33 When Goddess Breaks

The shockwave from the on-site Alpha Warhead washed through this bunker, causing intense tremors and bits of dust to fall from the ceiling. The whole room shook like it was a boat on rough seas.

"It is done."

Bright was the first to speak. Even as he held the pulled trigger in his hands, the man wasn't sure if he had just entombed what was left of humanity inside this bunker by sealing off the entrance.

In the close to a month since Kukulkan had left for Jupiter, Foundation Sites have constantly been under siege. Site-19 was just the latest in a line of casualties that gradually thinned what's left of humanity.

Only about five O5 Council members remained. Three of the 13 members of the new O5 Council were inside those overrun Sites and chose suicide by activating the on-site 100-megaton Omega Warhead. All that remained of those Foundation facilities was a giant crater.

The other five were buried like Site-19 when they activated their Alpha Warheads and collapsed the surface. They were equally cut off just like Bright was now. Every line of communication stopped.

The man then turned to look around him, at the room he was in. There were about a hundred Foundation Researchers and other people under the protection of Kukulkan. More than just standard humans, those inside this bunker included some useful SCPs like SCP-109, the infinite water canteen, and SCP-105 for checking up on the status of other bunkers within the Heavy Containment Zone.

Under the request of Agent Kukulkan, this place also held SCP-239 and SCP-191, the latter of whom is pending a 'neutralized' status given how most of her anomalous cybernetic attachments given by that rogue Broken God operative were gone.

Bright could hear the faint sound of crying and sobbing.

There's not a lot of hope right now. In less than four days those things breached down to the Light Containment Zone and forced a detonation of the Alpha Warhead.

Those other sites really weren't kidding.

O5-9 then took out his phone and scrolled through the alerts, with the last alert being one saying how SCP-2000 was under siege.

Bright's lips thinned. Preliminary estimates place the time it'll take for those things to breach into the much deeper Site-19 Heavy Containment Zone to be at worst a week and at best, maybe a few months.

As much as Bright hates it, they really are helpless now.

A certain quote from a space opera series jumped out at the man once their helplessness set in.

"Help us, Kukulkan, you're our only hope." He whispered.

___________

How long has it been?

How many cycles of me filling up my Pocket Space and dumping it over SCP-2399 has it been?

Was this how Sisyphus felt? He rolled a boulder up a hill only for it to roll down once it reached the peak, just like when I filled up my Pocket Space and flew up to SCP-2399 and dumped it over that machine. Whereupon I would then fly down into the core of Jupiter to search for more pieces of SCP-2399.

It was hair-pulling how frustratingly boring of a task this was. Was this how people in the backroom felt? This mind-numbing torture of repeating the same task over and over again?

This was a Sisyphean hell. The task was simple, so I didn't even need to think to complete it.

I had no one for company. I have no one to talk to. All I could hear when I collected the pieces was the currents of swirling metallic hydrogen moving across the mantle of Jupiter. When I went up into the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, I would then be met with a song of loud thunders paired with the occasional beeps made by repair drones that shed off SCP-2399 akin to dandruff.

I was terribly lonely. So in my desperation for someone to talk to, I tried to speak with those repair drones.

Only when it didn't respond did I realize that talking to inanimate objects was a common symptom of insanity in many literary works.

So I pushed on. I dove into my memories just like I dove into the depths of Jupiter. I replayed every aspect of my life from start to finish until that too, got boring.

Much of my childhood memories had fragments in them. They weren't clear as I think Kukulkan's eidetic memory isn't retroactive.

I replayed my stay here in this SCP world. Every moment from my first appearance all the way to my entrance into Jupiter.

After the second time, that too got boring.

It was only the thought of this being important to saving humanity that pushed me on.

As I sped down to Jupiter's core every time I finished dumping pieces of SCP-2399 over that hovering destroyer, I… began to find creative ways of entertaining myself.

I started drinking the metallic hydrogen. I started scratching my arms and legs. I started biting and chewing on carved-out pieces of Jupiter's solid core. I started doing things just to pass the time between my descent and ascending out of Jupiter.

I even began to test my own durability. Given that I could regenerate without a problem, I went to extreme lengths as I broke through my skin and tore into my flesh.

I knew this wasn't healthy. I knew this complete isolation was very unhealthy. I screamed out in pain when the skin broke and exposed the bluish-silvery flesh underneath. But for the sake of humanity's future, I must continue to repair SCP-2399.

I endured this hell.

I think I'd have gone mad from the mind-numbing task and isolation without that level of Stress Defense.

But… after an unknown amount of time, I've finally completed SCP-2399.

Only about three-quarters to full repair, but I guess the remaining pieces didn't matter as the thing began to move on its own.

Repair drones moved like bees returning to a hive and were subsumed by the now-functioning destroyer. They fused together akin to air bubbles merging inside water, making me think perhaps whatever made up those machines were some kind of nanites.

It was only after the first hour did the thing escaped Jupiter's atmosphere. At this speed it'll take the thing days to fully reach Earth, much less the sun.

It wasn't fast enough.

I felt frustrated once again, so I pushed it to go faster.

My hands breached into SCP-2399 when the material it was made out of couldn't withstand the amount of force I was exerting upon it.

Right, I wasn't Superman. I can't just hold onto a section of a plane and not expect it to break apart.

Immediately, my green personal shield flared and shimmered into existence as I was hit by a barrage of antimatter. More specifically, they were bricks of anti-iron sped up to near-light speed using tunnels of compressed space and electromagnetic rails.

Thankfully, because the personal shield was not made of matter but instead pure magical energy, those anti-iron bricks couldn't react with my body comprised of normal matter.

However, they did explode in a fiery outburst of anti-matter nuclear fusion. CPT Symmetry states how anti-matter should behave the same as normal matter, so when the atoms of an anti-iron brick slammed against an immovable object at relativistic speeds, just like how when I moved fast enough inside an atmosphere, those atoms were forced to be close enough together to enact nuclear fusion.

Again, why do I know this stuff?

SCP-2399 must've registered me as an 'enemy' when I accidentally sunk my arms into it.

So I backed away until the city-sized spherical machine was nothing more than a tiny speck almost invisible against the black backdrop of space. It was only really visible by how it blocked out some stars.

Oddly enough, the destroyer stopped firing the instant I moved to get away.

Before I could do anything else a scintillating light consumed SCP-2399 and overshadowed everything else, darkening the universe until it was the only visible thing.

I moved to shield my eyes from its bright rays.

It was as though another star had been born inside the solar system, easily outshining the sun as SCP-2399 released apocalyptic levels of gamma rays.

Enough to fry whole planets.

Whatever SCP-2399 just did release a long trail of brilliant white as it launched itself toward the sun. That trail became brighter and brighter as it closed in on me before disappearing entirely.

I could feel local spacetime becoming turbulent and filled with gravitational waves as SCP-2399 moved away.

Then, in the next second, I saw two images of SCP-2399 appearing right next to me, one moving backward and toward where SCP-2399 used to be while the other continued traveling toward the sun.

Holy shit I think SCP-2399 just breached the lightspeed limit.

An object duplicating in two as it moves past you is exactly what you should see if something is moving faster than light.

You can't see the FTL object as it approaches. And as it passes close by, only then would the photons from the object's past trajectory and from the future reach your eyes.

I sped up alongside SCP-2399 in a vain attempt at catching up.

I knew that no matter what I did, I'd never be able to catch up. I… unless I can somehow warp space. Perhaps if I release my own rules I can move faster than light?

Jupiter turned redder and redder as I moved away from it. The stars in front of me began to coalesce into a single bright spot right in front of me as everything behind redshifts into the infrared spectrum.

I tried to catch up to SCP-2399 by following its trail of ionized gasses. The destroyer probably used antimatter to propel itself forward, creating a contrail of nuclear plasma while using some kind of spatial-warping technology to move faster than light.

The latter is probably the reason why the local spacetime was so turbulent.

Seeing SCP-2399 moving towards the sun by itself gave me a warm feeling. Was this… finally hope? Is the culmination of everything I did finally at hand? Will Grand Karcist Ion finally be killed once this piece of Mekhane touches him?

As I sped past the orbit of Venus, with SCP-2399 already in the space between Mercury and the sun, I let out a smile.

Finally, 'When Day Break' will end—

Because of Special Relativity, I had no time to think, much less react, to what happened next.

I was blindsided by a colossal deluge of energy equal to a month's worth of the sun's total output.

I wasn't the direct recipient, instead that honor went to SCP-2399.

Yet even so, I found my shield being burned away as it attempted to protect me from enough energy to vaporize the Earth many times over. I found my metallic cape being burned away.

Even when I took every Divine Authority available to We Are The Winged Serpent to defend me, I found myself being knocked off course— slowing down and being pushed back as the lance of Quark-Gluon Plasma was so hot that three of the four fundamental forces of the universe unified into a single Force at the core of this beam.

The weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force altogether merged with the strong nuclear force, creating the Grand Unified Theory Force. Physics changed because of how much energy were was.

I was being hit by a lance of energy so dense that it was comparable to the first few instances of the Big Bang.

I felt dazed as though I just had a concussion. I felt pain across all my senses. Raw pain echoed throughout my body unlike anything else. My skin had been burned away until all one could see was the crystalline flesh underneath, and even that continued to be eaten away by the energy.

Then, I couldn't see anymore as my eyes burned away.

Oh god, the pain.

It was as though I was a human and somehow had poured a bucket full of boiling water over me.

Once the deluge of energy stopped, my sight quickly returned, as blurry as it was.

In my brief moments of consciousness, I saw through my blurry vision how my fingers were mostly lengths of emerald-colored bones connected by bits of crystalline tissue.

I probably more resembled an emerald skeleton with bits of crystal 'meat' on them now.

Hmm...

I would be horrified if I wasn't coming in and out of consciousness. The brief bouts of being conscious before the pain send me back into a mindless oblivion. The unbearable pain of having all of your skin and most of your muscles burned off... I found myself skipping forward in time.

My last sight before blackening out fully was that of a white-gold planet.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"Mmm—!"

There was a sharp intake of air as I tried to get up.

What the hell just happened? I was so disorientated that I didn't even realize how I was in the middle of a molten crater, and the thick sky above me was a sickly yellow color.

I… was following SP-2399 before being hit by a lance of fundamental particles, there— Venus. I'm on Venus.

I looked around me at the Venusian landscape. The sickly green-yellowish rocky surface paired with an equally sickly-yellow-looking atmosphere.

In the distance, I could see meteorites falling into the ground and occasionally causing an explosion so large it temporarily blotted out all light.

Those are… probably the remains of SCP-2399. They have to be since no normal space rocks can survive atmospheric entry on Venus because of how thick it is.

I rubbed my face, finding everything had been healed. My clothing returned. Yet I could still feel sensations of phantom pain across my body.

I barely survived it. That attack from Ion.

If I wasn't in my third ascension state utilizing the full might of the Heart of ORT and every Divine Authorities belonging to Pan-Human History Kukulkan, Quetzalcoatl, Tohil, and Q'uq'umatz, I really would've died.

I had no time to think of my newfound mortality. So, I blasted up into the sky, the carbon dioxide ionizing around me in a brilliant white as I reached space in less than a second to try and assess the situation and determine what could be salvaged.

SCP-2399 has been destroyed. Mostly vaporized.

Fuck.

What remaining pieces of it that weren't caught in the direct path of that lance are raining down across Venus and Mercury.

Just then, I found the sun shining even brighter. Spacetime was becoming very turbulent.

Crap—

I had no time to think about what I was going to do next. Only time to react.

So through We Are The Winged Serpent, I grabbed Quetzalcoatl's Authority over Venus and moved the entire planet between me and the sun in milliseconds.

It was a physics-breaking act. A planet suddenly moving so quickly would've shaken it apart as the whole mass was encountering mind-boggling levels of acceleration. Not only that, stopping so suddenly would've caused Venus to be shotgunned into a cloud of loose particles as planets are truthfully more balls of dust clumped together through gravity.

But Divine Authorities don't obey physics. They manifest the effect without a cause.

And so, I was able to use Venus as a shield against the next deluge of energy.

Though it was less powerful than the previous one, it was still almost awe-inspiring being behind Venus as it blunted the attack from Ion.

All I could see was a corona of blindingly bright light surrounding the comparably black Venus. The eclipse was steadily retreating inward as the stream of fundamental particles ate away at the edge since those were the thinnest in a sphere.

I can't just stay here.

Venus is probably where the majority of those SCP-2399 pieces fell. If it is destroyed, then my last hope truly is gone.

But… equally, I can't just move the planet out of the way since it's the only thing that's blocking Ion's attack.

Unless…

I look down at my hands, then at my heart.

Closing my hands tight, I thought to myself; let's do this then. I probably have only a few seconds of protection before that lance of energy drills right through.

<Last Sun Xibalba: O' Star, Fall Down From Space>

I used my Noble Phantasm.

A star came into existence in front of Venus without any cause save for by my will alone. It was a foreign star, one that doesn't obey the laws of man. It wasn't even a ball of hot gas, instead, it was… something else. It didn't even look like a star as it had a solid surface of silver.

It was truly detached from the Common Sense of Man.

The alien sun absorbed the attack like it was a black hole, leaving the charred and molten corpse of Venus alone. There, I grabbed the planet's remains and dragged them along with me as I traveled to the edge of the foreign star created by my Noble Phantasm.

There, I could see how a bright beam came right out of the sun as though it were the Starkiller Base.

Drawing my right arm back, I let out a silent scream as I exercised Quetzalcoatl's Authority in full and threw Venus at Sol.

Under the effect of a Divine Authority, Venus was traveling faster than light. The usual physical effects like redshifting and disappearing didn't happen.

The rules of physics isn't applicable to Venus right now.

A God's rules was.

"Annoying."

Venus cracked before being pulverized into billions of tiny chunks of rocks and dust. The particle beam from the sun gradually thinned until it ceased to exist.

I felt my last hope being snuffed out like someone blowing on a candle flame. The foreign star phased out of existence, and I was shrouded in 'darkness', stuck at the bottom of an abyss of despair.

Ah… my last hope. I… failed.

I failed.

I truly failed.

"Good attempt though, my Goddess. I like it."

Ion appeared right next to me about five meters away. As he walked and approached, rocks and debris came from nothingness and solidified under his feet. He walked calmly like a preacher approaching a tribe of 'savages', his staff topped up with a thing that shouldn't exist was right by his side.

"I must apologize for that attack. I didn't intend to blast you with that Creation Lance. It was directed at that piece of Mekhane rather than you."

I glared hatefully at him, at the three eyes on his face. Even... if I failed. I'll go down swinging.

"How hateful. Don't you know that this is for the best?" Ion paused for a bit, "You can talk."

"By turning people into those flesh blobs, you monster?!"

Ion then spread his arms out.

"Tell me, my Goddess, what do you think is there after death?"