rebenok said: I am an enclosed alien universe spreading my alien rules, ignoring any local rules.
As the Heart of ORT, I'd become ORT in the far future. I wonder how would the Waifu Catalog depict such a thing.
I flew towards SCP-343. A wide and savage smile on my lips as I became excited at the thought of battle, at the thought of taking revenge for the defilement done to me.
Space and time changed and altered to aid my motion. Any spatial shields put up by the old hero of mankind were shattered as I blitzed right through them as though they didn't exist.
I make the rules.
I grabbed the writhing mass that used to be SCP-343's head. There, I flew up and used SCP-343 as a shovel to push away the many rocks underneath the seabed.
In one second, I dug through the kilometer of Earth's crust that separated the Foundation facility and the bottom of the ocean.
I kept on moving.
In another second, I pierced through that sheet of water many kilometers thick and met air. Steam covered me because of how fast I was going. The bright crimson sky and the corrupted sun bared down at me with renewed vigor as though trying to transform me.
"God… dess… jo… in… don't… kill… me… there… is… only… pain…" SCP-343 moaned out as I flew through the air.
Ah… looks like SCP-343 is nearing his end it seems.
I pushed up into the upper atmosphere. A coat of fire around me as I climbed up higher and higher until I reached the Karman line in another second after piercing through the ocean.
There, I continued flying out of Earth's gravity well until I was halfway between the Earth and the Moon.
Having been through so much, all that remained of SCP-343 was a fleshy ball no larger than a basketball.
Drawing my right hand that held the head of SCP-343 back, I used the Heart of ORT inside me to fuel a partial appearance of my Noble Phantasm.
My right arm thickened as it turned into the arm of a giant green humanoid. Using this arm, I threw SCP-343 out into the depths of space with as much force as I could muster.
I had no problem keeping track of SCP-343 as it flew through the void at a third the speed of light.
Never return, I said inside my mind before a thought suddenly crossed it.
Cain, the man who asked me to give his brother peace, the immortal who asked me to ferry his older brother into the Afterlife.
I shall answer his prayer.
I dispelled my Noble Phantasm.
Raising up my two now normal hands, my body started glowing like a sun. My brilliant radiance bathed my surroundings in an almost ethereal glow.
I calculated the trajectory of SCP-343's head. Then I aimed to where SCP-343 will be in about a second.
It'll clip the moon.
Oh well.
From the outside, it appeared as this gargantuan burst of light too bright for the naked eye. A second sun bloomed in existence in the space between Earth and the Moon. Even while over a hundred thousand kilometers away, the night side of the Earth facing me will become as bright as the late afternoon under the radiance brought about by what I was about to do.
An utterly ludicrous amount of energy started building up around my body.
This symphony of destruction. This ensemble of annihilation. This finality of God's perturbation.
Even despite what you did, I still respect you. No, not this fallen one, I respect the man inside Cain's mind, the one who sacrificed his everything for the sake of mankind.
Give me the torch, I will watch over humanity in your stead.
I will end your misery.
There, I unleashed my most powerful blast of plasma yet.
Since this was in space, it was silent. Yet the silence only seemed to exacerbate the grandness of what I was performing.
A nearly unending onslaught of stellar plasma that could only exist in a star's core erupted out of me. It smashed into the basketball-sized remains of SCP-343 and clipped the side of the white Moon.
The stream of nuclear fire melted half of the lunar surface in less than a second. Large plumbs of dust, debris, and molten crust and mantle flew off the surface and went with the direction of my plasma as a hole was drilled into the sides of the Moon.
The remains of SCP-343 simply evaporated away in the face of this attack of almost unimaginable magnitude backed up by my rules, my concepts.
The Moon was an innocent casualty of my attack, caught in the crossfire. As my plasma stopped after a three-second release, I could fully appreciate the levels of destruction I caused when I stopped holding back.
In just three seconds, the surface of the entire Moon was turned into a very accurate representation of hell. Oceans of lava large enough to swallow whole countries replaced the originally white lunar surface. There were a few tiny islands here and there that rose above the bright yellow lava, remnants of the tips of lunar mountains that didn't melt fully.
The edge of my plasma wave clipped the sides of the moon, digging out a large chunk of it that reached down deep into the mantle.
A simple brush with that wave of stellar plasma and the Moon was devastated beyond belief.
A simple glancing hit and almost the entire lunar crust melted like chocolate inside a hot pan.
I knew for a fact that if I aimed that wave directly at the celestial body instead of to the sides I'd completely blast it apart like someone blowing on a handful of sand. If I aimed it at Earth I'd bore a hole through that planet as wide as China.
It was… awe-inspiring.
More than that, the power terrified me. Looking down at my body, I noticed how I was wearing Kukulkan's second ascension outfit. That white leotard. Not even the third ascension.
I wasn't even using the Heart of ORT to its full potential. I didn't even use my Noble Phantasm to its full potential yet.
Though at least now I know I can fuel its appearance with the Heart of ORT instead of the magical energy of a continent.
Just how much power could I unleash?
I wasn't dealing with trying to use as little power as possible, now I was trying to deal with using as much power as possible.
Just how much power was in the Heart of ORT?
I felt nonetheless giddy. There's just something about wielding so much power that builds your confidence.
I flew back down to Earth.
During my flight, I found myself gaining a new profound hatred for these things, and most of all, a genuine unbridled hatred for whatever corrupted the sun.
This thing killed billions of people. This thing corrupted the most selfless person I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. This thing violated me…
This sun… I glared at the sun as I descended through the atmosphere. That white pupil of a crimson eye, staring at me balefully.
I found clenching and unclenching my hands as I broke through the troposphere.
I don't know what caused this. I don't know what they want, but … I will find you, and I will kill you, so swears Kukulkan, so swears me.