Strucker pulled a shotgun off a shelf, firing it as he ran. I grabbed a knife and tossed it at him.
He ducked down under it, firing another shotgun blast. I slid around that, just in time to see him lift a… fucking minigun!
I ripped a Spartan shield off another wall. As I raised my shield, I focused on an impression in my mind. A Spartan shield. Raised high, blocking armies. A phalanx, defending an ancient path. And a storm of projectiles, landing from on high, only to find an invulnerable shield blocking it.
In an instant, I was no longer Dial. I was a Spartan soldier. A king. The form of the most famous Spartan of all time surrounded me as I raised the shield. The white space rippled, becoming a mountain pass, with the ocean to my right. An army rose up. 300 men in all, side by side with me.
Strucker’s bullets landed on a bronze phalanx. And impossibly, was turned aside. The minigun fire bouncing off our shields made a rhythmic, almost beautiful sound.
I shifted the shield in my arms and spun around, tossing it towards Strucker. He dropped his minigun and grabbed the shield in a suddenly robotic arm, the form of Bucky’s brainwashed and crazy version flickering around him.
In that instant, I knew we’d both figured out a secret to fighting on the mental plane. Your own subconscious beliefs formed the reality of this place. Intellectually, I knew bullets would easily rip through bronze. Subconsciously, the movie 300 had been badass. Not historically accurate in any way, shape, or form, but the impressions it built on me had been formative.
Likely, Strucker had the same impression of Bucky. An immortal supersoldier, working for Hydra for decades, the greatest weapon they’d had, capable of catching even Cap’s shield.
The image of Gerard Butler fell from me as I lifted a sword that hadn’t been there. Strucker’s Bucky form shifted away, replaced with him lifting Loki’s scepter.
We raced towards each other, meeting in the center. The army I’d formed disappeared, leaving the two of us to duel.
I clenched my sword in both hands. It wasn’t until mid-swing that I realized I was carrying Excalibur. Doesn’t matter what version. Pick one. When it comes to weapons, none scream ‘king of all swords’ like Excalibur does.
The blade smacked against Loki’s Scepter with a sound like thunder, the dust around us blown away. Strucker twirled the scepter to slash at me with the bladed end. I parried it aside, slicing back at him, and scoring a cut across his arm. Strucker snarled, backing away to raise the scepter. A blast of light smacked me in the chest, sending me hurtling back. As I flew through the air, I raised my sword high, the blade flickering with light.
“EX-CALIBUR!”
I swung the blade downwards. A wave of golden light, pure power, exploded forth from the blade. Strucker screamed as the wave smashed into him, destroying the mountain around him.
I smashed into the ocean behind me, gasping in pain at the feeling of smacking against the water. In front of me, the mountain began to slide into water, sending dust billowing into the waves while Excalibur faded from my grip.
Strucker came out of the waves, wrapping a hand around my throat. I smashed my hand into his elbow, weakening his grip, then headbutt him, punching him back.
We hit the ocean floor together. As our feet were pulled into the mud, I focused my mind. I had to keep this fight going, keep it moving. Build, build, build. Make him dance to my tune, constantly adapt. I couldn’t beat the Mind Stone.
But I could beat Wolfgang Von Strucker.
The mud at our feet rose up. Strucker, startled, tried to pull away, only to get sucked in. So did I.
When the mud was finished pulling us in, we were surrounded in darkness.
“What are you doing?” Strucker asked. He sounded smug. “Trying to make me afraid of the darkness? How cute.”
“Darkness isn’t what you should fear,” I said softly. My mind finished building the image. I needed to make sacrifices in the forming of this new place. I’d have to deal with them. “What you should fear are the things the darkness hides…”
A light flickered to existence. It was a fluorescent light in a cement ceiling. We were now in a place that could have been any military bunker in the world. Cement walls and floor, signs indicating different areas, an office down the way.
But on the wall in between Strucker and I, a red light spun, an alarm ringing out. “WARNING. FULL CONTAINMENT BREACH! ALL PERSONNEL ARE TO FOLLOW CODE BLACK LOCKDOWN! I REPEAT, CODE BLACK LOCKDOWN. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. WARNING. FULL CONTAINMENT BREACH! ALL PERSONNEL ARE-”
As that voice continued to echo, Strucker looked around. Blood on the walls. A corpse in the back of the room. He chuckled. “Really? Is this the best you have? A scary hallway? I’ve seen worse than this. Caused worse.”
He raised a gun, aiming it at my head with a smirk.
“That says a lot more about you than it does this place,” I slowly cracked my neck. This… was going to suck. “But trust me… there is nothing worse than this place.”
Stucker fired his gun. I took the hit on my chest, reeling back, but ran instead of confronting him.
‘He’ was coming.
“Better run, Strucker!” I glanced back and grinned. “They’re coming!”
I ran past a sign on the wall. A symbol of a circle, with three arrows pointed at the center of it. Around it, three words were written.
Secure. Contain. Protect.
------
Wolfgang Von Strucker
Strucker frowned as he watched Dial run. This fight was not what he would have expected. Currently, on the outside, he and Dial were in flight, trading psychic attacks of pure energy, the Avengers and Hydra staying back. At one point, a Chitauri armored soldier had tried to interfere, only for his mind to be erased by pure telepathic power. His body alive, but his mind wiped of all but the most basic functions.
Of course, he died when he crashed into the forest below.
However, even as they were fighting on the physical plane, Strucker was currently standing in a hallway within Dial’s mind. It wasn’t what he’d expected at all. If he could have imagined the young man’s ability in a mental match, he would have laughed. Dial’s mental abilities weren’t what he was famous for.
This must have been the product of his infuriating new form, Strucker decided. He began to walk forward-
The wall. The wall to his left. It was beginning to… blacken. Pit. As though a corrosive substance had begun secreting through the concrete. Strucker raised his hand, the handgun within it shifting to become Loki’s Scepter once more, an advanced weapon he knew well how to use. He aimed the end at the wall, staring hard at it.
A blacked hand came forth. It looked rotten, disgusting, as though it belonged to a corpse that had been left out for weeks, though it curled it’s fingers like it was alive. Strucker almost felt relief fill him. A zombie. Of course, Dial was a known pop culture fanatic. If all Strucker had to deal with was such simple creatures, he could dispatch them in mome-
A head came out of the wall, slipping through like it was a pool of water. The face smiled. A leering, horrific smile. The old man came forth. Strucker fired the scepter, a blast of energy smashing into the man. The man laughed, seeming to delight in Strucker’s attack.
The Hydra Leader stared at it as the decayed man stepped fully out of the wall, decay following his, no, it’s footsteps.
Then he spun the scepter around, ready to fight back even as he swallowed his fear.
------
Mahmoud Schahed/Dial
In the real world, I watched Strucker stumble, and smiled. Yeah. Don’t fuck with SCPs.
He managed to recover, spinning out of the way of one of my psi-lances when I fired it off. We both landed in a forest clearing. I snapped all four of my arms out, sprouting more psi-lances. Condensed forms of pure psychic energy, able to attack the mind and body at the same time. Too bad the second I’d started using them, Strucker did too.
It must have been a combination of his own intelligence and the Mind Stone. He was learning his powers' limitations, mimicking me as well as coming up with his own thing.
“Dial, are you in need of assistance?” Natasha said through the Omnitrix.
“No! Anyone who comes close will get their minds wiped at this point in the battle. Thor and Hulk might be able to survive it,” I ducked aside from a tossed tank, snapping a hand to catch it in a telekinetic grip and tossing it back at Strucker. “Magic and multiple minds to fight against. Same with Steve. But right now, I need everyone to stay back. Just be ready to come when I call.”
“Understood. Good luck, Mahmoud,” she added more softly before signing off.
Good. I couldn’t afford the distraction.
“Your mind is more flexible than I imagined,” Strucker said as he shot at me with a blast of energy. I blocked it on a mental shield, then gripped the ground beneath him, exploding it upwards. It smacked into an orb-shaped shield of his own, dirt and snow bouncing about, then he laughed. “But you can’t last forever.”
“I’ve had sex with She-Hulk. I’ve got stamina you wouldn’t believe.”
With that quip, I fired off more lances. He raised a shield.
And that’s when I hit him with a big gun. I forced all of the psychic energy I could onto a spot just behind him. Strucker’s eyes widened as he snapped his eyes over his shoulder. I could see him thinking. Psi-lances coming at his front. An unknown buildup of energy behind. He surrounded himself in his shield again, pulling all the energy he could into it, his gauntlet glowing bright.
The energy behind him exploded outwards. Purple and sickly looking, it billowed outwards to surround him, becoming a miniature storm with a swirling dark circle in the center where Strucker stood. The psi-lances hit, but the storm had the stage now. A rift in the physical world, where my psychic power swirled. Funny enough, everything within that mass, where a black hole surrounded by violet power lay, that didn’t have a mind was entirely fine.
Strucker, on the other hand, screamed.
I dove into the swirl of power, attacking him directly. He snapped up his shield to full strength, gritting his teeth.
And the Rift began to shoot through with yellow energy. As we battled in it, trading blows, violet and gold smashed and exploded against each other as we fought for control of a psychic storm. It began to grow, becoming an 80-foot hurricane of pure mental power.
I blocked a wave of gold energy, grabbed a tree out of the ground and tossed it. He snapped it in half with a psi-lance, then grabbed a portion of the storm and threw it at me, which I dodged by flying upwards.
This battle was getting out of hand. On multiple levels. Because in my head, the sacrifices I’d made to build my scenario was catching up with me.
------
Deep in my mind, I screamed as I ran full sprint down a hallway. Behind me, a tiny Teddy Bear was chasing after me.
Oh sure, laugh. Except the bear was made of rusted metal scraps, and was literally dripping blood. It leaped towards me, and only the sound of metal scratching against cement warned me. I dived aside. An adorable death machine brushed against my back, rusted metal slicing my skin in dozens of places.
“Fuck me!” I rolled aside and jumped into the air, smashing through a door at high speed. “I regret all this shit!”
In order to make this place, I had one plan. Force Strucker into the worst place I could, and make it somewhere he wouldn’t be able to just overpower. One of the worst places I could imagine was an SCP Foundation base in the middle of a full containment breach. But it had to be a strong illusion. It needed to be as real as I could make it. Every monster needed to have a life of it’s own.
So I guided my own subconscious to pilot it. This place was as real as I could make it. The monsters were everything I had ever imagined. And not one of them was in my control. But since they weren’t in my control, they were free to do as they liked. And what they liked was killing humans. Of which only two were running around.
I made some small addendums. None of the memetic monsters, no reality warpers. Couldn’t risk them somehow escaping this mental prison and causing havoc in the real world. But that was pretty much it.
I also had sacrificed a lot of power to do it. I could feel it recharging, enough that I could pull out another creature if need be, but I was saving that for a special occasion.
The sound of metal scraping disappeared in the distance. I didn’t stop running. I could feel, on some level, that Strucker was fighting. He’d fought off SCP-106 (Didn’t kill the fucking thing though) and was currently running from SCP-469. A living ball of wings, fluttering all the while. Strucker had started shooting at it, running as he did. With every loud, echoing shot, the wings would grow. New ones snapping out.
After all, whenever a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.
I pulled my mind back to my current situation. My goal wasn’t just to survive. I needed to maintain this illusion as long as possible. I may be a nerd, but I don’t have knowledge of every single SCP. Just the famous ones and some more random types of them.
I ran into another room. And froze solid.
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It was a playroom. A nursery, of sorts. There were colorful drawings on the walls, toys strewn about, some small books on a shelf. It was the home of a small child.
My stomach dropped.
I saw her on a bed across from me. She was playing with a small doll, making little noises. She looked up at me.
Tiny. Only a little bigger than my 2-year-old niece back home. Short brown hair. A cute yellow sundress with flowers on it. Her eyes were bright and clear. She smiled at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said immediately. I started walking quickly, heading for the door across the room. She watched me, happiness slowly fading.
Three parts of me were active then. On one level, I was thinking she was adorable. Like I said. She was about the age of my niece. Cute little thing.
On another level, I was terrified. I knew what she was. What danger I was in.
Another level, the smallest one, but growing and growing, hated her. Not too much. But enough to want to kill her eventually, if it kept growing.
“Mister?” she said sadly. “Are you with the other grown-ups? Can you play with-”
“I have to go,” I said quickly, grabbing the door handle. I froze. “For what it’s worth… I’m sorry kid.”
I didn’t look at her. Eye contact might make the effect worse. She let out a sound. Confusion. I’d made her accurate, after all. Same powers, but also acting like a little kid who just wanted to have fun. Maybe she honestly didn’t know her powers. But because my own knowledge on that was ambiguous, this mental projection of her was too. Maybe she was innocent. Maybe she was dangerous.
But either way, you don’t fuck with SCP-053.
I opened the door and exited. She watched me go without a word.
In the distance, Strucker had finished off SCP-469. Attacked it with a silent telekinetic attack, shredding it without a single bit of noise to feed it.
This place I’d made, this endless labyrinth of monsters. It was a lot worse than I’d thought it would be. God, that’s so stupid. A place I’d made surprised me! Then again, that’s sort of how humans work. We tend to surprise ourselves pretty often.
Which was going to make this place even more horrific. If I fucked around, my own mind would end up killing me before it killed Strucker. And with the Mind Stone, he actually had a chance to fight off all but the worst SCPs, and run from the rest. Within reason.
I looked around. The hallway I was in was mostly empty except for the corpses. They were really just faceless fake bodies I’d formed as part of the illusion, but they were still creepy. A few down the way were missing body parts. They looked… chewed on?
“Hm?” something I’d mistaken for a couch rose up from the shadows. Blood dripped from his lips. He smiled slowly as he rose up. Basically human in shape, but huge, only a bit shorter than Diamondhead, and malformed in shape, a giant monster in all the ways that were important. He chuckled as he slowly walked towards me.
“Hello, mon ami,” he said, his voice heavy with a French accent. He raised a human arm to his lips and sucked the meat off, like ripping the flesh off a chicken bone. “I am so glad to find someone else. These false bodies have no flavor. You howev-”
“Nope.”
I spun and booked it for the end of the hallway. He roared something in French, tossing the arm aside with a splattering sound and chasing me. I didn’t look back.
Not happening. SCP-082 was a cannibal, but honestly even if I hadn’t made him I wouldn’t have stuck around for his speech. I’ve seen horror films. Leave the giant monster, don’t trip over random bullshit on your way.
I went spinning around a corner, ran through a cafeteria where a man in a plague doctor’s mask was purchasing something from a vending machine, then pushed further. I was aiming for the center of this construct. There would be one room just before I got there though. SCP-082 was still hot on my heels, but he wasn’t a sprinter. I pushed harder and harder, feeling my mental energy slowly refill, even as I battled Strucker outside the construct.
Oh, and Strucker himself was… he was winning. He was beginning to adapt, to learn how to roll with what was coming his way. Well, he was a HYDRA scientist. He’d likely trained his whole life for things like this. Maybe not on the level of some SCPs, but the Mind Stone let him overcome that.
I felt him rip SCP-058 in half with a beam from Loki’s Scepter, turning the walking heart into two chunks of flesh, then burning those as a British voice screamed.
SCP-076-2 was the one he had the most trouble with. The eight-foot-tall Semitic demigod summoned blades to his hands to strike with, moving like the best warrior I could imagine. So Strucker found himself desperately having to fight off a being with Ares’ abilities. If it wasn’t for his mental powers, he would’ve died. But the damn Mind Stone just kept stopping me! He managed to crush Able’s heart inside of his chest, forcing him back to his sarcophagus.
I kept my focus and moved on as he began to battle another group of SCPs. I ran through a door as Fernand the cannibal shouted at me to stop in the name of the king or something, and slammed it behind me.
“...Oh fuck me.”
Of course. Subconsciously, I would put this one in the center of the construct. The most important one.
A single statue stood there. Made of concrete and rebar, painted a white-yellow across its body. Bipedal, with shorts arms, legs, and a long body. And its face was horrific. A triangle of red paint with a ‘nostril’ in the center, and two green ‘eyes’ at the top of its false face, two black eyes beneath.
It didn’t move, but I also refused to blink as I stared at it. The rest of the room was made of black concrete, and there were some foul-smelling piles around the place. Two bodies lay at the feet of the statue wearing orange suits, their necks snapped.
This thing… SCP-173. The one that started the whole mythos. A simple statue. Until I blinked. Then, in a second, my neck would be shattered by stone hands.
I clenched my fist. I mentally checked on my level of power. I had enough. I just needed to focus. I stared at the creature before me.
“I was really hoping that Strucker would end up fighting you. But since I drew the short straw… well.”
And, slowly, as I forced the next creature into existence, I closed my eyes.
There was a sound of stone on stone. Then… nothing.
Slowly, I opened my eyes.
SCP-173 was in front of me, its hands reaching out towards me.
I looked behind me.
Another statue, but not as abstract as 173. It was an angel, made of gray stone, with flowing robes and short-cut hair. When I’d created it, the statue had been holding its face in its hands, seeming to be weeping. Now, however, its arms were out, clawed fingers stretched out, its teeth revealed to be vampire-style long fangs, eyes wide with predatory rage.
I moved from between them and looked between the creatures. A Weeping Angel from Doctor Who and SCP-173. The inspiration meeting its successor. Both creatures that only moved when they weren’t being watched, now staring at each other. Locked in the ultimate staring match.
But that wasn’t enough. I couldn’t take the risk that something would interfere and let them start wreaking havoc. They may have had a weakness, but they were also some of the most dangerous creatures in all reality for a reason.
I stared between them. “Well, fellas. I know how love at first sight is, but- Wait, am I being snarky towards things made from MY OWN subconscious!?”
I shook my head. Goddamn, I needed to focus. Placing a hand against the floor, I summoned a pair of new creations. I wanted to save the rest of my energy for something big, but I could spare a bit for this.
With a pop, two creatures appeared. They looked around for a second, then at me, before wiggling in place happily. They looked like a pair of teardrop-shaped robots, with a wheel at the bottom of their bodies, one mustard yellow and one burnt orange. SCP-131, the eyepods. Adorable.
“Bre-bre-bre!” they said in unison as high-pitched babbling.
I pet them on their heads with a chuckle. “Okay. Keep an eye on these two for me, will ya?”
Using the wheel-like protrusions on the bottom of their bodies, they spun around and stared at the Weeping Angel and 173.
I didn’t waste time. One final pet on the heads of the eyepods as they let out small burbles of joy, then I left.
The next room was a control center of sorts. Computer monitors on a wall, and a chair in the center in front of dozens of buttons. I walked over to it and sat, looking over the monitors. I could still feel Strucker, and the monitors represented that as a camera zooming in on him.
He was still fucking winning. I sighed. Okay. Well, I’d need to pour on the fire then. He was coming towards me now, would eventually come through one of the other doors to the control room. If I had to make a choice, well… I had one last trump card. Or a nuke, considering it was just as dangerous to me.
I pressed some buttons on the panel in front of me. They didn’t technically do anything, but the mental act of pressing buttons was the important part. The most important button, of course, was large, red, and very foreboding.
I pressed it. Then I stood back and watched the show.
Because if my mental image of things added to their power, then this SCP was one of the strongest I could make without summoning reality warpers...
------
Wolfgang Von Strucker
Dial was a madman.
That was the only answer.
This place. He’d thought it similar to the laboratories he’d once ran. The large concrete bunkers he’d run experiments in. But this was so much worse. The closest he’d ever come to this was the Graveyard, with that damn Wendigo creature.
What was wrong with this man? Where had he seen such creatures that roamed the hall of his mind?
That ancient old man that had broken his arm before he managed to escape it, it’s touch decaying all it met. That massive bovine heart with stretching tentacles. That ball of wings who seemed to absorb all sound. The warrior who attacked him with impossible strength and skill.
And more. So much more. He’d had to fight or escape over a dozen creatures, using the power of the Mind Stone, pumped through the mental construct of Loki’s Scepter, to challenge and push back against the creatures.
But barely.
Strucker strode through a hallway, his throat raw. Outside the mental plane, Dial and he crashed into a ship, shattering it on waves of telekinetic force as the psychic storm they created continued to surround them, forcing back those who would interfere.
But within Dial’s mind, all Strucker found was horror. His arm broken. Scratches and cuts across his chest, face, and arms. Clothes torn.
Dial was a madman. He must have been. Only madmen could dream of horrors like these.
He walked through a hallway, coming to a door. He could sense him. Dial. In a room beyond. Snarling, Strucker used telekinesis and ripped the door open.
In the cell beyond, a creature stood. Again. Strucker was getting real tired of that. He stepped forward, fury in his heart.
“...A giant lizard,” Strucker mumbled. He stared at it for a moment. Yes, it was unusual in appearance. Its body was covered in fur on top of scaled skin, the sides of its body were open to reveal blooded muscle and rib cage. Its head had no skin, revealing a bone-white skull, teeth more akin to a predatory whale than a lizard, and haunting red eyes glowing within that skull.
Somehow, less impressive in terms of creativity than some of the last, like that creature in the stairwell.
Dismissively, Strucker raised his scepter and fired a high-powered beam of energy. The blast ripped into its flesh, scored the bones. He smirked, twirling his scepter.
“Is this all you can conjure, Dial?”
“...Disgusting,” the reptile said softly. Strucker stared at the creature as it began to heal. Bone fused back. Flesh regrew. Eyes snapped unto him.
Ah. Like the Hulk then, an enhanced regeneration ability. Well, he’d simply overwhelm it with damage. Even regeneration had its limits.
Strucker fired once more.
The blast dissipated against the creature's flesh.
His eyes widened. He fired again. The blast might as well have been a drop of water. The creature smiled. “Foul bag of tissue… I will rip your flesh apart.”
With that cold and gleeful sounding declaration, the creature moved with impossible speed, claws and teeth extended outwards. Strucker snapped a hand outwards and caught it’s immense mass in a telekinetic grip, tossing it back against the wall behind it, then grabbing rubble to try and crush it.
The monster ignored the rubble, smashing through it to rush Strucker again. Strucker tried to lift it in a telekinetic grip, only for the creature to snap down long-clawed tentacles that pulled him forward, their immense strength ignoring Strucker’s power.
Stucker barely had time to block the creature’s jaws on a mental shield. He felt a shot of fear fill him as the creature began to laugh. Dial… was truly insane. He pulled at the energy of the Mind Stone, pressing its power into the Scepter and hit the creature with all he had, only for it to laugh again.
Outside the room, a small placard could be seen next to the door, with three letters and numbers. SCP-682.