Chapter Text
“Okay, let’s go over our plan.” Dr. King addressed the New Squidbeak Splatoon, as well as a small group of SCP Foundation scientists, “Callie will start the news broadcast. She’ll talk about how she has an important announcement, but it’s nothing to worry about, and then she’ll pull off the bandaid of the Squidbeak’s existence. That’s when one of us humans will walk in from offscreen and reveal the SCP Foundation’s existence, the existence of our home dimension and the SCPs, but keep it a secret that the multiverse might be en route to exploding. Now, any ideas on which of us should go?”
Dr. Gears stood up from his chair, and pointed at one of his fellow scientists. “I would like to nominate Dr. Clef.”
“Why me?”
“For once, I agree.” Kondraki glared at Clef. “What reason could you possibly have for choosing Dr. Clef of all people?”
“Simple. I want to see if the cameras of this world obscure his face in the same way as the ones in our world.”
“I don’t get it. What exactly are you looking for?” Marcus inquired.
Dr. Clef leaned back in his chair. “In our universe, cameras are incapable of capturing my face. It always shows up as a ukelele, an alto clef symbol, or a giant spider. Nobody knows how or why, myself included.”
“Some of us have got a hunch it might have something to do with his time working for the GOC before he joined the Foundation.” Dr. King added.
“And the GOC is…?” Lauren waved her hand in a circle.
“Above your nonexistent pay grade.”
“Hey, Clef, maybe we could test if your effect on women works on inklings!” Dr. Kondraki suggested.
“I’m sorry, what effect does he have on women?” Callie squinted at Dr. Clef.
Kondraki shrugged. “For whatever reason, women are anomalously repulsed by Dr. Clef.”
“I’’m not entirely sure that’s anomalous.” Marie remarked.
“Oh, not you too!”
Callie was sitting in the news studio at Inkopolis Plaza, waiting for Dr. Clef to arrive. She looked at the clock, and realized she only had five minutes until they were supposed to go live. “Oh shoot...” She looked around the empty studio, quietly begging, “Come on, Clef, show up already…”
By the time Callie only had a few seconds before she’d have to go live, Clef still hadn’t shown up. “Guess I’ve gotta improvise.” She adjusted her shirt, trying to look relaxed as the cameras activated. “Hey everyone. I, uh, I know we’ve been having something, uh, a bit of a month recently.” She hoped she wasn’t sweating as much as she thought she was. “I have to admit, we, well, I mean, that is to say, we haven’t been entirely honest. Or really honest at all.” She hoped this wouldn’t be seen as damage control.
“For example, some of you may remember the… what was it? Oh, right, the gas leak at New Albacore. Well, some of you might’ve suspected there was something more. Just know that there was.” Callie inhaled, and then exhaled. “It was a zombie epidemic. Some of you might not believe me.” Callie almost smiled; she was starting to get more confident as she kept talking. “I can’t say I blame you, but now, I’m telling the truth. The kaiju from last month that destroyed part of the city was from another dimension, and the two incidents are connected. So was the giant lizard monster from even earlier.”
Callie paused, second-guessing her decision. She ultimately decided she was in far too deep to back out. “The theory of alternate dimensions has been proven correct, and all of these creatures have come from a different universe. I urge you all to not panic, because I’ve got some good news too. My cousin and I, along with our grandfather and three others, are all part of a small peacekeeping militia known as the New Squidbeak Splatoon. We’ve been operating in secret for a few years now, keeping the peace from the shadows, and we’ve recently gathered some allies from the alternate reality.”
Callie looked around, growing more frustrated by the second. “I said, we’ve got some allies from that dimension! Oh for the love of- can someone cut to commercial? Oh right, We can’t- No wait, I just remembered, uh...” Callie ran offscreen, flipping the switch to change to a commercial for a new food product.
All Marie could say was, “Wow. I don’t know whether to cry or laugh.”
Out of the 10 others watching the broadcast, Drs. Bright and Kondraki were eating from a tub of popcorn before the commercial break started. “That was...” Bright trailed off.
“Interesting.” Marcus finished.
“Yes, if by ‘interesting’, you mean a complete disaster.” Dr. King corrected him.
“Now, now, there’s still hope they can salvage this. So long as Dr. Clef shows up soon.” Craig tried to keep up morale.
“Yeah, we probably shouldn’t have let him leave drunk.” Bright admitted.
Katherine nodded. “Yeah.” Her eyes widened. “Wait, what do you mean, drunk?”
“Oh, did I say drunk? I meant-”
“Intoxicated. Inebriated. Completely hammered.” Dr. Kondraki interrupted.
Lauren facepalmed. “Okay. I know I’m going to regret asking this, but how drunk is he?”
“It’s Clef. Trust me, you do not want to know.” Kondraki answered.
“That’s probably true.”
“This is going to be a disaster.” Marina spoke quietly, putting her head in her hands.
“Tell me about it. I didn’t make nearly enough popcorn!” Kondraki exclaimed.
“We’re back already?!” Callie looked around for Clef in a panic, shocked at how quick the commercial break had been. Before she could start figuring out a nuclear option, the door opened.
Dr. Clef burst into the studio. “Sorry I’m a bit late.”
“A bit late?! You were supposed to be here an hour ago, dude! And are you drunk?”
“What? No.” Dr. Clef drawled, staggering on his feet, “Now, let’s get started with this.” He turned to the camera, saying, “Kids, if a stranger approaches you on the street, all you gotta do is deck ‘em and run. Cut open their jugular with a pencil, exsanguinate them with a paperclip, or just go the old-fashioned route and give ‘em a nice hard kick in the happy sack. Just make sure they can’t-”
Callie aggressively slapped her palm over his mouth. “Clef, I don’t mean to sound rude, but what the hell do you think we’re doing here?!”
“I thought we were doing a PSA on stranger danger.”
Callie instinctively recoiled, as though she could subconsciously sense something inherently wrong with Clef. “Okay, first off, no one would ever let you do a PSA on stranger danger except as an example. Second, we’re breaking the masquerade, remember?”
Dr. Clef thought for a moment. “Oh, right! The masquerade! How silly of me! How could I forget?”
“By being drunk?”
“No! Maybe a little drunk. But anyway, the masquerade.” He turned back to the camera. “Myself and some other humans have come here to help contain anomalies from our dimension, or as we call them, SCPs. if you see anything strange or, as we say where I come from, anomalous, be sure to call us at 1-500-BITE-MY-”
Before Dr. Clef could finish, Callie took off her shoe and threw it at his head. “Ow! What was that for?”
“Clef! That’s not our number and you know it!”
“Well what do you expect? I’m drunk. Oh wait, I wasn’t supposed to say that.”
Callie lowered her face, and pinched her own forehead. “Oh, man, this is a disaster. Anyway, for everyone at home’s sake, the real number is (03) 215-2020. Just call (03) 215-2020 if you see something anomalous, and we’ll contain it in no time.”
Dr. Clef looked lost. “Now what do we do?”
Callie turned off the camera. “Now, we book it.”
“Hey guys. How’d it go?” Pearl asked, grinning at Callie and Clef when they returned to the base.
“I don’t wanna talk about it. You guys saw the broadcast, didn’t you?” Callie snapped.
“You bet we did. Still causing trouble wherever you go, eh Alto? Honestly, I didn’t expect anything different.” Kondraki laughed, “At least it made for good TV.”
“Very funny, Konnie.” Dr. Clef almost looked like he’d started to sober up.
“That was a complete disaster. We’ll be lucky if there isn’t a mass panic!” Dr. King yelled at them.
“Okay, I see your point, but you have to admit it was mostly his fault.” Callie gestured over to Clef.
“Look, here’s my idea: We wait a week or so for everyone to get used to the fact there are humans living around here, and then we send Kondraki, Clef, and Bright out to look for Octavio while Dr. Gears and Dr. King stay here to help us out with the SCPs.” Marina suggested, “Right? I think it’s pretty sound.”
Dr. King shook his head. “I hate to disagree, but those three together, without any proper supervision, can never end well. Instead, I’d recommend sending Drs. Gears and Clef. Myself, Kondraki, and Bright can stay here and help out with the SCPs.”
“Very well. You know your colleagues better than we do, and you seem mostly well-adjusted compared to them, so I’ll trust your judgement.” Craig approved.
“Alright, so we’ve got something vaguely approximating a rough outline of a plan. Now there’s just one more question.” Marcus started, “What’re we going to do about the humans from the infinite IKEA?”
“I doubt they could’ve made an entire settlement in just a month.” Marie considered after thinking for a brief moment, “I say we wait until next year and then send 5 of us to go check on them.”
“Alright, sounds good.” Lauren agreed, “Maybe we could give them financial aid as well. Our world’s economy is probably way different from theirs, so we should help them adjust. Maybe we could even establish a trading system to capitalize on an open market, thereby establishing a self-sufficient symbiotic economic relationship between us and the humans.”
Lauren realized that about half the group was giving her odd looks. “What? I paid a lot of attention in finance class.”
“Seriously? I was just thinking we could help them figure out what to name the place.” Bright suggested.