9 The Mandarin, finally -8
(Now I know that in the film Wenwu mocks the name he was given by the West; he does, however, use that in the comics, so the using of that name is part of my AU)
After far too long, Alex finally had a chance to speak with SCP-10000. The Mandarin, Xu Wenwu himself. Alex had been just about ready to send one of the Foundation's valuable nukes down at him to get his attention.
Alex, as the leader of the Foundation, had gotten used to being in charge over the past two months. Waiting weeks to talk with someone didn't make him happy at all. Even more so when all he got was a damned phone call with him as well!
"The Mandarin, it sure has been difficult to get a chance to talk with you, Mr. Xu." Alex said as the phone connected while leaning back in his office at SITE-001.
"Mr. Ricci, your persistent efforts to reach me have been noted," Xu's voice came through, devoid of humor. "I am occupied these days. Be direct, and do not squander my time."
"Fine, Mr. Xu, if that is what you want. I wanted to speak with you about your return and the revival of the 10 rings. I was of the understanding that you had retired to be with your family." Alex said slowly while tapping his fingers against his desk.
"Don't bring up my family!" Xu hissed angrily on the other side of the phone. "If you must know, then I am out for revenge; as long as you don't get in my way, Ricci, then we will have no problems."
"Revenge? Who in this world is foolish enough to cross you of all people so badly you would come out of retirement." Alex pretended that he knew nothing, and while he indeed didn't remember who killed his wife, he at least knew it had happened.
"If you must know Mr. Ricci, then someone dared to kill my beloved wife, and I will not rest until I have had my revenge." Xu snapped back angrily.
Alex glanced down at his desk, where the files for SCP-10252 and SCP-10254 lay in two small paper folders. He had planned to sell these to Xu, but since the man didn't even want to meet him face to face, Alex decided to raise the price a bit.
"Allow me to offer my condolences for your wife's passing, Mr. Xu. I only ever met her once, but that was enough for me to know she was a truly good person." Alex started his final plan with those words.
"I would like to offer my help, but alas, while I can do much to prevent someone from dying, bringing them back is beyond what I can do." He continued smoothly.
"Why are you suddenly talking about bringing my wife back? I just said I wanted revenge. Even if she were brought back, I would not stop," Xu asked, his voice edged with suspicion.
"Well, you keep saying you want revenge, and if someone took something from me, well, let's just say my revenge would not be complete before I stood with what they took back in my arms and them all lying dead and broken before me," Alex replied, leading Xu down a different path than he had walked in his movie.
"So, what would the famous Overkill do if someone killed the love of your life?" Xu asked, now somewhat calmed down.
"Well, I think the only proper revenge is when you lose nothing and they lose everything. So, I guess I would find a way to bring my love back to me. While most would think something like that impossible, they would also think an ancient warlord still being alive today as impossible, but we both know better," Alex continued to string him along, now that he had him hooked.
"You know something, Ricci, I can hear it in your voice," the Mandarin shot back.
"I didn't lie when I said I didn't have a way to bring someone back… but I hear things, rumors, and the like. There are two rumors I have heard that might be able to give you what you want," he said, cleanly loading his words with hints.
"Not mere rumors, I would assume, since you dare bring it up with me. What do you want for this information you have, Mr. Ricci?" The Mandarin said as he bit down on the bait willingly.
From there, the conversation went on and on as they started talking business, and Alex did his best to balance his greed with shrewdness. Still, when he finally put the phone down hours later, he had gotten a lot from the old warlord.
'With this, China will more or less be mine. The Foundation should be able to replace SHIELD there rather quickly. Now I just need to wait and pretend I'm looking into those clues for a bit longer, and then I can meet him for a handover,' Alex thought as he placed the files inside a safe and left to have some dinner.
'Tomorrow, I will summon yet another SCP. Maybe I should look up some lucky rituals? Nah, given my luck, some SCP will be involved with that, and my ritual would just mean I would summon them tomorrow,' Alex walked with a spring in his step as he was both excited and terrified about what could happen tomorrow.
-----
"System, summon the monthly required SCP to meet the minimum," Alex said as he sat in his bunker right after having finished his breakfast.
[Ding! Understood, Host; please stand by as the random SCP is summoned!]
[Ding! Warning! Host, an 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!]
[Ding! Warning! SCP-1555 has appeared!]
'Hmm, alright, this one is doable, I guess. However, again, it is not something that can be placed in a containment cell. So it will be interesting to see if just putting up some signs and a fence or two will be enough,' Alex thought after going over the information he had on this SCP object.
"Though I guess I can use this SCP for a few of my plans…" Alex whispered as he leaned back to make plans before his system once again interrupted him.
[Ding! Congratulations, Host, for meeting the SCP requirement for 3 months in a row! Host has been rewarded with an additional SCP free random spawn from the system!]
"Wait, wait! No, no! I don't need that reward!" Alex tried to stop his system, but it didn't listen.
[Ding! Warning! SCP-391 has appeared!]
Alex nearly collapsed in relief when he learned that it was a Safe-class SCP that had been summoned. Letting go of the breath he didn't know he had been holding, he used his system to locate the two rogue SCPs while the system went on about rewards.
[Ding! Congratulations to Host for getting SITE-130, a Class 3 Foundation facility in Russia! 500 Class C combat personnel, 50 research personnel, 100 administrative personnel, and 30 maintenance personnel!]
[Ding! Congratulations to Host for getting 1000 undercover Foundation agents within the USA!]
[Ding! Congratulations to Host for getting 1 special containment task force of 25 Class-A combat personnel!]
"Hmm, more undercover agents are nice… but I need way more than that. Still, to think SCP-391 would end up there… Guess I better send someone to get it quickly." He decided and quickly gave the orders for someone to move to Camp Lehigh to follow up on a clue about a possible SCP object there. He figured he could just send them to capture all owls in the area alive, and then they could take their time.
"Now for SCP-1555, I should get that done before looking into meeting Bruce… it's time I collect my first Avenger." Alex whispered to himself as he could finally start his plan to make his own ALPHA-9 strike force within the Foundation.
'If only that darn SCP locator tool would work! I mean, really, what is the point of telling me that 1555 is in the US? Where else would it be?' Alex cursed in his mind how evil his system was. Not only did it suddenly come out and double the chance for a death SCP to spawn, but it gave nearly no help.
-----------------------
It was two days later, during one of his daily meetings, that Alex heard the ping of the system ring out in his mind.
[Ding! Congratulations to Host for the successful containment of SCP-391! Rewards are being given out!]
[Ding! Host has been rewarded with Midas' touch ½! Please continue to work for the Foundation!]
Alex couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at that reward. 'Half of Midas' touch? What is that?' "System, explain the reward," he whispered under his breath.
[Ding! Midas touch allows Host to turn objects he is touching into gold! Host only has half of the Midas' touch and therefore can't transform anything to gold yet!]
'So a totally pointless reward which has no use… great… These rewards make no sense yet. So far, I have only gotten more additions to the Foundation, and now it's personal power? Though I got to admit, the full reward would be sweet.' Alex really did like the idea of getting his hands on his first superpower. However, having half didn't do him any good.
'I guess I need another Midas SCP for the whole reward? Is there even such an SCP?' "The meeting is over! I want a report on Banner and a trip made ready to San Juan for any time I need it!" Alex said, cutting the meeting short as he turned and left the room, leaving behind the sounds of people saluting and crying out, "Yes sir!"
-----------------------
"Welcome to SITE-014, sir," the SITE director said as Alex stepped off the quinjet.
"I hope I didn't take you away from your work, Director," Alex replied politely as he was led inside what looked like a large office building with its very own warehouse next to it. Only the warehouse was, in fact, the vehicle bay.
"So tell me about this new Safe-class SCP you have, Director," Alex said as they walked along the halls of the SITE while nodding to the many members of staff.
"Well, so far, we believe that it's SCP-391, also known as Midas' Owl. Which I assume you already had guessed based on the fact you asked us to capture all owls in the area," the woman said as she led Alex down to a containment cell.
"Indeed, my sources did suspect that it was SCP-391 that had made a reappearance. Still, given the situation we are in, it's best to be extra cautious. Now, did retrieving 391 come with any difficulties? With the area it showed up in being watched by SHIELD's Hydra division?"
"Not as much as we had feared, sir. We got some proper paperwork done, which should allow us in, and I suspect they didn't want to make a show out of refusing us. They did demand to watch our men do their work, but that was no problem," the woman said as they stood before a large glass window into the containment cell.
"That's good; we wouldn't want SHIELD to get in the way of the Foundation's work. While they try to protect humanity in their own way, they can't be trusted with something so important. Only we can," Alex said, not forgetting to enhance the glory of his Foundation in the minds of the other people in the room.
"Right, you are, sir. They have their own thoughts and ideas; they are not suited to handle SCP cases like we do," the woman agreed, as she knew a lot about SHIELD as a class-4 employee of the Foundation. The more she knew about them, the less she liked the organization that pretended to be like their Foundation.
"But enough about that. Instead, I want to talk about 391. I want you to figure out how much gold it can produce and it's worth. You are then to sell it through agents within the Ricci family. The proceeds will be added to this Site, though it won't reduce the funds granted from headquarters. Still, it is important to keep the accounts clean and clear. Understood?" Alex said after thinking for a moment.
He knew that the amount of gold would not be that much. So, there was no point in taking the SCP object back to SITE-001. Better to just let it stay here and increase the money this SITE had so he wouldn't need to increase the budget too much as they got hold of more SCPs.
The Director naturally agreed as she didn't have a choice and wouldn't go about turning down extra funds as even though there weren't yet many SCPs in containment, the hunt for them still cost a lot of money.
After spending the rest of the day at SITE-014, Alex bid farewell and returned back to his home to rest. "Tomorrow, we will set off for San Juan!" He told his guards so they could prepare everything as he entered his quarters for the night.
While Alexander Ricci was having a meeting with the staff at SITE-014, another Alexander was hearing a report that had quite a few similarities with the one Alex heard.
----------------
"So someone wanted to poke around at Camp Lehigh?" Alexander Pierce asked on the phone. He, as the head of Hydra, knew that while most of SHIELD had mostly abandoned the place, Hydra still had some secrets buried there.
"Yes, sir. It was animal control, sir. They had the proper paperwork to get access to the place, so we couldn't stop them without a good reason. Even then, it would surely have raised questions about why we cared so much for what is supposed to be an abandoned site," the agent on the other end of the call said.
"We were able to shadow them as they worked on capturing all owls they could find. They did spend a bit of time looking at the bottom of trees for traces of more owls but did nothing suspicious. It seemed that it was just a legit search for owls without anything else."
"Hmm, well done for keeping this under wraps for now. I expect you to follow up and ensure nothing else was done or left behind by them. As long as you find nothing, then don't bother reporting it," Pierce said after a short pause as he came to the conclusion that nothing was off about it, given the order to capture owls was legit and apparently because there were signs of bird flu.
"Understood, sir. Hail Hydra!"
"Hail Hydra."
