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AROUNDERHOUSE Joint
The day SCP-5514 fell, the world turned on us. The politicians said it was a waste of money we could have spent on more guns, planes, bombs. The media only saw the collateral damage - the skyscrapers sheared in half and the container ships crushed like soda cans. The environmentalists pointed at its corpse and said that the consequences of its blood leaking into the soil could be catastrophic, taint the seas for generations to come.
The day the Dragonslayer fell, the world stopped being afraid of dragons, and decided they didn't need us anymore.
They were wrong, of course. They always are.
— Fleet Admiral Torvald Halbaum, Global Occult Coalition (Project Armada CO)
Fifteen years ago, a monsoon making its way up the California coast was unthinkable. But a lot has changed in fifteen years.
The tempest settles over San Francisco under the cover of night. Gale-force winds pick up, whipping sheets of rain onto the asphalt — the trees go from bending and swaying to being snapped in two and dragged into the air. Klaxons scream to an audience of none at every empty traffic intersection. For a dirty moment, San Francisco holds its breath. Most people are crouched with their loved ones in attics and closets. The public emergency shelters are full of people packed like sardines, listening to the storm rage aboveground. The faithful have prayer books, the paranoid have canned food, and General Sarah Jung has a job to do.
She's sitting in her office, tastefully decorated and blessedly soundproofed. She is idly sipping at a small cup of Earl Grey tea. If she had windows, they'd look out over the bay in turmoil as the storm made its slow, violent advance into the city. But no — the office is all mahogany paneling and steel accents, monitors hanging from the walls. The largest, on the far wall and the size of a whiteboard, shows a live satellite map of the West Coast, stretching from Baja to Vancouver. A large red dot hangs off the coast of California. The map updates, and the dot ticks another inch closer to San Francisco. General Sarah Jung finishes her tea and rises, striding out of the office into the command center.
The Block is an ugly blight on the San Francisco skyline. A featureless gray metal rectangle 150 feet tall, one side dominated by a massive set of hangar doors that go nearly all the way up. It sticks out like a sore, hypoxic thumb, and no one enjoys its presence. As of five hours and twelve minutes ago, it is the most important building in the city. Most of it is empty space inside, for obvious reasons. But the topmost three floors are dedicated to data — this the brain. The nervous system that the GOC has draped across the western seaboard terminates here, in this room. It is some cross between NASA’s mission control and an aircraft carrier’s combat information center; stepped rows of terminals arranged in concentric circles.
General Jung has called all hands on deck; every terminal is occupied by an operator in blue fatigues and a headset, dutifully analyzing the information stream at it comes in, speaking into their microphones. As the door to her office opens and she steps out, a cloud forms around her of analysts trying to get her attention, tablets of readings and maps being waved in her face.
“General, the Air Force has authorized air support from Fort Bragg—“
“— trying to reestablish radio contact with the advance ships outside the bay, they’re—“
“Typhoon is six klicks away from the Black Line, ma’am.”
That last one is the only important one.
“Any changes in trajectory?” she asks.
“Negative, ma’am. He’s only getting faster.”
She acknowledges it with a swift nod but doesn’t stop walking, and the cloud follows her. The center of the room is dominated by a massive, holographic display of the earth, slowly spinning; a number of dots are marked out, most colored green or yellow and drifting comfortably in the deep ocean, far from any shores. A single, ugly red dot hangs nearly on top of San Francisco.
Jung stops walking when she reaches one terminal. She looks over the top of the monitor at the analyst behind it; a dark-skinned young man, a laser-focused attentiveness dancing in his eyes.
“Sergeant Mallory.”
“Ma’am.” Those eyes don’t leave the screen to meet hers.
“What’s your take on this?”
“You have a room full of analysts who could give you a detailed breakdown of the probabilities at play here. Ma’am. And they’ll all tell you that past incidents tell us there’s a 73.4% chance that Typhoon will turn around before it enters the Bay.”
She could reprimand him for that, but both of them know she won’t. A perfectly-manicured finger comes down on the head of the Godzilla bobblehead on his desk.
“Don’t you think this is in poor taste?”
“I prefer to focus on the actual conflicts as opposed to the imagined ones, ma’am.” The ghost of a smile dances on his lips. He knows he’s getting away with a lot right now; the circumstances allow some latitude.
“Then quit futzing around and tell me whatyou think.”
“Typhoon isn’t violent by nature. He hasn’t come within fifty kilometers of the city in ten years. When he does get close, the high-frequency soundbursts make him turn around just fine; this is uncharacteristic. I think the storm has something to do with it.”
“The Black Line is forty kilometers out from the city. He’s six away from breaching it.”
“Four now,” an aide chimes in.
Jung crosses her arms. “So he’s never gotten this close before. I know that already. I’m asking whatyou think we should do, as someone who’s been watching his movements a lot longer than I have.”
Mallory looked up at her.
“You’re asking if you should give the scramble order or not.”
“Yes.”
This gives him pause. He stops looking at the screen, leans back, lost in thought. Then, a few seconds later, he returns, and finally looks up at her.
“I think Typhoon’s not turning around. I think you should given it five minutes ago.”
She turns on her heel and gives a sharp nod to one of the warrant officers standing by the wall. He flicks a switch next to him; the dome light overhead turns green. Outside, the keen-eyed can hear a distinct shift in the sirens across the city; going from a low, warning droning to an active air-raid warbling.
Inside, the General’s voice overpowers it.
“Attention! We’ve been lucky enough to avoid this situation so far. But that means many of you have only worked on training exercises before. This is not a training exercise; everything about this situation is real, including the lives riding on your shoulders today. Don’t ignore that weight. Feel it. Let it remind you what you’re fighting for today.”
A familiar rumbling begins to shake the building from underfoot. A few of the soldiers look pale.
“Two minutes to launch. Don’t disappoint me.”
A god fell into the sea in 1998.
We were told to dredge her corpse and dispose of her. Her mission was over; the Crocosquid was a charred husk lying on a beach a few kilometers away. But it was a pyrrhic victory. Too much damage. Too much exertion. Firing the Sun Vent that incinerated LSA-Brasil-01 had nearly destroyed the Dragonslayer too.
But we won. That was what mattered to the Foundation’s Council, to the public. Maybe we lost the greatest weapon humanity had ever created, but in the end, we won. The remaining LSAs were docile, avoiding populated areas and preferring to stay in the open ocean. We were safe, we could begin to rebuild. Ease the belt on a war economy. Make it so that maybe our kids could live in a world like the one we grew up in.
But the second nastiest thing about superweapons is that they have a function in peacetime too. No one knows when war will come to your shores. No one could guarantee that something wouldn’t drive the kaiju back into animalistic fury. That there wasn’t another crocosquid somewhere out there, slumbering in an undersea crevasse, waiting for her chance to come to the surface for round two. We barely won last time. And the GOC doesn’t take chances.
So maybe we were handed orders from Düsseldorf not to melt down the parts of 5514 that we pulled from the sea floor. Maybe we lied to the Foundation, said more components of the Dragonslayer were unrecoverable than we first estimated. Maybe they were packed up, shipped off to a score of blacksites across the world to be replicated and reconstructed. Maybe, not three months after the war ended, we were already preparing for the next one.
Hm? Oh, yes. The other nastiest things about superweapons: you can never just have one.
— Commander Hans Demwar, Operation ANGLER GREEN (SCP-5514 Recovery and Disposal) CO
Chris braced himself against the railing. The waves were so violent it took both hands to keep him steady, and he was completely soaked to the bone even through two ponchos, his high-vis vest pulled over top. But like everyone else, he had a job to do tonight.
His little tugboat was just a lookout. They were moored right near the entrance to the San Francisco bay, starboard side facing the open waters of the Pacific. Every floodlight on the ship was on, providing some meager visibility. Really, the most it did was make sure he was visible to the other four ships he could see doing the same across the waters.
The rain was becoming a problem; the radar dish on top of the wheelhouse had been damaged, making communication with Command inconsistent and unreliable. The most they could get through were static-filled messages, and the storm was giving so much interference that satellite communication was struggling too.
He cursed out loud to no one in particular. Then his thoughts were broken by a sound cutting through the sturmundrang; a low, shrill howl, like a mournful whale’s call. For a split second, it pierced through the thunder and waves, then fell below again. He froze, wide-eyed, for a second — then nearly slipped as another crashing wave hit the side of the ship.
Scrabbling to the railing to pull himself up, he yanked the binoculars from around his neck and to his eyes. Total darkness, of course. Shaking fingers scrabbled across their surface until he found the dial and flicked it. Suddenly, everything was cast in shades of white and grey; active night-vision. He cast his vision left-to-right, trying to get a bead on anything except an endless sea of grey waves and black sky. Nothing. Nothing. Noth— wait.
He did a double-take, bringing his sight back to that spot and staring directly at it. Ten seconds passed, then thirty. He was about to pass it off as a trick of the eye, then—
His eyes widened.
Even from this distance, it was gargantuan. Some cross between a lizard and a seal, breaching gracefully out of the water like a whale, accompanied by that same mournful, shrill cry. It hung in the air for a second before crashing back down under the waves.
Struggling violently, he grabbed ahold of his radio, shouting into it.
“This is Unit-3 Calloway! I have eyes on LSA-Typhoon-01, 290— no, 292 west-by-northwest! Moving actively towards the Black Line!”
Static on the line.
“Dammit!”
Another wave shook the ship, no doubt the wake of the Typhoon’s re-entry. Chris abandoned the railing, racing around the ship as fast as he could, trying to get to the satellite phone on the other side. Maybe, just maybe—
He froze. He was on the port side now, staring back at the San Francisco skyline. And there was something there.
It was hard to see, cast into silhouette by the lights of the city. But it was big. It was humanoid. And it was moving. Logically, he knew there was only one thing it could be, but he kept staring. He kept staring as it progressed from slow, unsteady steps to a confident stride, then into long, loping dashes, throwing up water from the bay as it ran towards him. He stared at it right up until it was nearly on top of the ship.
And then, finally, it was cast in sharp relief. A well-armored mech two hundred feet tall, painted in sharp maroon, blades portruding from each hand. Its ‘face’ was dominated by a single red circle. He watched it in slow motion as it leapt, jumped entirely over his ship, and slammed clear on the other side, never so much as stopping its charge.
The radio crackled to life, breaking through the static for a single moment as he watched its back.
“All advance ships, be advised: Black Suit Voodoo Ranger is on scene and actively engaging LSA-Typhoon-01. Stay out of the way.”
Voodoo Ranger was the first and best of the Dragonslayer’s children.
We recovered what we could, of course, but the issues were immediate. If we transported that much hardware to one location, the Foundation would immediately realize. So we had to spread it out. The Plasma Wristblade ended up in Sydney. The ESA landed in Sri Lanka. Et cetera. The result was that every Black Suit was vastly divergent in design, each molded around a different organ from their mother, operating on different strategies and excelling in different situations.
But San Francisco was the largest city in close proximity to the most LSAs, and as such, we received the lion’s share of original Dragonslayer components. It took years to get them back in working condition and miniaturize them. Funding was a constant battle, as was keeping it quiet from the Foundation. But PTOLEMY has the best scientists in the world. We got the job done.
The other suits might have their unique talents or specializations, but Voodoo Ranger is the only one built from SCP-5514’s bones and organs. The armor plating was smelted down and reforged. The original computer systems were reincorporated at every opportunity. The weapons were refitted for a suit half the size of the original. Smaller, faster, stronger; he is every bit his mother’s son.
Naturally, there was really only one person we could get to pilot it.
— Doctor Arjun Patel, Project WYRMRISE, San Francisco Facility Head Scientist
“— hear me? Repeat, can you hear me, Captain Rosales?”
The radio inside Castor’s helmet finally broke through the static.
“Well, not loud and clear, but I can hear you. Think I might be through the interference zone.”
Hanging from his harness inside the head of the mech, he pushed his legs, the suit reading his movements and sending the physical data into the computers that dispersed them to the thousands of servos throughout the Black Suit. The delay was nearly nonexistent; the suit moved in perfect time with him. The camera feeds around the ‘head’ were wired directly into the helmet’s visor; he saw the sea around him. The overall effect was that the mech was an extension of his body, of himself.
Another leap over another ship, spraying water everywhere. He was a warrior in a billion-dollar war machine; he was a kid in a pool.
“This isn’t a training exercise, Captain Rosales. Don’t take any risks you don’t have to.”
“Where’s Typhoon?”
“Last known location is about four-point-five klicks from your current position, seven degrees south of your current heading.”
Castor pivoted his head, scanning the roiling waters. Nothing. He thought ‘infrared’, and his visor lit up in shades of blues and purple, with a decided lack of red or orange.
“He’s coldblooded; if he’s underwater, infrared won’t help.”
“I can see that.”
“Don’t sass me.”
He ignored her, turning off infrared mode and going back to his naked eye. Typhoon was a big bastard; heshould be able to see—
“Shit!”
Castor stumbled forward, an impact shaking the Black Suit. He felt it transmitted as tiny vibrations all across his skin; haptic feedback, critical to his synchronicity with Voodoo Ranger. He needed to feel everything the suit felt, and right now, he felt like he’d been punched in the back.
Kicking his leg out and spinning onto his heel, he did a 180, facing whatever had shoved him.
“Well, hello, ugly.”
Typhoon was some disgusting cross between the body shape of a komodo dragon with the skin and blubber of a seal and the face of a moray eel. It was standing on his back two webbed feet, the front pair hovering in front of it. Castor couldn’t be sure, but he felt the expression on its face could only be of surprise as his six-ton hand come around, catching it directly in the jaw. It bellowed in pain.
“Don’t let it go for the water!”
Prophetically, its next move was to drop like a rock, diving back into the waves — or it least, it tried to. Still half-kneeling, Castor wrapped his other hand around its neck, yanking it back up.
“Now what?” he grunted into the radio as it writhed violently, trying to flop itself free.
“As long as its on its feet, you’re fighting on your turf. Don’t let it get into the water.”
“Besides that!” He slammed another fist into its head, inciting another pained bellowing.
“In the past, Typhoon’s proven susceptible to prolonged physical trauma.”
It took a second for the phrase to register. “You mean beat the shit out of it?”
“Yes, I mean beat the shit out of it.”
“Wilc—”
His response was cut off. Finally sick of the chokehold, Typhoon lunged, biting those massive jaws down. Castor jerked his hand back, but not fast enough. The huge toothed jaws caught the suit’s forearm, trying to rip it off. His other fist came around, smashing the back of the monster’s skull, but not hard enough to dislodge its hold.
“Piece of shit!”
“Vent your exhaust through the upper ports!”
“What?!”
“Now!”
He thought, and it was so. Typhoon jerked back violently, releasing the grip on the forearm that was now suddenly spewing skin-meltingly hot exhaust gases through a series of vent ports.
“Handy.”
“It sure is. Now go beat the shit out of that lizard.”
Castor lunged, catching the still-confused sea beast with a glancing blow. The blades on his arms extended, slashing the soft underbelly. It bellowed in pain again, but this time with an edge of rage to it. Blood spilled out; Castor was sure that if it was morning, he would see the water turning into a frothing red maelstrom. Looking up, Typhoon roared, a guttural sound audible even inside the suit.
“I think I made it mad!”
He didn’t have time to hear the response, because Typhoon lunged right back, claws now fully extended as it hammered blows onto Ranger’s armor. The claws were sharp and strong enough to leave gouges in the plating. Castor jerked as his pain receptors lit up; it was psychosomatic, but it still hurt like a bitch.
Time to fight fire with fire.
He willed his blades to extend. They telescoped forward, going from his forearm to extending past his arms, and he brought them crashing down on Typhoon’s head, forcing it underwater.
“Keep his head underwater if you can.”
“Why? He’s a fish!”
“He’s a reptile, you idiot! He doesn’t have gills, he still needs to breathe!”
Castor obeyed, putting his weight down onto the monster’s head. It only took a few seconds for Typhoon to start thrashing, before suddenly stopping.
“What’s he— WOAH!”
Typhoon rocketed forward, trying to pull his captor down with him. Castor braced his legs, pulling on Typhoon’s neck like an angler on the line. His jaw strained, and sweat beaded on his brow inside the helmet.
Then he suddenly pushed. The jets on each elbow fired in a short burst, giving him the momentum he needed to slam the monster’s head against the sea floor, momentarily dazing it. Then he yanked it back onto its feet.
“Castor—”
“Not now!”
He slammed another punch into its gut, and then another into its head. That soft underbelly was still bleeding into the surrounding water, illuminated by the lightning flickering overhead.
You like that, you big piece of shit?
One more shove, sending Typhoon stumbling backward, clutching its head almost comically. It wasn’t fighting back; that meant he was winning, right? It’d be retreating any second now. Maybe a few more to really hammer in the lesson.
He lunged, hitting it in the jaw with an uppercut. He didn’t notice the strange flickering on its spines.
“Castor!”
He wrapped a massive hand against one of its arms, pinning it back.
“What?!”
“Let go of it!”
Something in her voice made him obey without questioning for once. But he wasn’t fast enough; one hand was still grazing against Typhoon’s skin when the entire sky suddenly lit up. Castor shut his eyes reflexively, but he still saw the lightning bolt smash directly into Typhoon’s open-mouthed head. The monster groaned, lighting up in patterns of blue and yellow for a split second as energy poured out of it.
The entire suit was launched backward a hundred feet from the pure force of it, landing with a stumble on its ass.
“What — the fuck?”
Castor looked up, his helmet visor screaming alarms at him as his systems rebooted. Comms was one of the first to come back online as he struggled to his feet.
“Since when the fuck can it do that?!”
“It has to be the storm!”
Seemed plausible. Typhoon’s skin was decorating in electrifying patterns, like a bolt snaking across the sky. Its spines danced with energy. It bellowed again, daring him to try — and as it did, he could see the blue energy in its gullet.
“How am I supposed to hit it without touching it?!”
“Figure something out!”
Voodoo Ranger finally struggled to its feet just as Typhoon began to bumrush him, carving a path as it half-ran-half-swam through the water. Castor threw himself out of the way of the charge; the jets on his legs swiveled and fired, thrusting him in the right direction to miss Typhoon by just a few feet.
He pivoted back, trying to put distance between them. Typhoon was completely different now; skin glowing with energy, pushing aggressively where it had been cowardly just a few minutes ago.
“I don’t know what to do!”
He could hear the tension on the other end.
“If it was constantly releasing charge, the water around you would be electrified, but it’s not. That means it’s a controlled release.”
He dodged out of the way again as Typhoon lunged with another bite.
“So how do I make sure it doesn’t release intome?”
Another lightning strike, but this one didn’t connect with Typhoon. Just lit up the sky in cold blue light, letting Castor see just how violent the waves they were knee-deep in were becoming. And letting him see an opening.
Typhoon was waving its arms up and down, no doubt trying to appear bigger. But that revealed a tiny soft spot in its hard, leathery skin right near the armpit. Before he could think, Castor lunged forward, jets thrusting the two-hundred-foot machine ahead.
“Castor, don’t!—”
Too late.
His bladed fist connected with the soft skin, and sank through it like butter through a knife. Typhoon roared again, an animal, guttural noise of pain, and writhed. Then its head turned down to look at its aggressor.
Castor knew it couldn’t see into the cockpit, but for a moment, it felt like they saw each other. Then he noticed a telltale blue crackling in the reptile’s eyes, and his own widened. Typhoon’s skin lit up as electricity poured out of it and into Voodoo Ranger. Castor couldn’t hear the alarms going off over the sound of his own screaming, and then he didn’t hear anything at all.
The Black Suits were built around anomalies. Compare that to the White and Orange suits; they utilized paratechnology, but that’s not the same thing. Paratechnology refers to technology that we approximately understand the workings of, even if modern science doesn’t. Anomalies exist outside that understanding. We were desperate for any advantage against LSA-Brasil, and so we deployed weapons we didn’t understand.
Consequently, the Black Suits exhibit… quirks. Things that don’t quite make sense, given what we know about their construction and components. Things that make some of the engineers nervous to work on them. Sometimes Voodoo Ranger’s servos twitch without anyone piloting it. Sometimes the cameras in the hangar will mysteriously turn off in the wee hours of the night. Sometimes the training pilots report faint voices in the cockpit.
Nothing has ever been confirmed, obviously. We’d have to ground the entire fleet; twenty Black Suits, the thin line between humanity and the monsters, suddenly unable to defend us in case a kaiju decides it’s hungry. We’d be left defenseless, and every single man working on Project Armada knows that.
So no, nothing’s ever been confirmed.
— Colonel James Meyel, Black Suit Training Officer (VOODOO RANGER)
Castor couldn’t feel where his body ended and the abyss began.
He was still wearing his suit, he was pretty sure; the visor clouded his vision. But he didn’t feel tethered. He lifted a hand, and glided forward through the black emptiness. This was nice. This was safe.
He leaned back. He could get used to this. There was nothing here, but that also meant nothing to hurt him. No pain.
He wasn’t sure how long he floated before he heard the voice. A familiar, warm voice, like honey on toast. He’d heard it before, but he wasn’t sure where.
“Wake up.”
He groaned in response.
“No sleeping on the job, hun.”
Another groan.
“You’re blowing it out there, darling. This is what you wanted to do, right?”
Silence.
“Isn’t it? Could’ve had a cushy job as a Foundation nepo baby. Mommy and Daddy saved the world, you could’ve made Site Director by thirty just off their coattails.”
“I didn’t want that.”
“I know you didn’t. That’s why you came running when the GOC called jangling the keys to a Black Suit. A chance to make your own legacy, the same way your parents did. You have that chance now, and you’re wasting it floating around, hun.”
“This isn’t saving the world.”
“It isn’t. But it’s still saving a city of millions. You’re young; you have plenty of time to work your way up to saving the world. What are you gonna do? Let a bunch of families die because they’re not the whole world.”
He snapped, an annoyed twinge in his voice. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“You know who I am, hun.”
“… Yeah.”
“And you know what you need to do.”
“… Yeah.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“… What if I lose? What if I disappoint them?”
This got a laugh from the voice.
“You’re not gonna lose, hun.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m right beside you, stupid. And I didn’t lose to the Crocosquid, what makes you think I’m gonna lose to a shrimpy lizard-seal? Now get going, you have a fight to win.”
Castor screamed himself back awake.
The electricity was still coursing through the body of the Black Suit — but it was different. It was burning without being agonizing, flowing through every servo of the mech, raw unfiltered energy filling every atom of its being. It was like being on fire without the pain.
He didn’t bother answering the radio hail before he sank his other blade into Typhoon’s other arm. The lizard’s mouth was agape, and its skin was losing its luster. Voodoo Ranger was draining the energy out of it, taking it into itself. The beast screamed, and Castor screamed back, slamming his fists into its jaw again and again and again. It buckled, then crumpled, folding into the water, thousand tiny shocks being delivered to every inch of skin Castor pummeled. He felt the lightning in his guts and in his veins.
The radio call screamed through the buzzing in his head. “— Need to release it! You’re gonna blow up the suit!” A quick check of his systems confirmed it. The reactor systems were going completely insane. The suit couldn’t handle this for more than a few minutes, max. He needed to finish this, fast.
He shoved a hand into the water, grabbing Typhoon’s neck and dragging it back up onto its feet. He held him there, steady, while he aimed, steadied, then— fire.
The taser on his right fist slammed into Typhoon’s neck, dumping every spare volt of electricity directly into the beast. It screamed again, writhing in pain, eyes alight, before falling backward limply into the drink. The water roiled for a few seconds before, under the surface, it came to its senses and began to flounder away. Away from the city, out of the bay.
Castor released a breathe he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Over the radio, the channel was being flooded. Cheers, congratulations, data requests. He dialed the radio in to one particular frequency.
“You still there, sis?”
“Of course I’m still here, stupid. Are you still alive?”
“I think so. How’d I do?” He massaged his neck.
“Could’ve been a lot worse.”
“Better than you.”
“Uh-huh. Come on back.”
After the first death of the Crocosquid, the GOC fell under the illusion everyone else did: that our victory meant we were safe. We grew fat, lazy, complacent. A mistake that nearly resulted in our extinction. The reality is that as long as large-scale aggressors exist, humanity will never be truly safe.
The threat remains, and the GOC remains to defend against it. The Foundation can be as enraged as they want. The governments can hate us as much as they want. The Fivefold Mission is too important to be put on hold.
The GOC will continue to defend humanity, whether they like it or not.
— Fleet Admiral Torvald Halbaum, Global Occult Coalition (Project Armada CO)
1. VOODOO RANGER
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6. MISSISSIPPI QUEEN
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