Chapter 5: Big fish, big trouble. -4
[Ding! Warning! Host a SCP has appeared in the world and is outside Foundation control! Host is asked to deal with the situation and follow the Foundation's goal of Securing, containing, and Protecting!]
'Please let it be a simple enough Euclid one.' Alex prayed while holding his breath.
[Ding! Warning! SCP-169 has appeared!]
Upon hearing the alert, Alex could muster only three words. "Fuck… a Keter…"
His response underscored the gravity of the situation as he braced for the complexities associated with containing a Keter-class SCP.
[Ding! Congratulations to Host for getting SITE-169, a class 4 Foundation facility in the Philippines! 50 class B combat personnel, 5000 class C combat personnel, 250 research personnel, 1000 administrative personnel, and 150 maintenance personnel!]
[Ding! Congratulations to Host for getting SITE-300, a class 3 Foundation facility in Chile! 500 class C combat personnel, 50 research personnel, 100 administrative personnel, and 30 maintenance personnel!]
[Ding! Congratulations to Host for getting SITE-053, a class 3 Foundation facility in Brunei! 500 class C combat personnel, 50 research personnel, 100 administrative personnel, and 30 maintenance personnel!]
[Ding! Host has been awarded with 500 naval vessels belonging to the Foundation!]
Looking at the stuff he got just for summoning this SCP, Alex was nearly drooling at the thought of the rewards he would earn if he got this SCP placed in containment.
However, that dream only lasted until the moment he read the information about the SCP Object from the database, and he nearly burst into tears as he dismissed the system.
Mere moments later, alarms started to sound from his computer as the new SITEs would get his notice about the CK-class event and would quickly follow the order within. "System, why must you torment me like this."
Yet the system had no answer for this and just left him to deal with the bad news that was the fact that this world just got another possible way to suddenly meet a quick end.
'Because, of course, the first SCP I summoned would be a useless safe class, only for the next one to be a Keter class so dangerous that it can cause multiple types of K-class events while fucking sleeping!'
Alex cursed in his heart and blamed this broken system of his for doing him in like this. 'Sure, just ask me to contain an uncontainable SCP, why don't you? Yeah, why don't I just place an SCP the size of a fucking continent in containment!'
Alex spent the next half hour venting his frustration in his bunker before a new alert brought his attention back to his computer. "What now?" he grumbled but gave it his full attention nonetheless.
"So they already confirmed the presence of SCP-169; well, they are more useful than my damn system, that's for sure. Why my oh-so-useful SCP-locating tool is ever so helpful in informing me that SCP-169 is on Earth! Like, I would care about it at all if it was anywhere else. So yeah, thanks for being so specific."
With a sigh, Alex simply informed the SITEs to keep an eye on the SCP object and not allow anyone else to come and disturb their sleeping giant. He could easily imagine Hydra trying to do something that would end up waking up the leviathan while striving to further their little goals.
"Guess I might just get back to work, not going to get any action out of 169. This month will be about expanding the Ricci family. That and dealing with the ever-increasing Foundation work.
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[Kamar-Taj]
Alexander and the Foundation were not the only ones picking up on the appearance of a creature as large as SCP-169. No, atop a snowy mountain sat a woman whose eyes snapped open the moment Alex's system informed him of the SCP being in the world.
The bald woman quickly closed her eyes and sunk back into meditation as she sought out the source of the disturbance she had just felt.
"A life source this strong?"
she exclaimed in shock and disbelief as she felt a massive source of life energy, one far stronger than anything she had ever felt before. She quickly stood up and formed a golden portal.
The Ancient One, the sorcerer supreme, stood in the air over the ocean and looked down. Her eyes easily pierced through the waters to behold the colossal creature below. Shocked, she struggled to comprehend its immense size.
"This is impossible. The way it is laying, almost as if it has been there for countless years." She whispered as she couldn't believe that this creature had been here long before she was born, and she had never noticed it.
'Why have I never seen anything like this in all the many futures I have seen?' she questioned herself before shaking her head and leaving through a golden portal. Never knowing that someone had seen her and that a report would get sent about her to a mysterious man in New York.
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[SITE-001]
Alex was just finishing up the SCP entry for a certain bald sorcerer who had spooked his agents earlier that day. Ultimately, he had no choice but to promise to make available the top-secret file on the SCP that had been spotted above 169. To do that, he just needed to write such a file first.
[SCP-10777]
[Object Class – THAUMIEL]
[Special Containment Procedures: SCP-10777 remains outside Foundation control due to the challenges of containment, the risks involved, and the fact that SCP-10777 is actively working on containing an unknown number of SCP objects, many of which are Euclid or Keter class.]
[Description: the object appears to be a woman of Asian descent, is bald, and wears monk robes. She is the current leader of the group of interest, Masters of the mystic arts. She is the current owner of REDACTED. The full range of her abilities is unknown, but she is rated as being highly dangerous and should not be underestimated. If needed, the way to contact her is REDACTED.]
He hoped The Ancient One wouldn't mind how he described her in this entry, but he knew very little about her and would rather not write down something he was unsure about.
He did keep a few things hidden about her since she was so dangerous, and he didn't want to have to deal with her while he was still just an ordinary mortal.
Having done that and pretty much fully dealt with the new SCP he had summoned, he found himself with a lot of free time this month.
Free time he would spend dealing with a few marvel plotlines if he could. One of those just required him to get his hands on a top-secret SHIELD file, something he thought he had a chance of doing.
"Alright, agent, do me proud and get me this file without alerting Fury." Alex said under his breath as he greenlit the mission and gave the okay for the requested resources.
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It had been a week since Alex decided to give the green light for the mission to get the file of project TAHITI, and finally, he got his hands on it.
He had to admit it did make for an interesting read for sure. He was very impressed with how SHIELD had studied SCP-10254.
Still, he would like to think his Foundation would have done a better job. Not that it stopped him from noting down the names of those in charge of the project as possible recruits for the Foundation.
Getting his hands on this damn file had not been easy either, and he still struggled with the fact that out of a full 100000 undercover agents, he only had 3 in SHIELD/hydra!
He slowly realized just how small a part of the full might of the Foundation he truly had. Sure, he had agents everywhere, but what use was that random agent in animal control in Texas? Yeah, rather useless, for now at least.
'I need more manpower! And for that, I need more money! Or, gods forbid, more SCPs.'
'Fuck here I thought the about 160 thousand personnel would be a lot, but it's a drop in a bucket compared to what I need. Still, that one drop still needs more money than one would believe.'
Alex sighed as he was slowly coming to terms with just how truly massive the Foundation was and how monstrous a task it was leading it.
'The biggest problem is going to be money; if I get a base or two every month, I should be able to at least not be totally starved for personnel. But the money to support that personnel will come up short quickly.'
His biggest problem was that while he did have money to spare he had to use it in ways that couldn't be tracked. Which meant that everything he needed to purchase was far more expensive then it should have been.
He had even been tempted to check the bank account of O5-1, and oh boy had that been a surprise. Yet due to his system messing with him he found himself reluctant to use those funds.
The agents in the US Air Force still had to be given extra funds to bribe others to keep things about SCP-787 under control.
The cost of keeping that one SCP contained was getting awfully expensive due to the presence of Shield. Not to mention the first waves of bribes he had paid out while actively working on containing it.
Thankfully he had his future knowledge to work off to invest in some legitimate businesses that he knew would do well, on the side of his illegal revenue streams.
'For now, I have to wait for the Iron Man plot to take off so I can make some easy money on the crash of Stark stocks, then even more by also playing on the second crash and rise.'
Shaking his head, Alex stood up, took both the file and the small box beside it, and entered the secret containment vault of SITE-001. There, he placed the file inside SCP-216 and placed the box inside the locker labeled SCP-005 before returning to above ground."
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"Alright, let's get started with this meeting; with the current state of heightened alert and the need to re-contain everything once again, we are going to need more funds.
"Which means we need to increase the scale of the Ricci family so more money can be extracted towards more important projects."
Alex said as he entered a meeting room filled with some of his trusted subordinates who oversaw the more day-to-day dealings of the Ricci mafia while also being Foundation personnel.
"Yes, Master Ricci, I have been following your order to get a meeting with the Mandarin, though I have not yet been successful in that desire. It is hard enough for people within the 10 rings to meet him, much less outsiders like us."
"Naturally, the Ricci family is not someone that can be ignored, not even by him. So I expect we will have our meeting within the month."
The first to report was an elderly man with grey hair and a large scar on his face. Elderly he might be, but his tight suit made no effort to hide his impressive and robust body.
The next one to speak up was a younger man with a fine goatee. "I have been more successful in my endeavor, sir. I have already booked a meeting with Obadiah Stane for this Thursday. As for Fisk, he will be ready to meet you whenever you so desire."
"Ulysses Klaue was rather more difficult, but he agreed when I informed him that you would be traveling down to meet him in person. That meeting is scheduled for next Friday."
Alex nodded in satisfaction as he heard the report, while he would have liked to talk with SCP-10000 before Stane. He knew well enough that it had been an unlikely wish. "And what of recruitment?"
"We are making progress on that front as well, boss. Though it won't be going as fast as we would have liked."
"The world is currently a chaotic place with the 10 rings and other similar organizations all working hard on recruitment of their own. Still, I expect that we will be able to increase the pace soon enough." Another man stepped up to report on his question.
"Well, hopefully, Stane and Ulysses will compensate for our current shortfall in weapons. As for finances, we're stable, though I expect these new ventures to quickly yield substantial returns," Alex remarked with a casualness that belied the scale of the illicit operation he was discussing.
"That should not take long; with the new shipping routes we are opening up, we should be able to increase profits in the drug smuggling circles by at least 20%, and that business is always increasing in worth on its own already." A blond man said with a smirk on his face in response to Alex's last comment.
"I'm afraid I can't promise the same increase in the money laundering business. We are already in charge of supply, so the only way we can increase profits is if we either up our cut, which I would advise against, or if demand goes up." A bombshell of a woman said next with a powerless shrug of her bare shoulders.
If we're aiming for a significant scale-up beyond that, it would mean taking over more market share, which entails considerable bloodshed and expense," a lean middle-aged man commented, his tone indicating the weight of such a decision. The rest of the table nodded in agreement.
"We will hold off on taking more market for now. If my deal with The Mandarin works out, we should be able to grab a lot of the 10 rings' market or even take in whole chapters of them into our own fold."
"There is also a chance that my dealings with him might cause damage to the Hand, so be ready to react to that." Alex said as he started to wrap up the meeting.
After all, this meeting was of little importance, everything he heard here he could just as well have read from a report. The only reason he had this meeting arranged was to try out the godfather experience.
Retreating to his favorite spot by the pool, Alex browsed the day's news on his phone. The story of Tony Stark's secret child had receded from the headlines, now occupying only half of page three in the morning paper. On his news app, it had disappeared altogether from the headlines.
"Seems your fame doesn't carry as much weight without the suit, eh Tony." Alex mused, leaning back to enjoy a moment of relaxation, contemplating his somewhat playful rivalry with Stark.