Gallows Humors, Gallows Duties Ch 1

Hey peeps. Sorry but I did not make the deadline. I stayed late every day at work, and then Wednesday to Friday I worked for twelve hours.

After that, I just didn't have the energy. My apologies.

Good news. Finally came up with a name for this story. This will be the second of the 'commissioned' stories, it has five chapters all of which will be posted presently.

Cherico and Leecifer both have a cameo in this story, done with their permission and input. And I do believe this is the only glimpse anyone will ever see of a now abandoned story that Lee was planning, so hey, have that bit of meta knowledge.

Yer welcome.

I'll post these five, then put on the turbo to try and get the next chapter of Kaiju Slaying ready for you guys.

Who knows, maybe I'll still manage to barely slide in before tomorrow. But I'm unfortunately not feeling optimistic at the moment. As usual, got a bit of a packed weekend.

Here is the first chapter of Gallows Humors, Gallows Duties, hope you lot enjoy! 8D

=][=

I stared unblinkingly at the unmoving statue of concrete and rebar. Unheeding of the ache of my eyes or the eye-watering stench of the organic refuse underneath my feet. I held it unwaveringly in my sight as if my life depended on it.

That was, after all, the case.

“Steven, I need to close my eyes for a bit.” I called out, maintaining unerring eye contact.

There was a pause of a few seconds before I heard Steven’s voice somewhere to my right. “Ready.”

I closed my eyes, the sheer relief I felt making my knees weak. The burning in my eyes slowly ebbing away.

“You should be telling me.” Grumbled Stacy.

I took a deep breath of the holding cell’s stinking air. “Stacy, interacting with you makes me so disgusted I want to violently vomit out my own internal organs. I despise you so intensely, that I genuinely cannot tell if my vision is blurry from my eye irritation or from my unforgiving rage. If allowed, once we are out of here, I will gut you with an honest to fuck smile on my face, and then proceed to use your quivering intestines as a garrote to snuff what life remains inside you.” I took another deep breath. “I fully plan to record your pitiful mewling gurgles and your last gasp of air as you expire and will use the recording to lull my future children to sleep.” I opened my eyes and held the abomination in my determined glare. “Steven, I am looking again.”

“Okay.” Steven said, and presumably went back to cleaning. Solid guy, that Steven, he could be counted on.

Unlike Stacy.

Stacy, who had agreed to choose the relative milk run that Steven, Lee, Janice and I had picked out for the final exam.

Stacy. Who in all her wisdom, had instead made us have to survive for six months as D-Class personnel in the SCP Foundation.

There was only one person who Prime Me had ever hated. I now too, had one to hate.

The intercom crackled. [Fraternization between the D-Class personnel will be kept at a minimum.]

Seriously. Fuck the Foundation with a rusty rake.

Steven mentioned he’d worked as a janitor for the better part of a decade. Probably why he was so quick at cleaning the cell. He finished in roughly one third the time it took anyone else. He was the designated janitor every time we came to clean the cell. And he had so far done it without complaint.

I had done it twice myself. But I simply didn’t have the man’s ability with a mop. And the fact was, every second we spent in this cell, was spent in utter, mortal danger.

Why Stacy was consistently chosen as our third D-Class for cleaning duty was beyond me. I’d rather have Lee, the man might be a B-itch, but like all B-itches, he could at the very least be trusted to watch after his own self interest.

Yeah he claimed he was in it to be a hero. But if Prime Me’s life and my own time at the Company had taught me anything, it was that the only things you could trust, were Greed and Mutually Assured Destruction.

Unfortunately, Stacy was too goddamned stupid to comprehend this. Her idiotic lunacy was so advanced, that if I relied on her at all, she’d get me and Steven killed without fail, likely at the expense of her own life.

So I did the smart thing and cut her out of any and all planning, beyond keeping her in mind as a sabotaging element. It had so far worked wonders, having foiled at least three instances of her getting me killed.

I was genuinely unsure if those instances were accidental or not. I’d assume malignancy had she not proven time and again how apocalyptically incompetent she was.

“I’m finished.” Steven declared.

I wordlessly held out my arm, and waited for him to grab hold of it and begin steering me in the direction of the gate to the cell.

Were anyone other than Stacy our third. We might consider doing a layered extraction. Two people staring at the thing while the third walked. But neither of us trusted her not to sabotage us.

She walked into my field of view, her back to the abomination and her face flushed. “You don’t get to talk to me like that. I’m the Flag Bearer.”

Incandescent rage roiled in my stomach. It was utterly unfair that we’d lost Lee and Janice, yet Stacy remained. Were there any justice in the world, fucking Stacy would have been the one to go poke whatever SCP they had been sent to poke with a stick, and die during the mission.

As Stacy continued to berate me, I gave in to my hateful impulse, and blinked.

It was the fastest blink I could manage. Lasting the merest fraction of a second. Barely enough time for someone to shift their weight.

The concrete and rebar statue with the crudely painted face had seemingly teleported behind Stacy, holding her head at a brutal angle, just short of snapping her neck like a twig.

“Fuck.” I said as she screamed and Steven stiffened. “I blinked.”

“Fuck,” I heard Steven breathe, “we have to help her.”

“We can’t. We don’t have the tools, and even if we did, they probably wouldn’t work.”

“Help me!” Stacy hissed.

“We have to do something.” Steven insisted.

“Yeah. We leave.” I retorted. “This is partially my bad, but she shouldn’t have turned her back on it. There’s nothing we can do for her.”

“Fuck.”

“Wait. Where are you going?” Stacy demanded. “You can’t leave me here! I’m too good for this! I’m meant for so much better! So much greater! GET BACK HERE!”

We ignored her increasingly frantic screaming. When the gates started to shut. She switched from demanding to pleading, and from pleading to begging. I maintained eye contact with her, the concrete and rebar statue behind her visible enough that I felt safe in taking that risk.

I met her pleading, terrified stare, saw the despondent tears that streaked down her face, and as the doors were a few hairs from being shut, I allowed myself an ever so slight smirk, just the barest twist of my lips, my head turned so Steven wouldn’t see it.

But it was enough.

I reveled in the understanding that bloomed in her eyes the last instant before the doors shut, and fought down a laugh at the muffled ‘crunch!’ audible even through the thick steel gate.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

“Dammit.” Steven sighed.

“I’m sorry.” I lied.

“Now it’s just us two.”

“We don’t know that for sure.” I said without meaning it. “They might just have been transferred.”

“I hope so, Alex.” Steven said as he walked despondently back to our quarters. I let him stew in his own thoughts as I went to my cot and lay down.

We’d have to put up with a new guy for the next bi-weekly cleaning. Hopefully they’d have better survival instincts than a particularly defective dodo.

Steven and I got the rest of the day off. Say what one will about the SCP Foundation (and boy did I have a lot to say) they at least had good management. If you survived the highly likely to get you killed thing they threw you at, you got the rest of the day off to decompress.

Steven and I were rewarded with light duty for the next three days. Restocking the shelves of the Site 19 library, janitorial duty, fixing the printer whenever it had a paper jam, and the most important to me, delivering food to the Safe Humanoid Containment wing.

I delivered the numerous meals, but lingered at the door of SCP-105.

“Why if it isn’t Mister Knight from the past.” Said a young female voice from the other side of the door.

I grinned. “Eh, that was last week. Today I’m an Undercover Alien Interdimensional Hero Secret Agent man who is biding his time.”

“Oh? Biding his time for what?”

“Clearly, to complete his mission and blow this joint.”

“And how will the Undercover Interdimensional Hero Secret Agent man manage that?” The young woman asked with a chuckle.

“Why, with his magical I.T. portal.” I shot back.

There was a frankly adorable snort. “An I.T. portal?”

“A magical IT portal. Created via portaltonium.”

The joke wasn’t good, but in the poor girl’s frankly awful life, there was little to laugh about. I faintly recalled that the site director was sweet on her, and had tired on multiple occasions to set the girl free.

Judging by the fact that I had not been instructed to cease my fiddling. My guess had been correct. Either that, or 105 being marginally less suicidal was deemed a worthy tradeoff for allowing her a pet D-Class.

The fact that they’d be able to use me as a lever to get her to do what the Foundation wanted was not lost on me.

“And how would someone who is not the interdimensional alien get access to the Magical I.T. portal?”

I clicked my tongue. “Unfortunately, it’s only available to family members. But worry not, I have the perfect solution.” I slipped her food through the slot.

There was the rustling of paper, followed by a snort. “Certificate of agreement to become Agent Alex’s Waifu? And consent to teleportation without notice?”

I grinned. “One time offer, take it or leave it for a free ride to a multi-universal adventure.”

I had been slipping the girl notes for months. By now, she had a collection of certificates; ‘Certified Magical Girl,’ ‘Badass Cutie Patootie,’ ‘Nicest Smile in the West,’ among many others. Each with the clause that the signee agreed to ‘all the term entails according to the bestower of the document.’

Every note I’d given her had been utterly mundane. To most scans, so would this one. Except I had signed it with ink mixed with a drop of my blood and a clause that the signee agreed that only my blood was needed for the binding.

A dick move? Maybe, but I couldn’t exactly be open about receiving consent under my current circumstances.

Her chuckle was decidedly wet as I heard the scratching of a pen. “Well, consider me a Waifu, I guess. Where are we headed to first?”

Jackpot.

“Clearly, we’ll first return to headquarters, where I’ll be richly rewarded for my valiant completion of my very dangerous mission.”

Her laugh was a little less forced and a little more weepy as I told her we would travel to a world with dragons. Where she would have sisters who would love and support her and she would eat every exotic meal she could ever stomach.

Unbeknownst to everyone, I wasn’t even lying. After all, according to my HUD, my ticket out of this hell dimension was exactly forty two minutes past my next shift at SCP-173. And my first official Waifu was one Iris Thompson, otherwise known as SCP-105.

=][=

The new guy could follow instructions. Loudly calling out when he was about to blink, keeping his eyes trained on the statue at all times, and never allowing anything to break his line of sight while Steven cleaned.

In no time at all we were backing out of the cell, the door closing before us. The sound of concrete scraping the floor resuming the instant the doors were closed.

We trooped back to our quarters, Steven and I tried to keep our cool, but we were visibly excited and nervous.

Forty-two minutes on the dot after our shift, gates appeared before the two of us. We sprinted through before the siren finished sounding its first wail.

The instant I was through, I looked and saw two other portals. Lee stumbled out of one of them and I sprinted for the second one. I came out to the sight of a blonde, blue-eyed, pale-skinned girl in her late teens to early twenties, she looked scared and hopeful at the same time.

Her eyes widened and she jumped back as I came through. Without ceremony, I grabbed her by the front of her shirt and yanked her through the portal so hard her feet left the ground. Through the closing portal, I could see the door to her room opening, a SWAT team with compact assault rifles in hand running in.

I got a very good look down the barrel an instant before the portal finished closing.

I finished falling to the floor back first, making sure the blonde landed on top of me to minimize the chances she got hurt, the double impact slamming the air out of my lungs in a pained grunt.

I waited a few moments before raising my fists to the air, and forcibly took a deep breath so I could celebrate properly. “WHOO! Not dead! Love it when a plan comes together!”

“Mr. Janitor!?” The girl asked with a gasp.

I smiled at her. “Hey, name’s Alex, sorry about the rough handling, but I didn’t want you to miss out on your multiversal adventure with me.”

Her eyes wide, she began to tremble from head to toe. When she spoke, her voice had a heartbreaking amount of hope in it. “It’s not a joke right? This is happening? This is real, this time?”

I allowed my grin to widen. “Yup!”

She pressed her face to my chest, and I suddenly had an armful of comely, crying girl. I hugged her to me while I let her get it out of her system. And, looking around, I was glad to see my forcibly optimistic bullshit about Lee and Janice had been partly prophetic. “Hey Lee, glad to see you didn’t die.”

Lee stared at me and the girl in my arms with cold, judgmental calculation, but whatever calculus went on in his head seemed to come out in my favor as he nodded. “Likewise.”

“We got ourselves stuck on cleanup duty for 173, what were you up to?”

“...Clean-up for procedure 110 Montauk.” Lee stated, in a lifeless voice, the haunted look in his eye gaining new meaning.

“Shit…I’m sorry you had to go through that.” I said, and for once, unequivocally meant every word. “Is that what happened to…”

Lee shook his head and closed his eyes. “She was forced to fill in under threat of termination when one of the bastards threw his back. She killed herself two days later.” Opening them, he looked my way, an almost manic intensity in his eyes. “Do you know what happened to Stacy?”

Shit.

“She was with me and Steven,” I replied, and continued when Lee looked confused. “The Statue. She wasn't careful, and I accidentally blinked,” I told him with a shrug, wondering if the ‘Hero’ would condemn me for it.

Instead, the corner of his mouth twitched, in the faintest of smiles. “We're punished if we kill each other. But not saving each other? Perfectly fine. What was that phrase of hers? ‘Acceptable Casualties?’ I’m calling dibs.”

“Dibs?” I echoed.

“I asked around before we left. That world was doomed because, in a few years, Day Will Break,” he stated, and I was doubly glad I’d gotten Iris out. “For my Placement, I get to choose where I go, so I’m going back.”

I stared, the idea of going back to that hell...What.

And I cannot stress this enough.

I shook Iris off enough to at least be able to stand. She held onto my left hand with a death grip, but that was well enough. I made my way to Lee, who eyed me warily. “Dude. I know I'm an A-hole. I know you have no reason to trust a single fuckin’ thing that’s coming out of my mouth. But please, in the name of anything you consider holy, if you were ever going to pay attention to a single thing I said, do it now.” Slowly, deliberately, I reached out with my right hand, and laid it softly on his shoulder. “I'm not going to pretend I understand what you went through. I do not know Montauk, and I don’t want to know it. But what I do understand, is wanting to get back at someone who hurt you, who hurt you so badly that you cannot in good conscience just let it go. Believe me, out of everyone in the multiverse, I understand.

“But reality in that hellverse is more frayed than even 40k. And Day Break? That’s one of the most fucked up things that can happen. You literally get to choose where you’re going. Don't throw that away. Go somewhere that actually has a chance. Leave that hellscape to its fate. Go somewhere where you’ll actually get to have a happily ever after. Don’t throw away the golden goddamn ticket you've sweated and bled for. That place isn’t hell, because hell is legitimately a better place to be, and you just said it’s about to get much, much worse.” I shook my head and squeezed his shoulder imploringly. “Please. I know I’ve been more of a pain in the ass than I’ve strictly needed to be. I know we butted heads a tad more often than we got along. But the only one I would wish that hellscape on is Stacy. You objectively deserve better, please don’t throw that away.”

He looked at me for a long moment, then he...laughed?

Huh?

Not even a crazed cackle as would be halfway logical no, he sounded, of all things, amused as he gently pushed my hand off him.

“Alex, you...you really don’t get it, do you?” Lee asked, sounding almost pitying. “I'm not going there for revenge, unless you count the best revenge. The Premium Catalog, it’s more than a little Broken, so jumping into a Tier 10 scenario is, if anything, easier than a Tier 4 one. No, I will go there to save it, and I will by no means be trapped there. Trust me, even if you don't understand, I do have a plan. And this time, I won’t have a Stacy to trip me up.”

He looked at me as I scowled at him, and shook his head, “You want a golden ticket, and I understand that, can even respect that, but I'm looking for a golden cause, and, having seen that world, I want to utterly destroy it, in order to save it, and, in so doing, hurt those SCP bastards in ways worse than any kind of physical torture ever could. But that’s a secondary goal, possibly even tertiary, not my primary one. We’ve been in enough Seminars together, here in Basic, for you to know I don’t do things just for one reason.”

I took a deep breath and let it out in a defeated sigh. He had made the most fatal mistake of all and started drinking his own Kool-Aid. Lee…Lee was hard to argue with when he got like this.

Harder than usual anyways. “Fine, fuckin’ fine!” I took out my phone, pressed a familiar icon I had not dared touch during the final exam, and held the phone up at Lee. A two second quantum-level scan later and both our phones beeped. “There, I’ve designated you a beneficiary of my food summoning. Every day you can summon ten pails of freeze-dried ‘add water and heat’ meals, ones that can last a single person thirty to forty-five days depending on rationing; three random sandwiches from across the multiverse; seven sodas from across the multiverse; and however much drinking water you want. That’s the only thing I can do to help. I’d go with you if only to keep your preachy ass from getting capped by some random asshat with a sniper rifle, but I had to wave my right to choose where I was going to get myself transferred out of Class A. Don’t die before I finish my first assignment and can answer a call for backup. If we get a few hours and access to a workshop, I can put together a Lasgun, Laspistol, and Longlas with assorted power packs. Something tells me you’ll need the firepower.”

Lee stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head again, chuckling. “You don't need to, really, but I do appreciate it, and I can see why you’re transferring out of Class A. Try not to die yourself, though, Alex. If you need help, and The Company allows it, call me for a little...Sunlight Cleaning, alright?”

I stared for a few moments, trying not to smile. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but I was almost certain it was a pun, the highest class of humor. Not that I’d admit to my ignorance, that would be against the Code. “That was terrible, and you should feel ashamed of yourself.”

Before either of us could say anything else, Shinya Kogami walked through the door, eyebrows raised. “Huh, three out of twenty-five survived. Low, but not unusual.” His eyebrows rose further. “And one of you already has a Waifu. You work fast, dontcha?”

I made sure to give him the grin that always made his eyebrow twitch. “Well, come along you three plus one. Time to get your Stamps and your assignments.”

We followed after him and were directed to separate rooms. We waved our final goodbyes and separated.

I don’t pray. But if I did. I wouldn’t pray for Steven. He had a solid mix of common sense, hard work, and gumption. Enough to get him through most situations he’d ever get himself mixed up in.

Lee though? That dum dum would get all my prayers and then some. If only I wasn’t certain that would just make things worse for him.

I got to meet my new boss, I was being subcontracted to one is the multiversal aspects of Death. Apparently, It had heard from a ‘Frank’ that I made for a good Trouble Diffuser.

Meh. It got me out of Class A, and that’s all that truly mattered.