Michael stood atop the desk, blood dripping down onto Hearthgrieve and his lunch.'
'Well, this is awkward.'
“Uh, I can explain. Just wait a moment,” Michael said as he quickly hopped down from the desk, tossing Tommy’s head into a corner before he began to strip the corpse of anything useful. He needed to do this quick. They both shared the same dimension hopping ability and he didn’t want to be holding on to it if it got shifted back to its own dimension.
Hearthgrieve stared at Michael, clearly disturbed. He probably wasn’t expecting someone holding onto a headless corpse to suddenly appear on his desk.
“What in the living hell Michael, is that Tommy?” Hearthgrieve asked in exasperation.
Michael ignored him, focusing instead on looting the corpse. He finished it up quickly, only taking a few moments, and in the end he was quite happy with his haul from the encounter.
He’d managed to get a silver ring, and on it was etched with the depiction of a man with his arms held wide as a wave of arrows fell upon him. This was probably what protected Tommy from projectiles. Michael put the ring on, waiting an expectant moment, but not really feeling any different.
He moved onto the mace, a very useful melee weapon that displayed quite a bit of stopping power during the shift, and then onto the crystal Tommy had pulled out of the Night Druid corpse, the one he’d said would increase resistance to fire. Not that Michael knew how to use it.
After growing progressively more and more tired of being ignored, Hearthgrieve put his hand on Michael’s shoulder.
“Michael, we need to talk. Why are you rummaging through the pockets of your own corpse?”
Michael held up his gains in response, “What do you think? I’m obviously looking for anything useful.”
“I was more asking why you have Tommy’s corpse is here in the first place,” Hearthgrieve asked in an anxious tone.
Michael opened his mouth to respond, but something next to him caught his attention.
Tommy’s disembodied head had begun twitching, as its mouth slowly formed an uncomfortably wide smile. Black bile began to form on its skin, and after a moment, it began to speak.
“Oh, it seems you’ve won, soul thief," the head said with a laugh. "Maybe I should congratulate you, not that you really deserve commendation for this. You take from me just like everyone else after all.”
Michael had a hunch as to who this was, but decided to ask anyways.
“Who are you?”
“Oh don’t play the fool. I am Order, I am everything,” the head said in a deep, confident tone.
“Okay, and why are you here?”
“I’m here to simply check up on a growing crop. Quite a promising one at that. Perhaps I should give you some special attention?” Order said, smiling somehow even wider. “I was honestly betting on the other one to survive, but then again, I don’t know all that much about you, now do I? You're simply the product of an ancient god's foolishness. Regardless, I can’t stay here long, this bodies not exactly in good shape, but I do want to leave you with one piece of advice if you want to survive.”
Its face turned serious, “don’t disappoint me like they always do.”
With that the head dissolved into a pile of black bile.
Michael stared down towards the puddle, silently contemplating as the sound of guards rushing over could be heard outside the room.
Looking around, Michael could see that Hearthgrieve was long gone.
'Smart man.'
Guards rushed into the room, rifles pointed towards the corpse and towards Michael.
Michael nonchalantly waved towards them, “Hey guys, I’m back. I’m guessing y’all missed me?”
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Over the course of the following week, Michael was put through many, many experiments. Nothing too crazy, they mainly spent their time examining the crown and his body.
They brought in a girl who claimed they were able to see all the energies of the world, whatever that meant, hoping to gain some insight into the crown's anomalous traits.
Apparently a white energy was constantly drifting from the crown and into his body, and then into the mace at his side. That was probably why the mace was so much more effective in his hands than in Tommy's. They figured that was what was improving his physique so quickly as well. His body also did read as oddly durable during the experiments.
During one test, they killed a lab rat next to Michael while the girl watched. Apparently when it died, a white light got sucked out from its body and into the crown.
Similar tests continued on for quite a while with the same result.
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As per Michaels agreement with the foundation, he was allowed to keep everything he found in other dimensions, so long as it wasn’t hazardous to the foundation or humanity at large.
Although they did need to know more about the items he’d found before they committed to letting him use them, so Michael lent the silver ring and mace to the foundation for testing.
A short while later they discovered that the ring protected against most forms of projectiles, except for any of the paranormal kinds, which would still hit their target reguardless. They didn’t go into detail with that part, but it was something to keep in mind.
Apparently nobody but him was able to bring out the same amount of power while using the mace though. Most people could barely get it to show any anomalous effects at all, let alone having the same explosive power it had when he'd used it.
He also spent some time thinking over his last dimensional shift. It helped him come up with some new items to request.
1. Poisonous Gas
2. Someone to instruct me in how to use a mace.
Since he was immune to all poison, there's no reason he shouldn't implement it in his battle strategy. It worked wonders against Tommy, so he figured he'd keep using it.
On another note, Michael had grown more cautious around the foundation staff. They were starting to be wary around him as well. Any time he was escorted somewhere, there would be more guards than necessary, and they’d be armed to the teeth. Apparently he’d come back one to many times holding onto a corpse for their liking. The anomalous items he carried also probably didn’t help his case much. No matter how friendly he was, they would still raise some eyebrows. He’d been lucky that Hearthgrieve had left the room before Order had started talking all cryptically at him. The last thing he needed was more suspicion being pointed his way.
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Just like that two weeks passed. Michael received replacements for all the items he’d lost during the last shift, as well as the items he’d requested.
He’d been given a couple of grenades that they promised contained extremely poisonous gas. They also had an expert in close combat come to tutor Michael on how to properly use his mace. Learning the basics had helped him quite a bit, and at this point in his training he was at least not just swinging the thing thoughtlessly. Though he had seemed to pick up pretty quickly, quicker than anyone the trainer had ever taught according to him. That was something Michael made sure to take note of, because the foundation surely would as well.
Several days passed by peacefully, until weightlessness once again began to overtake Michael as space warped and folded around him, pulling him into the unknown.
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When the shift had finished, Michael stood up and scanned his surroundings, his shotgun held at the ready.
From what he could tell it looked like he was standing in the middle of a child's room. Though it was extremely run down, dirt and dust covering most of the area.
Off in one corner of the room, Michael spotted a tea set sat atop a small table, with a little girl poking her face out from underneath it.
Michael shined his light towards her, and she stared absently towards him. She had a bit of an odd look to her, pale with wide eyes. Though most kids that young tended to look a bit odd.
Michael cautiously approached the child.
“Hi there, my name's Michael. Sorry for intruding, I'm not gonna hurt ya. What’s your name?”
The child didn’t respond, simply poking her head further out from underneath the table. Her neck slowly became visible, as it came out farther and farther.
'Wait a minute,' Michael thought in alarm.
It’s neck gradually stretched longer and longer, normal skin giving way to a fleshy exterior as it snaked its way out from under the table, its neck several meters long.
It began to snake through the air towards Michael, it's jaw unhinging.
'Oh fuck that,' Michael thought as he backed away before firing a shot towards the creature's head.
It dodged with surprising speed, before shooting towards Michael who ducked as the head shot over his shoulder, burying itself into the drywall behind him.
Michael aimed towards the table where the creature's body was hiding before firing several shots towards it. Almost immediately the neck went limp.
With a fast-beating heart Michael slowly moved towards the table, before kicking it over. underneath Michael could see a small pile of flesh that somewhat resembled a body. Although it didn’t have hands or legs and seemed to be rooted into both the ground and wall. Both of which were covered in a fleshy red substance.
'This is going to be a problem,' Michael begrudgingly thought.
Michael moved towards the door, listening for any movement in the hall. After a few moments of hearing nothing but silence, Michael moved back over to the bed and sat down.
He pulled out his laptop and began to look and see if there was any mention of something like this in the database they’d given him. Several minutes of searching later and he’d found something that seemed to match what he’d encountered.
SCP 610, The Flesh That Hates.
After a few minutes of light reading, he'd learned everything he could about it.
Michael closed the laptop.
“Well, fuck."